TWIST AND SHOUT

Last Friday evening, Bob and I decided to go to bed about 9:00 p.m., and read our books.  Shortly thereafter, we had some strong winds.  Bob went out on our back patio and closed the two umbrellas.  When he didn't come right back, I also went to our patio.  The winds were amazing.  They were whipping around the north side of our home.  Our trees were bending back and forth.  We were certain that we would have some downed trees.  The lightening was also incredible.

In the morning we surveyed our property.  We were very lucky, just several downed branches.  We walked around and picked everything up.  On the north side of our home is our next door neighbor.  Currently the house is for sale and is empty.  That side of our home had a lot of leaves down.  We picked them up and went about our other chores.

A little while later, we went to the store.  We normally don't drive through the circular drive; however, today we did.  As we were driving, I shouted to Bob, "STOP"!  The neighbor to our north had a huge blue spruce
tree.  It had snapped in half.  It was evident that the tree had been badly twisted by the high winds and then it snapped.  We can't believe we missed it when we were cleaning up the yard.  The tree was a beautiful blue spruce. It will be missed and hence the name of our story, "Twist and Shout".

HAS ANYONE EVER TAKEN YOU UNDER THEIR WING?

Do you often wonder where certain expressions come from?  Like..."Taking someone under their wing".  The other evening I looked out my kitchen window and saw a lonely female duck on the bank of the stream.  She was just sitting there all by herself...so I thought.  I got out my binoculars and saw that tucked under her wings were some babies.  I immediately grabbed my bread and my camera and walked down to the stream.  The mother duck was very nervous.  She had 11 babies under her wings protecting them.  I couldn't get close enough to feed them.  Mama jumped into the water and all the babies followed.  They swam up stream.  A little while later, she was back sitting in the same spot.  By this time, it was getting dark.  I was surprised that she hadn't left to find shelter for the night.  The next morning she was gone, and I haven't seen her since.  I hope she and her babies have found a nice home.  Perhaps they will visit again.  I will be waiting for them.

LOOK WHAT WE FOUND ON OUR "PATIO"

A week or so ago we were working on our patio flowers/gardens and discovered a couple of duck eggs behind our herb garden and close to our home's brick wall.  A couple of days later a female duck flew away as Bob opened the kitchen window, which is right above the herb garden, .  Well, a day or two after that, we saw the female duck walking around the patio and we finally discovered her sitting on her nest behind the herb garden.  The word "duck" in Spanish is "Pato".  No wonder she had her nest on our "Patio".

We are hoping for a couple more babies soon!

GIANT STRAWBERRIES

The other day I was at the market and saw these huge strawberries and couldn't resist.  They were absolutely delicious.  I just sliced them and ate them with some plain yogurt. 

Next time I really should make a strawberry pie!

OH DEAR...A DEER

After a long hard day of stripping wallpaper, taking off the glue, and washing walls, we got to sit down to a nice glass of wine on our patio and watch the wild life in our backyard.

Beautiful and relaxing!

CELEBRATING 21 YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP

Have you ever kept "something" for a special occasion and wondered what that special occasion might ultimately be?  Well, we had a fine bottle of wine and on the bottom of it we placed a red sticker.  The red sticker indicated that we paid a little more than normal for the wine or it was a special gift.  In this case, the bottle of wine was a Christmas present from Sam's staff.

This bottle of wine has been in our wine rack for about 13 or 14 years.  We have been waiting for just the perfect time to open the wine.  Over the past year, we have been de-cluttering our home in preparation of selling it and moving on.  During this process, we came across many items that we never used because we were saving them for a special occasion.  Well guess what?  The time has come that we are going to consume and or use these things.  What are we waiting for?

We took the bottle of wine, 1994 Kendall Jackson Grand Reserve Merlot, to Ohio and enjoyed it with Jim and Karen.  We had a nice toast to our "21 Years of Friendship".  We couldn't think of a better way to enjoy it.  The wine was good, but perhaps it should have been consumed a few years back. 

The moral of this little story is "enjoy now...don't delay"!

PAELLA ANYONE??

Where does the time go?  We can't believe that it has been about 10 days since our last post.

Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend (it seems like a long time ago), we went to visit our good friends in Canton, Ohio.  We met Jim and Karen a little over 21 years ago on St. Patrick's Day.

They moved to Ohio about 14 years ago and we have remained good friends.  We all like to cook, eat and drink good wine.  Not necessarily in that order.

On Friday night, Jim had already planned our special dinner.  He had purchased an Outdoor Gas Cooking Paella Grill.  The paella included:  shrimp, mussels, clams, chicken, chorrizo and lots of other good stuff.  It was indeed a very tasty dinner.

Stay tuned as we will post other events of the weekend.