Wednesday 18 June 2008

The Outdoor life

We have been busy beavers recently. After my early awakening thanks to a jet lagged hubby we trotted off round to Home Depot to get some mulch for my newly cleared front garden. We got back about 9:30 and spent 20 minutes spreading it “before it gets too hot” – what a joke! We were glowing within 5 minutes! But we persisted and it looks really neat now. All the neighbours are commenting on how much better it looks. Once again, we must have been the talk of the steamy with our untidy ground cover plants! We were the disgrace of the street until a couple of months ago when our landlady finally got round to replacing the shutter beside the front door. The slats kept pinging out, and if you tried to put them back in they would ping out all the more!

With all the heat it was inevitable that we had a thunderstorm later on in the afternoon. It finally slowed from downpour to heavy rain and we braved a walk to King Street for dinner. We had barely gone a block before I was soaked to the knees. My shoes were sloshing with water. I’m surprised I don’t have trench foot now!!

Sunday was more yard work. We borrowed our neighbour Margaret’s jet washer and I did the back garden. Stephen helped by moving the patio furniture out of the way and standing back out of the splash zone. By the time I was done I was soaked to the knees and splashed all over with mud. Well, I hear that mud masks are beneficial for the face! I almost had to brain Stephen when he was talking to Margaret and said “well, we usually do this each year back home”. All I’m going to say is that I didn’t realize Stephen was royalty as I seem to remember that he usually either buggers off to the driving range, or gets the recliner out and sits on the lawn reading the paper….

Mum and David arrived on Sunday. Well, technically they arrived on Monday morning as their flight was delayed by about 3 ½ hours. We had to be up and into work for 7:30 so we told them to get a cab and left them a key. I was surprised that they were up the same time as us in the morning. I thought they might have needed a little more kip!

There was a huge storm passed through the area on Monday afternoon. I looked up at one point and couldn’t see the buildings across the street. On closer inspection it was so squally that the rain was going upwards! There were lots of trees down and general traffic chaos on the way home. We had planned to BBQ, but that wasn’t going to be happening, so we jumped in the car and drove along to Chadwicks for dinner, only to find that the entire King Street area was without power. All was not lost however as we all trooped off to Faccia Luna for salads and pizza.

Everyone was up at the crack of dawn, and Mum and David traveled in with us en-route to the National archives (David is over doing research on his next book). I had one amusing moment during the day. Paul W had an 11am appointment, and the guy turned up about 5 mins to 11. Paul was off at another meeting, so I called him and he told me he was across the street and would be about 5 mins. Joni let the chap know and offered to make him coffee. Paul got back a couple of minutes later. Joni called me to find out if the visitor was back with me, as she had had to leave the front desk for a minute and the chap was no longer in reception. Nope. It turns out he did a runner. He was agitated that Paul was a few minutes late and then he scarpered rather than wait. He missed Paul by seconds. Odd behavior!

We had the delayed BBQ last night. Only one minor hiccup in that we ran out of gas halfway through!! A frantic phone call later and we managed to exchange the use of Paul B’s gas bottle for a corn on the cob and a signature in his copy of David’s book!!

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