Yummy...

 I hope you ate well today.  According to my west coast brother today is "National Hot Fudge Sundae Day" and "National Wine and Cheese Day."  You're bound to find something you like somewhere in those choices.  

My wonder spouse and I managed to find something to our liking.  This evening we went to dinner with my son and his family.  We were celebrating two birthdays and a new job, so lots to be happy about.

My daughter-in-law, one of the birthday people, selected Red Robin as the site for dinner since she had a coupon for a free 'birthday burger.'  The reason and the destination both sounded good to my spouse and me, and so we went to Red Robin for the first time in at least three years.  I used to go there fairly often with my son and his family but the granddaughters have grown up and their tastes have expanded.  Dinner there today brought back some sweet memories.

I had water instead of wine, but I did have a generous amount of cheese on my bacon cheese burger.  It was served just the way I like it with cheese and bacon of course and sliced tomato and mayo.  No lettuce.  I am not a fan of lettuce.  Happily it came prepared exactly as I had ordered it.  This does not always happen in restaurants.  

I am glad to be able to report that the Red Robin onion rings and sweet potato fries are just as delicious as I remembered.  

Sadly, after eating our fill of burgers, fries and onion rings, my spouse and I decided that we had no room for hot fudge sundaes.  That treat will have to wait for another day.  Happily tomorrow is another day.  

Eureka!!

 The new system works and we have water flowing to all of our flowering plants at the front of the house.  Around the other three sides of the house we have bushes, lilys, hostas and similar plants that have been coming up and thriving (or at least surviving) for years.  They do not need a special watering system.  

But now we have a watering system on the front side of the house that my wonder spouse assembled with a little help from me.  He designed, organized and installed the whole thing, following diagrams and directions, and putting all the little pieces together.  My help was of the 'standing by to hold things or hand him things' variety. 

Here you can see one of the larger hoses and the little ones that run off from it to the individual plants.  If you look closely you can see the aqua top of the water spike in the pink plant and the red top of the water spike in the lily. 

Each plant has a small hose running directly to and attached to a little hollow spike which is inserted near the roots of the plant and carries the  water to the roots.  The whole system is on a timer which is scheduled to turn the water on for an hour beginning at 6:00am.  Tomorrow morning will be the first test of this part of the system.  Sometime in the next few days I will cover the exposed hoses with mulch and sometime in August I will post a picture of our flourishng flower beds.  If you do not see a picture sometime in August you can assume the worst, but I have high hopes.

A simple system..

 When the landscaper finished her work yesterday she recommended a "simple" above ground irrigation system, with all black hoses so it's practically invisible, that we could install ourselves. All for under $100. It could be set up to come on with a timer every evening. This sounded great so my spouse ordered the product from Amazon.  It was delivered this morning.  As advertised, the kit contained miles (I may exaggerate a little) of quarter inch and half inch black hoses, attachments to allow lots of different installation arrangements and nifty suggestions with diagrams, lots and lots of diagrams. 

As you might expect, it wasn't quite as easy to install as advertised, so we didn't finish the job in a day.  Happily, I do know how to water plants the 'old-fashioned' way with an ordinary garden hose.  Hopefully the plants will still be alive tomorrow and by tomorrow evening the new system really should be installed.

Stay tuned...

a face lift..

 No, not for me.  I'm well beyond the age where a face lift would do any good.  If I could figure out a way to get a full body lift I might consider it.  But this isn't about me. 

Way back before my spouse and I went on our cruise in May, we had contracted with Flower Princess Plant and Lawn Care, a local landscaping company to do new landscaping all around our house.  The agreement was that the work wouldn't be started until we were back from vacation so we would be here to water the plants.  

Two days ago the 'princess' (it's a one woman company) started work on our lawn.  She finished today.  I wish I had thought to take some before pictures but I didn't. However I did take pictures today. 

You can't really tell from the pictures but she trimmed all the bushes, cleared out and put fresh dark brown mulch under all the trees and all around the house and planted several new flowering plants in the front flower beds. 

Here's the front view.  Note the neatly trimmed bushes and the mulch around the light post and across the front of the house.

A closer view of the (soon to be) flowering plants.

Doesn't this look spiffy?  A face lift indeed. Tomorrow my wonder spouse and I will install an inexpensive watering system that the princess recommended.  Every morning the automatic timer will tell it to gently water the plants.  I will let you know how this works after we give it a trial run.

Feeling sheepish???

 My west coast brother and my excellent sister-in-law raise sheep and goats on their hillside farm out west.  I think it's because of their lifestyle that he suggested I read two books about sheep.

A recent movie "The Sheep Detectives" is based on these two books. I will, I think, try to see the movie sometime after I finish the books.  

The books "Three Bags Full" and "Big Bad Wool" were written by a German author Leoni Swann and translated into English by Amy Bojang.  The first one takes place in Ireland.  I have always enjoyed reading 'cozy mysteries' and you can't get much cozier than cuddling up with fluffly fictional sheep.  Real life sheep can tend to be smelly and sometimes nasty, but we're talking fiction here.

Having sheep dectectives try to solve a murder (with a few people here and there along the way) is a fun twist on traditional murder mysteries. They have unusual skills, like a keen sense of smell, to help them in their detecting. All of the sheep have names of course.  My favorite is Miss Maple, a wise old sheep who figures things out.  Shades of Miss Marple?

If you're looking for a uniquely entertaining read, I recomment these books.  

Trying something new...

 I do not like to talk about my physical ailments in this blog.  I actually have very few to talk about anyway.  However today I experienced a new treatment for my knee pain that I want to share.

I noticed on our most recent vacation that after moderatly long walks my knees, especially my right knee would be hurting.  Not excruciating you understand, but enough to be bothersome.  Because I don't want the pain to get worse I tried a new treatment (new to me anyway) called Softwave.

I had my first treatment today and was surprised at how it worked.  I had expected the treatment to be pain free but it wasn't.  However my knees felt really good when it was over.  I will be going back for a series of eight treatments which should keep my knees pain free for a long time to come.   This brochure explains the process better than I can.  

The company doing this in Fort Wayne is "Integrative Health." You can get more information by Googling 'Integrative Health Fort Wayne.'  Happy hiking everyone.

Follow up...

We won!!  We Won!! I am happy to report that the soccer game we attended last night was every bit as exciting as the one we watched on TV today and the outcome was more satisfying because Fort Wayne won with a score of 3-0.  The new soccer stadium was everything a soccer stadium should be.  There was even a 'pep squad.'  At least that's what we called them when I was in highschool.  Of course back then it was the basketball players we were cheering, but last night's chant of "We want another one, just like the other one." sounded very, very familiar.  Very enjoyable indeed.  

This afternoon my wonder spouse (who is responsible for getting me interested in soccer) and I watched the final match of the FIFA World Cup competition.  Spain vs Argentina.  

If you haven't heard, Spain won 1-0 with their only goal scored at the very end of the game.  Argentina was not able to score due to some really excellent saves by Spain's goalkeeper.  

I felt like I was in a win-win situation watching this game.  My favorite city in the world is Barcelona (pronounced Barthelona if you're interested) which is in Spain, so of course I was inclined to cheer for Spain.  On the other hand Lionel Messi who was playing for Argentina (a country I have visited and like) at one time played soccer for Barcelona, and he is an amazing player, well worth cheering for and so I did.  

From now on, for the next few months at least, I think our soccer watching will be focused on (FWFC) the Fort Wayne Football Club. Sometimes on TV and sometimes in person.  I'm especially looking forward to the in person games, and not just for the big salty pretzels with cheese sauce which were very good indeed.