Summer has gotten away from me. It wasn’t a very good one, even though we did have some nice trips out in the camper for Marc to ride his E bike in different territory. I’ll include some photos of those.
Mostly, it’s been terribly hot, humid, and severely lacking rain. Many weeks our lawn turns so dry it’s brown and crunchy, then we get some rain and it tries to spring back to life. Some of the larger shrubs, like the honeysuckle and most of the lilacs totally dropped their leaves even though I do have some water going to them.
We won’t talk about the garden.
Despite planting six squash plants, only one came up and it flowered but never
produced anything. The only tomatoes that have done well are the volunteers
that came up in the compost bed but they’ve only ripened within about the past
week or so. Chives and chard did well. Even our apple trees produced a measly number
of apples, which usually got eaten by either birds or deer before I had a
chance to do anything with them.
I had enough leftover jewelry and sewing projects of totes and bags that I was able to supply the animal shelter with enough for their summer online auction which just wrapped up. I had twenty items I donated and all of them sold, so I was very happy with that! Shortly, it will be time to start sewing again in earnest to produce things for the next online auction in February. It’s still very difficult for me to go there and work on fundraising things and meetings because Buster hasn’t been adopted yet. It continues to be all I can do to not run in and scoop him up and bring him back home. We miss him so much! Our two old girls are doing much better without him around though, so it was the right decision. What hurts the most is giving up on a cat that was one of the best we’ve ever had. He was such a joy and a character; he added immensely to our lives and we sure miss that. The two girls mainly sleep and give us problems with finicky appetites, health issues, and cause problems when we travel with them in the RV. They never used to, so it’s been an adjustment for us all.
We did make it up to the property
recently and I’m always amazed at how quiet it is there. It calms me down like
being in some Zen Garden. We got a final burn pile out of the way on a rainy
day so the property is about as clean as it’s ever been. We listed on July 7th
and have only had one showing so it’s been a total disappointment as to
activity. I think the real estate market is a LOT worse than anyone is letting
on.
Marc has already started back in
mentoring at the high school again. He does this M-F for most of the day and
the teacher loves having his help! He’s been having a lot of trouble with a
torn rotator cuff though, which limits what he can do. Hopefully, he can have
surgery on that this winter. I do have another couple RV trips planned yet this
year; to a shoreside state park on Lake Michigan with great bike trails and
another for October. I’m sure those will wrap up the season for us this year.
