The great spring clean. Days 1 & 2

Porch 1 cleaned off. Table taken out, washed down and returned. Most of the shelf organized and wiped down. 

The deck is next. But what a view!!

My view today as I rested and recouped from all that work!! Love my hammock chairs. 

Day 2

I went to a few estate sales and Liz LOVES pictures of Victorian children and her boyfriend does not. He says they are going to haunt them. Hahahah. So we sent him THESE pictures. Things of concern on those beds!!

It is cicada time here as well. So for your viewing pleasure cicada under glass. 

There was one on a step that I joked to Liz it may fly up her pants - hahaha. It did not :) 

Back to The house where Butch  had already started on the rest of the porch. He had pulled the rugs and pressure washed them and hung them on the fence to dry. So I parked and came out to assist. 

The OG porch all washed off and ready to be redressed. 

Butch out there pressure washing the yucky deck. 

I got busy and tore down the umbrella that was beside the pool as it was rotted and the renters apparently had a dog (or feral child) who chewed on all the knobs at knee high. Fun times. I pulled all the weights, drained them then used my trusty wagon to tump it over onto and dragged it to the street. Ingenuity at its best when you can’t lift more the 30#. Yay me. I got it done. 

Then I started pulling all the chairs back in place. 

THEN I rested and enjoyed the porch for a minute under the fans. 

Back at it!!

I put together the seating area out by the Grill pergola - not that we HAVE a grill. Note to self need to buy one of those. We have the green egg but we need a gas grill for quick grilling. 

And with that the pool is “open”. Come on out!!

Drama on the porch

I went to the porch to enjoy my coffee and ended up spilling it. Why?  A dove flew out while I was walking out. Scared the bejebus outta me. The. I noted a female sitting in a nest in there as well. Sigh. No ma’am. You may NOT raise your babies on the porch. Especially not on the pool skmmer. No ma’am. I spent the morning chasing them away. 

I put the owl over there. They didn’t care. I have put snakes in there in the past. They make meats on top of them. Silly birds. I finally put plastic sheeting over it all. Then they tried to build on top of that. Sorry fellas. I love you, but NO. This is not where you build a home. 

I did a flower walk as well. 

The red amaryllis are coming in well. Along with the elephant ears. I need to MOVE some. 

Wisteria is also finally coming in. Their wild cousin have come and gone so I had suspected mine were traumatized by their brutal hair cut. 🤣

Iris are also still going. Beautiful!!

Even my ice plant is starting to bloom :)

More Amaryllis 

And a bonus Frog :) he’s cute!!

Eclipse 2024… or not….

Butch and I had a good trip to San Antonio - we enjoyed staying with Tandy and Damian.  They are GREAT hosts.  

We left here at about 9am to get to the airport and have a leisurely lunch and people watch a bit.  Our flight was delayed due to “construction at San Antonio” by about an hour sitting on the tarmac - the good news was it was cooler and the temps on the plane didn’t get hot, so I just sat there and watched a movie :). I got one and a half movies in before we landed.  Love watching new releases on the plane!!  I watched “anatomy of a fall” which was a foreign film and I.S.S.  Which is about the folks at the ISS fighting as war breaks out in the planet. It’s crazy but good.   I had to finish this one the way home!

Anyway, we were a bit delayed but not a biggie.  We got to Damian and Tandy’s and they made dinner and we talked and visited then played games after.  We played 5 crowns that night.  I’m NOT a night owl, but boy they sure are.  We went to bed around midnight.  Yawn!!

We played 5 crowns the first night!

We woke up to some breaks in the clouds… we had hope!

They were dashed… BUT we keep seeing little snippets of the sun, so we still had a LOT of hope!

Believe it or not, it has begun.. the lower right has a tiny bite out of it… and note that this is pretty clear around the sun.  So, again, we had HOPE… 

Every time I would pass the storage box this guy would go skittering… I started talking to him on this trip… called him “fat boy” hahaha!

I think he was offended by the name :)

The set up for Butch - Tandy provided a monitor for him to view as he couldn’t see through the filter to find the sun when needed.. double filter on the camera and on his face was making it hard to find it.  I had the same issue when tracking on the phone - because that is where all these photo’s are from - my phone.

Damian is prepared… 

Damian has NOT fallen down, he is aiming his go-pro to take pictures of this the whole time… I’m chilling and looking at it when it comes out… very comfortable way to watch this for sure!!

You can see more of a bite… I couldn’t take pictures with the filters anymore because it wasn’t quite bright enough to see.. but the clouds really did help for naked eye pictures.

Putting the filter on during one bout of brighter break through light..

You have to zoom in, but there is a sliver there… 



MORE clouds but filtered… so dim.



Still BRIGHT out… until…

Just how DARK it gets out there when there is a full eclipse.  Impressive and way darker than I thought it would be for sure!!


Zoom in and you can see it’s just about coming out now… 

There is a sun in there… just left of middle as I was taking pictures towards bright clouds - again, hard to track, but still fun to see if we could see anything.. we did on rare occasions get glimpses.  We stopped looking and straining to see it about this time.  

We moved to hot tub and enjoy the day!  

Note his camera is aimed almost straight up to catch the event.  I don’t know that he got anything better than I did… I suspect he did.. I’ll share once he shares them with me.

Tandy put on a fun snack charcuterie board for lunch.  Perfect for hanging out and enjoying what was left of the day.  We ended up with rain eventually at the end of the day.  I don’t call this a total loss at all. We had a GREAT time visiting with Tandy and Damian and Ella. 

We took everyone to dinner that night at Lupe’s.  Butch couldn’t hear Tandy saying “everyone smile” so he’s caught mid bite of the yummy fajita’s.  

That night we played Boggle with everyone - Ella kicked out booties.  She had 61 points when we had a lovely 5 and lower on everyone else’s… she had an 11 point word.  I had tried for Raccoon on a prior one, but it didn’t have two C’s…. So wasn’t legal - drat it!  Oh, well.  I tried.  

when we got home I was greeted with these lovely Iris in the back yard.  They have me remembering Dad a lot as these are from him.  They are so pretty.  The other side of the yard has a yellow one, however it’s not blooming currently.  There are some buds over there.. hopefully it will be a purple and a yellow. :)




The next one! 2026 is being planned with the girls.  We are thinking Majorca.  Anyone else want to join in with us?  LOL