A beautiful morning
Gives way to a lovely afternoon with blueberry pierogi
Summer eating at its Polish best.
Sunday
around the house
To-Do List
One item on my summer to-do list is to repaint the ceiling in one of the showers. Why? There's some stain that we have no idea what it is or how it got there, can't get rid of it, and are tired of. So our simplified solution is fairly straightforward: paint over it with multiple coats.
Taping up the edges and protecting the rest with plastic, though, took longer than all the painting (for all coats) combined will likely take. And the best part: all the plastic, at this point, was unnecessary because I didn't have a single drop.
Of course, if I took out the plastic...
Jam
This is the time of year we feel like we’re drowning in blueberries. We head out each day and pick berries, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for a not-so-few minutes. Today, for example, I picked for about an hour; K joined me for about half an hour, and she was not even picking in a new spot of the bushes: she was going back over where I’d been, grabbing the berries I’d overlooked because they were hiding.
And the rest of the time? K was making the first batch of jam for the year.
Thursday
Today was a day of yardwork. "Think of all the time we spend with just maintenance," K said as she looked at what I accomplished today. We're not really getting ahead with our yard with a day like today: we're just maintaining a steady state.
I turned this, for example,
into this. To do so, I borrowed my neighbor's massive trimmer that theoretically allows one to trim the top of such high bushes without a ladder. Theoretically.
It's also heavy. My shoulders ached after just a few minutes of work. That's why I took it back after finishing the first two shrubs and used our own, light electric trimmer to turn this
into this. The growth on those shrubs -- what are they called again? I can't even remember what's growing in our own yard -- has been phenomenal. I have to trim them several times a year.
I continued with the electric trimmer to turn this
and this
into this. The trimmer has its advantages: it's light and, well, I guess that's its only advantage because it's terribly stressful (perhaps not terribly, but it is an added concern) to make sure one doesn't trim the power cord along with the shrub. Not that I've ever done that. Countless times.
In the evening, another bike ride.
First Blueberries
Thursday
I've been trying to get the deck finished for what seems like an eternity, but it keeps raining. I thought I had a window this morning, but just as I stepped outside, it began drizzling.
I turned my attention to the kitchen sink instead. We've long needed to rip out the old silicon and replace it, but I couldn't find any black silicon. Then I realized it wasn't actually supposed to be black...
In the afternoon, I took a chance and finished the deck. Normally, that late in the day, putting water-proofing on the deck is a terrible idea. It doesn't soak into the wood; it cooks on the surface and then gets sticky. I figured, though, that since I only had to do verticle parts of the railing, the freshly-sealed surfaces wouldn't actually be getting in direct, 90-degree sun exposure. And also, if it does turn sticky, who'll ever know? It's not like you're going to walk on it.
In the evening, we (minus L, who had volleyball practice followed by track practice) went to a local university for Music By The Lake. A local youth orchestra was performing, and to our admittedly-slight surprise, we discovered Mr. K, E's band teacher (and favorite teacher), runs the whole program.
Clover was just excited to get out of the house.
Under the Sink
Today's project.
Summer Work
The summer work continues: we're installing a garbage disposal in our sink, but because of the way we plumbed it, we can't put the disposal on the side of the sink we want. No big deal: we'll just re-do a bit of the plumbing.
While I was looking for the parts we need, though, the Boy entertained himself.
Chatting in the Kitchen
The Deck
It's a job I tackle every other year, a job that takes days and days to complete because of the simple fact that I can only work a few hours each day.
This year, I have the added area of the lattice that encloses the lower deck. Today's accomplishment: all the exterior portions of the upper deck and all the lattice.
At least two more days of this await, maybe more.