Spring Has Sprung!

A Great Play in Ashland in March

Wow!  How time flies--our last Blog post was in February, and it has been a busy couple of months.  We have been dealing with some more appliance issues (furnace finally fixed and a new stove on the way), had visits from two sets of friends from Juneau;the first with Jim and Judy Hauck who we met in Ashland in our RV and went to a great Shakespeare play and had a great dinner.

We also made a trip to visit Neil's folks in Silverdale, and afterwards visited the Seattle Flower and Garden Show.  It was a great show and we took in some seminars about roses and pruning.

We Visited the Garden Show in February and Had a Great Time!

This Show Garden was "Pillow Talk" After the Movie

Neil and Pamela at the Wizard of Oz Garden in Seattle

Later on, Ed and Janis Buyarski came by as part of their annual plant buying trip and stayed a couple of nights with us.  While here, Ed did some long overdue heavy pruning around the homestead and we hauled four pickup loads of yard waste to the recycle center.

Ed and Neil Pruning Flowering Cherry Tree

Flowering Plum Trees After Pruning

Pile of Pruning Debris Behing Rose Bushes

 We also have been working on getting the Skinny Winnie motorhome ready for some spring camping trips.  The RV has had a couple of electrical issues that have finally been fixed by Guaranty RV in Junction City.  In fact, we pick up the RV tomorrow (Friday) as they finally found two electrical shorts that kept blowing a light circuit.  One of them was a mounting screw that punctured a wire behind the microwave.  The other issue was a beeping fridge caused by a mis-aligned door.  While they were working on these issues, we had them install a four stage battery charger that will keep the batteries charged better and make them last a lot longer.

Our New Progressive Dynamics  Four stage RV Charger

One of the things Neil worked on this week was to install bicycle hangers in our garden shed.  They mount to the roof and allow us to store the bikes up high out of the way until we need them.  It is a double pulley system that Neil found on Amazon for $15 each.  

Pretty Nifty Bike Hoists at a Good Price

Bikes Hanging in Garden Shed--With Headroom!

Next weekend is the Astoria Crab Fest and we plan to go there for a long weekend. We plan to eat lots of seafood and take some walks on the beach.

Our Destination Next Weekend

We plan to stay at Fort Stevens State Park, which is the site of Battery Russell and other gun batteries that operated from 1904 to 1944 to protect the mouth of the Columbia River.  

Fort Stevens State Park Near Astoria

There is also a popular ship wreck, the Peter Iredale that Neil's Mom used to talk about as she used to walk the beaches when she and Neil's Dad were living in Seaside, Oregon after World War II.  In fact, a few of the large Japanese glass floats we have are from that beach.

Barque Peter Iredale Aground in 1906

Wreck of the Peter Iredale Near Astoria Today

The weather has been typical spring in Oregon--some sunshine and some rain.  We may get our first 80 degree day of the year next week.  We hope that the weather holds for our trip to the coast.  We are also waiting for the replacement of our wall mount stove and microwave oven.  The stove stopped working on Easter as Pamela was baking pies.  Since we renewed our home warranty, we called American Home Shield and after two technician visits, we are going to get a new stove and microwave combo in the next week or so.  We decided to upgrade to a better make and model than the replacement they would provide, so we will get a new one installed for less than half of what it would have cost us without the home warranty.  The home warranty has been a good investment for us with the water heater, furnace, and now the oven.

While Neil has been working on some outside stuff, Pamela has tackled sorting of our large number of 35mm slides to determine which ones we want to have scanned.  We have nearly eight banker boxes of slide pages and carousels, so it is a BIG job.  She is making good progress, and it works in well with her Creative Memories work.

Dining Room Table is Now a Slide Sorter!

Sorry it has been so long in posting updates to this Blog.  We appreciate your visiting, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Neil and Pamela