Thursday This and That

New iphone Day # 2, and life is getting better.  If I can figure out what password works for the itunes store, maybe that irritating window popping up on the screen, asking for the password every time I open the phone will go away. 

The camera on the phone is nice and will most likely come in handy in situations where I don't want to carry my regular camera. The photos above and below came from the new phone---both early morning shots from yesterday and today. 

Yesterday provided a nice catch-up day for all that did not get accomplished the day before. After two or three sessions of weeding yesterday, the garden is looking much better without so much fast-growing grass hiding the actual veggies.

Seems like in the summertime everything takes advantage of my time spent focusing on another project. If I'm cleaning house, the grass and weeds grow in overdrive.  If I'm weeding my garden, the house quickly turns messy. If I'm mowing lawn, both the house and the garden conspire to add to my workload. 

Yesterday actually turned into successful multi-tasking of town errands, gardening and house purging. 

Bags of dead, soggy lettuce and petrified hotdog buns, et. al. from the refrigerator and freezer went to the trash.  Catalogs and magazines from at least the last year moved from piles in the living room and kitchen to a pile in a box, adding more clutter to the garage. 

The dogs don't care about the clutter in their area, and since we don't do much entertaining in the garage, the garage can usually take the load of cast-offs. That strategy works for us most of the time. 

Two years ago, however, during the summer, Bill thought he saw a snake slither into the garage. That was definitely a time when we wished that we hadn't used the area for the home temporary dumpster site. 

Every single item was cleared from the garage and placed outside as we searched in vain for that snake.  Though we never found it, the garage benefitted from a pretty thorough purging. 

Same thing happened when a "he-she" mouse team quietly took up residence in one of the boxes near the door where various items of clutter had been deposited over a couple of years. 

When a putrid stench threatened to asphyxiate us every time we passed through the area, once again we moved contents outside.  

Eventually, when I emptied a really stinky box and watched at least100 iddy biddy mice scatter every which way but loose, I resolved to never allow our clutter to build up again.

We have been fairly disciplined, but there's always room for improvement when there's no more room to pile things inside the house.  The garage tends to be a handy receptacle. 

Back on topic:  the kitchen looks better this morning, as does the refrigerator and its freezer and, of course, the garden. Plus, I accomplished about four or five errands in town, so it was a good day of catch-up. 

Today we won't be catching up around here----just tending to the usual jobs of watering and maybe a little weed eating.  Bill has been gathering wood and transferring it from the forest to the wood pile. Plus, Terra will come and ride Lefty.

Finally, it's Throwback Thursday, and the calendar says it's time to travel back 43 years to a hot June day and St. Joseph's Catholic Church where a little brother wanted a mustache of his own and a big brother split his tuxedo pants on the church altar. 

With a bunch of students, friends and family watching and wishing for some air conditioning, Bill Love and Marianne Brown followed the lead of Father Malachi John Timothy O'Donovan and each said, "I do."  

I don't know if we've said those two words since except for maybe when someone asks who wants pie and ice cream, but we've covered a lot of ground since that monumental day in 1974.  

Our life as a couple has led to one adventure after another---a dream which both of us agreed upon when we first became acquainted after the 1973 Boy Scout Jamboree at Farragut State Park.  

It's been a great run, with, of course, a few doors slamming (mainly Marianne) and all that regular stuff which goes along with any marriage. 

I have a feeling that as long as we're able, we'll be happily engaged in adventure after adventure as the Love train keeps chugging on down the tracks. 

A few years before on this same date, Kevin Brown and Joyce Dahm said their vows at Whitworth Presbyterian Church, so "Happy Anniversary" to my brother and beloved sister-in-law. 

With that, I'll wish everyone else a Happy Thursday.