Tamara Unleashed

Last Monday after the second day of compacting the gravel driveway, Craig decided it was time to try out the new metal hook he had gotten to put on the front end of Katie to help lift and move fallen tree branches. There was one in particular that came down last spring that was huge and was partially supported on its way down by 3 small trees and still partially (barely) connected to the trunk.

I was there in my chainsaw chaps ready to cut the logs into liftable size pieces but Craig was in the mood for dragging larger pieces. Guess what happens when you drag a heavy log across the freshly compacted gravel. I was a tiny bit perturbed for a mini second then just laughed.

Two days later we got 9 inches of rain over 36 hours I understood that compacted gravel is no match for large quantities of water running down hill.

At the bottom of the driveway is a stone bridge over the ditch that Craig designed and built in 2016. Thankfully he put fir tress on either side of the bridge as Wednesday when he left during the rain to go to a dental appointment this is what he found at the bottom of the hill. Because of the two small trees just above the center of the photo, he was able to see where to drive.

As soon as the rain stopped the water receded enough that he was able to see the bridge was intact when he came back home two hours later. After the second wave of rain came later in the day, this is was we were left with on Thursday.

Here is all of our gravel at the bottom of the hill across the grass

Craig spent 2 days reclaiming gravel and spreading it up the driveway again. There is still much gravel raking to do but the driveway is pretty much repaired and ready for a day of compacting before it rains again tomorrow.!!!

The forces of nature are amazing.

Today is gorgeous and I will go up and down this driveway as many times as I can to get it as compacted as possible before it rains. What we had last week was the worst it has been the 10 years Craig has been here.

There will be a wonderful Mexican meal at the end of the day at a local family owned restaurant.

A perfect Mother’s Day.

We have had busy week. At the end of every day, we have said “We killed it today”. I returned for Iowa late on Monday. We were up early on Tuesday for Tools for Schools on Tuesday followed by a Zoom call for “business”, a session with personal trainer and then to The Garden to mow and weed whack. Weed whacking is soooo much easier with an electric weed wicker. Not as heavy or noisy. As I was weedwacking on Tuesday and Wednesday, I discovered that we are covered up in poison ivy this year. Craig is out on a search and destroy mission for the poison ivy right now.

I started having an unusual rash over the weekend but it has intensified and is on several areas of by body now. Intermittently very itching but no blisters. I always had gloves, long sleeves, long pants and high socks on when outside so I am not sure it is poison ivy.

When I got back Craig told me he had traded a big garden tiller which he had never used for a wood chipper so we can make our own mulch out of the abundance of wood we have. Her name is Carol Ann (named by previous owner). While I thought I was on the fence about being a gardener, it is looking like I am headed that direction — figuring out how to have as little to do as possible in the summer when it is hot and buggy.

Fortunately I had not gotten around to doing weeding around the shed as I might have been tempted to think this was the weeds I had been removing from other areas. Surprise.

We went to another songwriter round on Thursday in a different venue and all singers were enjoyable. We are working towards Craig participating in these rounds.

And I have been diligent about practicing my bass guitar. Miguel thought I was doing very well during my second lesson and I have advanced to practicing scales.

Yesterday we worked for 8 hours on driveway maintenance. A gravel drive running down hill develops ruts. We did a lot of work in December and the ruts we had now were much fewer and smaller. First you have to use the leaf blower to get the old leaves and grass out off of the surface and out of the ruts. Then Craig uses Katie to distribute mounds of gravel on the areas with the ruts. Then the gravel is spread out over the rutted areas with a garden rake followed by running the earth compactor over the entire area which is about 2-3 city blocks long. With the new tractor (Katie) and our very own earth compactor it is much easer to do than when Craig was working with his antique tractor Gilda.

Gilda will be put up for sale this week. Craig has invested countless hours in keeping her running and she works well for a 50 plus year old tractor. Hopefully she will find a good home.

Last night I had finished mowing the lawn and noted that the cows were coming into the west pasture. It was about a half hour before sunset and I had not tried to find #14 since she first approached me a few weeks ago. I walked up to the fence and started talking to the cows as they walked by. None were closer than 10 yards away. Some stopped and looked at me curiously but no one approached. I kept at it for about 5 minutes and then I noticed one cow walking towards me. She got close enough for me to see it was #14. When she was about 10 feet from the fence she stopped to pee. before walking up and licking my hand. As soon as she started approaching the others stopped and watched her and many moved closer. I looked out and the cows were all fanned out looking at me over the adjacent pasture.

I didn’t want to reach for my camera and potentially scatter them so II yelled at Craig who was in the shop. I had to yell pretty loud so he could hear. He looked out saw all the cows and thought I must be injured based on how loud I was yelling. He came running and once her realized I only wanted him to take photos, he needed a minute to recover.

By this time #14, now named Elsie, had wandered off and the others came closer. A young cow (about 6 months old) approached and was very friendly. She let me pet her for about 5 minutes. Even though she was not tagged yet and has NO distintuishing markings I decided to name her Caitlin – seemed timely. Hopefully, I will be able to pick her out in the future. Then #100 approached and let me pet them. I was going to name her Honey until Craig told me Honey was a boy. I quickly renamed him Henry.

They stayed focussed for me on the 15 minutes I stood there. I eventually decided to go in and get ready for dinner.

I had my first bass guitar lesson on Wednesday. This is my practice chart. Miguel who was the lead guitar player in Natalie Stovall and The Drive has agreed to give me lessons. I am very comfortable with him as I embark on the journey. I am learning on an electric bass guitar which we were able to acquire used. I had to get a practice amp that can easily be moved from place to place. Money has been invested and I will do my part with an open mind and practice to see if I can become an adequate bass player to accompany Craig.

Now for a couple of updates. The mice seem to be gone so the silver ware drawer is back in place. I successfully the tires on the bike. Now to find time to fit all of the activities in.

The new major project at The Garden is to get new gravel laid down to refresh the driveway that will go all the way around the shop. There is now a garage door opener on the south door where I park my car. We can now fit two cars, a truck, a tractor and the lawn mower in the shop in addition to the 46 Chevy Panel truck that is further down the list of activities to get running again.

Inside we have a living room to paint and kitchen and master bath to remodel. The bath remodel will include an outdoor hot tub. So much fun ahead.

While I grew up helping in our vegetable garden and canning the produce, it was never my thing. In large part because I needed to avoid the sun AND I am a bug magnet with rather extreme reactions to bites. The fact that I have found real joy in pulling weeds around the trees and around the house this past week has taken me by surprise. After mowing last Saturday and weed whacking on Sunday I was left with the below. I wasn’t sure how much may be flowers. Craig is not a gardener and the flowers that are here were here when he moved in. So I called my friendly gardening expert Deb. She said to send her pictures. Within minutes she had sent me her assessment of what was in each picture along with the warning that there was poison ivy in several places

Bottom line, most of what was growing was not flowers so I set about pulling weeds. The weather has been perfect. Sixties and low seventies and there are no bugs yet. Listening to podcasts and books I have had a great time pulling weeds and learning which are easy to pull out with roots and which require a trowel. I see the squirrels playing, wild turkeys in their mating ritual, hear peacocks who live across the road. and the woodpeckers The cows are often nearby. It has been immensely satisfying,

The before and after are pretty dramatic. Craig is an expert at the poison ivy.as h

e hauled 6 truck loads of poison ivy vines away after he moved here 10 years ago. I am over half way through with getting rid of the weeds. It will be so much easier to mow. Now Craig wants to know what I am going to do with the areas I am cleaning up. Am I ready to become a real gardener and actually plant something? Should I just mulch or should I just weed in the spring and see how fast the weeds come back before beautiful weather for weeding next spring?

I am off.to Iowa for the weekend and hopefully I will still have a week of good weather for gardening when I return.

Craig generally lets me know when he takes his hearing aids out at night so I know that he will not be able to hear whatever I may say unless I am very close to his ears. The other night he modified it a bit. “I am going to take my hearing aids out. Wait a minute if you have any complaints.” It took me a few seconds to process what he said and erupt in laughter.

We finished our step project a week ago. I made the stone landing at the top. A good upper body work out rearranging the pieces. The following morning Craig left bed first which generally means he is getting coffee. He came back a few minutes later without coffee and I asked what he had been doing and he said “I went outside to go up and down our stairs.” It was 49 degrees out. He sleeps in the buff. He does not like the cold. It still makes me laugh.

I love looking out the kitchen window and admiring our shared project.

It is hard for me to really comprehend how happy I am in this partnership with Craig. We laugh a lot and work well together. We are trying to figure out how to weave all the threads together in our pursuit of healthy active aging. We have cycled twice. The second time we blew 2 tires on one of the bikes we borrowed for Craig to try. Fortunately, it was James bike which is just like mine. I have the original set of tires from my bike that we can put on his to continue our trial of figuring out which style of bike will work best for Craig. My tire pump was not reading accurately.

We went to our first songwriter round for research to identify the spot that Craig will feel comfortable participating in an open mic night. He really needs to share his music with more people. We did two venues our first night. The Commodore Grill was first and is a real possibility. The second pictured on the left is the Listening Room which is very touristy and less likely to be a good venue for Craig. When I asked James if he wanted to join us, he said he avoided writer’s rounds like the plague. My only previous experience with writer’s rounds over the years has been ones Natalie has participated in and I realized they were carefully selected individuals. The first round at the Commodore Grill were individuals that could not sing or play the guitar well and I immediately understood his comment. After the first round, the rounds were enjoyable. Each round was 3 artists playing 3 songs. I am going to try to get tickets to the Bluebird on April 30th – the iconic venue. Craig played there in the 90’s once when he was visiting from AZ and would like to perform there again.

Craig takes good care of me. Last week Craig observed some unsafe chainsaw technique on branches that were too big for the loppers and a bit flimsy for the chainsaw. So I found myself the proud owner of a 6 inch mini chainsaw and after watching a couple of videos on safe use of chainsaws I had a pair of what I now call my “chain chaps”. A couple of days ago we had a load of gravel delivered for our driveway maintenance, Craig called me to see the real life purple dump truck.

This week our big project is building a set of steps out of railroad ties into the slope leading from the south end of the shop where I park my car and have my work bench. Craig did not want me to have to walk around the slope. Actually, he had been planning on putting the steps in for the past 5 years so they not just for me. As we continue with his list of projects that have accumulated over the past 5-7 years, I get to stay active and learn a lot. Craig said if he had a blog, he would have to title it “Getting shit done with Tamara”.

I did some of the shoveling, spading and dirt management. We have one more step to add today..

Life is good. I am well cared for. We are having a GREAT time.

For the past couple of months James has really gotten in to pickle ball. After watching him play last week, I decided to try it but was a bit concerned as to how my knee would tolerate it. Today James and Natalie met me at the local community center an hour before the open time for pickle ball started and we played for an hour. It was a perfect way to give it a go. It felt like good cardio and my knee tolerated it fine with the brace on. The White House community center has senior pickle ball on Monday and Wednesday mornings so Craig and I will check it out.

I told Craig Sunday that I wanted to cycle on Monday as it was the only day this week that did not have a chance of rain. Upon arising Monday, I was not feeling it. We had a busy weekend and I was ready to just have a “down” day.

Fortunately my man said that he thought we were riding today and was prepared to do so – my choice.

So we stretched, got dressed and went out to clear the sawdust from the bikes, oil the chains and fill the tires.

Off we went. It was not a long ride – 7 miles but it was a ride. Craig dropped off after a bit – still getting used to the bike but I kept going to the end of the road the we live on. I had some good hills and I made them all. I practiced going slowly at the top without feeling fear that I might fall over if I didn’t stop.

There were a few cars and trucks that slowed down and passed. I felt very safe. I won’t have a chance to get out again until Thursday afternoon if it is not raining, I am looking forward to discovering some longer rides through the beautiful countryside.