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Nine years ago… gosh, has it been that long?.. when my mother died, a friend gave me a memorial rose bush to plant in her honor.
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It’s struggled to hang on over the years… through droughts and floods and yes, woodchucks. But when it blooms? It really is fabulous.
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These are untouched iPhone photos.
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The colors really are this bright.
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The variations of shades knock me out every time.
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I think my mother would approve.
❤️
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The day my husband had been waiting for finally arrived. The top road engineer from the State (and two support staff for backup) were here. Outnumbered and surrounded, my husband was undeterred and ready to discuss the ditch from Hell in great detail.
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He explained how repeated snow plow drivers and mailman had driven on the edge and ruined the structural integrity.
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He explained how the sides have been caving in and filling the ditch with dirt, sand, gravel and chunks of road tar.
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He complained about the town scraping off all his hard won grass that helped the erosion.
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He told them he wanted to install .. at our expense…a perforated drainage pipe and fill in the ditch to bring a level lawn out to the road … like our neighbors on both sides and across the street.
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And that’s when things got tense. Because no matter how many reasons my husband gave, the head engineer would not be swayed.
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He kept repeating the ditch was necessary for proper road drainage. Which is odd, because it was the previous owner who (illegally) dug the ditch to begin with.
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Nothing my husband said… and believe me over the course of an hour he said a lot…. could sway the official.
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The end result?
Before the state paves the entire road, which will happen in the next few weeks, a crew will arrive to completely dig out and shore up the sides of our ditch. They will lay new dirt on the sides and scatter grass seed.
Big whoop.
To me this will be even worse than what we have now. It will be steeper… and harder to mow and weed whack than ever. Grass seed? Useless, it will just wash away into the ditch.
And before you say we should have just filled it in ourselves and not told them? The official told us if we did that we’d be given a huge fine and forced to dig it back out again… and if we didn’t? They’d come dig it out themselves and charge us for doing it.
They say you can’t fight city hall. Apparently you can’t fight the Maine DOT either.
😡
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We’ve been having a lot of hot summer weather lately and with that comes late afternoon thunderstorms. With late afternoon thunderstorms comes high winds. With high winds comes the possibility of power outages… and that’s what happened recently just as I was sitting down to read. Not wanting to give up my book, I grabbed a large battery operated lantern and propped it up behind me on the couch.
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Lord Dudley Mountcatten was not pleased.
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Something new and strange had been added to his world.
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And had to be thoroughly investigated.
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After a full five minutes of stalking, sniffing and batting…
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His Lordship made peace with the temporary lighting device.
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For those of you not lucky enough to live in my beautiful state, here’s a peek at what you might see on any given day.
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Lobster. It’s everywhere.
Even at the gas station.
When you live on an island like I did, you party near the water on beaches, near the water on piers, and sometimes…
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On the water itself.
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These are pictures from a friend of mine who’s in a local band.
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The concert was staged on a float….
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Which means concert goers had to float as well.
And finally… I doubt there’s anything more iconic about Maine than a traditional lobster bake. If you’ve never attended one, you should. There’s nothing quite like it.
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The food… lobster, clams, potatoes, corn, onions and eggs are all covered with seaweed and burlap and set to steam over a wood fire.
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Clams and potatoes are wrapped in tinfoil.
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It’s a slow process but well worth the wait.
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Just don’t forget the butter.
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👍
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Wild critters.
We love them, but damn.
This is our little kitchen porch, which is really just a covered landing.
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In the corner there’s a stand on which I place potted plants every year. It’s usually well balanced with one begonia on the top and one begonia on the bottom. Until the woodchucks discovered the bottom flower and started nibbling…
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Bottom flower was then moved to the middle shelf and middle shelf decorations were moved to the bottom.
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Which was fine…
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Until a chipmunk found the bird’s nest and decided he needed to deconstruct it.
And if that’s not bad enough?
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Something has started using our man cave/Barn Mahal porch as a toilet.
WTH?
😳
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One afternoon, when the temperature was near 90 and the humidity level was almost as high, my husband decided it would be a good time to start ripping up the old deck. You know, the one we hired a contractor to rip up and rebuild.
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It was hard, heavy, hot work. Which is why we’re paying someone else to do it.
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An hour or so into the demolition, said contractor showed up…
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And was a little surprised the husband had already started the project for which we’d hired him.
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But they worked side by side, in the heat…
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Because no one told him husbands who are bored with retirement need to keep busy.
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In less than three hours…
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All the rotted old wood planks had been ripped up…
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And hauled to my husband’s truck…
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Because yes, he would dispose of them as well.
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Remind me again why we hired a contractor….?
🥴
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A few glimpses into my world.
Thankfully we didn’t get much of that awful smoke from Canada’s wildfires… but one night the sunset did look a little hazy.
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Bad air quality makes for beautiful pictures.
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Beer number two from Wisconsin was tasted and thoroughly enjoyed.
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Weird Hat Band from Young Blood brewery sounded absolutely bizarre… a pastry sour with peach, basil, graham cracker and vanilla… but wow. It worked. In a delightfully weird way.
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Lord Mountcatten reclining on the new driveway. He’s still hesitant to walk it’s length, but has no qualms about napping on it.
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The husband, weed whacking the ditch from Hell.
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We are currently waiting for the state DOT man to make his second visit and final pronouncement on the future of said ditch.
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Meanwhile.. here’s the husband, caught in the act of throwing a large chunk of tar into the neighbor’s field.
Bad husband.
🥴
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We have a plethora of birds who visit our feeders.
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Flocks of starlings that devour suet and peanut nuggets in mere hours.
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We have cardinals and gold finches and rose breasted grosbeaks, orioles and sparrows and mourning doves.
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We also have a duck.
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A female mallard to be more precise, who comes early morning and late afternoon.
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I often wonder what the other birds think of her.
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And if they wonder why her bath is on the ground.
😉
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Three weeks to the day we did it.
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We drove the first vehicle on our brand new, way too expensive, virgin driveway.
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Husband had the honor, and since his truck had been sitting in the garage all that time and it was time to go to the dump…
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The inaugural drive was his.
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The string barricade was removed…
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And though I didn’t, I felt as if it should have been christened with champagne.
After the husband left, I pulled Ethel off the grass and back into her garage berth. It was gloriously smooth, rutless sailing all the way.
And then, not five minutes after I went back in the house?
Someone turned around in our beautiful new pristine driveway and left this:
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😩 😩 😩
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Home repair projects are lining up faster than ever here at Casa River… and if my husband wants to go back to work instead of enjoying retirement? Then I’m going to spend his reinstated paycheck hiring a contractor to fix the things that need to be fixed.
New driveway? Done.
New windows for the master bedroom? Ordered.
New back deck? Materials being delivered today.
And then there’s the disaster we call a living room ceiling.
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The one that’s been damaged by roof leaks for the the past decade.
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( It doesn’t really look this awful, I had to increase the contrast for the pictures)
Thankfully the cause of the leak was finally found and repaired, but it’s left us with a mess that’s been screaming for help.
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Our house was built in 1974 and an addition was added in 1994. This bump out to the living room included a support beam like structure that has been nothing but trouble.
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It’s slightly sagging in the middle and of course it was also water damaged.
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The problem in fixing and replacing it…. is we don’t really know what’s up there. The only access is through a tiny hole in the den closet and though my husband has crawled up there numerous times, there’s no attic and no way to reach that particular area.
After one contractor quoted us $25,000 to fix it sight unseen, and another quoted $35,000 to completely rework the trusses, we despaired. But the guy who will be doing our back deck and windows agreed to give it a go and brought over some fun equipment to investigate.
This required moving the furniture into a pile on the other side of the room which Lord Dudley Mountcatten did not appreciate.
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How can you fling your mouse off the couch when it’s right next to the coffee table?
Oh, the horror.
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The first step was drilling holes in the ceiling.
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Second step… threading the spy camera lens into the holes.
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Third step… trying to figure out what the hell you’re looking at.
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Fourth step… drawing a highly technical schematic.
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The contractor wasn’t pleased with the outcome, something about overlapping beams and braces and trusses … but agreed to repair and replace it as best he could. This will involve an utter mess and temporary load bearing devices which I’m not looking forward to, but it has to be done.
And until that day?
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We have a beautiful Swiss cheese ceiling to enjoy.
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Good times.
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River's world..... 