Ouch...

So sore...yesterday I weeded this flowerbed...

There were lots of weeds - the flowerbed above looked like this one before I weeded it...
I weeded a whole wheelbarrow full of weeds out of the bed. Today I weeded the other large flower bed in front of the house (the one in the photo above). Tortellini, the tortoise, enjoyed wandering around in the sunshine while I weeded. I learned that he likes to eat dianthus flowers. :-D
Last night and today, DH and DS moved all this mulch (15 yards/2 truckloads) to the flowerbeds and the area around the pool and patio. DS said that he was beginning to think that the tractor purchase was a good idea, as DH moved a lot of the mulch to the patio area with the front end loader on the tractor. It saved them both a lot of manual labor...
Don't the beds look nice now that they are all mulched? The area around the flowers was deliberately left without mulch. The mulch delivery guy said not to get the mulch up next to the flowers until the mulch had cooled off for a couple of days...otherwise, the plant would get burned by the mulch and die.
Here is another mulched bed...
And another...

Out by the patio, DH spread the mulch around these plants...
but ran out of steam here...
This yellow butterfly stopped by for a drink from this puddle today...
My yellow primrose have blossomed...
And my pink lupine...
I have been unable to embroider for a while, as my d-card that I use to transfer designs from the computer to the sewing machine was faulty and needed to be replaced. We found one on ebay and it arrived today, so I was able to make this door sign for Doris' husband...
And, as usual, Let's go PENS!!!!

Just a few new things this week...

The photo I posted the other day of the lights that DH put up between the trees behind the pool didn't show up well, so here is another photo of the lights at night...
My two sisters were visiting the week before last and one of them brought some old music that my mom sent down. We divided the music up between the three of us and I decided to frame some of my music for the walls of our music room. I found 11x14" floating frames at WalMart and bought 14 of them. Since most of the music was 9x12", the pieces fit in the frames with a 1" border all around. The music was old, most of it from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but some of it dated back to the 1890s.
Here are a couple of the pieces close-up...
And here is one with Frank Sinatra on the cover...
I made this door sign for a friend from church (if you know Doris, don't tell her about it). I am also making one for her husband, Wayne, but I'm having issues with my embroidery card and need to get it replaced before I can embroider anything else.
We didn't get much done this weekend on the house. Friday night was a wedding for the daughter of our friends and Saturday we hosted the end-of-the-year party for our church choir. On Sunday, DH planted the five lilac trees that I bought last week. The outdoor TV is not up yet, as the pole that it was to be mounted on turned out to be the wrong size. DH ordered another one, so it shouldn't take long to get it up once the pole arrives. Here is the happy wedding couple...
Oh, and of course, LET'S GO PENS!!!!

A little of this, a little of that...

I thought I would update the blog while I watch the National Spelling Bee. These kids are amazing!

Here is a photo of one of my Hot Cocoa roses. Isn't it gorgeous? It almost doesn't look real!
I have another blossom on my Lollipop Gerbera daisy. It is a variegated pink color with some very deep pinks when it first blossoms - then it begins to fade...
This is the second garden bed near the pool/patio area. It is where I planted the hot peppers, sweet peppers, banana peppers and peas. The supports along the wall will (hopefully) keep the pea plants in line...
Here is my flower bed. This is also in the pool/patio area and has mostly perennials, with a few annuals thrown in for good measure. The plants really shot up the past couple of days with all the rain we've had. I've had a couple of my coleus die, but mostly the plants are doing really well...
DH has been working on installing a TV out by the patio/pool. It will go under the garage overhang so it will stay dry. The TV will go on this pole; the hole behind the pole is for an outlet...
Here is the view of the TV pole from the hot tub...
The bench for the half bath arrived today and I assembled it. The half bath is near the pool and will also be used as a changing area. The bins on the bookcase will provide places for people to store their clothes while they swim. I still need to purchase some large bath towels or beach towels for this bathroom...

The Pens are in the Stanley Cup Playoff game against the Detroit Redwings. The best-of-7 series begins Saturday night, so LET'S GO PENS!!!

And the landscapers returneth!

Wow! What a surprise! I thought for sure the landscapers wouldn't be back to finish the patio area for a week or two - it's only been 2 days! They sealed the gaps between the two seat walls and the deck...
And the gaps around the two columns...
The rest of the travertine arrived and they cut the remaining pieces to fill in the triangle...
They didn't seal the gap between the seat wall and the travertine. My guess is that they need to let the pavers that they just installed dry before they fill in this gap...
They filled in the other planter with soil (thought I took a photo of it, but I don't see it anywhere - hmmmmm), but they didn't spread the top soil yet. The Bobcat and some of their other equipment is still here, so I suspect that they will be back tomorrow to finish up.

The landscapers leaveth...

We have a deck railing! The landscapers showed up a bit before 7:30 this morning and went to work putting the aluminum slats in the deck railing.
Here is a closer view - I really like how it turned out...
They spent some time cleaning up the area and made a bonfire of a lot of the junk that had been lying around. They didn't spread the topsoil yet.

And they still need to finish the pavers. I guess they ordered 10% more pavers than they needed for the area and still ran out. They talked their suppliers into selling them less than a full palette, so when that comes in they'll be back to finish the patio and spread the topsoil.
They still need to fill this planter with soil also... The landscapers loaded up their utility trailer (which has been parked beside our garage since the second week in August) and left about 12:30 today.

DH took the day off work and spent the day on the tractor getting the lawn ready to seed. He seeded part of the lawn area, spread the smelly mushroom mulch on it, and watered it. He'll do another section next weekend.
I started working on the cover for DD's window seat cushion, but didn't get very far. It was nice to be able to hang out in the sewing studio while keeping an eye on the laundry though.

Deck details...

The deck is not yet finished, but it's getting there! All the diagonal boards are down and the ends trimmed so that the border boards could be added...
We really like it. The landscape guys have really done a great job with it...
In response to a comment on yesterday afternoons post, I can see how the person could think that there isn't anything for the ends of the boards to connect to. I hope the photos from today will make it more obvious how this deck is constructed. Some of the photos that I posted in past blog entries didn't show the support beams around the edge of the deck. These supports are what the ends of the diagonal boards are connected to...
It took a while for them to get the border boards under the seat wall, but it looks nice now that it's in there!

The step looks great too!
Here's the deck from another angle. The border isn't yet in place on the side that meets the house, the railing needs to be finished ,and the deck needs to be sealed. The landscapers planned to be done tomorrow, but I'm not so sure that will happen.
Here are a couple of close-ups of the screws in the ends of the boards...
and in the middle of the boards. I don't think this deck is going anywhere! :-D
I restocked the refrigerator today. I'm glad I didn't do it last night, as I had planned to, as the refrigerator door was accidentally left ajar last night and I would have had to throw away all the new food. Replacing the food once following the power outage is definitely enough!

We (almost) have a deck!

Yes, we have had our power restored!!!! It was off for 67 hours, almost to the minute.

On Tuesday, the landscapers showed up with a generator so that they could start work on the deck. They finished this much on Tuesday and also put a coat of sealer on the exposed aggregate around the pool.
Today we had a delivery of mushroom mulch (my apologies about the smell to anyone who comes to visit us) which DH will use when he seeds the lawn.
Today they got most of the deck done. If you are wondering why the boards don't go all the way to the edge, I wondered that too. DH told me that they are planning to put a border around the outer edge of the deck so it will all work out in the end.
This is the last little bit that they need to finish up - I assume they will do that tomorrow. They haven't said anything about when they are going to finish the travertine pavers - we still have a corner that isn't finished because they ran out of pavers.
Hopefully, my updates will get back to a more normal schedule now that we have power again. I'm going to cook dinner tonight, even though I haven't made a run to the grocery store to restock the refrigerator, so I must run...

Remnants of hurricane Ike got us!

Well, we've been in the dark here in Western PA since Sunday night, around 9:20pm. No electricity, no hot water (we have an electronic starter on our gas water heater!), no phone or internet (we have Vonage phone), etc. I can't open my oven door (I was in the middle of a cleaning cycle), the dishwasher has undrained water in the bottom, as it was running at the time, and yesterday I had to throw all the perishable foods out.

The awning that belongs to our landscaper didn't fare well in the storm...
Our pool was a mess from the storm - those are pieces of styrofoam that were packed around the pavers on the palette...
We lost a couple of trees and some large branches. This tree trunk just twisted right off...
Here is the rest of that tree...
And we lost this medium-sized tree...
But my favorite tree was safe, so that was good!
The landscapers spent Monday cleaning up the debris around the patio area and I scooped out most of the debris from the pool...
Our neighbor lost his barn in the storm. Part of it fell on Friday during some high winds and downpours, but the rest of it fell during the storm on Sunday night.
I don't know when the power will be back on - according to the electric company's web site, it should be back on sometime this afternoon. I'm at King's Restaurant eating breakfast and using their free internet access. My battery only has half-power though, so I don't have too long to post.

I tried to go to the local library yesterday and get a library card. I couldn't, because they were running a program on their computer that they couldn't interrupt. I was told to call them on Friday and see if the program was done running! They let me get on one of their computers for 30 minutes (only if I gave them my license to hold - the computer was all of 2 feet away from the checkout desk). I asked them if I could sit at one of their tables, plug in my computer to charge, and do some work offline - no, you can't do that here! Unbelievable! Fortunately, I remembered that I have a power converter in my car and was able to plug my computer into that to charge.

I'm about out of battery - not sure when I'll get back on to post again, but hopefully soon!