Once again, an entire month has flown by without me posting anything except comments. Today happens to be my 69th birthday. I have a cold, but it's a very mild one, so I kept my appointment for a massage, and then took advantage of two free birthday offers: a pastry at Panera and a Chai tea at Dutch Bros. A soak in the tub, an afternoon nap, and Costco pizza for supper rounded out the day.
Gardening is all done for the season. The winter squash have been harvested, the raspberry canes pruned and thinned, all the plants pulled up, tools and equipment put away, and garlic planted.
My winter squash crop, plus the last four summer squash.
The last of the tomatoes. I opted to use most of the green ones for green tomato salsa and green tomato relish.
The green tomato relish in process. I never got around to taking any photos of the finished products in the jars.
A friend gave me one Casperita pumpkin plant, and it produced 13 adorable little white pumpkins. I shared some with my girls, and used the rest for decor.
I brought the last sunflower into the house. So cheery!
In addition to gardening, I drove my husband to a few appointments, and spent a good deal of time with the grandchildren. My youngest daughter, single mom of a four-year-old girl, has been gradually moving to another apartment on the other side of her town. It's about an hour's drive from my house. I have been there every weekend this month to babysit and/or help pack and/or clean. I plan to be there again this weekend, at her new place, helping to unpack and organize.
My hallway is lined with bags of outgrown little girl clothes, and more for her to grow into. Eventually, they will get out to a storage shed in the yard. My daughter has no place to keep those things, so they stay at my house.
The living room is all stirred up because we are finally getting the baseboards installed, two years after the flooring went in. (There's a reason for that, but it's a long story.) I've taken books, piano music, and vinyl records off shelves so the bookcases and shelves can more easily be moved. The sofa is covered with those things, as is much of the floor. And the sofa has been pulled out from the wall so the baseboards can go in.
The handyman started the project a week ago, but ran out of materials. He is scheduled to finish up the job tomorrow. The mess will get worse before it gets better; I will have to pull everything (mostly totes of toys for the grandkids) out of the living room closet so he can put the baseboards in there, too. But soon it should be all put back together.
Of course, I decided to sort through the books, piano music, and vinyl records and thin out the ones I don't ever intend to use/read/listen to. It's really time to thin out my belongings again, so my children don't have so much to deal with when I die.
This is a multi-topic post, so I'm not sure where to post it. I think Silverbloggers is my best option, since I am as retired as a homemaker ever gets, and all of the above activities are things a retiree does.
*All photos taken on my Android phone."