Project Checklist


Blog!?! Who has time to blog! There's too much to do!

Rick and I have been frantically working on the backyard and deck, getting ready for the big event. The deck is getting old enough that it needed some major repairs, such as a new step and rail top. I wouldn't want anyone to get injured at the wedding. And then I want the grass as pretty as I can make it. And a new gazebo for the deck. And lots of potted flowers. And patch the bare spots in the yard. And... and... and...

One project I've been pondering as to how to do is a concrete patch underneath where I hang my bird feeder. The bird droppings and sunflower seed shells kill the grass, apparently attract wormies, then the moles are attracted to the worms. So wherever I hang it I have no grass and have pushed up dirt and rocks instead. But I don't want to eliminate the bird feeder, and I can't hang it over a garden, the seed will just grow. That leaves only one possibility - concrete.

I looked into bricks that form a circle. Cool but a little pricey. You can only buy a full circle which is 6' in diameter and I only want a 4' circle. And a 6' circle costs $300. Yikes! But I have a son in the concrete business so I decided to take advantage of him and his know-how.

So I chose a plan of action and got started on it a month or so ago. There has been a lot of oddball things I wanted that are hard to accomplish. One being color. No, it's not hard to find concrete stain. But I have only a 4' circle and they only sell the stain in full gallons. Oh well. I got the color I wanted and it cost about $25.

Next problem - some kind of decoration. I searched online for some circle designs and found a very suitable one for the placement and purpose of the circle - birds and flowers.

How to apply the design? Grind it in! Stain it, sketch it, then grind it and the design is then concrete color while the rest of the surface is stained. How to grind it? I have a dremel, can you grind concrete with a dremel? Sure you can! - with a diamond tip, that is. Those are also hard to find. I did finally find one and about a third of the way through the project it broke. So I called the store and they didn't have any more. But another location had it and all the others as well. So I purchased a better one, a ball shape one and the job went much quicker and easier.



Here is the end result right after I washed off the painted sketch, it's mostly dry with a few wet spots. Those are snowdrop flowers, not bees:

Don't forget to click on it to see it better, in a larger size.

Another project I can check off my list - On with the dress!

Finally - Some Fun!

Yesterday - after sitting around all morning waiting for a guy to come by to look at Rick's motorcycle windshield he was selling on Craigslist and doing some accumulated junk sorting in the meantime - we finally went out and did something fun. Something that we enjoy doing together and that kinda brought us together to begin with.

Rick started talking about lunch and I suggested that whatever we ate we should take it somewhere outside and have a makeshift picnic and photo session. I could only come up with Saltwater Park, I guess I wanted to see the Sound (I thought you heard a sound?). But Saltwater is ugly. So Rick got the idea and came up with a better place to go - the Ruston area on Commencement Bay in Tacoma.


It was a very pretty, breezy, sunny day when we left. There were old dilapidated piers, parks, flowers, birds, barnacle-encrusted rocks. Lotsa photo opps. So we found a place that sold sandwiches and beer and grabbed both and headed back to the water.

We found a spot to sit just off the walkway that follows the waterfront, on the rocks, outta view (so we could drink our beers) and enjoyed our sandwiches under the watchful eye of a seagull. We got what shots we could right there, mostly birds and long view shots of Tacoma. Then we drove back down the road to check out some of those dilapidated piers. I spotted a pretty knoll with trees and bluebells so we stopped and I went and got a bunch of shots of that knoll. Not too many of them came out, that's something I still have to learn - the metering for those extreme dark and light pictures. While we were walking in that area it started to sprinkle.

We got back in the car and parked right next to one of those piers and it was raining pretty good, we saw it coming. But, being spring, we knew that we could most likely wait it out. So we sat in the car and it eventually POURED!
We could see the rain letting up and some brightness from the direction the weather was coming from. It eventually slowed to just sprinkling again.

So we hopped out and quickly got some shots of that pier. It was still raining so we had to make it quick. But we got some nice stuff.

On the way out a little further we saw a fishing dock and decided to check it out as well. I talked to a couple fishers to see how the fishing was doing. They hadn't caught anything nor had they ever fished there before. But just as we were leaving one of them got a bite and ended up pulling up a 8 - 10" bullhead. Ugly little fish!


On the way back Rick spotted a little View Park. Not much of a view, just the Port of Tacoma. The park itself had some nice offerings though. And while we were there someone else pulled up - in another red Neon! We decided that the park should be called "Red Neon Park" instead.


We got back to Rick's and got to do our show and tell. That's where we upload our pix to our 'puters and sit there and compare and critique. We both got some pretty interesting stuff.
It sure was nice to get out and play again, been a while.

About Me

My photo
After 2 unsuccessful marriages I spent 12 years as a divorcee, only to fall prey to another man's wiles. We had a fun 5 years together and then he decided he wanted more freedom so once again I'm single.

So I'm freshly divorced at 57 and have 5 great kids and now 7 grandkids. My kids are still a major part of my life but I'm busy helping my aging parents on Kauai.

I've lived in California, Hawaii and Oklahoma before finally settling here in Washington. I love Washington and come back to visit family, friends and take care of my garden often but will be temporarily a resident of Kauai.

I've moved 30 times in my life (no, my parents weren't in the service, at least not since I was about 2) and finally planted roots when I got my little house that I've owned since '91.

My family are Jehovah's Witnesses, I've been one since '72.