Progress continues..

The nearly 10,000 pounds of rock, gravel and wall stones were delivered yesterday right after that thunderstorm. Poor guy, it was pouring rain and he was out there with his remote control swinging the pallets off the truck bed on to the driveway. If I can get a video to upload, I'd show you how he did it! Last night Den hauled two stones at a time each weighing 69 pounds in the wheelbarrow. There were 43 of those and 24 caps. Now we have the 2800 pounds each of gravel and limestone to haul back today. We're hoping Andrew is going to show up to help! Will is working until 10pm every night!

Rock cakes

Mmmmm, they look sort of like rock cakes. The texture is sort of like rock cakes, but they are the crispy,chewy oatmeal cookies that are my maternal grandmother's recipe. (Since she's Swedish, I should just call her Mormor, mother's mother.) But rock cakes, oh, yum!, are what we ate in Scotland. I probably ate them at several places, but I remember eating them particularly at two places, Tricia's and Janie's. I've NEVER made them myself, and I should get someone's recipe so I can. Why did I never do that?

It's pouring rain, yes, again. A good day to be baking. (Yikes, the lightning just made my computer bleep!) The rest of the week is supposed to be HOT. So I made chocolate chips for Andrew to take home with him when he comes over, and I made the oatmeal for me. I decided I am going to let myself eat one cookie a day. If I say "none" then I can't stand the craving, but if I say one at 3:30 or so, then I can deal with it and not overindulge! They are yummy, though!

Clouds

All in a day's work

Summer seems to be the time to either do the projects that we can't do or put off all winter, or else the time to make some up. I'm wondering WHAT we're getting ourselves into with our latest project.We had to cut down the willow tree that was in the back corner of our lot. It was huge, gave a lot of shade, but had a lot of dead branches. I'm sure we would have lost much of it this spring anyway with all the bad storms we've had. We're trying to level this spot, build a two foot retaining wall and landscape it. We want to be able to sit around the firepit, so we needed enough level space for that. Our soil is clay, clay clay, so when it's wet it's heavy and when it's dry it's rock hard. Den works hard at this! The stone, all 10,000 pounds of it, gets delivered on Wednesday. We dug up a lilac that we had behind the back fence and planted it in that back corner. Actually, it was several bushes, so we divided it into two bushes. Hopefully, they will survive. I'm always sad to see my plants die, especially big ones. It rained last night and is supposed to continue off and on until Saturday, so at least they won't dry out!

The other project is one it seems we need to do every year, and that's painting the pool deck. I also bought new cusions for the recliner and "swing". The latter we bought in Italy in 1994. Guess it was time for a switch! Pool's open every day! Come on over!!! Pretty private back here, too.

Pictures on Picasa

Did you know that all the pictures we upload to blogger are stored in a Picasa Web Album? I just saw that note and went to it. There they are! All the photos from the very first blogs on. It's so cool, just like a photo trip of my life since I started blogging! Fun!

Uploading video

OK, I've been working on this for awhile. Any hints from the rest of you who do this on how to get videos to upload on to the blog? Not that what I have to upload is all that amazing, but I thought it would be fun.
I started out and it was taking FOREVER, like 10 minutes, so I canceled it and thought I'd read how to do it and start again. Well, I was doing it all right, but the next two times I tried I got an error message from Blogger. Do you think it's blogger or is it me?

The Empty Nest

"Officially" our nest was empty since last Friday. Sounds like it isn't going to be empty for too long, though. Will is going to be working out of Council Bluffs after this week. It doesn't feel like an empty nest until a week day comes along. Andrew was always in and out on weekends, sometimes just spending the night with a friend on the spur of the minute. (You can do that when you're a big kid!) But Monday evening arrived and no one came home from work but Den. I have to say, we really enjoyed our evening! We ate dinner out by the pool then worked on our landscape project until dark, which is about 9:45 these days! Andrew did show up while we were eating dinner, though. I can't remember what he was looking for, but he was in and out in a flash. He wanted College World Series tickets and couldn't find them at the grocery store where they usually sell them. The base had some, so he just stopped by to pick up the booklet. Boy, is his life easy!

I FINALLY got to paint the pool deck today. With rain and more rain I haven't been able to get it dried out enough to paint. I'll have to finish it tomorrow, so hopefully the weather will hold! I bought the paint guessing at the matching color while at Menards. I guessed a little brighter than actual, so we really need to wear sunglasses when out there now!

Yesterday was so gorgeous! And today too. We have sun, 70's and no wind!!! I sat out by the gurgling "pond" for two hours yesterday afternoon.

Den and I have been wracking our brains for ideas to landscape our backyard. When we cut down the willow, it left a gaping hole. We also want a spot for a firepit. With such a sloping yard, it is a bit challenging to fit a firepit AND places to sit without tipping into the fire! We're thinking maybe boulders or stumps at this point. We're going to plant lilacs along the neighbor's fence to add some privacy eventually, then put down mostly rocks since where the willow was is all roots. It's an ongoing project! We had such a lovely evening yesterday, I never wanted to go into the house. Then the moon was so bright I could've camped out in my backyard. However, we have mosquitoes now.... Not hard to believe, is it? There are fireflies, though, too!!!