Month: May 2011

This is an after picture but to see the before picture, you have to go back a couple posts and look at the after picture in that post, then zoom in on the flower garden to the left of the driveway. It was totally full of grass, but it had gotten even taller! I cleaned it all out with a little garden shovel and my hands. Took several days, but now it is just full of (I am told) phlox. It should look great when it blooms. Speaking of which, here are some current blooms in my yard:

Turns out I have a clump of trillium. I remember when they were a protected flower, but I doubt that they are any more, because they are everywhere. Still, I like them!

Earlier, single petaled (is that a word?) peonies. The bigger ones are not blooming yet, but these are smaller and I have several of them in this great color!

I planted a pansy in the old boot and I think it looks really cute.

This is an unusual bleeding heart that is just blooming up a storm, even though I just transplanted it.

And finally, a picture of the front door (not storm door) painted the color I got for doing the trim. I’m undecided on it, so far. It is a bit pinker than I’d hoped. What I was looking for was a brownish burgundy, but not too dark. I think maybe I went too light, but I’m not altogether sure yet. I’ll have to look at it a while more. And wait until it is totally dry. In the picture it is still wet.

A couple major things this week are over, so I’m feeling much calmer.  First of all, I had a trip that wasn’t filling that I had to cancel, even though it meant possibly losing the $500 deposit. Turns out I made that deposit for a different trip that has filled. Whew. What a relief to have that off my mind, although I was looking forward to going to Lake Geneva and a show at the nationally famous Fireside Dinner Theater in Southern WI.

Last concert of the year on Tuesday – Chetek Middle School. It went quite well. No more practicing at school after work. Yay!

Senior Fitness Day today a work. One of my speakers/testers canceled out Monday night because he hadn’t heard from me. Apparently my emails got lost in space somewhere, because I sent them. Anyway, that meant I needed to write a 30 minute talk yesterday, plus figure out how to do both the strength and aerobic testing all by myself. The good thing was that the schedule wasn’t full, so I managed to get them all done and only be 10 minutes late starting the talk that I wasn’t supposed to be giving. (Followed by the talk I was supposed to give, followed by a great talk by my chiropractor.) Anyway, it all went fine, people were happy and I’m done with it for another year. Again, whew. And yay! (for the good comments)

I’m off to mow since it isn’t raining.

I guess it is hard to compare, since you can’t see all the junk that was under the snow. But, trust me, the house looks a lot better than it did, from the outside, anyway. I washed the siding under the windows to the left of the door today, and that helped a lot. You can also see lots of perennials in the planters, some which came up and some which I added. The tulips in the foreground are not, unfortunately, mine.

Today was the recital. Out of my whopping 11 students this year, only 8 played. One didn’t want to and the others had legitimate scheduling excuses. Here are some pictures.

Aurora Helms is the 2nd grade daughter of Marti Erb Helms. She is on the right in the first row, with the long blonde hair. She is shy like her mom was, but shows good potential on piano. She is being home-schooled, too.

Pampered Chef desserts (along with ice cream sundaes and punch). On the right is my new “up-and-coming” 2nd grade student that I have very high hopes for. She picks up piano like no one I’ve seen in a long time!

So, I’m practically done with lessons for the school year. I’m starting a new student (the girl next door) this summer and the one pictured above wants to continue through the summer, but I’m making her take a month off. I’m not going to give lessons up at work again. Too many distractions and the piano is pretty bad and out of tune.

I got a lot of painting done at 117 yesterday. I have white primer over all the really, really bold colors, like the brown, the cranberry, the bright green, and the dark blue. Two coats of primer does it. Then the holes can be fixed and a couple more coats of primer put over those spots. Then I’ll finally be able to do the finish coat. It is amazing how much better the kitchen looks, though, with just that white coat of paint rather than the conglomeration of green and yellow and cranberry. We also took a wall out, which has opened the space up quite a lot. I’ll post pictures of that area later this week.

I got both yards mowed today, now that it finally stopped raining long enough for the grass to dry. I also weeded the flower beds along the house at 126 and put two coats of primer on the two low ceiling rooms at 117. (The one was that dark blue room – really hard to cover, as you would expect.)They are ready for the top coat, then the floors painted as soon as I get the paint. It is fun to be working on that house, even if it is just a little. Dad is busy hauling gravel to put on the driveway/muddy mess.

And for your viewing pleasure…. more flowers.

I think I like to take pictures of flowers more than anything else. We took a trip today (then seniors and I) up to Winter, WI (about an hour north) to go to their immense greenhouse. I got tons of stuff for the gardens around 117, but then I had time left, so I took pictures. Here are some of my favorites. I’m doing them big, because they are prettier big!

They had this little miniature village made out of little plants made to look like trees and other bigger things. I thought it was rather cute!

And one last flower:

Well, it has definitely been a muddy spring. Just when we thought it was over, it started again raining every day.

Yesterday a guy came and tore up the driveway. Actually he pushed the dirt from where it was to up by the garage, making the driveway itself about 4 – 6 inches lower. Thenwe plan to get gravel to fill it up again. The problem is that it was so muddy that he couldn’t finish. So we have this huge amount of mud stretching from the door to the other side of the garage and all the way out the driveway. And no fix in the near future if it doesn’t dry up. Agghhh!

State music contest – done. The day was beautiful, a lovely day to be “down south” in Eau Claire! I only had 6 events to play for and they were spread out throughout the day, with  a two and a half hour break for lunch, during which time I went to a couple garage sales, went shopping, and, of course, got lunch. I find that I don’t really care so much what rating kids get, since I’m not that close to many of them, so I didn’t stay around for results. When I left, only 3 were in, two 2nds and one 1st – pretty much what I expected on those three.

It would have been nice to be home, getting things in the yard and house accomplished, but they will just have to wait for another day. I think tomorrow we are going to buy all new interior doors for 117, since the solid core, 6 panel ones are on a really good sale. I’m not sure, but our current plan might be to finish a portion of that house real fast, move over there and get this place rented out before our finances collapse. That is because Toccoa isn’t selling. We did lower the price on that one to $59,900 this week, though, so we’ll see what happens on that front. I won’t go lower. For less than that, we might as well keep it and try selling something up here. So hard to know what to do in this economy. But the one thing we know to do is to get busy and get these two houses fixed up pronto!

We’ll be gone until Saturday. Tomorrow we are going to a training for people who are getting Americorps (formerly Peace Corps) workers, and the Garage is getting one in September. Then on to a two day workshop for volunteer coordinators. So, we’ll be gone until late Friday evening. Then I have state music contest Saturday all day – I only play for 6, but they are well spread out. After that, things settle down a bit, although I have another conference May 21 – 22 in Madison.