The Next Chapter in the Book . . .: Chapter 352

Happy Birthday Grampa!

As summer wears on, the garden is getting more and more sparse but the hearty stuff that continues to come forth still looks like we live next door to Chernobyl. I have huge, weird, green tomatoes and tiny little watermelon that I don't think is going to live to see my plate this year.

It may be late, but the flowers look great. My dalias must have gotten a second wind and they are putting their best blooms forward.

I like this spidery orange one that's getting us in the mood for fall.

And strawflowers. I was so excited to find a strawflower plant and I'm not disappointed. I love the crunchy little flowers it's made all summer long. I'm going to save some seeds and see if I can resurrect it next summer.

Another dalia. It's consistently put out bi colored flowers all summer.

These mums were volunteers from last year. They have taken all freaking summer to bloom. If I'd known they were going to take so long to bloom, I would have put them in the back row instead of a prime place right up front of the table and chairs. I guess there's a reason that you buy mums in the fall and not the spring. Huh.

Coleus are always fun to add a splash of plant color to a garden. The other flowers in my yard might change but I always have coleus. . . and strawflowers. New rule. I'll always have strawflowers too.

And the Boston ivy is changing into fall-colored leaves a sure sign this nice weather is winding down for the season.

I love the way water beads up on kale!

The projects of the week were to make it our job to fill a landfill all by ourselves. We started with the art closet under the stairs. Well, it started out as the art closet because that's where the kids kept their art supplies. Over the years it became the "Igor Memorial Closet" since Igor liked to hide in there during thunder storms and power naps. As you can see, it was full to the brim.

So, we moved everything out to the living room for sorting and the closet looked great. I hated to put anything back in the closet it looked so great. However, the living room took a beating after we disemboweled the Igor Memorial Closet and so it begin it's trek to the dump.

After the closet was emptied, Bob decided he needed to remodel it. Who remodels a closet??? I admit the space had been ignored over the years The popcorn ceiling had been removed from the entire rest of the house and this was the last room to have it so it received a ceiling makeover, the old original rust colored shag carpet from 1982 was removed, Bob scraped the ceiling, filled the holes, laid new flooring, and painted the entire area.

Too bad we had to ruin our nice closet by putting the stuff back in it.

I finished it off with a custom made decal that proclaimed it as the "Igor Memorial Closet".

Bear is visiting and as I type, he's begging for a snack with his beady brown eyes drilling through me hoping to break my concentration enough to hide some carrots for him. This way he can pretend he's a big-bad search doggie. Considering his kind are used for sniffing and tracking, this Bear Dog is a dud when it comes to his nose. In the evening I hide carrots around the room for him. Although he runs around sniffing energetically, he can't find a carrot when I'm pointing at it. But it keeps him entertained for a little while......Me too.

Part of the detritus of the Igor Memorial Closet was finding our old family videos. They needed to be converted from VHS to digital format so Bob has been doing that finally. I wander past the TV only to get caught up watching videos of days gone by. We sure had cute kids and fun times.

There were several with Grama Book and the kids so we stopped to watch those of course.

While Bob has been recording videos, we've also been clearing out the garage attic. How many pair of snow chains that don't fit anything we own does one family need anyway?

But every family needs three types of car-top carriers, right?

In the end, we took one truckload to Goodwill one trunk load to the dump, and

found buried treasure. This was Kyanne and Carissa's old cash register and Carissa was just lamenting not having it for Reagan when what to our wondering eyes should appear?

After Bob dug two truck loads from the attic, it was obvious there was much, much more that needed to be purged. As one thing leads to another, it became very clear we needed new attic stairs to accomplish this little task. If you give a mouse a cookie.....

This was one of those projects that can go bad really fast but we managed to pull it off once again although it looked sketchy when you are standing on what you are tearing it out.

Success!

Reagan is enjoying her trip to Maine and other assorted small states located on the East Coast. This is her first "lobsta" roll. It looks like she is embracing the Mainer half of her pedigree very nicely.