Catch up part 2

I want to blog every day, but every night I'm too tired. :-)

The big story of today is that on Tuesday we went to help MIL work on her new house, to expedite their move in. Bob helped sort out the curtain rods, and I cleared out the front flower bed. The landscaper must have not liked people, for every plant there was full of thorns or prickles. But what counts where today is concerned is that apparently one or more of the unknown plants was actually poison oak or poison ivy. I used to know what they looked like... The point being that my forearms are all red and bumpy and VERY itchy. ack!

In spite of all that, we've made some progress at home. We primed, painted and repainted (with the good, "one-coat coverage" paint) one wall of the living room. If you look closely you can still see the wall paper glue. So don't. :-) We have enough stuff to hang up it won't be a problem. Then we moved all the stuff from the other wall to the newly painted wall. This includes a glass display shelf, a piano, and the large bookshelf we bought at auction not too long ago. (I put a pic of it, right?) Of course all the shelves were full of stuff, so that was all unloaded, sorted and organized, and reloaded.
I did have the foresight to go ahead and paint the ceiling above the big shelf's new location, so we won't have to move it again. (Yeah, we're doing it backwards - walls first and then ceiling. What's your point?)
Then we stripped the wall paper from the now accessible wall, and started scrubbing off that awful glue.

In the midst of this chaos, Taryn has been scanning pictures nonstop. See, Grandma had pictures in every drawer, box, and cupboard in her house, and we volunteered to scan them all in to Bob's computer and make discs for everyone. It suddenly became pressing when we realized the family reunion is this month.

The chicks were getting crowded in their box, and some were getting picked on, so we went ahead and moved out the 4-H chickens (20 Red Sex Link girls) to the tractor that Bob and the boys made. They seem to be doing very well, though they haven't yet found their way up to the nest area. One got out today somehow, but stayed close until Riah found her and put her back in. The little ones in the box are happy to have more room.

Tiger has made a complete nuisance of himself, and since he's been "fixed" now, we moved him out of the house. I kind of miss him sitting on my keyboard as I type. :-/ He still has access to the back room, where we keep his food and water, but soon that will move to the garage and he will be an outside cat for real. He misses us terribly.

In spite of the sunny forecast, we've had showers every afternoon this week. Still nothing like last week, when we got a total of 17 inches of rain. Bob was able to mow some yesterday, but bent the blade again, on a root this time. He's thinking about cutting down the elm tree.

The roof guy never came out, but the insurance guy did. He thinks the leaks are just old damage, bad workmanship... Aunt next door agrees that it has leaked before in heavy rain. Any rate, it's not covered because it's not storm damage. So we'll try to patch it up and continue as before.

We had our first fresh salad of the season. I've never gardened this far north before, and it's kind of weird to be so far "behind." In San Antonio I know we had our peppers out in March, and the lettuce was bolting by May. But in NW Arkansas, May is still iffy for warm weather crops, and the lettuce is growing beautifully. The onions and potatoes look great, too. The tomatoes are holding out for warmer weather.

Ooh, I've seen a few new birds at the feeders lately. Hummingbirds. :-) Bluejays. Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Something yellow - maybe a warbler of some sort. And something small, very blue, and shy; looking at pictures we guessed Mountain Bluebird, but it's not supposed to live here. Maybe Indigo Bunting. I wish we could get decent pics through the kitchen window, but we just can't.

That ought to do for now.