Bogieblog

I Don't do Pretty Toes

I was at a friend's place yesterday and her granddaughter was there (she is in her mid 20's). She had on sandals and commented that I shouldn't look at her toes as her last pedicure was a couple of weeks ago.

First, I don't look at people's feet for two reasons: I have no reason to look down there and I can't really see that far anyway for something so small. Unless she had on a screaming yellow or green, or she had her feet resting on top of the table, her toes would not be visible to me. I'm not sure I would even notice them then - LOL.

I commented that I had never had a pedicure and she was like, "OMG, why not?" Seriously, that wasn't a thing when I was growing up. I can't say I ever heard of an acquaintance getting a pedicure until the last 15 years or so (or maybe I didn't pay attention). I don't do pedi's or mani's because there is no point to it in my mind. Sure, I lop off the nails when they get long, but that is it. I'm just not a maintenance type of gal.

Speaking of feet, I had something fall on my pinky toe Friday afternoon and it is not happy with me. It is swollen as well as all black and blue, even the mole is discolored. I had to hobble around the rest of Friday, but by yesterday I can walk normally in shoes - even if I still get twinges of discomfort. Walking barefoot (which is my norm at home), I have a bit more discomfort and I've adjusted my foot position while walking to keep my weight off the outside of the foot. I've broken that toe before but think only at the worst I may have re-cracked (but not broken) that area. Nothing to do but wait it out.

Picture taken about 24 hours after the happening. For some reason it doesn't really show the darker purple, although you can just see a tinge close to the mole and on the very inside close to the other toe. Actually, now that I think of it, a lot of times pictures of deeper reds and reddish-purples (such as my deep red rhodie in the shade garden) are turned just plain red on my phone and I can never get them adjusted to what I actually see.

Passing Along for a Renewed Purpose

Sunday morning there was a post on the local swap FB page asking for a small bookshelf. I happened to have a small bookshelf that I have been using to hold acrylic paint bottles, and a few odds and ends, for the last 8-9 years. All that paint is 7-9 years old and hasn't been used in 5-6 years. The teacher's need spurred my to gather the paints into a bag (to be gotten rid of) and pass it down. The bookshelf started out blue, and back in the early 80's I scraped off the paint and stained it.

Fall is starting to make itself felt with nights in the 40's. One of the maple trees out back starting to turn and pincushion flowers are blooming.

[Imagine that, it took until Tuesday for Typepad to allow me to upload those two pictures although it was happy to let me upload the first to pictures the first time]

These are the nice days, where the days are cool enough not to need AC, warm enough not to need heat, the mugginess leaves the air, and letting in the solar gain in the afternoon warms up the house enough that the house is just the right temperature in the morning. We will still have some "hot" days but then we will inevitably slide into winter. It remains to be seen how fast that slide is and how soon we see snow.

The Rest of the Exterior Paint

As promised, here are the results from painting the other two sides of the house.

Yes, the color does change from blue to green to gray depending on the lighting - both strength and angle.

These two sides of the house were challenging because the kitchen windows are original and everything was painted brown. She did a fabulous job of painting around the panes.

I am looking at 3 different colors for the front door:

Benjamin Moore AF-505 (Blue Echo)

Benjamin Moore 2136-40 (Aegean Teal)

Magnolia Home MAG011 (Sir Drake)

Yes, this post was started yesterday, but after 3 different errors when trying to upload the pictures, I gave up.

Rest in Peace My Friend

Jeff Soyer was one of the first bloggers I ever met way back when blogging was THE thing. He and I hit it off because our preference was to stay at the outskirts of the goings on at the shindig at the Weekend Pundit's old Manse. He generally gave up blogging to turn to modern FB and forum formats. He had great presence amongst several gaming and writing online communities and he asked me to take over moderation of one of those FB communities about a year ago when his health really started deteriorating. In March of this year the doctors weren't quite sure why he was still above ground.

He was an older generation gun nut with a love of reading, a cat lover. a big donor for varous projects in his community, and a gay guy with a great sense of humor in a time when being "other" was not as acceptable as it is for the younger generations coming up.

Rest in Peace my friend. Although sad for the loss felt by family and friends, I am so happy you are out of pain and have joined all your 4-legged furry friends who passed before you.

His preliminary obituary is here.

Jeff's FB page (for posterity)

Dramatic Change

First, let me say that for the first time in a long time, I had absolutely NO ISSUES getting Typepad to grab, uploade or publish any of the pictures. That has happened so rarely in the last couple of years that I think it is noteworthy!

The house has had a couple of color combinations since I bought it. Originally it was yellow with brown on top

Last year I covered the yellow with Ben Moore Blue Heather (1620)

One issue I have is the brown. When the sun is on the west side of the house, that side heats up massively. On top of that, the color scheme just stuck out way too much for my liking. People should be looking at the gardens as they pass by, not the house. Another issue is the foundation paint has a bluish tint that didn't quite mesh with the Heather Blue paint. And then there is the edge of white from when I primed the new wood for the new garage door.

However, coming up with a color combo that would go with the windows and garage door (which had been purchased with the original paint scheme in mind) was daunting. And, I believed that I needed two colors for the different orientations of siding. In fact, everyone I had talked too, including the guy I had repaint the house a few years ago, couldn't think of a better color combo.

Then late last fall, I was talking to a gal who walks her dogs along my road, and lives on the next street over (I can see her house from mine). Turns out she paints for a living. She prefers to do interiors, but does exteriors sometimes too. It took us some time, and a lot of back and forth, but we hit on a combination we thought would work. Part of that premise was she didn't believe that I needed different colors between the two different sidings. She started painting last week. She does all her painting by hand, so the going is slow, but I'm liking it.

Ben Moore Tranquility AF-490 (blueish-greenish-grayish and changes color according to the light) for the siding and Jute AF-80 (beige-ish) foundation give the house a whole new look with a dramatic difference. Bonus is that the foundation color is close enough to the eave color that the eaves don't have to be touched. Just the front and north sides are done. I was unsure about my color choices until the brown garage trim got covered - now I love it.

I will have to figure out front door color in the future and perhaps the garage frame (or just the inside portion of the frame) although I may not touch that. I kind of like how it blends with the foundation but has just that tiny strip of rubber showing.

It's supposed to rain Monday and Tuesday so painting the south and east sides may take some more time. She did get the foundation to the south side done Friday, so at least she doesn't have to worry about water splashing up from the ground. It's possible, depending on how hard it rains, that she could do the brown portion as well as under the overhang from the bach porch and stairs, but it is her choice. The east side will not have the foundation painted, as it was never painted with the porch and ramp in the way. We both think that the gray of the block will be fine.

I'll post pics when those two sides are complete.

Rain is a Good Thing Here

Updated with pictures 8/12/2024

Finally got a good amount of rain, so my dry spell is over for now. I got about 4" of rain spread out thru last week, so no flooding issues. Even the remnants of Debby only put down about an inch since I was on the west side.

I was able to mow Thursday evening, after the first 3" of rain, but before Debby hit. I still didn't have to mow the part between the house and the rhodies. That section also extended down to between the driveway and the rhodies (except a couple of tall weeds), but I did mow everything else. That was the first time since July 2 - so 37 days (except the drainage ditch which was mowed once between those dates).

The Clethra (Summer sweet) busted the blooms out after most of the rains and the air is full of its sweet scent. Various insects are enjoying the blooms. I've seen bumble bees, honey bees, blue mud wasps, and a bunch of others, including this beauty.

Well, okay then - I can't upload pictures again, so I'll try again later. I also need to upload my first Rose of Sharon bloom since I planted them fall of 2020.

RoH - the bud apparently opened during some of the pouring rain, so isn't in the best form. But, It is the first flower from either shrub since planted, so wanted to document it

More Pics from the Weekend

Now that Typepad consents to actually grabbing pictures, here are a few more from last weekend

Joe Pye weed in the drainage ditch to the south. Next picture there are at least 3 bees, maybe more

 

The shade garden, which I allowed to go wild. the bright pink is tall phlox, the blue is Endless Summer hydrangea and the tree hydrangea in the background is starting to bloom

 

Butterfly joined me while I was pulling laundry off the line

This picture of Timothy grass is from about 10 days ago. It is growing in the southern ditch near the Joe Pye weed (you can see JPW starting to bloom in the background)

I don't think I published any pictures of the Endless Summer blooms (just that group photo up top), so here are some from a couple of weeks ago

Have a great week everyone!

Do I Get to Name It?

Yesterday I noticed and extremely late day lily over by the front door. That entire bed is covered by the regular orange ditch lilies, and all of them had gone by and dropped all the old flowers a couple of weeks ago, so it really stuck out. Since I rarely use the front door, I decided to go take a look and found this - which must be a natural hybrid since I didn't plant it.

Pictures of what I believe the parent lilies were for reference (sorry, you don't get a pic of the orange ditch lily - because, Typepad). With the ruffling of the petals on the above lily, and the downward curl of the petals like a ditch lily does (whereas the petals on the yellow are not curled down), I believe it is a cross between the ditch lily and the yellow lily.

Well, Typepad won't let me load anymore pictures (it has taken me 10 minutes to get this far (and this is an even different issue than I've had in the past - it doesn't even try to grab th pictures at all or give me any errors). Since pictures is what this post is all about, I guess you don't get to see them until such time as Typepad decides to play nicely.

(A bit later) - the standard ditch lily that I believe is the other half of paternity of the flower at the very top.

Joe Pye weed is flowering at the culvert on the south side of the yard. I planted that in the shade garden when I first put it in, then I think I forgot about it and kept pulling it (when I used to try to keep control of that area) - so it decided to grow in the ditch. And, apparently I exhausted Typepad, because it won't let me do more pictures. I swear, if I weren't so lazy, I would find another host.

Remember to Change Your Batteries

No, this isn't some weird timing for changing smoke detector batteries.

Yesterday morning, which was an off-Friday for me, I was planning on moving a ton or two of wood pellets from the yard into the garage.

I guess I should start off by explaining that I had someone over to fill in some of the larger cracks in the garage floor and redo some wall fixes at a more professional level than I managed to do several years ago (not structural issues). So, when I had pellets delivered during the spring sale, those were placed out in the yard so I wouldn't have to move them when it came time for the work to be done. The work was completed last week (and no, it isn't very interesting so no pictures).

Yesterday morning I was reorganizing the permanent contents of the garage and it was finally a cool, and non-tropically humid morning so I figured to move pellets before I did some other running around slated for the day. The best way to move the pellets is to load them in the truck, then back the truck up to the garage and unload them (much easier than pulling a garden cart 6-bags at a time).

So, I grabbed my fob (for a change remembering to do so before getting in the truck) and pushed the start button. Hmmm, the dash tells me there is no key present. Okay, fair enough, it had been a year or so since the last battery replacement, at which time I had put fresh batteries in both fobs. The second fob is never used, so that battery should be good enough to get me thru this, then during my other errands, I could get replacement batteries.

Well, I guess batteries die in tandem. Or at least I was hoping that was the case, otherwise there was a real expensive bill coming to replace the starting module (or whatever). I called the Ford dealer in town to confirm they had batteries, then asked the neighbor across the street if he would give me a ride. He agreed and I soon had fresh batteries and the truck responded well to the fix, so all was good.

The battery issue, although a PITA, occurred under the best circumstances:

• It happened on a day off so I could take care of the issue right away.
• I didn't have to be anywhere I couldn't walk to if the batteries didn't fix the issue (I had to go to the bank, but that is less than 1/2 mile away).
• It happened in my driveway instead of up in Concord at Wally World - which was one of my planned stop
• My neighbor also happens to have their off-Friday the same as my off-Friday so he was available to help me
• I actually now have a close neighbor that drives (which was not the case this time last year)
• Really, if required, I could have walked to/from the Ford dealership. It is 2.5 miles away so was not an attractive option, but doable (one of the reasons I prefer Ford's over the last 10 years or so is because we have a local dealership). I'm unsure if they still have a courtesy service, but if they do, they probably would have helped me out with a ride.

So, it was a bad news, good news event. It just kept me from moving any pellets yesterday, which was inconvenient, but nothing major.

The Proof Reader Had One Job

The town instituted a sticker program for the town Transfer Station this summer. It has been in the works since last year and they put it off once that I know of. Residents get stickers when they register their vehicles. Others, such as those who have summer houses can ask the town for a sticker. Oh, and the Transfer Station services a couple of towns around us too.

So imagine my surprise when a post came up on a (civilian run) Hillsboro FB page

People, there are 7 words on that thing. How can "Hillsborough" not be correct?