Parking lot- New Truck for Julie

Well, I hope this is the start of something good in my daughter, Julie's life. She has a car (VW Jetta) that she really cn't afford (never could, I don't think), so a friend of hers gave her a car for $1. 1990-something Nova (really a piece of junk in my husband's opinion-- he's the mechanic, he should know). She might have used this if she could sell the Jettta, but in the meantime (before that could happen), she and her beau, Chris decided to buy a truck...oops!...
. A TRUCK!!

Chris bought it with $$ he was saving for their 'future', so I guess it's alright. I don't know their intentions, but they've talked marriage, I guess.

Anyway, she is selling the Jetta to a lady she knows from Malakai's school (Justin's mom, Tanya). Installments. Not sure I'd ever do that with someone I don't know well, but that's her choice. I just hope she doesn't get screwed!

Intereesting News....

Lee came home from the doctors office and said he has the starting of cataract. It may be anywhere from 10-15 yrs before it's ready to be operated on, but it's just news I don't like to hear. He already is 'glacoma suspect' and has drops he uses all the time. I told him he could use braille with me....LOL

What ONE bulb of garlic caused...

Okay.... so the garden hasn't been tended to all year.

 Yes, you read that right. All year. Little scruffy, isn't it?

Oh, I've meant to, but one thing or another has gotten in my way.Read the other posts in this blog to see all the things that might have kept me from working outside. (Mainly the 90 degree weather -- or higher!!)

Well, I went to the Garlic Festival in Bennington, VT again (always on Labor Day weekend) and this year I decided to try planting garlic, so I bought a bulb. Yup. One bulb. Well, I've never done this before and I figure that if I don't like it, then I 've only done one bulb worth of garlic.

Well, since I couldn't plant it in a garden that had gotten so overgrown, I had to at least clear out a patch of dirt. and well, you know how that is....

 I got part of it cleared (mostly taking out tall grasses and dead violet plants--those overtake the garden every year), but notice what I had to contend with? ROOTS!!!! Little, spindle-y roots. Some I had to chop with a hatchet, but mostly pull out by hand, which killed my back. I turned the dirt over by shovel and it was easy enough to pull out EVERYTHING , but the roots.

One thing I did realize was that I had wonderful worms in the garden. Goooood! Love it! Made me think of my co-worker, Glo, who is deathly afraid of worms. (wonder why...)

 I did leave in the irises, two tomato plants who haven't bit the bullet' yet, a thyme and basil plant and some day lillies. But that was all. I was so sore and crippled from all the back-breaking work I haven't done in ages, that I couldn't plant the silly little bulb of garlic, until the next day. (Oh, I did find lots of scallions-- I thought I'd only planted a few-- and planted some more in the little area with the garlic. This area is in the lower right side of the photo. I marked it with the large rocks going into the garden on the right and filled in more rocks around the the bottom of the photo.) .... It looks good, but the garden on the back left still needs to be done. Maybe before the snow flies....

Bathtime and schooltime for Kai??

Somehow, the only way to get a kid in the tub is to make it fun....

Doesn't this look like fun??

Of course, he's young yet, so I'm not sure if this is a sign of things to come...This was kai in his bed, BEFORE I woke him up for his first day of school....

 This was him running late.... (wasn't this the same outfit he slept in???? I think she purposely put him in this when he went to sleep, so she could save time, but really....I'm not his mom, so I can't say a thing. Everyone was late for work/school.... oh well.

Somehow, he doesn't look quite awake, does he? 

Hurricane Irene photos at last!

We did get hit pretty hard with wind, but never lost power at our house. Two streets over (and actually, the next street over) lost power for three days. My mom 15 mins away, lost power for almost a week. We had her in to our house every other day (she babysat my grandson) so she had power/phone/bathroom facilities. I'll post some photos that I took after the storm went through...Lee & I just walked a few miles to see our daughter, Amber (they lost power for a few days)...

This is the tree on Center Street that we heard come down...

This is how my hubby decided to divert the water that usually comes into the garage....Notice the mini sandbags at the right side of the garage door? The bottom of the garage door is pretty muddy, but it won't stay clean so I gave up long ago....LOL.

This was our back yard.... lots of leaves everywhere, but not a tree down. Good thing since we have so many of them back there....

This tree snapped in half (it's trunk is on the far left of the photo). It was up the road from our house although the swish and the 'thunk' Lee & I heard may have been behind our back yard (see the above photo).

This branch feel from a really tall tree at the elementary school at the end of our street.

This was a a street a few blocks away. They hadn't had power for two days. (Boy, were WE lucky)

These were more on the streets surrounding us...

This is the tree that cut off my daughter Amber's power... it was across the street from her house. 

This one was on my way home from work. They were in the process of cleaning it up.

We had half power all week at work, so a few of our machines in my two depts. didn't work... All in all we faired well.