HOW TIME FLIES WHEN YOU ARE HAVING FUN!

Sorry we haven't posted in a while. Here is what we have been doing.


First of all, Sam is now feeding 20 baby ducks along with many other adult ducks. Our neighbor sold her house in 3 weeks and a new family will be moving in the end of July. The youngest daughter, Molly, loves nature and Sam's ducks. Mama duck is still sitting on her nest next to the house. Hopefully the babies will be born soon.

We have been stripping wall paper and getting our home ready in case we decide to sell. It is a big project. Mark the painter is here every day before 8:00 a.m. It is great having a contractor here on time. He doesn't smoke and he doesn't play music. He is a "work-horse". Glad to have him on our team. Not so sure I would climb up his make shift scaffolding.

We have had our Grandfather Clock for about 24 years. It hasn’t been keeping time lately, so we had the “Clock Guy” come and repair Grandfather. It was very interesting to see the repairman take Grandfather apart and put him back together. It is wonderful to have Grandfather working again. We love to hear the quarterly chimes. Of course, Bob puts it on “Night Owl” so he can sleep.

Our San Miguelian friends, Tom and Linda from Colorado, came to visit for a couple of days. It was great to relax and catch up with them. We had plenty of good food and great wine. Thanks to Tom and Linda for their wine donations!

We celebrated Bob’s 55th birthday with Tom and Linda. Sam bought Bob a Garden Groom Pro. We are trying to work “smarter” not “harder” around our home. So far it has worked great! Bob trimmed all of the boxwood and hicks hew bushes in the front and back yards within 2 hours. Believe me, we have a lot of bushes. This would normally take both of us about 8 hours to trim and clean up!

On June 30th, we picked our first tomato from our garden. Of course, we had to split the tomato. Now we have a cucumber that will be ready in a day or two.

Cans, cans, and more cans. Nathalie, who is our neighbor and 10 years old, decided she wanted to raise some money to help sponsor a child to attend 7th grade in Los Ricos de Abajo, Mexico. This is the school where we teach English in the winter and are currently sponsoring three children. She enlisted the help of her brother, Joey, who is 8 years old. She also contacted some of her friends. To date, Nathalie and Joey have collected 693 cans. Her goal is to collect a total of 2000 cans by July 31st, which is her birthday. The Tios, that’s us, have promised to match 50% of what they collect up to a maximum of $100.

It definitely has been crazy in our back yard. We normally keep a Havahart trap in our yard to catch the ground hogs. They eat our geraniums and also try and get into the vegetable garden. So far this year, we haven't caught any ground hogs. However, the other day we had a wild cat in the trap. We let it go and the cat ran right through the stream and into the woods. He was so glad to be free. Bob reset the trap and that night we caught a possum. As you may know, possums don't like the day light. Bob went out and opened the trap to release the possum. The possum stayed in the trap for over 6 hours with the door open. Sometime after dark, he finally left. We have also caught three squirrels. Bob is ready to spray paint the squirrel to find out if it is the same one. Just a little fun and adventure at the Zimmerman's.

It is hard to believe it is already July 5th. Usually my beautiful day lilies don’t bloom until the middle of July. They started blooming about 10 days ago; that’s about 3 ½ weeks early. We will definitely enjoy them while they are here. We will need to contact our great niece because she always comes over and picks the beautiful colored day lilies and decorates the fountain on the patio with Tio.

Since last Thursday, we have been partying with all of our neighbors. Tis the season! The weather has been extremely warm. Yesterday the high was 91 F; the same for the next three days except the humidity is to be much higher. The air conditioning is working overtime. It is a great day to catch up on our blog.

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