Month: July 2024

This post will cover quite a few odds and ends that have piled up over the last few weeks. Topics include yard flowers, insects, ethanol production, and a health update.

The hot summer weather is taking a toll on the yard, with parts of the lawn starting to brown out. However, quite a number of flowers are flourishing, including the Grandpa Otts, Hydrangea, Phlox, and a few others. Here is how they appear today. (Deb, are you having luck growing your Otts?)

(Hydrangea blossoms begin as white then turn pink over time.)

The hostas are still blooming and one of the lilac bushes is in its second seasonal blooming phase, so there is quite a bit of color around the yard.

A few weeks ago we were watching the Elma Trail Days parade when we noticed a large flying insect in the front flower bed. Online research reveal it was a “Common White-tailed Skimmer,” nice to have around as they eat mosquitos.

In local news, we had known this area of Iowa produces ethanol, used to blend into gasoline. However, we were surprised to learn just how much is produced. “Valero Charles City is a biorefinery for progress, converting around 49 million bushels of corn into approximately 140 million gallons of denatured ethanol and 368,000 tons of distillers grain co-products each year.” (The grain co-products are sold as livestock feed.) That is a lot of ethanol and underscores just how much this technology means to area farmers.

I’ll finish this post with a short medical update. I am now on a maintenance plan to monitor my PSA and testosterone levels as a result of my prostate cancer treatments. Every 6 months I get a blood draw which is shipped to the Mayo Clinic for analysis. This week was one of those times. The results: My PSA remains low and my testosterone levels are slowly climbing back to normal. Good news all around.

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

Pam’s Penny

You DO NOT want to mess with cat ladies. Nope. Not a good idea. Trash them at your own peril.

Happy Trails.

The past week was quite active for me. I took a scouting trip to lower Michigan to check out houses and topography, and attended another old engine show. A few changes were made to the web site as well.

Pam has been checking Michigan properties on-line for a while now. While we like Heart House, we have been considering a move “Up North” to an area with more woods, a few lakes, and fewer agricultural odors. A Michigan relocation would put us closer to Felicity in upper New York state, and also makes a great jumping off point for travels in Canada and the eastern U.S. Location is everything, though, and as we’re not familiar with the upper part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, it was time to take a scouting trip.

I concentrated on the upper third of the state, from Mackinaw City down to Ludington. I visited areas on both the Lake Huron and Lake Michigan coasts. Total mileage for the trip came out to 1,925 miles.

As with all states, some areas are more attractive than others. The central portions are relatively flat which makes them less desirable. Eastern portions have more wooded rolling hills and some very attractive small lakes. On the western side, Ludington has a great beach and the nearby Reed City was one of the more attractive towns I drove through.

Along the way I drove past several properties Pam had identified as potentials in various areas. Alas, the listing photos do not always give a good indication of the neighborhoods and overall condition of the homes. Of three that had potential appointments with realtors, only one turned out to be worth the effort.

This older Craftsman style home sits on almost 6 acres and has over 3,500 square feet of living space. The upstairs could be a separate living space (for Pam’s sister Becky) as it has a bath, kitchen, and a couple bedrooms. The full listing and more photos can be found at this link. (Link opens in a new window.)

The realtor was Amanda Hunt, professional and with knowledge of the area. I enjoyed meeting and speaking to her as well as the information she was able to provide about the house and community.

I had mixed responses to this house. While it has several appealing features, there are some drawbacks that would be expensive to rectify. For example, there is moisture in the basement, possibly due to the wet weather the Midwest has been experiencing, but there are no gutters to channel water away from the house. Gutters, plus a new roof and tuck-pointing the chimneys, would run around $23K – $25K. Both kitchens and bathrooms would need updating, and we know from experience what kinds of problems that work might uncover. Do we really want to take on another fixer upper?

The house is part of an estate settlement and the price is unlikely to come down. As appealing as the house is, for location, style, and size, it is more of a financial burden than we want to take on this time around. We will continue to monitor the listing and see if the price drops as time goes by and if so we may reconsider.

I checked out a couple lake properties as well. There are some very pretty lakes in Michigan! The downside of most of these is they have many steps / stairs and are quite small, mostly designed as weekend or vacation properties and not full-time homes.

I enjoyed the trip, confirming some areas to search in and other areas to ignore. The roads were uniformly good, much better than Iowa roads, and services are available in larger communities within reasonable distances from the properties I drove past. I consider the trip worthwhile and a success.

Returning home, yesterday I attended the Root River Antique Power show in Spring Valley for the second year in a row. While I am not going to bore you with a lot of details, there were some new activities not present last year, and a few more crawler tractors were present.

I have created a video with clips of various sights, sounds, and activities of this year’s show. Run time is 8:54

Speaking of videos, I have added a pair of YouTube pages to the web site with links to the various videos I have posted over the last few years just in case anyone, including myself, would like to review them again without having to scroll through pages and pages of past posts. Here is the link.

I’ve also changed the Cats and Dogs pages to reflect Blondie’s passing and mentioning the three latest cats, now about a year old.

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

Pam’s Penny

Thank you Cindy and Deb for sending an animal condolence card. Thanks Julie, Becky, and Dianne for sharing the sadness of the passing of a long-lived pet. There is less laundry without Blondie in the house, but I can’t seem to change my habit of checking on her every half hour. Because, of course, there is nothing to check on anymore…

While Himself was busy driving in Michigan, I kept myself occupied rather than dwelling on the sadness. The stairwell to the second floor, in particular, needed deep cleaning (cripes, I dug out a few Christmas spruce needles from under the tread pads). The cats have been busy taking apart ribbon trim along these steps, requiring glue and tacking. Chipped paint on the front of the treads was repainted. To mix it up, I also climbed the ladder [inside] to clean and dust the high shelves in the parlour, and then up on the ladder [outside] to paint a second coat on part of the ceiling of the wrap around porch. And when I got bored, I bathed both dogs.

Happy Trails.

Sad news: Blondie, our senior 16 year old dog, found the Rainbow Bridge this week. I will start off with a photo of Blondie in her early days.

The rest of the week was not without incident. A neighbor’s house suffered fire damage, causing quite the stir in this small town. The fire happened when the owners were on vacation, and the cause is not yet known. Imagine coming home to this!

We don’t know these neighbors well, just enough to say “Hi” to, but they keep the yard mowed, put out flowers and bird feeders, and had recently put on the metal roof seen in the above photo. Right now the broken windows have been boarded over and we see people coming from time to time, so we expect, after the insurance has been settled, that the house will be repaired and occupied once again.

This weekend is the local celebration, Elma Trail Days. There have been some events in the park and a parade is scheduled for later today. (Saturday) In anticipation of people coming down Main Street, Pam made up this commemorative sign for Heart House.

The house and yard are looking good for the weekend, with all bunting and flags put up and yardwork completed.

A number of flowers are blooming around the yard, including daylilies, hollyhocks, hostas, phlox, and a few others. I like to see the colors around the yard.

It looks like I will be making a [future house] scouting trip into Michigan’s lower peninsula soon, checking the landscapes and helping Pam decide what regions we may consider for a new home. There will be a few “drive by” addresses to check out, and perhaps an appointment or two for viewing specific homes. More on this in my next post.

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

Pam’s Penny

Even after watching six months of her health decline, somehow I wasn’t ready for Blondie’s end. Three days before her 16th birthday. Goodbye, old friend. See you at the Rainbow Bridge.

Happy Trails.