Month: April 2020

Having lived in a small town (Greenwood, population 1,100) I grew up experiencing small town living. My mother was a school teacher school and my father delivered mail; both my parents were well known in the community.

We received a dose of having friendly neighbors this past week. While we were outside trimming trees and bushes, two of our new neighbors, Jan and Lorraine, walked past and struck up a conversation with Pam. During the conversation Pam mentioned she wished to get some rhubarb starts so we could eventually have rhubarb pie.

The next morning we found a pot of rhubarb on our east porch! Brand new and obviously from a greenhouse, we really appreciate the gesture. (Pam now thinks of the two neighbors as the Rhubarb Sisters.)

Along the same small town theme, a couple deer came running down Main Street the other day and cut in behind a house located just west of us. And a strange sight; two people dressed as dinosaurs came walking down the same street one day. Turns out they were dressed for a photo shoot at the local bank located a few blocks to the east of us. And, of course, the Mennonite carriages roll past every now and then. The clip-clopping of the horse hooves is quite a relaxing sound (except for the dogs…).

I have previously mentioned the number and variety of birds in the area but we also have rabbits and both grey and black squirrels in residence.

Still another example of small-town life came from the City. Officials secured a small bulk tank of hand sanitizer; bring your own container (spray bottle recommended) and fill it up for free. This information was provided to us by another neighbor who was driving by, saw us in the yard, and stopped to pass along the details.

As you may have gathered, we have been spending time outside as the weather improves. In addition to trimming trees and shrubs, I put down some grass seed and started filling in some low spots in the lawn.

After the foundation seal had cured I had to reattach the gutter downspouts I had removed from the house. Most had to be reworked as the foundation is now about 2 inches thicker than before. This meant the downspouts had to be rebuilt to clear the new insulation. The job took several hours and I was able to use parts and pieces of gutter that were on hand and left by the previous owner(s).

In addition to reworking the downspouts, I had to reinstall the porch boards I had removed to gain access to the main foundation. This photo shows the front porch (and I had to do the east/side porch as well).

Inside the house, Pam continues the parlor bedroom painting and upgrading. Here she is working on the west wall of the room at about ten foot height:

Note the previous “mustard” color that the new paint is covering. The new two-tone paint job, combined with a ribbon border and fabric header, looks terrific on the completed sections of the room.

Pam’s attention to detail extends to the strip of ribbon, seen in the lower right corner of the above photo, which features fabric moths cut from the header fabric. Pam glued the figures to tagboard to give them some depth, then mounted them where the ribbon pieces meet or end.

This photo shows off the ribbon strip and fabric figures a bit better:

In addition to working on the bedroom, Pam and I took a few minutes to mount a floating shelf under the upper stairwell angle. (This shelf would be visible upon entering the door from the front porch into the house.) The shelf displays two of Pam’s cameras and her mother’s Brownie box. Notice the 110 complete with original case, flash cube and flash cube extender. Can anyone say Antiques Roadshow?

As I write this it is raining so there will be little outside activity today. The rain will be beneficial for the grass seed I just sprinkled here and there on the lawn, as well as Pam’s new rhubarb plant. It will be a good time to catch up on other “inside” projects. There is always something to do!

From the Photo Archive

This week’s photo is from 2000 and shows the Fields Family at the Grand Canyon.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents:

No, the parlor bedroom is not PINK. It is “rose” (bottom color) and “blush” (top color). I had to do a bit of paint mixing myself to get the “blush” just the right shade. The accent ribbon is “deep mauve.” There will be plenty of cream and mauve + cranberry accents in the room — eventually.

One of my overall decorating goals here at 702 Main is to get things out of boxes and on display or in use, hopefully in artsy and interesting places. Hence the cameras on the shelf.

Happy Trails.

This week we saw one of our high-priority projects get completed: The foundation was sealed.

A few weeks ago we had contacted a company, Weber Insulation, to come out and seal the house foundation @ 702. Our hope is this will reduce the level of cold air (and warm, humid air) infiltrating into the house, making it more energy efficient.

Weber Insulation arrived yesterday, April 21st, to do the work. (Early morning, 7:00 a.m. That hour is a bit early for us these days.)

There are several steps in the sealing process:

Dig a trench around the foundation, making the trench about 4 inches below ground level.

Spray the existing stone rubble foundation with polyurethane.

I removed some boards so even the house foundation located under porches could be coated. One of the young [and thin] workers got the task of going under the porch opening,

Grind down the high spots.

Fill in low spots and do final sanding.

Last step involves spraying on a layer of glue and adding the topcoat finish.

Finished foundation looks good!

The crew started shortly after 7:00 AM and was finished by 2:00 PM. Now I have to put back the rain gutters, hose holders, and east porch railing, all items I had removed in preparation for this work.

I’m very pleased with the way the foundation work looks and how quickly it went. Now to see if it helps make the home more energy efficient.

For your edification and enjoyment, I am working on a video of the project and will be posting it shortly on my Videos page.

The foundation was not the only bit of news from the last week, although it was the major story. We had our first spring flower bloom. I am not sure what these are called but pleasant to see it happen.

For the first time this year, the next week’s forecast has no below freezing temperatures. Let us hope that continues to be the case!

Elma seems to be home to a large variety of birds. We have numerous robins, finches, cardinals, woodpeckers, and sparrows. The other day this bird was feeding under one of the bushes in the yard. (Photo was taken through our front window which is early glass and added some distortion.)

We will have to get a bird identification book so we can give these birds their proper names.

On other fronts, Bob the Builder came by and will be giving us a quote re: adding a bay onto the existing two-car garage. I expect the addition, 16 feet by 30 feet, will be in the 15K – 18K range, not counting the cost of cement work.

We should be hearing from the electrician we spoke to earlier in the year. At that time “Jake” indicated he was scheduled about 3 weeks out, so we should be getting closer to the top of his work schedule.

All in all, the improving weather means more projects can get underway. It will be a busy spring.

Photo Archive

This week’s photo was taken at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in 2002.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny:

The foundation guys (three in all) kept their “social” distances pretty much, except for Fields standing too close to them and insisting on shaking hands. The dogs had their potty breaks on leash the day of the foundation spray – woo-hoo, that was exciting.

Happy (socially distanced) Trails.

This past week, including Easter Sunday, was a study in spring weather. One day it was warm, up in the 70 degree range, then snow came in.

While the accumulation was not great here in Elma, less than one inch, Rochester (about 70 miles north) received nine inches of snow. We were on the fringe of the heavy snow band.

Still, the wind blew and the snow had a decided horizontal element to it, making it a good day to stay inside and enjoy a hot cup of cocoa.

During the week we had colored Easter eggs, an exercise I hadn’t taken part in for some time. Brought back some memories of days when our kids were younger, and back when I was a kid.

Activities for the rest of the week were somewhat limited; the remaining boxes were removed from the storage area and put in the garage, Pam’s painting continued, and I did [still more] lawn clean up after winds had blown quite a few leaves onto our lawn.

For any who might view my Galleries, a few technical changes have been made. Most photos now have rounded corners and video clips are labeled as to their run times. Galleries that have one or more video clips associated with them have an * in the title. Layout of the galleries has been standardized with captions below the thumbnails and centered on the page.

I know these changes mean more to me than to others but I enjoy tinkering with the underlying code and I think the changes present the photos and video clips in a more attractive way. The hard part was editing all the galleries and video pages; a very time consuming and (at times) tedious task. Glad to have it done.

Pam is trying to trim up the dogs Bru and JoJo as they are well past their normal grooming appointments. Both were getting quite shaggy. (Blondie is a short hair so grooming is not a high priority with her.) Although not perfect, the dogs do look much better after their trim. JoJo is still a work in progress as she will sit still only so long while Pam works on her section by section. I think dogs and humans will both be happy when pet groomers reopen for business!

From The Photo Archive

Back to when it all started: August 10th, 1974.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents:

I was thinkin’ I might eventually invest in some equipment and try doing the dog grooming myself, now that I’m retired. Using a scissors and comb this time, I proceeded to give it a try. Bru ended up with one errant snip on her belly and I cut myself in the hand working on Jo. Both wounds were bleeders. I knew there was a reason I paid people to do this.

Home grooming might work with Bru, who is a smaller dog, so the overall volume of hair (and thus time devoted to the task) is less. With JoJo, however, who is basically a Springer Spaniel mix, too much dog and too much hair.

And too little patience all around.

Happy (future) Trails.

Mondays are grocery shopping days for us. I headed out to a local store, Fareway, located in Cresco. Cresco is about 25 miles from Elma.

The store is not large but carries most of the basics we need. However, “exotic” items, such as agave liquid sweetener and witch hazel, are not part of the product mix. We alternate between this store and the HyVee store in Charles City, which carries a wider range of products. Next Monday will be a HyVee trip.

Given the COVID-19 situation, I can take advantage of “Senior Shopping Hours” that run from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM every morning. Best part for me is no kids running up and down the aisles!

Quite a few of the shoppers were wearing face coverings so I may need to find one or dig out my ATV dust mask for future use. Masks are not mandated but are picking up in popularity.

Paper towels are still a scarce item, but I did find some hand sanitizer. (Last week HyVee had TP so we are OK there.) Other items are still rationed; a limit of 4 “water items” was posted, along with limits on some paper products.

All told it was a mostly successful shopping trip. What I did not get this time will go on the list for next week’s trip to Charles City.

Around the house, work continues on a couple different fronts. Pam continues to paint and I work on projects mentioned in previous posts such as lawn clean-up and moving boxes out of our storage unit into the garage.

I did take the snow blade off the John Deere tractor and put on the mowing deck and grass bagger. I ran the mower over the yard to even out the grass and pick up leaves that had blown in from surrounding yards. I raked out several corners around the house, dog run, and along the garage and finished mulching the “heavy” winter accumulation of leaves. The lawn mowing, combined with sidewalk edging and leaf mulching, has the yard looking pretty good.

Given the number of trees in the yard it is no surprise that there are a lot of small branches and twigs on the lawn. These will have to be raked up as they are too heavy for the mower deck or lawn vac to handle.

I continue to work on my web pages; my galleries now have an “Auto Play” button on them which will start the chosen gallery to run as a slide show. I find this more convenient than clicking on each photo to go through an entire gallery but that option is still there for those who want it. Combining the Auto Play with the Full Screen mode makes for a nice way to view these collections.

Life goes on despite the COVID-19 restrictions. We are keeping busy with outside projects on nicer days and inside projects on the (many) dreary days. There is still paperwork coming through regarding my retirement; Medicare just sent us a multi-month billing and I had to call them to remove my former private insurance coverage as primary. (Former coverage ended at the end of February this year.) Pretty soon, though, I will have to find an open barbershop and we both should set up dentist appointments for routine cleaning (when dentists are operational again). Nothing critical, though I do miss open library hours. Overall we are doing OK.

Archive

Here is photo of me from 2007. We had visited a museum in Reno, Nevada as part of a longer trip.

The sign below was made for us by our good friend Hank when we lived in Colorado in the late 1970s.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents:

It’s been a month since the unexpected gall bladder removal surgery. Supposedly I can now start to lift items weighing more than ten pounds, although my torso incisions frequently object to heavier weights.

Our sheltering in place continues. Although Iowa’s governor has not issued a formal “stay safe at home” order, we’re finding local businesses are on reduced hours and/or reduced public interaction, if not downright closed period. Neighbors are maintaining a social distance when speaking to us, as are potential service providers who arrive for quotes (electrician, foundation spray company owner, handyman).

I’ve been surprised by the catio cat population. I assumed that, once given the freedom to come-and-go at will, there would be considerably more wandering about than is presently occurring. I guess they are “sheltering in place” where the food, water, and heated beds are. No dummies.

Happy (future) Trails.

I am going to start this post with a few follow-up comments about our current activities and projects

Medical: Pam is doing very well. She has now finished with three of the four weeks restriction on lifting ten pounds or less and is looking forward to finishing the final week.

Her “painted-on” incision bandages have fallen off, just as the doctors said they would after a few weeks. Pam is glad to be rid of them for psychological reasons as well as physical ones. The healing process is moving along just as it should.

Pam continues the bedroom painting project:

She works on this project every few days and allows her shoulder to recover in the off-time.

Yard work: I have finished edging the Main Street sidewalk, the last bit to do in that project. Very few people in Elma maintain their sidewalks so the neighbors probably think I am a bit crazy, but I do think having neatly trimmed and edged walks show that someone cares about their property and neat walks add to the curbside appeal.

I was able to get some more lawn raking done and move forward with the lawn clean-up. While below-freezing temperatures are still in the forecast, the daytime temps are gradually warming up. I hope to have the initial lawn work finished in a couple of weeks, depending on weather conditions.

Home repairs: New this week is a quote for getting the foundation sealed. A local company does this work, and the owner stopped by to examine the job site and give us an estimate of $3,300.00. We told him to put us on his work schedule. We are hoping for completion by early summer.

Project begun: Moving boxes from our rented storage unit to put in the attic of the garage. I have been frustrated in my quest to find tools and odd items such as screws, nails, and shelf brackets so I decided to bring most boxes out of the storage unit. I will have better access that way and can go through boxes at my leisure when I need to find something.

This will be a multi-week task in parallel with lawn work when the weather justifies the outside activity. (Today we have a mix of rain and snow in the air so neither project gets any attention.) There is another side benefit; the “big boy” toys fit much better in the storage unit and allows easier access to the remaining boxes.

Social: While still not fully “mid-westernized” we are getting there. One local shopper runs this weekly ad:

We have not tuned in yet. 🙂

Pet update: The cats and dogs have adopted the house and appear to be quite comfortable. Here are 4 of the cats and JoJo sleeping around one of the main floor heating vents.

Pam has opened the catio so the ferrel cats can start getting some outside time. We had half-expected them to run off but they seem to be fine coming back to the cat shed for food, water, and heated sleeping beds.

Finally, a new feature for my posts: Jerry’s Archive. I will, from time to time, include a photo or two dating back in time. I have started to go through older photos taken over the years and will put a few in these posts as a reminder of past places, people, and things we have known or experienced. I hope you enjoy them.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny:

Nothing new to report. Sheltering in place seems a lot like surviving winter in Iowa.

Happy (future) Trails.