The Greenwater Report for May 25, 2009

May 24th, 2009: Overcast most of the day with only the odd sign of the sun. It started out pretty warm but cooled off about noon and started to rain. It smelled good and felt good, but we soon headed inside. It was a nice little rain and really cleaned things up. A spruce tree outside our patio doors changed colours as we watched, from gray-green to a bright, fresh green. I walked down to Reggie’s for coffee this afternoon and noticed a lot of pretty little yellow flowers along the way, along with something that looks suspiciously like pigweed. I guess weeds like rain, too.

Someone commented that we have had four seasons in the past couple of weeks – spring, summer, fall and winter. We have certainly had sun, heat, cold, snow, wind, and a bit of rain. I remarked the other day after walking down for coffee: I dress the same now as I did all winter. (Of course, I didn’t do much walking outside during the winter.)

‘Tis the season for garage sales, and we are doing our best to cover them all. All I ever buy is the odd book, but Doreen seems to be able to find something she needs at every one of them, usually a plate or pitcher, or something for one of the kids. Lucille usually comes with us and she is pretty good at finding stuff she needs, too.

We saw some pretty nice tools yesterday, but I have learned to be careful – you find a useful tool at a dirty low price, but if you buy it, sooner or later someone is going to expect you to use it. The old “I don’t use ‘em, I just collect ‘em” argument only works so often, then they start to catch on.

We got the last of our renovations (at least, for the time being) done while we were out in Alberta. Saskatoon Paving Stones came and dug out a little garden by our entry door, packed down a good base, and laid tumblestones for a patio floor. Expensive, but I didn’t have to lift a finger, and is it ever nice. We picked up a couple of comfortable swivel rockers for it; already had a small table and two chairs, so now we have a great little outdoor visiting area. Doreen has planted flowers all around it and it looks pretty good. It is on the west side, so likely the next thing we will be looking for is some kind of sun shade.

We thought we were going to have to take our motor home to the repair shop before we made another trip. The coach batteries quit charging while we were on power at Craik, and when we unplugged we found nothing would work on twelve volt, even once the engine charged up the batteries. There is a small bank of fuses under one of the dinette seats; one was blown, the other was actually smashed. Once I replaced them, everything worked again. We had a power break twice last Friday night, so maybe that had something to do with blowing the fuses. Nice if that’s all the trouble we have.

There is a rummage sale at Perigord tomorrow, and we are seriously thinking of going down to visit with our old buddies. We can also visit Jenny on our way through Kelvington. Trouble is, Doreen has a medical appointment Tuesday morning early so we would have to be back here Monday evening. That’s a lot of driving for an old man in one day. We’ll see.