Cat in Grass 
Me working on Pastel
Still trying to get better photos of these conte sketches.Yesterday after the dishwasher guy was here, we drove in to Pinedale and met Scott about landscaping the yard at the house. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Joe now wants the whole thing mostly done including a circular drive in front with cement curbing and a nice walk up to the front door. There will also be a graveled drive extended to the back double gate with curbing also. It will be a pretty good chunk of money. And later we can do another stage and get the front actually xeriscaped with different size and color of rocks and some shrubs and such. Joe has wanted to give away the big boulders that are stacked in piles in the front, but Scott will be able to use those for the landscaping and said he could move them around while he had his big equipment there.
While in there I found the camera manuals ..... right where I looked twice before. It DOES have a usb cable and also one for making videos. Now comes the reading! Actually I just discovered that I had more telephoto with the camera lens than I knew, up to 40X! That's how the latest good bird photos were taken. Its hard to hold it still without a tripod though.
Also it was the day oncology wanted me to have a protime test - that's for coumadin - and it was 4.4 which is dangerously high. Carol, the oncology nurse, wanted me to go back again today for another test and I talked her out of it. Sure didn't want to drive to town again. So they just changed the dose of the coumadin. Maybe it was a bad reading. It seemed to me the monitor wasn't working the way it usually does, Also I'd been eating cauliflower for a couple of days. After that we stopped by Kathy and James house because they had brought us a bag of Vidalia onions back from Georgia. They have two of their grandchildren here now. Got gas and came home.
Last week I said I'd host today's small painting group and luncheon at the house in Pinedale. Then the last couple days started getting these other things piled up to do. So had to call Nancy, who had also offered to host that day, and tell her I had to be here today and asked her if she could still have it at her house. She said yes, and invited me too, but I didn't feel I could go today. In my younger days, I would have tried to do it all. I'll plan it for another day soon.
The window glass repairman came this morning at 9 a.m. and installed the new living room window so that's also done. He is really nice, from a ranching family in Daniel. Should have asked him why he didn't want to cowboy instead of fix windows and glass, but I suppose he probably does in his spare time. The ranchers are always grateful for family, friends and neighbors who will help.
Joe went down to the front gate this morning and worked to put up the cross piece, the name of which is unknown to me - the log that goes across the top. He asked me to drive down there several times because he wanted both the tractor and truck there. Boy that 68 yellow Chevy is sure hard to drive for me now. Photos of him working would have been nice but didn't take any. I kept track of him every once in a while through the spotting scope. He climbed up the ladder braced on the upright poles pretty darn high, up and down many times. He used the tractor bucket to lift the log as high as that will go, and then works with it from there. He got the log up and says he's not finished yet. He's tired tonight and already napped a couple of times while trying to watch the NBA playoffs.
I was out in the yard early, it was so beautiful out. Took some photos but am not going to get them ready for the blog tonight. The lilac bush is going to bloom this year if a late frost doesn't come along. This is the best it's ever looked. It's about 40 years old now - YES I KNOW!! - forty years, and just now has gotten thicker and sprouted up to about 4 feet tall. I had transplanted it before I began to blog, and can remember talking about it last when I was still emailing my letters and photos out. Probably 2005. It was only about a foot tall, all stunted At that time I transplanted it from the front yard where there is no protection, to the east wall of the garage where it gets good morning sun and is sheltered from the wind. It is much happier there. I'll take a picture if we're lucky enough to see it bloom. Not sure if I'll get any annuals in the pots this year or not. Maybe if I go look at them at the nursery..... I'll get in the mood.
My big job for today was burning the garbage. I always used to do it, but we really had the barrels (four 50 gallon drums) packed full. I was hoping Joe would do it but he just lights the top and when the fire goes out that's it. It won't burn easy that way and I just kept digging in there and turning it over, and got them all way down to mostly ashes, perhaps 1/4 full now. Lots easier to get barrels to the dump when they aren't so full and heavy. Anyway it sure pooped me out. Probably fussed with it for three or more hours and used about 4 gallons of old used oil to keep it burning.
It was nice in the morning, but clouds came up, breezy and cool, and by dinner time it was raining again. The hills were nearly obscured by clouds and mist. We had a lot of thunder but the power stayed on. It showered pretty nice for a while. This is the best spring we've had for years.
It was on this day in 1909 that the first woman to drive across the United States, Alice Huyler Ramsey, left New York City for San Francisco. She was 22 years old, a housewife from Hackensack, New Jersey. Her trip got a lot of media attention. In 1909, not many women drove cars, and some doctors thought that it was dangerous for women to even ride in cars because they would get too worked up at more than 20 miles an hour. Alice Huyler Ramsey drove 3,800 miles across the country in a Maxwell 30 with three other women, but she was the only one who knew how to drive. They drove for 41 days and used 11 spare tires. She wrote a book about the trip called Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron (1961). In 2000, she was the first woman inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.
