Boston, here we come!

Joe had a business trip to Boston the middle of November and I got to go with him. We stayed in Cambridge just down the road from MIT. Joe spent three days at the ITT booth of the Energy Harvesting trade show with long days. I got to wander around Cambridge and Boston which I love. New England is one of my favorite places especially in the fall. As you can see the trees still had a lot of color on them and the temperature was wonderful and warm.

I love the contrast of the old and new in Boston. These pictures were taken from Cambridge looking over the Charles River at Boston.

I was able to spend one day at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. As I was waiting for the shuttle at the hotel to take me to the "T" to get on the train to go to the museum a lady was waiting and said she wanted to go to the museum but was afraid to ride the T. I invited her to go with me, so we ending up spending the day together at the museum which turned out to be a very enjoyable day.
Joe at the trade show. He is the one in the blue shirt. They, ITT, won the Best of Show Award.

After the show we drove up to Maine to spend four days for a break and rest. We got to visit our friends which we met when we were at BYU 37 years ago. It is great to have good friends. We also got to spend time and attend church with Joe's brother Ken and his family. They have a wonderful small Branch they attend. Great people. We stayed in a hotel right on the beach in Old Orchard Beach. The above picture is from the beach in front of our hotel. It was so beautiful.

How Does My Garden Grow Chapter 9

November was a busy month and here it is December. We got the furnace in and I am really enjoying the heat. The beginning of November started off cold but as the month went by it was a beautiful month. I finally picked the last of my tomatoes the middle of the month. Many were green but have ripen and we are still eating tomatoes from our garden. Amazing. We had peppers still growing before we left on the 14th of November to go to Boston for a business trip.
Of course it froze and a big winter storm hit just before we got home. We had an amazing garden for our first year and just plopping the plants where ever I could find spots.

See Ya Later Radiator!

Here is a picture of the old radiators that have been removed and in a pile outside waiting to be taken to the salvage shop for some $$. The lovely pink radiator is still waiting to come out but the guy that has been helping us didn't have time to finish up. It is nice to have another thing checked off the To Do List.
I love my new furnace. The ducts and returns are huge compared to the furnace. But it sure has been nice to have heat. Love that feature. I love before and after pictures. The before picture is showing all the 100 bottles of beer along the wall and the other picture shows the nice new heat ducts and some food storage. The bottles are long gone.

It's begining to look like Christmas:)

What a weird year for snow this year. It snowed here back on May 24 and then October 27th. Hope this is not a sign of a long hard winter.

That will teach you!

We have a very narrow driveway which is hard to get out of on a good day, plus the heavy traffic on our street makes it almost impossible to get out of. We have people park there cars right on the edge of the driveway often and sometimes a foot into the driveway. Well this time was the limit. They were parked clear in the middle of the driveway and no way to get out. Joe had to be to work so he ended up driving on the lawn to the next driveway. After a while and no one showed to drive it away I took the matter into my own hands. I called the police. They were out in about 15 minutes. Gave the car a ticket, called the tow truck. The officer said the the car was a rental and it could have been abandoned. All in a days work in the neighborhood.

Look, no hole!

I enjoying seeing the before and after pictures. It helps me to see that we really are making progress. It is a little hard to see but the gray wire dangling from the corner of the house to the tree and then onto the corner of the garage and into the garage and a plug is how the garage got is electricity. The part that connected to the house was wrapped around a two by four and then plugged into a outlet.
One of the projects that Joe has been working on all summer as he has had time is running new and safe wiring to the garage. We had a big trench dug which he laid the conduit with the wire in and also two empty conduit pipes to use for the cable and ether net wire and what ever else might come up in the future. We got the new meter for the electricity in about a month ago and then we were able to fill in the trench. We were hoping to get grass planted but I don' t think we are going to make it this year. Maybe if we get lucky like last year I can still get it seeded. We want to be able to back out from the garage with the cars and turn around so we don't have to back our of our driveway onto the street which during rush hour is really hard to get onto the street.

How Does My Garden Grow Chapter 8

This year at the beginning of the spring we didn't have a garden spot so I just planted my veggies and fruit in the flower beds in the front and side of the house and in the back where we had taken out the large pine tree. I have been amazed how much produce we got. Lots and lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers, yellow peppers and Anaheim peppers. We got five watermelons, carrots, cabbage which the bugs got to first.

Last week I picked the apples from the tree. We have been eating them for the past month. They taste sooo good. It is amazing how different they taste right off the tree compared to the ones you get in the store.

I have been drying the extra tomatoes that we can't eat. It is so easy to dry and takes up a lot less room that bottled tomatoes.

I am very pleased with our garden this year but am glad it is almost time to put my garden to rest for the winter months then I can rest also. Well, I can dream can't I. I know there are tons of house projects I want to do, like paint the rooms on the main level. Will keep you posted.

Surprise!

I got home last night after working for a couple days in Idaho in the yard of our home. The weeds have got out of control so I pulled lots of weeds and sprayed lots of Round Up. Joe stopped to pick up something to eat and surprised me with the roses. They are so beautiful and smell wonderful. I love the smell of roses.

How Does My Garden Grow Chapter 7

I planned my dentist appointment so I could pick the peaches off our peach tree at our home we are trying to sale (our formerly called vacation home but I now call it my work home). The peaches were perfect. I got a large dish pan full of peaches which I will freeze and make a peach pecan pie. A note added on September 25, 2010. I got 5 bags of frozen peaches which means 5 peach pecan pies!

How Does My Garden Grow Chapter 6

This is just part of the basil from the garden. I have made four batches of Pesto. It is so good. I love the smell of fresh basil and pesto. I froze all the pesto this batch to add to the pesto already frozen for later this year when the basil is all gone. We have enough basil for a couple more batches of pesto.

Pesto Chicken with Sun Dried Tomatoes. This was very yummy

Our first watermelon of the season and for that matter ever. It weighed in at 14.5 pounds. Not bad. There are three large melons and two smaller one that are almost ready to eat. For the cost of the plants we have come out ahead. I was so excited watching the watermelon grow. We had it for dinner on Labor Day. We were not disappointed. It tasted so good.

I have more tomatoes and peppers than we can eat. I decided to dry them. After reading on-line about how to sun dry tomatoes I found out that they dehydrated the tomatoes with a food dryer for the easiest way. I went to look for my food dryer and found out we had not moved it yet so I dried them in the oven. They smell very sweet as they are drying.

And on the 4th day there was light

Sunday morning I got up, went into the kitchen and turned the light on but... no light. Hum what is going on. In this house we never know when a plug or light will work so I must say it was not a real surprise. Monday was the prefect day to fix it as it was Labor Day. Joe checked the switches and they were good so he moved on to the light. It was the ballast in the light fixture. We decided to get a new light fixture that we can use when we remodel the kitchen. By the time we got the light it was too late to put it in. So last night, Wednesday Joe and I got the light up. It is really nice to have light in the kitchen again.

WOW!

Yesterday Mom and I attended the funeral for my brother-in-law's father who passed away. In our family it seems like my in-laws family just become part of my family as they often attend many of the family activities. As in the case of Eldon Hunt who had attended many Thanksgiving Dinners at my home and others over the years. As Mom, Blair and I were waiting to talk to the family and view the body I saw out of the corner of my eye and others looking at someone right behind me. I looked and it was President Thomas S. Monson. His parents and Eldon's parents has been close friends during their growing up years. President chatted with us and other for quite some time. He later spoke at the funeral.

As we talked he made you feel very comfortable. It was amazing to be able to meet the Prophet of our church and also to see him in a very normal setting. I still can't believe it!

He even wiggled his ears for Jack, my niece's son who is 5.

Neighborhood Cleanup

A couple of weeks ago I had someone come clean out all the junk and trash left behind in our attic. It was amazing what was left behind. I counted three sinks, one toilet , a mattress, lots of old building materials, doors, windows, wood and lots of other junk. We took a large trailer load to the dump.
Two weeks later the guy came back to finish job of cleaning the basement out. That junk got to go out on the street for the neighborhood cleanup.


A weird day in the neighborhood. First a lady knocks on my door & keeps pushing herself closer to the door. She asked if she could pick the apples off my apple tree in the back yard because a couple of years ago the 5 single guys that rented this house before we bought said she could. I slowly reached my hand to lock the screen door. I said I wanted them and then asked where she lived. She said "around nearby" She acted put out that I wouldn't let her pick the apples, which aren't ripe yet anyway.

I had a guy working for me cleaning out the basement which has tons of junk, old metal pipes, coal from whenever they had a coal burning furnace, 100 + ...hard liquor bottles plus lots of old broken doors etc. Once a year the city has a clean up day and you can put your junk out that won't fit in your trash can. The guy is piling everything out on the street. The bottles are in trash bags. He finishes and goes home. Shortly after a lady knocks on my and asked if she can have the coal to burn in her coal stove. I said sure, glad to have someone use it. She said she would be back later that evening but never did show up.

Later that evening I hear lots of banging and look out the window. A guy is throwing the trash around as he is going through it. I get Fred and go out ask the guy what he is doing as he is ripping open the bags with glass in them. I tell him that he needs to clean up the mess he made and got him some trash bags to put the bottles in. I then realized that someone else could come and look in the trash bags, so I got the trash can and told him to put the bottles in it and he did. Well, a few minutes later three other people are going through the trash getting the rest of the metal. Interesting people! Almost every day for the next week before the city picked up the trash, people were checking out the trash. Someone else came and got the coal and we put out the old swamp cooler and the next morning it was gone. I hope they put the stuff to good use. Boy the saying "Your trash or junk is someone's treasure" is true.

How Does My Garden Grow Chapter 5

This past Saturday I went out to water my garden and check it out. Wow, what a surprise. I had not seen any watermelon growing and thought we would not get any watermelon just lovely huge vines. Much to my surprise there are three growing. From what I can tell reading about the variety of watermelon, which is a Sugar Baby it is close to being ready to pick.
The cabbage keeps growing bigger and bigger. I think I will pick one in two weeks. I have 7 or 8 so I need to start eating them. They will keep growing until a frost.
I picked three peppers off the pepper plant. The basil and parsley needs to be cut back. I am going to make pesto and tabouli using quinoa instead of bulghur. Tabouli is a traditional dish from Lebanon which is where Joe's great grandfather came from.
What a surprise that there were this many tomatoes ready to be picked and I had not seen any. They were hiding down under all the leaves. I picked 7 more this morning. We will be enjoying lots of tomato dishes in the coming weeks. I love to slice the tomatoes and sprinkle Feta cheese and fresh basil drizzled with olive oil over it. I can eat tons of tomatoes that way. So good!

Car 66 at Rocky Mt Raceway

Joe's company, Itt sponsored a race car this year and invited their employees to a race. We got to go and take Alice and Jeff and the boys and Doug and Jessica. ITT provided us with a nice dinner before the race and the driver, Eric was talking to people and they had his backup car out front that we could look at. It was cool, no glass for the windows, just plastic in the front and back and plastic lattice on the side windows.
The boys loved it. They love the movie Cars so we thought they would enjoy it. Joe was able to get a ticket to ride in the Pace car and was able to take Braeden, Carter and Jeff. They loved it. It was a fun evening.

Oh yes, #66 ITT's car won the main event. A great fun evening.

Happy Birthday

For my birthday I decided I wanted to have a slumber party with the boys. This was the first time that Tanner got to come for a slumber party. We went to Gateway Mall and played in the fountains. It was so fun to watch the boys play in the water on such a hot day. Afterwards we had Ice Cream at MacDonald's. Braeden was my party planner and with Joe's help put up streamers and the Happy Birthday Banner. It was a very fun day.