An Evening View

Posted on June 17, 2020 by TJ

I’m drowsily sitting here on an early evening enjoying a glass of iced tea while I enjoy the view out the window. I’m watching the bluebirds feeding their young in the birdhouse, various birds visiting the feeders, and occasionally Theo or Millie saunter by. Ahhhh! This is the life!

EJ spent most of the weekend weeding his garden beds. His garden is really growing nicely. I didn’t think my herb garden would be much of a success this year, but it looks as if some of my herbs are actually growing–sage, thyme, basil, chives, dill, and probably oregano and cilantro. I’m not seeing any mint, lemon balm, rosemary, or lavender yet but I am still hopeful. Gardens are all about planting seeds and hoping.

We have a raccoon who visits our birdfeeders almost every evening. Usually, he (or she?) arrives after dark when we can’t see him. We know when he has visited because the next morning the tray feeder is cattywampus. Once in awhile the raccoon visits before it gets dark and we get to enjoy watching him. He visited before dark one day this last weekend. When he first arrived, Theo chased him off but it wasn’t long before he returned. I was able to video him during his second visit. At first, he kept looking off to the right so I’m pretty sure there was a cat there making him nervous but he finally climbed the post. You can tell when Hannah Joy saw the raccoon because she started to bark and whine. The coon wasn’t at all nervous about Hannah Joy. He must have known she was in the house and couldn’t get to him? Not long after I stopped videoing, both Theo and Millie began stalking the coon. Silly cats. Although so far the raccoon has run away from them, I don’t think the cats would stand a chance if the he decided to defend himself. We didn’t want to risk Theo or Millie getting hurt so we went outside. The raccoon scurried under the deck and EJ and I picked up the cats and carried them into the coop for the night to keep them safe and out of trouble.

Yesterday Hannah Joy was not such a good girl. She was beginning to eat a butter box (which the four sticks of butter come in) before I saw her and took it away from her. Then she got into the pockets of my sweater, which I had hanging in the bathroom, and ate the Kleenexes. Then she knocked over the tin that holds her very special treats, spilling some of them on the counter and floor. I was able to rescue all of them except the ones on the floor. She ate them. Even though Hannah Joy isn’t always a “good girl,” she is an adorkable girl whom we love very much. Her quirks are what make her preciously unique.

This morning as I was starting my chores, I saw a rabbit up near the big rocks. Usually, we’ve seen them at the bottom of the driveway, not up near the house, but I suspect that all the building activity next door might be causing them to relocate. At least most of the construction noise has decreased. Just for you, I took a photo of the only place on our property where we can see the building through the trees. It’s at the bottom of our driveway. We can’t see it on our hill. The tall part at the right looks to be a garage. I’m not sure if the other part is a house or a workshop. It’s kind of fun trying to guess what the building is from the brief glimpse we have as we walk to the mailbox.

My vacuum cleaner hasn’t been working very well for several months. Maybe several months times two or three. We have limped along with a sucky vacuum, as best we could. We tried buying a used vacuum at Habitat for Humanity a while back, but that didn’t work so well either. then the coronavirus hit and we were in Lockdown so that stopped our looking for used vacuums. A couple of weeks ago we resumed looking and we found a local man on Facebook Marketplace who fixes vacuums, but when I asked a few times where he lived so we could drop it off and he didn’t tell us, we said, screw that. We aren’t going to drop off a vacuum cleaner unless we know where to pick it up at. Most things, of course, we exchange in a public place but there are some items/services that we really need to be able to pick up at the person’s house/business. If I ask a couple times for an address and a person doesn’t give it, I move on and keep looking.

ANYWAY, a couple of days ago I finally told EJ that we need to have a vacuum that actually works so we got online and ordered a new one from Bissell. We have never had a Bissell before but we chose this vacuum because it wasn’t terribly expensive and a beautiful dog was sitting next to the vacuum on the website. Ok, we might have ordered the vacuum even if it wasn’t pictured with a dog, but the dog definitely helped us choose. LOL. The vacuum arrived today. We had to walk down our long winding driveway to get it from the Magic Box, which is where delivery people put our items. We have a sled to carry deliveries up the driveway in the winter, but I told EJ that we really need to get a wagon to pull large items up in the summer. It’s very awkward carrying up unwieldy boxes.

Once we got the vacuum in the house and out of the box, EJ and I took turns vacuuming the few rugs we have and the carpet in the bedrooms. When EJ took his turn, he said, “Wow! This vacuum really SUCKS!” He meant that in a good way, not a bad way. Vacuums are supposed to suck, but not suck.