spring clean-up…

28 Sunday Apr 2013

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yesterday I tidied the deck a bit – moved light things off it and washed a table – before I sat out for a while…

this morning I sat on the lower deck in the sun for quite a while looking over the garden… wondering when and how I am going to get all the spring jobs taken care of… I was up a number of times with back pain and had two hot tubs during the night… so I wasn’t able to do any yard work today… as the day goes on and I sit and stand more my back feels much better…

take my picture Grandma...

take my picture Grandma…

last year I couldn’t do anything in the garden because I was waiting for, and then recovering from, surgery… I had a wonderful woman come in who did a great job but about the time I came home from my surgery she wasn’t able to continue…

this year I think I need to look for a gardener to come and do the main clean up and then help me with some of the planting… at least I will be able to water… not being able to lift anything over five pounds really slowed me down last summer…

construction...

construction…

the boys were over for a while and built a lair with garbage/recycling/yard waste containers and anything else small that they could move…  they also put a few things in the garbage for me…

the completed lair...

the completed lair…

had the water tested and the hot tub needs to be emptied and refilled but I am hesitant as it has been a great help to my back and it takes a couple of days to get the temperature back up after being filled…

what to do, what to do…

 

Alaska…

27 Saturday Apr 2013

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have a cruise booked with Cyndi and Ron…  we booked it in October I think…  lots has gone on since then – Christmas, Mexico vacation with the whole family, anniversary of George’s death and my birthday…

we booked hotels and activities for the week following the cruise a while ago, to be sure we would get the things we wanted…

last week Cyndi and I talked about the excursions on the cruise and which ones we might like to take…

there are lots of options so she is doing more research and checking with Ron to see what is at the top of his list…

I don’t believe I’ve spoken to a single person who has taken an Alaskan cruise who didn’t love it… I am looking forward to spending time with the kids and seeing some wonderful scenery…

today I got to spend some time out on the deck in the sun… finally the temperature was warm enough… I have been sleeping in this lounger (n the house) for the past week in an attempt to help my back…

lounging on the deck...

lounging on the deck…

it made me wonder if I would be sitting on the deck of the ship with a blanket on the cruise…

shhhhhhh…

26 Friday Apr 2013

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yesterday morning I took this picture of the front yard…

yesterday morning... no snow in the front yard...

yesterday morning… no snow in the front yard…

there is no s – n – o – w….   shhhh… don’t want the weather gods to hear… there is still snow around, but it is melting away every day…

here’s a shot I took on the 21st… just after the ground was covered in a light dusting of snow…

slight dusting of snow on April 21st...

slight dusting of snow on April 21st…

the last few nights as I’ve been sitting in the hot tub I have heard the geese flying overhead… finally the water is flowing in most of the rivers and creeks… I think they must be happy that the weather has improved…

geese with only a little open water...

geese with only a little open water a couple of weeks ago…

today, a number of colleagues went out without jackets on because, for the first time this year, the temperature was in the double digits…

maybe tomorrow I will be able to sit on the deck in the sun…

 

the pond…

25 Thursday Apr 2013

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we’ve had ponds in the garden for 20 years…

our first one was a water bed liner in a frame right next to the house… in 2009 when we got the hot tub, we had to do away with that pond… we’ve built them in the back corner of the garden (the biggest one),  beside our garage (a recycled bathtub), and in the shade (now mostly sun) garden beside the house…

kidney shaped pond with a barrel...

kidney shaped pond with a barrel in the shade/sun garden…

I would usually come up with the idea and the two of us would discuss it, and then usually George did the heavy lifting…  he always went on about “my” ponds although he loved them… usually the first spring job was to clean them out, put the pumps back in and fill them with water… then whatever fish had survived in the condo would move on out to their real home… and in the fall they would move back to the condo…

fish moving to the winter condo...

fish moving to the winter condo…

the big pond has been leaking for a few years and we just couldn’t figure out where the problem was… last year I contacted a landscaping company to see about getting it fixed… they said they would replace it for me while I was in hospital so that I could recuperate beside it following my surgery… they never came but kept saying they were going to…

so, maybe a month ago, I emailed them and a second company that I found on line… once again they didn’t respond but I got a very quick response from B. Rocke Landscaping… he came out, looked at pictures, because there was still tons of snow in the garden, and arranged for a couple of drawings…

catching the fish with Grandpa...

catching the fish with Grandpa…

we met a few nights ago to make a final decision and I am anticipating a new pond in the garden by the end of June, all going well…

I feel that it is in homage to George and am very excited to see it take shape… we might even put a boulder with some type of memorial on it…

I can hardly wait…

eyes…

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

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been struggling with a persistent infection in my right eye… had it since before Christmas and have been taking antibiotics and a topical ointment and seeing an ophthalmologist 3 or 4 times during that period…

I had been thinking that I should get Crystal to go with me this morning, but then thought I would wear my big girl pants as he would likely only give me another prescription and send me off…

well, how wrong could I be… today, he did a little surgery on it, right in the office… his office is located in the Eye Clinic at Children’s Hospital and there are lots of very small people in his waiting room… my little eye infection is not such a big deal… although while he was working on me, it felt like a rather big deal… it was miserable for quite a while afterwards, but right now I really can’t feel any sensation in it at all…  I am trying to keep my hands away from my face, just to be sure, lol…

eye following surgery...

eye following surgery…

reminded me of George’s cataract surgery just before he died… it was his right eye as well… we went through quite the time with giving him the drops that he had to have in it 3 times a day… every single time I put them in, he would jump, lol… but his vision improved a hundredfold…

George's eye following cataract surgery...

George’s eye following cataract surgery…

amazing the things that our bodies go through…

 

little melt down…

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

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busy day at work…

came home, had pho for dinner and helped set up a Facebook page and the Facebook app on an iPhone… was lots of fun…

heard from my accountant that two documents were missing from my tax stuff so had to go upstairs to the computer room and search through many, many, pieces of paper… eventually found what was needed and then had to remember how to scan and send a document…

finally figured it out and then went into the area where the scans were kept and started reading the ones that my son-in-law had done of the cards we received when George died…  made me cry, but I couldn’t stop reading them…

one of the cards we received...

one of the cards we received…

eventually the phone rang and I was able to pull myself away from them…

i miss my beloved…

grandparents’ day…

22 Monday Apr 2013

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got the car back so that I could drive to the grade 2 class for Grandparents’ day… George and I had made it a couple of times before, but this will be my first year on my own as last year I didn’t hear about it in time to arrange to go…

put on the big girl pants so that I could figure out exactly where the school was… it is quite a distance from Crystal’s house but I think I got the directions fairly straight in my head… and then I printed out a Google map to get me there…

first thing the little guy said to me when he got here on Sunday was how much he was looking forward to the day…

found my way there, got into the classroom about a minute late and had a lovely time… after watching the kids work on a Smart Board calendar in French, we completed a survey about what it was like when we went to elementary school… there was at least one grandparent in the room who attended a one-room schoolhouse… after that we cut out pictures of things that we do together and pasted them onto a sheet of paper… we also added some words that described what the pictures were…

pictures that show what we do together...

pictures that show what we do together…

finally he read me a couple of French stories… then we went to McDonalds (along with about half of the grandparents and kids who had been at the school) for lunch, then back to school and work…

as we were driving back to the school from McDonalds we talked about how Grandpa would have enjoyed the day and how he wouldn’t have had any trouble finding the school or McDonalds…  we were both missing him…

another milestone…

the day…

21 Sunday Apr 2013

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started out overcast…

slept off and on through the night sitting in the lounger that I bought yesterday… so spent a good portion of the morning and early afternoon watching tv and dozing in the chair… the good news is that it has helped my back…

very large snowflakes came down...

very large snowflakes came down…

was thinking about having a hot tub around 8 am but then huge snowflakes started to come down and more and more came down for a long time… about 3 it stopped and the sun came out…

deck covered AGAIN... although it did melt late in the afternoon...

deck covered AGAIN… although it did melt late in the afternoon…

went grocery shopping and came home to make dinner for the kids…

since then I have been watching the JUNOs in the lounger which Jeff took upstairs for me…

looking forward to a better sleep tonight and hopefully my back with be feeling much better tomorrow…

spring???

20 Saturday Apr 2013

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went to Rona and got a new folding lounger for the deck outside the patio doors… been using a wooden rocker there but it just isn’t comfortable when I’m reading a book and want to put my feet up… this one will be great and I might even try sleeping in it tonight to see what that does for my back… the young woman at the Service desk knew who I was right away, which is becoming more unusual as staff change on a frequent basis… when I was in the store the other day, the person who was helping me in Hardware didn’t know who George was… felt kind of sad about that…

then we went for a pedicure… which was actually quite good for my back as I was sitting up for an hour, even if I was jerking my feet around as my toes were pampered… I have very sensitive feet, lol… Crystal and Cyndi get quite a kick out of the whole process…

purple toes...

purple toes…

just came in from a hot tub… while I was out there I could hear gaggles of geese flying over in the dark, although I couldn’t spot any of them… but certainly a sound that makes one think of Spring…

and, even more exciting… the solar light by the pond was flickering… which means that the snow is nearly gone by the pond, and the sun s getting strong enough to give it a charge…  sadly my dragonflies don’t seem to be lighting up…

dragonfly solar lights...

dragonfly solar lights…

maybe Spring is really on the way…

helping hands…

19 Friday Apr 2013

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my back is still a pain… been going on for a week now and the twisting and turning I do at night makes it very sore in the morning… by night time it is much better, but then I go to bed and irritate it all over again… it has been improving, very slowly, which is often what happens when you pull a muscle…

and then we went swimming on Tuesday, which may have put the recovery back a bit… if the car had been here this morning I think I would have gone to see the doctor because it felt miserable…

last week I didn’t put out the garbage and recycling because I didn’t think I could drag the bins over the snow to the lane so I really felt I had to do it this morning for today’s collection…

was on the way to the bins in the back yard when I heard my neighbour in the lane… he’s always asking if he can help me with anything, so I called him over and he took both bins and put them out for me…

was so thankful because they were sitting in a low spot where water had melted and then frozen so you had to wrench them to get them to start moving… and wrenching is just not a good thing to be doing these days…

tonight he brought the empty bins back into the yard which was also great… ever since I put the note on the garbage bin, it has been picked up without a problem… guess I should have done that a lot sooner…

garbage and recycling bins out while still light Thursday, February 21, 2013...

garbage and recycling bins out while still light Thursday, February 21, 2013…

I walked from the end of the street with my daisies in hand tonight and got a shot of the creek with water flowing in it… the snow is finally starting to melt away, yay…

water finally in Truro Creek...

water finally in Truro Creek…