Sunday, May 5 Happy Cinco de Mayo. We didn’t get last week’s blog out until today, and you have heard about most of the day already. John did take me out for a jaunt through the pasture where we took some photos of stuff I haven’t seen in almost a year. We also took a photo of our neighbor’s apple tree in full bloom. John sees that it gets water. We came back and checked out some of our tulips, irrigation ditch, and a bridge John built across it, which is better for me (and one of the horses prefers it) to use than trying to jump across the ditch. Today begins the annual Bluegrass Jam session in the Yakima Canyon at the Big Pines campground. The photo is of the correct area but not the actual river bend where the camp is – there it is a bit wider. I was too tired to try to attend today.
Monday, May 6 Luckily, we both had a good night’s sleep to regain our stamina (at least me). We started the morning with a grand tour of the grounds around the gardens, orchard, and house. I just took my photos off my camera and will no doubt include a couple in this week’s blog, to follow on John’s 4 from last week of various blossoms. Then dealing again with medical appointments and insurance issues, a never-ending chore. Later this afternoon, when it cools down, we are going to town for my INR blood draw, and to grab some food, and head on down the canyon for the bluegrass jam.
I got the photos from this morning (and yesterday afternoon) off the camera, but haven’t yet looked at them all. They were mostly vegetation, native and bought, -service berry (or sarvis berry), elderberry, blue spruce, white spruce, black pine, Ponderosa, apple, pear, cherry, plum trees, garden things (onions, strawberries, asparagus [plus the FIRST harvest],
heading for the table
blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and the new plum trees. Carpathian walnut trees, lilac, and crabapple.
Larch (Tamarack) in back
I took pictures of the pallets John bought for .50 each. They are double the size of any I’ve ever seen. One has five good long pieces of 2 x 4 in good condition which itself is worth at least $15.00 for the wood. Two have solid plywood tops. I don’t know how he managed to get the longest one into the truck.
We had a coupon for $5.00 for 2 full KFC dinners, so we carried those along down the canyon to the bluegrass jam for dinner, taking our drinks with us. It’s hot today — 86 at 3:00 p.m., hotter later. The campground is along the river with big beautiful Ponderosa pines for shade and usually a breeze. It cools down fast. Nice trip down, there, and back but not until after 10:00 – and had to pull over for a come-from-behind emergency medical unit, but it turned off 2 miles down Naneum from our neighborhood.
Tuesday, May 7 INR results back, in correct range, 2.1, so everyone is happy. Horse farrier came to trim 3 older horses this morning, and did it under the full shade of John’s White Spruce trees along the driveway. The temps were reaching 81, but I didn’t measure it in the shade of the trees. I went out twice and talked to them, and it wasn’t too bad; of course, I was not doing anything but standing. I spent most of my time this morning, and still have one medical insurance item left to do. Been catching up on all jobs-list e-mail updates from the recent week before when I had very little time.
Tonight we are going back to the canyon for more music. Last night, I chose to play “You Are My Sunshine.” Someone asked who wrote it and I didn’t know. Everyone thought a different person, and all I did was say, no I’m sure it wasn’t Gene Autry (although he sang it), and not Stephen Foster. Well, the internet has the story and John printed out about 5 pages cut and pasted from several sites.
Oh WOW…this is really good news about my latest time (seems like a lot…2 hrs) working with the health care system to transfer our dental insurance coverage to the CWU retiree’s plan and get out from under the individual account I have had since last June 1, 2012. Their coverage, while something, was nowhere near as good as the retiree plan from CWU. Our medical is already there, so the paperwork could be filled out ON LINE in a pdf document that accepted information, and then I printed. Had to go back to John’s computer where the printer is set up because it didn’t allow me to save edits. John is exercising the dogs, and we will grab something to eat as we drive through town to the Canyon, and eat down there under the Big Pines. Okay, we got out at 6:15 and drove by Burger King for our dinner. Two burgers and a chicken sandwich split. We got a cup of ice and took our own drink along. Got there in time to eat before playing music. I didn’t know as many of the songs tonight as last, and the wind was worse tonight than last night. We left about 9:25 and it takes us 45 minutes to get home. Rocks and dust came off the hill and on to the road just seconds before us on the way home. Orange dust swirled about as we went through but nothing was falling then. (Learned later others were encountering similar events.) I am running on an empty energy tank and am ready to crash.
Wednesday, May 8 Today is the normal day to do several things in town, but I didn’t write any notes at all for this day. Went to the food bank soup kitchen and played music, had a great chicken pasta and an awesome fruit salad, which I can eat — no dark green stuff. On to the AAC for SAIL class, and back home to get ready to leave for the Canyon bluegrass again. Tonight we stayed even later than last night, not getting home until 11:15.
Thursday, May 9 Today was about the same except I went to the Rehab center for music. We had dinner at home. Then we drove to the canyon.
Friday, May 10 Worked on a number of things during the heat of the day. John tries to do most stuff — watering our own trees, and garden — before the real heat but the last two days has had neighborhood irrigation water duties to tend to. One of the days he came in so wet from sweat I had to help pull his tee shirt off. We went back to potluck in the canyon taking two Razzelberry pies Marie Callendar (raspberries & blackberries baked together with a touch of apple. Nice evening with great potluck items– Dutch Oven Chicken and another pot of beans with sausage, two Cole slaws, grilled cheese burgers, spicy (VERY) meatballs & pineapple, nice fruits salad, and several desserts. Home late to find 6 horses loose in the front yard. Luckily, they had not left the premises. John put up a gate and my horse was the first we saw, closest to the road. I got out and talked to her, and looked down and saw our 3 Tobiano horses in the driveway. John walked down to them pushing them into the corral area, and he came back to retrieve Ebony. I had stayed with her as she walked down the driveway in the lights of the car. He came back and put her in, and then I drove on farther, shining the lights to the back of the house where the last two horses were, near the gate they left from. John had forgotten to close it late afternoon when setting hoses. Normally he doesn’t open that gate. The horses found it, though, and there was enough grass around to keep them occupied and out of trouble.
Saturday, May 11 the day before Mother’s Day, our scheduled day to get the blog posted. We were both so tired from a late last night (didn’t go to sleep until after 1:00 a.m.), that we slept in late. I slept in longer than John, after getting up and turning out the yard light and hall light. He spent a lot of time last night on another research project for the jam session regarding a song played and sung last night, “Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight.” He found a bunch of interesting stuff about it, and we will take it down to the group. It’s a song written by Red River Dave McEnery shortly after Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. It was copyrighted in 1939, and was first performed by David McEnery on a pioneer television broadcast from the 1939 New York World’s Fair. That was the issue of John’s research to find out all about the “first television viewing of a song over the air waves.”
The other thing he researched and wrote about this week and we took down Thursday night, was about Leather Britches – the song. It seems long garden beans were threaded and hung for future use and the motion of threading reminded someone of hand-sewing leather into pants, or britches. The sewing movements are similar to a fiddler’s hands and wrist motions as the bow is moved to “cross over” the strings (or strangs — if a southern mountain speaker). A song with many such movements acquired the name Leather Britches. Another term is shucky beans, but you knew that. Right?
Hope your week was great.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan