It's Cold This Morning!

Well, cold for July - 55 degrees and windy. Winds that blew out of the north all day yesterday took the temps 'way down last night. The dry air here does not permit the heat to stay trapped and stifling.

There is a wonderful little hexagonal pond out in front of the house; a shallow thing that begs for koi and flowers around it. However, it is cracked in several places and will hold water like a sieve. So yesterday, there I was, with a hammer breaking up all the loose stuff, then the wire-wheel grinder to smooth and get rid of the loose stuff. Today I'll finish grinding it down, then scrub it and wet-vac it, prepping it to be sealed.

Sunday (tomorrow) the temps will be back up in the 90's, and it will be warm enough again to set the repairs. First the KoolSeal in the cracks as filler, then the webbing cement over the whole thing to coat and seal it.

The bread I made last week is already gone; it went in two days. Something about homemade bread just cheers you up and makes you feel self-satisfied. I need to make more but I don't need to knead in cement dust, so I'll have to put it off til Monday. I also need to start the laundry and get into my ceramics shop downstairs as well. I got a gallon of glaze from the ceramics shop in Valentine yesterday; I have an idea of some things I want to get started on. Today, though, I'll just put water in the bucket of rock hard dried clay to make it into workable slip again, mushy and soft. Thursday the stove dials came in at last, and we took the stove completely apart to clean it and sand it. I had to use a putty knife to scrape the grease out from around the Jenn-Aire fan underneath; it had been let go for a long time. It worked; the burners heat up so much more quickly and the dials work so now I have four real burners instead of two. That took all day. Jobs always take twice as long as you expect, especially when you are obsessive/compulsive about perfection! LOL

Sometime this week I will get up the courage to get on the extension ladder and finish the red paint for the trim. This past week I sanded and painted the board fence out front; bright white again, the flowers will look good against it as they bloom. The tops of the posts are cut at a sharp diagonal. I had a choice - cut the tops flat and order finials to finish them off, or - take the red paint and a rose stencil I already had, and paint a stylized rose on the top of each post. I decided on the roses. Right afterwards, Pat's hubby stopped by to tell me how nice it made the whole yard look. Neighbors were stopping their cars to look that evening, and yesterday the girls at the post office complimented me on the house and the work we've done. It is so nice to actually feel like I am accomplishing something, especially when I wake up itchy from fly bites around my ankles and creaking and groaning in my joints! LOL

Oh, well - no flies yesterday or today, too windy and chilly, so time to get to work! LOL Although according to the paper the largemouth bass and the walleyes are biting everything being thrown into the water - I'd really rather be down at the reservoir fishing today... Sigh. Maybe we can go tomorrow, after we finish the pond and it is drying. Sunday is always a good day - tourists leave on Sunday.