Ewwwwwee the temperature sure jumped up here in Wisconsin on Tuesday. And along with that, the humidity!
This was from earlier in the afternoon, the weatherman later said our record breaking high was 94 degrees and the "feels like" temperature was well over a hundred with the heat index. The humidity was in the 70% range. ICK!
Just three days ago we were covering up all of our plants and vegetables because we had frost overnight. Only in Wisconsin...
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We started a few projects early in the morning to get them done before the heat got any worse. Steve had reconstructed the new sills on the basement windows on the south side of the house. Once he had the new material in place, I gave them each a couple of coats of good exterior paint. Boy oh boy, that sure looks a lot better than how they used to look.
Towards evening when things cooled down a little bit more, Steve was able to mount the two newly painted windows into place. Then from the inside, we will add the second layer of windows for added heat loss prevention in the winter.
We were losing daylight fast,
but he wanted to get them into place
so no critters would wander into our basement!
It sure looks a lot better than what was there before. I took this next pic today. Now all eight basement windows are finished! They will match the multi paned windows we want to install later on the main floor of the house.
We have also installed some room darkening roller shades in the west facing windows of the she shed, as well as in the dining room and office. This keeps that hot blazing afternoon sun from heating up the interior of the house and combating against the central air conditioning.
As soon as the shades were up and in place
the rooms cooled down considerably.
I even found these adorable little crocheted shade pulls rings, that look so old-fashioned and cute. Perfect for a little Grandma and Grandpa farmhouse!
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Now on to Steve's newest acquisition----
for his "Retirement Entertainment":
He bought A THIRD PUMP! This time it's a gas powered one. First he bought an extra supplemental used household type sump pump. Second he bought an electrical pump from Harbor Freight and a couple more hoses. Now he has increased to a large gas-powered pump along with even larger hoses!!!
My Boy with his water toys is sure having fun!
He found it used on Marketplace and
had to rebuild the carburetor and clean out
the old gas.... and now it runs!
There's really no need to pump out the big puddles in the yard, except for him to have fun. Big Boy playing with mud puddles, you know!
Look how happy he is???
Some friends suggested just making a big pond back there, year round. I wouldn't mind one, but he said no. He said all they do is attract mosquitoes and then he has to maintain it. He wants all the puddled up water drained so he can cut grass there!!! (like he doesn't have enough grass already with two and a half acres?)
If we just let it naturally fill up a hole, it would be just our luck that cat tails and marsh grass would grow. Then the DNR would designate us as a watershed property and we could never cut the grass for 50 ft around it!!
The situation is that there has already been 20 to 30 loads of fill brought back there by the previous owners in the last few years. We are just so low to the newly heightened water table of the Great Lakes being so high... that it never has a chance to soak down in the ground anymore. When you walk in our grass everything is mushy and soft and never has a chance to dry out. Until the Great Lakes level were to go back down where it was 10 years ago or 30 years ago or 50 years ago, the yard is probably never going to dry out. But he's having fun playing with his puddles. I don't care one way or another if the puddles are back there. But he wants to drain them so let him play. At least now he can start using gasoline instead of electricity.
We're supposed to get a bunch more rain before the weekend so he can play with them again!!
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As far as our self imposed quarantine, we have allowed ourselves a little bit of leeway. We have done a few shopping trips to the stores in the early morning senior hours on a weekday. We picked up what we needed and got the heck out as fast as we could.
This has been very tough on us being apart from our grandchildren. So we started letting up and are starting to visit with our grandkids and our grown children this week. One family at a time. Touching my grandkids again and hugging and playing. We need that....
We have decided that we are going to visit with family members that are not sick, and that have not been around any sick people. For now. Until we see how things go.
I feel like we are waking up after being asleep for a long time...
In my last blog I showed how we yanked down the old shed surrounding the basement stair entrance.
Now it was time to ready the frameworks over the cement stairs, and put on the steel bulkhead doors. (Steve found a used set on Marketplace).
Steve ordered up some treated planks from the local hardware store, doing a curbside pickup. He also ordered a big sheet of treated plywood at the same time.
With careful measuring, and walking back and forth, back and forth to the saw in the garage, he created a nice angled framework that was very sturdy and would endure for many many years.
Now the task was to get these heavy steel doors carried over and put into place on the frameworks. Usually I help him with anything that he is involved in. This was a job that was too heavy for me to help with!
We called upon son-in-law Waylen to swing by after work and give Steve a hand. What a relief it was for me.
These doors are probably way in the 200 pound range I think? They carried them out and around the newly planted grass so they didn't have to walk through the fresh dirt.
"UFF-DAH!"
Then they brought it over and set them carefully down into place.
Thank you Waylen!
With Steve's careful measuring, they were exactly the right size and fit for the opening and his frameworks. I know they look rugged in the pic, wait till they get painted! These are normally around $700, but Steve found them used for $150 from a guy tearing down a house.
After he got them bolted down into place, using a hammer drill and special cement anchoring bolts, it was now securely attached to the cement. Next he was able to measure and cut out and scribe the two triangle plywood pieces for each side.
Now it's time for my job! We asked the hardware store to get some more paint mixed up that was good for primed metal, and had it match the other red paint on the house. It took a couple trips back and forth to the hardware store, with curbside pickup each time, to get the paint matched exactly. (even with using the computer matching on a chip of our other paint). Reds are hard colors to match.
I gave two good coats to the plywood triangles, as well as two good coats to the entire steel surfaces of the doors and frameworks around it. It sure looked a lot better with the paint.
Once the triangles were dry, Steve screwed them into place and I was able to touch up where he did some sealing and caulking, as well as paint over the heads of the screws.
Done!!!!
I think I am imagining the grandkids coming over and sliding down it like we used to do on the one at my Great Grandma Anna Today's home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
We sure are missing the grandchildren... let us hope these numbers continue to decrease in Wisconsin and we can start visiting amongst the family again.
Now that the bulkhead doors are finished, it was time to finish putting my cages around my tomatoes and wire tie wooden support frameworks to the tops of the cages. It helps keep everything firm and sturdy once the plants start growing and bearing the weight of heavy tomatoes. I hope.
I put up the cute little white picket fences just to keep anybody from stepping into the tomato area, as well as the dogs if they are ramming around. They generally stay away and don't ever bother anything in the flower beds, but you never know. Maybe it will also detract a little bunny rabbit--- even though we really don't see many of those around in our yard. Plus this tomato area is located within the 4ft high fenced area for the dogs potty yard, so we don't see any deer or other creatures coming into that part of the yard. I like that the rain barrel is right next to my tomatoes. Easier to water them with good rain water, rather than icky city water!
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Speaking of creatures, our two beautiful elegant sandhill cranes are back. They gracefully browse along through the yard nibbling on this or that, especially in the evenings. I think they are nesting back in the preserve land behind our home. But they come out here into our yard to wander around.
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Also two blogs back, I mentioned about how Steve poured new cement window sills for two of the basement windows. I took care of re-painting the original gridded windows so they look really good again. Steve got them mounted into place. On the inside are the solid pane storm windows, and the outside ones will have the nice gridded panes for a better look. Now we will have double layers for better winter insulation. This house never had that before! The basement windows were single panes and we are sure there was a lot of heat loss in the winter. (probably why the sills were so rotted)
The three front basement windows under the porch are the ones with screens to let in ventilation. We have double panes to go in those windows as well in the upcoming winter months.
Now he will work on the two windows to the South as well as the one right by my tomato bed. They all need new window sills. The old wooden ones are rotten. So he is going to make some forms for the rest of these basement windows and pour cement window sills, just like he did for the other two. But that will have to wait until this hot humid miserable weather is past.
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Speaking of the covid-19 and getting out and about, we decided on Memorial Day weekend that perhaps Sunday morning early, during the immune challenged and senior citizen hours, would be a good time to hit the local grocery store. We heard they had hand sanitizer as well as disinfectant spray in stock, an ample supply of toilet paper, and a bunch of good things that were on sale that we wanted to take advantage of.
It was really hard to make that decision to actually go out and get groceries!!! I have had pneumonia over 20 times and have breathing challenges to this day, as well as being immune compromised after a bunch of surgeries. That is why we are being so careful.
This is the first time we have stepped indoors of ANY store since March 11th.
Our biggest worry was the tourists and vacationers returning to their cottages up north, that might have been in the store the day before. But then they sanitize overnight and the morning is a fresh start. That is why we went early.
I am still feeling tense and anxious just thinking about the whole excursion.
On Sunday, Steve and I set the alarm and went to the grocery store at exactly 7 am. There were a number of items we wanted to get and we also were thinking that we would like to stock up in case we go camping in the near future.
We donned our gloves and masks and headed to the store with a plan. When we got there, there were only two cars in the lot! Even still, we were VERY scared!
We got there as soon as the doors opened. We disinfected our cart in the lobby and went through the store.
I had my list all divided up by sections, because we know every aisle in the store.
We zoomed through in 20 minutes, getting just exactly the things that we wanted. They were only out of one thing that I had wanted. It's a certain type of spice that they only carry called Harvest Blend. Similar to Mrs. Dash. Our cart was loaded with our choices as we rolled through every aisle as fast as we could go.
We scored three big cans of Lysol aerosol spray disinfectant and three tall bottles of hand sanitizer! They even had the big 24 packs of toilet paper of the brand that we like, and we were able to get the biggest container of Tide pods laundry soap. Lot of stores around here are out of all of that...
We got everything in the cart, and a few treats that Steve threw in along the way. (he does that) We made it to the checkout with only passing one person in the store. At the checkout, there was the only other person there. We waited at a distance while the clerk checked our things out, while the owner of the store bagged our groceries.
$247.00 later we are home, groceries all sanitized and sorted, and packaging discarded and put in holding area or the fridge in the garage. Most of the things we leave sit out there for 72 hours, the rest of the needed items are sanitized to be brought into the house.
Then we both stripped off our gloves and masks and jackets in the garage. As soon as we came in the door of the house, we stripped off all of our clothes and they went directly into the washing machine. We both hopped into the shower without touching anything else in the house.
I am still feeling shakey and jittery.... Steve too.
But with the low numbers of only 30 cases in our County since this whole thing began, we have to start slowly getting back out there and I think we did okay.
Whew!
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Memorial Day morning started out with beautiful sunshine and some gentle relaxing coffee time out on the front porch.
We didn't plan on going anywhere, and instead did a few small projects around the house. We transplanted some tiger lilies from an unwanted location in the yard to make some rings around the bases of some of the big trees. Then Steve doesn't have to drive the lawn mower so close --- and the lilies kind of grow over some of the exposed roots and bumpy lumps around the trunks.
We walked to the far big backyard along the treeline, and pulled a bunch of big horrible growing vines and dead vines off the trees back there. Those invasive vines have bugged me since we first saw the property. They needed to get pulled out of those trees before they killed them. We cut and tugged and yanked and pulled until we had a big huge pile of them lined up alongside the gravel road back there. The city will come and chop them all up with the chipper for us. And all the trees, I am happy to say, are now "vine free" !! We huffed and puffed our way back to the house, as the humidity and temperatures were rising rapidly.
We puttered and putzed with a few things, but kept an eye on the radar weather channel. They were talking about heavy thunderstorms coming up this way. The first batch kind of missed us over to the west, but the second batch was coming quickly and looked like it was headed right towards us.
We grabbed some blue tarps and clamped them down to the tomato cages, to make a barrier over my tender little plants. We knew the pounding rain was coming, and those little young plants would have been battered straight down into the dirt if we didn't cover them up.
Oh My! The pouring rain came down and down and down! We got over an inch in less than an hour and it was just tremendously drenching us. It was coming down so heavy we couldn't even see to the far end of our backyard.
My tomatoes were safe under the tarps, and the rain barrel was filled to overflowing, even the overflow hose could not keep up.
Then, all of a sudden, the sun came out! It was still pouring rain from one cloud, but it was blue sky and sunshine right next to it.
I grabbed the cell phone and put it on video mode, looking for a rainbow. Here is what I filmed:
We never found the rainbow,
so that means
we never got a pot of gold.
The rain soon soaked into the ground and amazingly we didn't have too many puddles out back after it was done. Looking this morning, there's very little standing water in the yard. My tomatoes survived the storm, and now we are due for a couple days of horrible hot muggy weather.
This morning it is already 78° and muggy, we sat on the front porch for a little while enjoying coffee. Time to get back inside where the air conditioning will keep us comfortable for the next few days.
Well, I think I'm going to stop the "counting of the days". Wisconsin has made some abrupt changes, as many of you may have seen on the news. The entire state was released of any stay-at-home order. But then county by county, and city by city, they re-instated the orders so nobody really knew what was going on!
Some TV stations were reporting one thing, and then things would change an hour later and then they'd have to report something the extreme opposite.
I guess for right now, we will just play it close to home, we will continue to socially distance, and wait and see what happens. Texas did this same abrupt opening, and now two weeks later they have a resurgence of cases. We hope that's not going to happen here.
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The day started out with a fine misty fog coming up. I woke up at 5:30 and let the dogs out. I looked out over to the big backyard and it looked so beautiful. I had to go back to the bedroom and grabbed my phone to take a picture.
The dew on the grass was
like little pearls of glass in the light.
I started up a pot of coffee and popped a couple apple turnovers from the freezer into the oven. Within 30 minutes the house smelled wonderful... and it woke Steve up.
We shared our early morning breakfast treat as the sun came along and burned off the misty fog. The kids texted and asked us to bring back the long extension ladder, as they had some projects figured out for the day. We hauled it over to their house while they were gathering supplies in Green Bay. (nicely, they picked up some building supplies for us too! Thank you Waylen!!!)
Now to our own projects:
Steve carried my plants out of the garage to get some fresh air and sunshine. Today I was going to try to get a bunch of them planted!
I pulled up a pile of edging stones from a different part of the flowerbeds and trundled my wheelbarrow over to make some new beds near the pergola. Steve said he wanted to do the digging, so he could save the "turf" to put in another spot in the yard.
He started working on another basement window, and brought up the main one for me to clean up and paint. It sure beats the cost of replacing them with new ones. I got that done before breakfast!
Then I decided to start planting some of my flowers.
When we bought the pergola last month, the seller threw in two funky looking conical shaped hanging planting baskets.
Over the past winter I had rooted some strangling ivy branches from my big plant in the office. I had them growing in little pots on the window sill in the kitchen up until now. They were getting awfully long and one vine even started crawling up the pull chain for the light fixture over the sink. Another one had started weaving itself within the lace of my window curtain! It was time to get these ivy plants out and planted to do their job outside and decorate my pergola!!
Steve screwed in two new little eyelet hooks and I planted the ivy into these funky baskets. I interwove some of the pieces through the red lattice. Hopefully they will grow up and over and around and looked absolutely beautiful.
I have more ivy plants to plant around the bottom sections of the lattice on each side. Steve started digging up the sod and make me two little flower beds on each side of the pergola. He was happy, he got his sod!
Then I will weave that ivy up within the lattice too. Hopefully soon it will be covered with beautiful ivy on that side.
On the other side, he started digging up flower beds to put in my precious clematis plants. These were my Mother's Day present. I have a red one and a white one for each side of the pergola as we enter it from the front yard. This will hopefully grow up the front white trellises and cover up with beautiful blooms, all summer long.
I popped back into the garage to paint a second coat on the window because the first one had finally dried.
I took time to fill the bird feeders. Today we even spotted a beautiful bluebird come to hang out at the feeders and see what was going on. We've had about five or six Baltimore Orioles now because of putting out the grape jelly. I remarked to Steve after I filled up the bird feeders, that feeding these birds is costing us more than what we pay to feed our dogs!!!
Now I took out the three long red window boxes and set them on the ledges of the front porch. Into each one I planted geraniums, two deep red ones flanking each side of a white one in the middle. This year I splurged and bought a little bit bigger type zonal geranium that seem to be hardier with a thicker stem.
After I got all three window boxes done and in place, Steve came and sat on the front porch swing with me for a while.
We relaxed and reflected on how much we were doing today compared to what we were doing a year ago. A year ago we'd only been in the house for two weeks and we were going gangbusters with projects. He had already started moving the doorway and creating a half bath with the laundry room. We were still unloading one load at a time from the rental storage unit, and I was unpacking boxes and finding places for things here there and everywhere. We were painting some things and fixing other things and rearranging things and just adjusting to life up here in Oconto --- closer to the grandchildren. It was one of the best decisions I think we have ever made.
We made up a little lunch, and then I popped back out to plant all of my precious coleus around the circular flower bed and bird bath in the backyard. These are all of the plants that I have wintered over a year after year after year since the 1990s. I got them from my friend Connie, and I've been so careful to save enough every fall to keep them going all winter long.
I planted them around in the circle and I hope they will flourish. I did keep one little cluster in the window in the kitchen, sitting in a glass of water, just in case they need to root and start a new pot.
(I bought the little Dutch boy and girl
a couple years ago
at a rummage sale in Chilton)
By this time, I think I was really starting to slow down. By 2:30 I thought it's time to crawl in bed and take a little nap. Steve was still going gangbusters on stapling a new screen in the open window frames down in the basement. But I decided it was time to take a little break and close the eyelids for a while.
It didn't last long, but was enough to refresh me so I could get back out in start cutting apart some of the ivy and figuring out what needed to get planted where.
I did plant some more geraniums in the two beautiful cement planters in front of the she shed. We brought these planters up from our last home in Chilton too. I just love how they look and I'm glad that I am able to find a nice spot to put them to catch the western sunlight in the evenings. That cement is the original apron to the single stall garage before we converted it.
The wind started kicking up and has shifted, even though the temperatures got up into the low 70s, the wind started to bite and blast from the Northeast.
I didn't finish planting the ivy, and we headed out on the front porch for a while We got out of the wind because the porch faces the West. I actually got some sunburn from sitting in the sunshine on the swing for a while. Or maybe I got it while planting or digging. We had soft music playing, glasses of ice water, and we spent a enjoyable late afternoon just relaxing. We need to learn to do more of that!!!
I whipped up some salads for supper and we cooked up a single pasty to split, made by the pasty oven in Florence Wisconsin. We are able to buy these at the local Piggly Wiggly in Oconto Falls, and they are pretty much my favorite pasty.
We did take the dogs out for a little romp through the big backyard and then hooked on their leashes to loop around the rest of the block. The wind was blasting pretty strongly now and they said it's going to not let up overnight. So I'm glad I didn't finish planting any more of the delicate plants and flowers, and I won't even think about planting the delicate thin stemmed tomato plants yet for maybe another week.
I think we will curl up for the evening and play some cribbage and Yahtzee maybe watching HGTV shows and get some more ideas???
Day 64 at home. It seems that our numbers are really slowing down in Wisconsin, they said on the local news that there were only six new cases today. Our County itself has only gone up by one case in the last two weeks, most of the other existing cases have resolved and gone home from the hospitals, at least in our County. Let's hope this is the trend of moving downward, so we can start getting back to normal.
Many prayers and good wishes for all the scientists trying to develop vaccines and antibodies so that we can get this thing under control before another wave could hit.
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Our Wisconsin weather has been really crazy. It's been so cold and damp and chilly. We've been down to freezing the last couple nights. We even had ice in the birdbath this morning! We've had to haul all of our flowers inside to keep them from freezing, We can't even store them in the garage, so the last three nights they have been in the She Shed. The weatherman is promising some warmer weather, but rain. Oh well, better than *S*N*O*W*, right?
We are working on a couple more projects. Steve was raking out the newly spread dirt in the backyard, and the little bit up in the front yard. He is using a wide landscape rake we borrowed from his brother.
Today, once he got it all smooth, he raked in 10 lb worth of grass seed! He wanted to get it in before the forecasted rain. They said it's supposed to start tonight between 7 and 9 p.m. and rain most of tomorrow. Looks like we're due for about a third of an inch. I hope it's a nice gentle soaking in rain that will not rinse away the grass seed.
He didn't want to put the grass seed in too early because we have so many birds in the backyard. He didn't want them to think it was a marvelous feast that we were putting out for them to binge upon!
As it is, we have multiple bird feeders in the backyard. I decided to move two of them over to better viewing locations, so we can see them while sitting in our chairs in the she shed.
Steve was busy down in the basement working on the basement windows, (more on that later), so I decided to take a little pipe and start pounding in a new hole. Then I pushed it around and around and around until I made the hole big enough in the soft damp dirt. There are no power, water or gas lines in the back of our home, so it was safe to pound down about two feet.
Then I was able to pull up the thick pipe from out of the ground, and move the existing bird feeder over to its new location. Bang bang bang bang I pounded with this big heavy metal hammer on the support blades to help guide the pipe into the ground.
Voila! Done!
This bird feeder is kinda special. It's been with us at three homes now. I had gotten it from my dad many years ago and it has a really nice design. I can set the amount of tension on the spring perch, so if squirrels or big heavy crows land on the perch, it closes off and they can't get any food. But the smaller lighter birds like the song birds and cardinals and bluejays can fit on it just fine, and it doesn't close off the food.
Steve came up from the basement and wondered who was pounding outside? Here he saw I moved that great big pipe and pounded it down two feet into the ground by myself. He was pretty surprised. Then I told him how I did it with the little pipe first and went using it as leverage to push back the dirt and make the hole bigger. Work smarter - not harder!
The dogs helped too!
Steve and I are working on the basement windows. He is rebuilding some of them from the sill on up, where the wood has rotted away. Last fall we stuck on some quick square plexiglass storm windows to cover them up for the winter.
Now we are taking them out completely, and he is repairing the foundation and rebuilding the sill with treated wood. Then we are repairing the glazing around the loose sections of the window panes, and I am painting them all both sides with two coats of exterior paint. They will all be sealed back in and we will use the solid storm panels from last fall on the inside instead. Then the pretty panes of glass can be aimed to the outside.
What a difference!
We plan to replace the windows on the main part of the house with the same multiple pane grid style, so these basement ones will be able to match nicely.
We put the rain barrels into place, with the gutters aiming down into them. We have one for the side yard and one for the back yard. Soon we will have fresh rainwater to water all of the plants.
Even though it's too early to plant outside yet, I started getting all of my flower pots and window boxes ready today. Since we have some nice new fresh gravel, I was able to put some in the bottom of all of the containers for drainage before I add the potting soil.
I put little pieces of screen across each of the drainage openings and then gently put the new gravel into the bottom of each of the window boxes and cement urns.
I can't wait for it to warm up enough so I can put out all of my colorful geraniums on the front porch. It will be exciting to start my beautiful clematis and ivy plants growing up on the pergola. Not to mention starting my tomatoes in the new patch out back.
I guess I got Spring Fever?
For now, we are huddled up inside, when it is cold and damp out there, and we are playing cribbage and yahtzee by the fireplace.
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