The Symphony at Chetola

Every year we have been together Richard and I head to Blowing Rock for "The Symphony at Chetola". We have a wonderful time seeing friends and enjoying the music and fireworks. This year however Richard could not attend with me,,,,(huge sigh) but I did my best to have a wonderful time.


Below is our table which is our little red wagon with a folding top on it. This was during the cocktails and appetizer portion of the evening.



Here is Debra and her husband toasting Richard,,,


Peggy saying "Hi Richard"


This year there were 5 minute hot air balloon rides.


But after a few minutes we all started digging into all the food. We had deviled eggs, guacamole, grilled shrimp with sausage, cheese, some wontons and pickles. Stella made a killer relish tray with pickled carrots, asparagus, huge martini olives, artichoke hearts and marinated mushrooms with garlic and black olives. As I said this was just the appetizers.



Our good friends Harry and Melanie were able to join us this year and I am pretty sure that they will be back next year.


Here is a group shot with the balloons in the background.

A Lot of Work

We were lucky that Richard's friend Fred stayed with us for about 10 days. The guys got a lot of work done, some of which I am not allowed to do anymore. In an earlier post I showed them splitting firewood, By the time they were done 2 1/2 - 3 cords of woods had been stacked in the woodshed. For those who are not sure what a "cord" of fire wood is here are the dimensions: 4 feet tall, 4 feet deep and 8 feet long. That's a lot of wood.

One of the projects they completed was to build a small wood holder for the chiminey on our back deck.



After a long day of work Richard built a fire in the chiminey and and we all relaxed on the back deck when I got home from work.



Three days after Fred left Richard got a call that he had gotten a job as a ship's Captain helping with the cleanup in the gulf. He will be gone a minimum of 30 days, possible as long as 6 months. So, he went to work making sure I would be okay for the winter if he was not back by the time the snow starts to fly.

We still had more logs which he and Fred had not split so while I was at work Richard split even more wood. One afternoon when I got home from work I changed by clothes and helped Richard "stack-in" the wood he had just split.

Usually we do what is called an open stack but this time Richard decided that we would just stack the wood and get as much as possible on the hearth. There is quite a pile on the Family room hearth.



Below is the hearth in our bedroom. What you do not see is all the wood stacked in the wood box which runs through the wall from behind the TV in the family room into the bedroom. That holds enough wood to keeps us going for probably 3-5 days depending on how long the fires burn.



As I get photos from his life in the the gulf I will try to post them here and give everyone updates on how he is doing. He called me last night to let me know that he is being moved to another motel and is getting a new room-mate who just happens to be from Oriental. NC where we keep our boat. It really is a small world.

My July 4th Weekend

This weekend the old Aesop fable came to mind about the Grasshopper and the Ant. The grasshopper would play all day while the ant toiled, working on being prepared for the upcoming winter. This weekend we played and did some serious work for the upcoming winter.

The photo below is how the outside wall of our new mud room turned out. We had some leftover tongue and groove wood from the inside walls and used it here. I am very happy with how it turned out.



On Saturday, the 3rd Richard and his high school classmate, Fred fired up the chainsaw and cut some trees into fireplace lengths. Then they fired up the tractor and started splitting firewood for the upcoming winter. I know we have a few months of summer weather still.



At then end of Saturday they had split and stacked this much wood.



While they were splitting wood I was working on making new seats for these antique beach chairs that Richard has. I had purchased some Sunbrella for them and needed to cut it to length and hem the sides. When they were done with the splitting for the day the guys attached the fabric to the chair frames and Richard gave one a test "sit". Thankfully it held him and he did not go crashing to the deck.



When the chairs are folded up the material is supposed to pull tight. Richard was proud of my work as they turned out perfectly.



Sunday Richard replaced the rear brake shoes on the Land Rover and then we cleaned up and went to a 4th of July party. No photos, sorry. We had a wonderful time and met some nice people and got to watch some fireworks.

On Monday the three of us went back to splitting more wood. I would help roll the logs over towards the tractor where Fred and Richard would split them. Once the logs were split the guys would toss the pieces into the woodshed where I would stack them. This is what we got done before lunch time.



After lunch the guys followed me up to our friend's house where they loaded up the bed of the pick-up truck with more wood to be cut and split. We will soon be ready for a cold winter,,,,which I hope does NOT happen.

Work, Work, Work,,,

It seems when ever we are having a cocktail or two and start discussing something,,, things happen and we make these great plans. That is how we wound up buying a boat back in 2007 and now are creating a "mud room" out of what once was our front porch.

It started out one very stormy afternoon, when the downspout for the front gutter got clogged and then the gutter overflowed and we had our own personal waterfall right onto our front porch, which quickly became a small, shallow lake. During lulls in the storm Richard would run out and try to sweep the water off the porch before it seeped through the cracks in the grout and leaked into the garage below, dripping on his tool boxes and an old 1934 Ford Sedan Delivery. However the water won, again.

When I came home from work on Monday he had started working on our new mud room. To start he had to cut away some of the siding, remove the porch railing and one of the stair railings then cut and chip away all the slate that was where the new wall would be. What I saw was an already framed out mud room and he proudly told me how he bought us two huge windows for it so it would be very light, even in the winter.





On Tuesday he did some more work and when I got home I had the pleasure (lol) of helping him install the new windows. These windows are 5 feet long and 3 feet tall. Trust me when I say they are not light. So, how does one install a window from the outside on a wall, over a garage door? Its obvious, you use a tractor!

Don't laugh, it worked. We put the window in the bucket of the tractor, raised the bucket up about as high as it would go. Then we climbed up a ladder and stepped into the bucket where the window was waiting. We then team lifted the windows into place and Richard nailed them so they will not come out.




Richard prepping the wall for the second window

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary,,,,,

I am not sure how her garden is going but my is FINALLY taking off. Of my three hanging tomato plants one died, I am not sure why. The other two are really doing well.



My strawberries are starting to grow as are the green beans.









While I have been playing in the dirt on a regular basis, Richard has been playing with his greasy, old, 1969 right hand drive Land Rover. This picture was taken a few days ago. As of now the entire thing has been stripped and the old, rusted out frame is gone. He has two piles of parts in the driveway. One will go to the local machine shop for some welding repairs and the other pile will go to be galvanized. Once those two steps are done he will start to rebuild the vehicle on a brand new galvanized frame.



I finally got my new range the other day. It does almost everything: regular bake & broil, convection bake, dehydrate, defrost, slow cook, multi-stage cooking and bread proofing. It has 2 ovens and one very high powered burner which will be great for all my canning at the end of the summer.

Sioux Falls, June 3-7, 2010

I had the opportunity to head out to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for a weekend with my mother.

My first full day there we headed over to the annual "Rib Fest". There were about 8 vendors all of whom had won many competitions. We bought our lunch from this vendor.



The one to the left of the Aussie vendor has won first and second place at contests in St. Augustine, FL. I don't remember things like this going on down there.



Everyday, sometimes twice, we would drive out to the stable where her adopted horse Kona is kept. We would give him treats.



My last day there we went to Sioux Falls Park. It is a lovely place in the early summer.



I would imagine in the spring when all the snow melts the falls really run fast.



Maybe one day I will be able to go back for another visit.

Memorial Weekend, 2010

On Memorial Day weekend we took advantage of some very nice weather and headed over to our boat. We connected with our friends Walter and Brenda who are from Port Stanley, Ontario, Canada. They needed to get some work done on their boat and we told them to contact a place where we get our work done.

On Friday, very late in the afternoon, actually early evening, we all got together for sundowners in our cockpit.






Saturday Brenda, Richard and I all headed over to the local Farmer's Market where we bought some bread and then went to the local seafood store and picked up some huge shrimp which Richard would later cook on the grill.

After a couple of cocktails Richard went out and gave assistance to a man whose rudder had broken.



When Richard got back he cooked the shrimp and we ate dinner and then drank 4 bottles of wine. When the wine was gone Richard had me pull out a bottle of Earl Grey Liquor. This stuff is not made anymore but we enjoyed it, the entire bottle.




On Sunday we were all invited over to Harry & Melanie's house a/k/a Base Camp for an Ice Cream Social. I don't care what people say, ice cream does help ease a hangover.



Richard had a nice chat with Jesse and Cindy about a lot of nautical stuff.



On Monday morning we waved goodbye to Walter & Brenda aboard Brandarus as they left Oriental bound for points much further north.



We left Oriental about 9 a.m. on Monday and after several stops we managed to take a 6 hour ride and turn it into a 10 hour adventure. But it did include stopping at Chili's for some great burgers for dinner.