Category: The Seasons

This & That Wednesday

We’ve started to plan a trip to Nova Scotia in July. Hubby’s family is from that beautiful spot, and this summer they are having a family reunion. This is the fun side of the family! I am really looking forward to the time we will have there and seeing all of our wonderful family!

Our usual house sitters won’t be back yet from their trip, so the biggest challenge is finding someone crazy enough to stay here with our pooches and house sit. I thought and thought and wasn’t sure what to do, when one of our neighbor’s stopped by with her daughter-in-law. Her daughter-in-law seems to think she would be fine and have no trouble handling the crew, so perhaps I can go off with Hubby for a few days and relax.

Wednesday finds me headed back to Boston for a recheck on my eye. I’m sure all is well and this will be just a formality, but Dr. W. insists that she see you 1 day after, 1 week after and 1 month after the surgery to check on eye pressure, the stitches, etc. Hubby will drive me and if I am a very good girl perhaps he will take me out for lunch at the Indian Restaurant near her office.

Hubby finished mowing the lawn last night and I went out to take a look. It was so beautiful. Springtime is like that. Flowers are blooming, the grass, the tree leaves, all are turning that deep emerald green and when you look out over on the lake you can see the circles in the water telling you that the fish are rising.

The earth has once again been reborn.

Fruits & Vegetables

We went for a ride today in search of another fruit tree for Hubby’s small orchard. Well, it once was a small orchard, but since he has expanded, it is now a medium sized, back yard orchard. Although not all of the trees are productive yet, many are, and in a few years we will be functioning as a small fruit enterprise. I can see Hubby packing up his fruit for the town’s farmer’s market and all of this done with the biggest of smiles on his face. He really loves the care of the trees and the harvest of the fruit.

flowers

Our Orchard now has:

3 MacIntosh
2 Cortlands
3 Empire
3 Macouns
2 Golden Delicious
1 Gala
1 Spy Gold
2 Winesap
1 Cox’s Orange Pippin
1 Red Stayman
1 Enterprise (A surprisingly good Apple that has a long shelf life)

1 Stanley Plum (I love to make jam with these!)
1 Castleton Plum
1 Mount Royal Plum

1 Moonglow Pear
1 Clapps Favorite Pear
2 Red Bartlett Pear

1 Lapins Cherry
1 Stella Cherry
2 Bing Cherry
1 Black Tartarian Cherry

2 Reliance Peach (My favorite)
2 Finger Lakes Super Hardy Peach
1 Elberta Peach
1 Richhaven Peach

Wild Concord Grapes (The best for Grape Jelly!)
Seedless Concord Grapes
New Hampshire Reliance (A hardy canadice type) Grapes

In any case, we didn’t find another fruit tree. My man knows what he wants to see in his fruit trees and apparently he didn’t see anything that made him happy, but we did see two flats of tomato plants for the garden, so we got those and brought them happily home.

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The tomato plants

These tomatoes will join my cucumber, eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, butternut squash and corn plants in my garden. Currently they are all sprouting in the green house until we are sure that we’ve had our last frost. Usually that is Memorial Day Weekend, then we will be replanting everything outside except the tomatoes, which I will continue to raise in the green house.

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My seedlings

We were out longer than we anticipated and so we stopped at a small restaurant and we got two orders of fried “whole bellied clams”, coleslaw and fries. The lunch was so good and we enjoyed the brief stop. Then we headed back to the house where our puppies, all four of them awaited us.

We walked them in the yard, I watered my vegetable plants and Hubby watered his fruit trees and then he headed off to the store to get the weeks groceries. Although I am doing really well, I was feeling a bit tired, so he volunteered to do this without me. I have no worries at all, as he is one of the few men in this world who can do this job as well as I can.

Yes, I’m a lucky girl!

Shorts, Spring And Sneezes

I got up today with the intention of getting a lot done. I guess in some ways I did. I got the ironing done, got the winter clothes out of my closet and Hubby’s and got the summer clothes down out of the attic, and upon seeing this stuff realized that I need some new shorts. Ah shoot. Shorts fall into the same category as pants as far as enjoyable shopping…not!

But I didn’t leave the house to go up town the way I’d planned, and I only got one load of laundry done and for dinner, I just heated up a packet of Fondue.

Of course I was running around after puppies all day, including at least two dozen trips to the great out of doors for their “business” meetings at what I now call “the mine field”! There was also a mad dash up the hill when Greta and the two pups took off when they saw my neighbor drive in.

I confess I am still not up to running fast, and uphill, forget it, I can barely hobble. Thank goodness Emily was here to do most of the racing. At twelve years old, she is fast.

I also noticed to today that my nose was dripping all day long. I was also sneezing and coughing like crazy. A cold? I think not. Allergies! I also noticed that Hubby was sneezing and coughing. Dual allergy sufferers, that’s us!

So we’re a fun group. Four adorably fast running doggies and two sneezing, dripping adults. We are such a fun family!

Could It Be Spring?

We had ice out on our little lake here today. It’s always an amazing thing to witness. One day the ice turns very dark, almost black then slowly you begin to see small ripples of water, and before you know it the ice is just gone. For me, “ice out”, means the real beginning of spring. It seems after that, no matter if we have a cold snap, spring is here!

I have gotten my potting soil, and my seeds so I can begin my seedlings for the garden. I’m doing cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, eggplant, corn, tomatoes, butternut squash, summer squash and zucchini. My cousin Janet thinks I should also plant peas. I probably will. But we shall see.

The temperatures climbed into the upper 70’s today and they say we may actually reach 80 degrees tomorrow. Is it time to put the air conditioners into the windows for the summer? I’m thinking pretty hard about that. I really don’t like to feel suffocated by the heat.

I think there is simply no pleasing us New Englanders. We complain when it is cold and snowy and then when it is hot and steamy. Oh well, summertime, bring it on!!!

The Rain Came Tumbling Down And Other Things

Our big snow storm of Sunday night, turned into rain while I slept. 3 or 4 or 5 inches of rain! It has washed away all of the snow and created giant puddles in our yard. Puddles so deep that Anneliese and Arnie hate to go outside as the rain water touches their bellies!

I was listening to the news and heard that a mud slide had happened in the southern part of the state, very near my daughter’s condo. My daughter’s home is on a HILL! I called her to make sure she was fine and also her home. She is, and so is her home, although there will be a detour for her to use to get home for a while.

Meanwhile, it rained here all day. The wind blew, the rains poured down and each time I took Anneliese and Arnie out I got soaked. I actually changed my clothes three times before finally giving up on staying dry.

My flu returned and I started to run a fever just as Hubby’s fever broke. I have warned him to stay away from me so we do not keep passing this thing back and forth. We did have a little appetite tonight and had french toast for dinner. (**A short note here, we never eat breakfast for dinner. It’s against Hubby’s religion or something, so this was a first. Me? I could eat breakfast at every meal. I LOVE breakfast!**)

Our little Anneliese is feeling the pains of being the smallest member of our family. I’m not letting her dwell on it and I am encouraging her to see herself as a big dog!

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Of course she will, always be, my little baby girl!

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Nor’easters, Stomach Flu’s And Pups

Okay, so Hubby and I are just about dead this weekend. Apparently the flu shot we got in October didn’t cover the stomach flu that has spread across New England. Since I am the one without a raging fever, I was sent to the store for the important items like Coca Cola, Ginger Ale, chicken broth, beef broth, bread for cinnamon toast and saltine crackers.

We both have lived on Pepto Bismol tablets and as I also have the incredible good luck of having a migraine, I have been taking Tylenol. I’ve got to tell you that I truly have had better days.

To top off all this “wonderfulness”, we are in the middle of a classic New England Nor’easter! Yes, the snow is coming down heavily, and sticking and well, just making a terrible mess! Nothing like a big snow storm to make you feel good when you have the flu!

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This is the great State of New Hampshire. The blue you can see on this radar image is SNOW! The darker the blue the heavier the snow.

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My own back yard.

Just when I had given up hope of feeling at all well today, Fritz and the puppies started playing and I was able to snap a few good pictures. You can see how much he loves the puppies and how much they love him.

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Anneliese, Fritz and Arnie

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Anneliese and Fritz

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Arnie, Fritz and Anneliese

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Arnie,Anneliese and Fritz

So now I will crawl under a blanket and try to stay warm and get well.

Wish me luck.