Month: June 2021

The highlight of the last week was a visit from Jeff Hayes, a friend of Pam’s since childhood. A few other chores occupied us as well.

Jeff Hayes, his late wife Mary, and Pam had been friends since childhood. Jeff and Pam attended the same church and all three were in the same grade through school. Pam and Mary had traveled together in Europe before either married. Mary passed away about four years ago due to pancreatic cancer, a great loss to all of her friends. Pam established the Mary Lynn’s Memorial Garden in her memory. I have featured photos of the garden in previous posts; the name came from Mary Hayes.

Jeff lives in Florida but is considering a move back to Wisconsin. He was on a visit to friends and relatives who live near LaCrosse and was able to arrange a stop in NE Iowa on his way home. We were very glad to be able to meet with him and have a several hour conversation.

Topics discussed included the kids, our work on the house, friends Pam and Jeff have in common, and future plans. The weather cooperated with mild temperatures and no rain so we spent quite a bit of time outdoors in the shade. It was a very satisfying visit and we really appreciated Jeff’s effort to go out of his way to stop at 702 Main.

Other projects have been started; we started scraping paint on the front porch. Pam would like to have the porch painted by the 4th of July but much depends on the weather, which has been very hot and humid lately. (Much needed rain arrived on Friday and again as I write this on Saturday morning.) Scraping and painting will be the prime project for the upcoming week.

As with many projects, unanticipated sub-projects emerged. In this case I began removing a bunch of old phone land-line wire and cable TV cables from the outside of the house. These cables, some of them cut by previous owners and none in service, were attached to the outside of the house by stapes and cable clamps. A pair had been run up to the media room via the end of the porch. No use in trying to paint over or around them; just better to remove them now. There are more wires to remove on the west side of the house but that will wait for another day.

The heat limited our outside activities for much of the week but it did not seem to affect the flowering plants. This year’s star, so far, have been the hollyhocks Pam planted last fall. I had a photo of these in my last post but since then more blossoms have appeared and the hollyhocks look particularly attractive.

Each plant blossomed with a different hue. The shortest plant, with the deepest red flowers, came from seeds we harvested from a flower bed in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. We hope these plants will self-seed and expand the flower bed over time.

Potted pansies on the front flower bed are also doing well this year. Visible from Main Street, this pot and other flowers in the bed add color to that side of the yard. Many of the hosta plants are getting ready to flower; photos of those will be in my next post.

Photo Archive

This weeks archive photos have a definite mechanical theme. They are from an antique tractor show I visited. Location was Janesville, Wisconsin and date was in the late 90’s.

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

Pam’s Penny

Happy to see the rain.

Happy Trails.

It’s Father’s Day and the Summer Solstice combined. What has the Fields’ household been up to, you may ask? Here is the answer.

It has been pretty quiet since my last post. The week’s activities were a combination of routine tasks (mowing lawn, for example) and small projects. Pam painted the inside sill of the new kitchen window; next up is detail painting the brown trim around the window, then re-hanging the curtains. This will require relocation of the curtain brackets as Bob the Builder installed the original trim upside-down. Oh well.

I worked on the trailer’s lights as a few of them were inoperative. Three lights were replaced and some work had to be done on the truck end as one of the 4-wire plugs was dead. This left me with no right-hand turn lights. All issues have been taken care of now so the trailer is safe and legal for road use.

Along those same lines the power mirrors on the truck had quit working. Fuse checked out OK and power to the switch was verified. A new switch is on order to cure that particular problem.

Pam and I did go bumming a bit yesterday, visiting a couple of area antique shops. We didn’t buy much but Pam did find a piece of crochet work that she thinks may work in the parlor. We enjoyed getting out and even had lunch at Culver’s, a special treat for us.

The hot weather seems to have broken a bit as we are getting some light rain today and temperatures will top out in the low 80s. According to the local TV station, we are in a moderate drought, 6+ inches below the average rainfall to date. Lawns are already drying and developing brown spots. In spite of that, various flowers are blooming around the yard. Photos of these make up the bulk of of the images in this post.

All in all it was a quiet week since my last post, and it will probably be that way for the next few weeks.

Photo Archive

More from our 25th anniversary trip to England in 1999.

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

Pam’s Penny

Summer Solstice has arrived! How wonderful it is to have twilight until 9:00 p.m. And how bittersweet it is to know the progression toward darkness at 5:00 p.m. has begun. Maybe it takes getting older to appreciate the light.

Not much progress re: exterior painting here at 702 Main. A little less heat and humidity, please.

I ordered a few bookshelves for the library; our books need somewhere to live. With so many interesting angles provided by the bay window in that room, finding shelving to fit has been something of a challenge. The jury is still out on the bookshelves just received, as I haven’t started sorting through the book collection quite yet. Hopefully I’ll be satisfied with the look and utility.

Happy Trails.

Two main events have transpired since my last post. The first is installation of the new siding on the south end of the house. The second involves my recent trip to The Lot in Park County, Colorado, which involved a few ATV rides. I have plenty of photos that document both events.

I’ll begin with the siding project. Pam and I had been painting the new siding at a workstation I had set up in the garage. All the long boards had been painted and Pam had worked on painting a few short boards that were left after the garage addition was completed. We were in pretty good shape when Bob the Builder and his helper arrived to remove the old siding, install a new kitchen window, and put up the new siding. Here are photos:

I was in Colorado during this process so Pam handled all the on-site organization and inspection. There are a few touch-up spots that need to be addressed but overall the new siding is a huge improvement over the old! Plus, the new window works much better than the old one and the Tyvek and caulking will help make the home more energy efficient. One more item off the home project list.

While the siding project was going on I was in Colorado visiting The Lot and opening The Box for the summer. My goal was pretty minimal given my medical circumstances and the fact that I am no longer acclimatized to The Lot’s higher elevation. (9,750 feet.)

The largest single job was to remove a large pine tree that had fallen across my west access trail. The tree had been partially down last fall, leaning against another pine, but over the winter it hit the ground. I really hate to loose a pine like this.

Using my ATV’s winch I moved the trunk sections off to the side of the trail near one of the piles of branches. Chipping the limbs is on the agenda for the next trip.

Doing this work revealed how little stamina I have at this point. It was cut a few branches, rest, pile up the branches, rest, cut a few more branches, rest, and so on. Clearing the tree took me most of a morning.

I did manage to clean up a few smaller trees that had not survived the winter. A small pile of these were chipped but I have not yet dispersed the chips. (No problems starting the chipper as I had brought the battery home with me last fall and kept it on a ‘maintenance’ charger all winter.) There were no major changes around The Lot but there was a bit of garbage to pick up here and there. This is normal but the volume has picked up since the neighbors moved a large RV trailer onto their lot and have been spending more time there.

One of my goals for the trip was to get some riding time on the ATV. There is a trailhead about 8 miles from The Lot that gives access to several miles of forest service roads. I had explored part of this system last year but wanted to do more riding in the area. I had picked up a map and photographed the area I would be riding in.

I enter the area from trail 146 located in the upper-left corner of the photo. These trails are not difficult. I would describe them as pleasant but they are forest service trails — none goes to an old mine, ghost town, or scenic overlook. A person does ride through a variety of landscapes that include grasslands, pine forests, and aspen groves.

My ATV (Yamaha Grizzly 550) is equipped with electronic power steering so I did not find the riding took a toll on my stamina. I enjoyed getting out on the trails and spent several hours over a couple of days riding the area. These outings were the highlight of the trip for me.

The road part of the trip was uneventful. I paid a high of $3.25 per gallon of regular gas in Denver and a low of $2.55 in Ogallala, Nebraska. Two nights were spent in hotels and summer rates are in effect so prices were a bit higher than I expected, near $100.00 for the first night (Days Inn) and about $78.00 (Motel 6) for the second. Distance from NE Iowa to the lot came in at 926 miles and took around 18 hours of driving time.

The only disappointment came in the form of a failing chain saw. The more I ran it the worse it ran. I finally had to quit using it. On return home I took the saw into a local shop and they will clean the carburetor and get the saw running as it should. Estimate for this service is $40.00. But…the failure put a cramp in my planned activities for the last day or so of my trip. I walked The Lot and located all the corner stakes and rode my ATV around the development.

I really enjoyed the visit to The Lot and being in the mountains again. Getting out on the ATV and riding new trails was a real hoot. I did get some work done on The Lot and found the The Box and the power equipment survived the winter OK. Temperatures were in the upper 70s during the day and upper 40s at night. There was no rain but it did get windy at times. (Back in NE Iowa during the same time period it was in the 90s and heavy on the humidity.) I am looking forward to a return trip (or two) later this summer.

Photo Archive

Not much this time. The first is a photo of the cabin we owned near Nederland, Colorado.

The baby cradles were made for us by our good Colorado friends Hank and Elinor. (Felicity’s and Toby’s middle names came from this couple.)

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

Pam’s Penny

Due to excessive heat and humidity for this time of year, I confined myself to mainly small inside projects during Himself’s absence. I did mow sections of lawn on a rotational basis.

While I’m pleased to see the south end of the house’s siding now tidy and painted, the mint green conduit running up it’s height is going to drive me crazy. It stands out as a focal point on the red paint, and it is not meant to be a focal point.

Happy Trails.

With temperatures rising into the 90’s, it has been a hot week. High and low temps have been around 20 degrees higher than average. Time to run the central air and turn on the bedroom window A/C at night. The heat has put a limit on our outside tasks as well; we try to plan exterior projects for the shady side of the house — west in the AM and east in the PM.

Over the Memorial Day weekend we visited a couple of graveyards, one here in Elma and a new one, the Bohemian National Cemetery that Pam had read about. Pam’s ancestry includes a Bohemian link and this was the impetus to visit this site. The cemetery is small and very well kept, about a 35-40 minute drive (one way) from Elma and out in the farm countryside.

We found that many of the stones had marriage dates on them, and a few had genealogical information listed on the back side of the markers (such as Mother of, Daughter of, Parents of, and Grandparents of). Not only interesting but a boon to anyone doing family history research.

Just as we were about to leave, a mother and son arrived at the cemetery and, being the only people at the cemetery when they arrived, we struck up a conversation. The lady had grown up in the area and was able to give us some information on growing up in a mix of Norwegians, Bohemians, and Germans as well as Catholic and Lutheran religions. We enjoyed the conversation and left with a better understanding of life near the small town of Protivin, Iowa in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Back home, a couple projects occupied our time. Pam is nearly done with the snug and here is how it looks now:

Pam moved in the furniture, floor lamp, side table and other decorative items. The room is now “snug” and we are enjoying the fruit of her labors. The dogs and cats really appreciate having the sofa available to nap on. 🙂

I worked on two main projects, one was the install of a new dish washer. The old one had died last year and it was time to replace it. A trip to Lowe’s, in Rochester, yielded a Bosch unit in white to match the other appliances. Here are a couple shots of the install in process.

The dishwasher is now installed and in service. Not only does it clean the dishes well but we no longer have to hand-wash all the plates, pots, and pans. That was OK during the winter but now time is at more of a premium and better spent on other tasks.

The second project was to finish painting the siding that will be used on the south side of the house when Builder Bob arrives to install it and replace the kitchen window. We don’t have a time line yet but hope this work occurs sometime in the next month. The delay is dependent on delivery of the new window; building products have been experiencing long lead times.

This is my first week since completion of my radiation treatments, although I did have my second hormone therapy shot on June 1st. I am doing OK although my stamina is quite low. By 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon I am about done with project work for the day and turn to projects that take less effort (such as scanning slides). I did manage to get my pumpkins and watermelon seeds planted in the garden one cooler evening.

Also in the garden, potted pepper plants are doing well. Seeds from last year’s sunflowers have germinated in the line Pam planted. Rhubarb was allowed to go to seed at the beginning of the summer, with increased rhubarb production to look forward to in the future (hopefully). The blackberry bushes planted earlier this year are getting ready to flower. The Grandpa Ott morning glory starts appear to have been “frosted” one of the cooler evenings in late May, but are now making a gradual recovery. In the east side flower bed the geraniums [from the Mennonite greenhouse] are adding their red coloration. Numerous toads, of various sizes, have been spotted in the flowerbeds.

I will be on the road this next week. (Pam will be home with the cats and dogs.) As a result, my next post will be somewhat delayed. I am going to visit The Lot and see if The Box and other equipment survived the winter. Given my low energy levels I doubt much clearing work will be done, but it will be good for me to be in the mountains again. I’m taking the ATV and will purchase the annual CO license for off-road vehicles, allowing me to enjoy a few back country mountain field trips.

Photo Archive

I scanned a few more slides from the late 80’s featuring Pam , Felicity and Toby as well as a couple “artsy” shots.

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

Pam’s Penny

It’s just a few weeks now until Summer Solstice. Kinda hard to wrap my mind around the longest daylight in the year occurring a short time from now. The current long-lasting twilight [until almost 9:00 p.m.] is such a delight.

Happy Trails.