My Simple Life: June 2022

Friday, June 24, 2022

Little Boy Sleeps Over

Little boy had his first official sleepover at Nama Nama - Pop Pop's house last week!

With the Big Blue Comfy car seat installed in Bruce's car, we headed out to the Minnesota Arboretum for an adventure. Other than being informed that we needed to have made a reservation first to enter (and the attendant was able to get one for us) it was pretty smooth sailing.

We took the 3 mile drive first, and made a stop at Grandma Gloria's bench. Then took a stroll through the sculpture gardens. Little boy enjoyed playing with the little gray rocks under the stone arch sculpture best. We brought his current favorite snack of a PBJ and cranberries, and settled in front of a car park to eat and watch the cars go in and out of the lot.

The sensory garden was good, too, as there were a number of audio tours with start buttons to press, plus opportunities for photo shoots. And then there was the "twig house" where we spent quite a bit of time running through it ... I asked Bruce to take my picture with little boy before we went in (as self appointed photographer for the family, I'm not often in the pictures) but, little boy was in a hurry to get into the twig house, and didn't seem to appreciate a photo being taken at that particular moment.

Back home to Nama Nama - Pop Pop's to wash up, and then to Snuffy's Malt shop for supper. I'm going to brag here and say that little boy was the best mannered little boy in the restaurant! Even bedtime was uneventful, with only one wake up request for a drink of water and help getting the blanket back on.

He's such a good boy. 💕

Friday, June 10, 2022

Shrub Shopping

Lots happening to our home this Spring, so much that I think I'll write about each project separately. That way, each will have their chance to shine!

The Yew shrubs along the front of the house had already grown large and unruly. I suppose we could have noticed this over the years, and maybe tried to do a little pruning, but that did not happen. And, actually, the Yews in front of the living room window had probably been growing there since we bought this house some thirty plus years ago. The other Yews in front of the dining room window were replaced several years ago, but I don't remember exactly how long ago that was. I might need to search my blog, as I'm sure it was noted.

Anyway, we thought about what we might want to plant after the old Yews were taken out. As we drove down the road on our way to a plant nursery, we stopped and rolled down the windows to say Hi to a neighbor, who of course asked where we were going. "Shrub Shopping" I told him, and that it was probably going to be tricky because of the Northern exposure and all the shade from our two story house. He suggested plastic shrubs, I think he was joking, but I looked online anyway, and discovered that there is such a thing. Interesting.

We do like the look of Yews. And there's a story about the Yews in front of our house. Years ago when Katie was about three, she decided to taste the berries growing on them. Grandma Joyce happened to be over, and noticed that she was munching on something. Did you know that the berries on the Japanese Yew are poisonous? ("But, they're so "dood", Grandma!") We called poison control, who could only suggest that we give her some milk to drink, and observe. She was okay, but we decided we needed to watch those berries more closely in the future.

We ended going to 7 plant nurseries to see what we could find, and pretty much the only common advice the nursery people could suggest for us would be Yew or Hosta. Then we noticed some flowering Azalea shrubs that said partial shade. We decided to buy four Yew and two Azalea and hope for the best. Shrubs are expensive. Some that were not even terribly large cost $130 at some of the fancier nurseries! We decided that small shrubs from the Home Depot would be just fine, they would eventually grow. The Yews were $10.99, and the Azaleas were $14.99. That's more like it.

Bruce brought back the winch from the cabin, and anchored it to the one remaining (dead) tree in the the front yard. It worked, and the Yews were pulled out.

Bruce then built a filtering screen to sift the dirt from the stones, and put the cleaned out stones back. It was heavy work, but looked nice when he was finished. I kept bringing him out cold drinks, which seems kind of lame now that I think about it, compared to all the hard labor he did!

Some strips of sod were added in front of the shrubs on the living room side, and now comes the daily soaking of shrubs and sod until roots are established.