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I feel as if I need to play catch up here, to just sort of touch base on
some of the topics I would have written entire entries about if only I
had had the time to sit down and do it...
Well, let see... On Friday, May 8th -- my goodness, eleven days ago --
after work Nancy and I dashed over to the Narragansett Towers to play museum
docents and historic building baby-sitters for a wedding...
| The next morning, I was up early to dash off to East Farm -- a URI site
for their Master Gardener Program and also site of the Lester P. Nichols
Memorial Crabapple Plantation -- for their annual Spring Festival to see
the beauty of the blossoming crabapple trees and to buy some plants (tomato
and eggplant and herbs) for my garden and also to buy a new compost bin
to replace our aging one. |
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That Sunday was both Mother's Day and Gillian's birthday... Gillian started
the day off right by making pancakes for breakfast -- filled with fresh
strawberries and blackberries.
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Since we had recently had dinner at the Mews Tavern (which serves as our
family's local pub) to celebrate my birthday and would be returning there
shortly to celebrate Jeremy's birthday, Jill requested dinner at home with
chicken pot pie.
So I whipped up an oven full of chicken pot pie and we celebrated at home.
Nancy made a duck-shaped cake. After the traditional lighting of the candles
and singing of "Happy Birthday" and the ceremonial blowing out
of the candles, etc., when the cake was cut, Jill ended up with the duck's
head... which, as you can see, struck her as being really funny.
(Yes, we do seem to enjoy our little family celebrations.) |
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| We have been having a problem with carpenter ants and on Monday we evacuated the house so that an exterminator from New England Pest Control (home of the Big Blue Bug) could come by and spray. This meant we brought Tiger over to Nancy's
mother's house, much to his annoyance because he is quite set in his ways
and does not like to go anywhere. |
Monday night I had a planning meeting for the rapidly approaching book
sale at the Peace Dale Library.
Tuesday was a relaxing day, just work and a cleaning appointment at my
periodontist's office.
Wednesday after work I cut down the cherry tree in our front yard. (It
had problems and that had been the advice of the professor of that landscape
architecture course we took a year or so ago.) |
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One of the reasons for cutting down the cherry tree on Wednesday was because
Ocean State Tree Service was coming on Thursday to cut down a number of
our oak trees, including a big one in the backyard that had gotten too
big and old and had us worried that it might come down on the house in
a bad storm, plus some trees along one side of our house that had branches
that were brushing the side of the house, plus trees in part of the wooded
area between our back lawn and the property behind ours, partly because
they made our backyard too shaded and partly because I hope to plant more
interesting things there (i.e., things that people like to eat). |
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| The picture above shows one of the tree guys up in the big oak in our backyard
-- that is a zoomed picture, he is a good forty feet up. I couldn't believe
how hard-working these two guys were. They put in a long day, but at the
end of the day, they had taken down all of those trees. The picture on
the right shows some of the remains of the trees. (My task, over the summer,
will be to split this into fireplace sized pieces.) |
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Friday night we dashed from work to the Towers again, this time the event
was a fund-raising banquet for a local organization.
Saturday was a special recycling day and Jeremy and I dropped off an old
television set and an old computer CRT monitor, then we set out to buy
provisions for his cookout birthday party. The cookout was being hosted
at a house belonging to friends of his..
On the left, Nancy with 24 year old Jeremy.. |
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On Sunday we went to the Mews for dinner (Nancy & me, Gillian & Eli, Jeremy & Katie) and then came home to continue our celebration with his traditional Birthday Cookie. (Cookie made by Nancy and decorated by Jill with a Saab emblem -- Jeremy would like to buy a Saab as his next car.)
(Now that the spring birthdays are past, we have none until Sam and Milo
in July.) |
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We've bought a wood-burning woodstove fireplace insert and had it installed
on Monday. The weather cooperated by being damp and chilly so our first
test fire in it made everything seem quite cozy and comfortable. Tiger
seemed to approve.
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So... that's some of what's been going on around here that I've been too
busy to write about....
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