Slow Progress

Entryway before....

"Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step." ~ Samuel Smiles (Scottish author, 1812-1904)

Progress here is slow. It feels like we are moving things from my parent's house to the new house, three or four boxes at a time. OH!!! Right!!! We really are moving things only three or four boxes at a time! Some of the boxes are running out of labeling room and it is very confusing to see "Box 19...Attic", "Nyssa's Books", "Lorane's Cookbooks", and "My Study" on one little box. Long gone are the organized labels listing the specific contents of the box. We are rapidly approaching the saturation point, where we can handle no more boxes until the furniture is here, we need the furniture to put the boxed up stuff into. My goal is to have their furniture here in the new house by October 1st... then we can unbox and clean the old house and have garage sales.

But progress, though at a snail's pace, does continue... I have begun to hang pictures, trying to remember that this is my brother's house and we have different taste's in some things. I decorated my home with photographs of family, most specifically... Nyssa. I did have one huge still life painting that I "won" in a contest I didn't even know I entered. It was ugly... actually, it surpassed "ugly" and made its way on to "ghastly hideous", but it filled a space on my dining room wall. It is now in the garage sale pile. (Stephen is very happy about that.) I did hang this picture over the piano in the entryway. It was the one year I really splurged and the photographer worked with an artist to create this oil canvas over the photo.

Today.....

I used my handy dandy laser level and one of those snappy "tiny pin prick hooks that holds a gazillion pounds" and there you have it. I wear many hats these days. I built shelves in the eaves of the house by my closet for sewing notions and storage... that is my carpenter hat. I sanded and painted and sanded and painted and sanded and painted some more... additional shelves for the built ins in the living room and den and a little open platform for the television in the den so that the VCR and DVD player could sit under the TV.... that would be the painter hat. I seem to have successfully connected the stereo system... well except for the speaker wires and have managed to connect an eight port router to the cable modem and ethernet wires so that all seven outlets are working. I have my PC connected and wonder of all wonders, my old Power Mac G4 that has not seen the light of day for almost four years is connected and working and on the internet and the internal battery is still alive, although with OS9 I don't know which browsers will still support it...I guess this would be my electronic technician hat. I have covered all the shelves and lined all the drawers in all the bathrooms and kitchen and laundry room in this house....

OH! Yes! And I have mowed the grass FOUR times and haven't set off the security alarm once!!!!

Time flew past... way to fast.

So forgive me if I haven't been around.. by the end of the day, my brain is mush. The only reason I had time to post this is because I need to be somewhere in an hour and I was trying not to get all sweaty. Isn't that a sorry explanation?

(still trying to do better... end of post)

A View From The Mansion

A view of our preserve land... please ignore the yard!
(Click pictures to enlarge view)

"There are those rare days of late summer; perhaps ordinary circumstances don't necessarily go right, but mother nature grants you a glorious memory. If only you had manicured the weeds before her visit." ~ srp

Sorry about the yard; I have since done another mowing, my third since the first of July. It had been over 30 years since I mowed the lawn this much, not since high school. I discovered that if I turn off the sprinkler system, the weeds don't grow as fast... but then neither does the small amount of grass that still exists. Thus the conundrum....

"To mow, or not to mow... that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The disapproving looks of neighbors at outrageous weed growth
Or to take arms (and legs and knees and carpal tunnel wrists)
against a sea of crab grass and broad-leafed wild grass
And by rotating mower blades end them.
To mow, to sweat profusely (buckets full) --
To sweat -- perchance to draw the attention of mosquitos (no perchance about it!.....slap!!): aye, there's the rub."
~ srp's soliloquy

Eupatorium purpureum or Sweet Joe-Pye Weed,
attracts these butterflies (Sulfers, Family Pieridae)

Anyway, back to the post at hand; while taking a rest from the boxes, I spied something yellow on the flowering weeds at the edge of the preserve and found five of these lovely creatures completely intoxicated with the nectar from tiny, fuzzy purple flowers. No long lens here... just the regular 18 - 55mm zoom, hand held about two feet away to get them all in the picture.

Feasting side by side....

As one would leave another would flutter in and take its place. All morning they flitted and fluttered on wings of pale yellow with tiny golden dots and inhaled the sweet liquid with those long proboscides.

....or at a table for one.

Then as suddenly as they appeared... they were gone, off to play... satiated for the moment. And I returned to the boxes.

(end of post)