random thoughts – Day 2,339 (Monday) – circles

The cycle of laundry and household chores chugged along today. It is mystifying to me that, despite weekly vacuuming, I am still finding sewing pins in the rug. I’ve been plotting a couple projects in my head, but I haven’t pinned and sewn anything since before the show in June. Even so, two more straight pins were picked up today during the vacuuming. Another mystery is how there are what appears to be several bleach spots on my sheets, yet I don’t use bleach.

Genuine fake stone circle.

The circles and cycles of time and life took literal form after a trip to WalMart. I have been looking for garden bed edging and today, the website indicated there was some in the store near me so I took the one-mile journey to explore. I checked the outdoor outdoor section last week and found none. 

Today, armed with a product screen shot showing edging and the status “in stock” in case I needed help from a store employee, I started in the in-the-store outdoor section. After aisles of planters, hoses, and tools, I hit the jackpot. In an aisle shared with pool supplies, several styles of garden edging were found. Even better, several were marked down.

I bought two boxes of genuine fake plastic stone border section with stakes. Back at home, I set to work immediately and fashioned a circle of hollow plastic “stones” in a circle under the tree. Forming the circle was harder than I expected. The first effort was lopsided and looked more like an egg shape. It took a couple tries to even out the circle. I need to pull out some more grass.

While I was toiling, a couple neighbors paused to chat. It was fun, and also the most social activity my yard has seen since move-in day just over a year ago.

Imposter carrot cake.

After the yard labor, I set my sights on other circular items from WalMart. One was a tiny sweet potato pie in a brown box. The other was a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. I love carrot cake. In recent years, I’ve been buying one during my birthday week. 

Tonight I learned that WalMart may choose to call it a carrot cake and bury it under icing with a frosting carrot on top, but the flavor is 100% spice cake and there is but a single carrot flake of texture in the thing. I will still eat the imposter carrot cake, and now I feel compelled to have a taste and texture comparison of the so-called carrot cakes from Hannaford, Price Chopper, and the not-so-nearby Market Basket, but that might just be the nerd in me looking for another way to make a chart.

random thoughts – Day 2,338 (Sunday) – roof and books

Finally, the roofer.

The contractor for my roof and siding project, in response to my messages about two known incidences of the bathroom ceiling leaking during/after rain storms in the past two weeks, had said he would be over last Monday. At 5:00 pm on Monday, the contractor texted that the roofer would be here on Tuesday, but "the time was still being worked out." I don’t know where he came from, but the roofer and his chariot finally rolled up this morning, four days later than expected. I'm glad I wasn't holding my breath. 

After he leaned a ladder against the house, I went outside to show him the end of the house experiencing the issue and took him inside to show him the exact location. I don’t think there would have been any communication with me otherwise.

I also showed him the front section where the water flows off the roof at an angle and runs down the bedroom window and literally into the bedroom when the window is open. He said some metal piece up on the face of the house is warped and recommended gutters. I guess I shouldn't have tossed out the mailer from a gutter company that came a couple weeks ago. Oops.

Roofer guy went onto the roof with a tube of something and I could hear him walking around. There was some banging. He cast a shadow over the kitchen skylight that I could see from the couch. Whatever went on up there didn’t take very long and then he was gone without a word. There has been no follow up from the contractor since the text last Monday.

My summer 2026 salvation.

I spent the day finishing reading a John Grisham novel (A Painted House) I got it a couple days ago from the Little Library Box. It is some quality storytelling and I really enjoyed it. I returned it to the book box today, along with The Great Gatsby, which I read last week. The book box is so full I had to take two more books out in order to fit my returns in. That book box is turning out to be my summer of 2026 best friend and has turned the past couple months into the best staycation ever. It's exactly the sort of summer activity I loved when I was a kid and have been wanting to relive for ages. So far, so good.

random thoughts – Day 2,337 (Saturday) – day watch

Prepping for action.

There are some days where the turkeys are the most exciting thing going in the neighborhood, but this morning offered up some larger action that was interesting. 

The snow-blowing guy across the street from Mom had a digger across the driveway and a dump truck rumbling in the front yard at 8:30 this morning. The noise was just loud enough to be too much to ignore during the coffee drinking hour so of course I watched out my living room window. Whatever was happening looked expensive with two drivers and two rigs.

I called Mom for an unrelated topic, and she said she had something for me so I went next door right away, coffee cup in hand. The view of the heavy equipment action was better and like the couple of covert snoops we are, we watched out Mom's laundry room window as the equipment was put to work. At first, it was hard to tell what was the object of the activity and I thought maybe the driveway would be attacked by the digger thing, but the digger moved to the other side of the truck. As huge blobs of dirt with roots sticking out in every direction were lowered from the digger to the dump truck we saw it was the removal of the root balls of the previously chopped shrubs/hedges/green things that once stood in front of the house.

I imagine that is what I would be facing should I decide to rid myself of the overgrown greenery in front of my own house. It looks expensive, but I don’t know the neighbor well enough to text and ask how much it cost. I might, however, inquire about the contractor so I arrange to get my own price. That seems less invasive/nosey, and is the real reason I want to know.

random thoughts – Day 2,336 (Friday) – talking turkey

Two turkeys and a bunny.

Weeks of evening walks have revealed the patterns of the neighborhood. Between six and seven in the evening, the four male turkeys congregate in the yards two streets over from mine. The last few times I’ve seen them has been in the same section of the street. They are usually in a cluster, pausing in a yard, before moving on to the next one, but tonight, there were only three of them clustered in a yard.

As the three began to spread out across the yard, I noticed a little brown bunny, frozen still under a bush in the same yard, as if in a game of hide and seek. I wondered what would happen if the turkeys spotted the bunny. 

One time last year, a cat was lounging under a bush in my back yard along with a group of turkeys and none seemed bothered by the presence of the others and I am curious if the bunnies and turkeys share the same camaraderie.

The turkey and the chrome.

I kept walking and finally spotted the fourth turkey in a driveway across the street from the rest, near the back of a silver-gray Tacoma. It seemed to be admiring itself in the shiny chrome. It took a step or two away, then returned to the chrome corner. As I got closer, it pecked its reflection in the chrome. There were a couple more sidesteps and pauses at the reflection and then it sauntered off, away from me and towards the direction of its friends.

Meanwhile, the other three turkeys had gathered on a hill across the street and seemed to be watching the whole show. It seems, even in the turkey social world, there is always that one weird friend.

random thoughts – Day 2,335 (Thursday) – bowl of cherries

A morning round of the plants was made. The newly set plants out front were looking good. Someday, after the siding is done, there will be plants on the side of the house to check. It was a delight to see the tiny little baby spaghetti squash still on the vine. The feeling was short lived. I touched it, and it immediately fell off, and just like that, I had become a baby squash murderer. Damn.

After the squash murder, the rest of the day was quiet. Nothing to report except the weather, which was warm and a touch humid. There was nothing on the calendar.

None of the items on the to-do list were even thought about. Mostly I sat around embracing the “life is a bowl of cherries” expression and eating cherries and reading. For days, I’ve been eating cherries by the bowlfull. They have been very delicious the past three or four weeks. As I dipped into my evening bowl of cherries, I noticed the crystal bowl had cracks. What, what? How did this happen? Not to worry, I have six or seven more of them, but I still wonder why and how. Maybe it’s punishment for the squash murder.

random thoughts – Day 2,334 (Wednesday) – holes

New baby spaghetti squash.

Another beautiful day meant another morning working in the yard. Out back, something is still chewing on the basil leaves and I suspect the earwigs. The spaghetti squash plant from my sister produced a couple tiny squashes, but something ate both of them. There is no suspect identified in this crime. There is a new tiny squash but if history holds, it won’t last long.

Out front, holes were prepared to receive plants. A few ferns that had sprung up against the back of the house were transplanted in the ring under the tree out front. Some purple clover things that had escaped Mom’s front flower bed and invaded the lawn were dug up and relocated under the tree. The plan is to keep expanding the circle around the tree with one or two more rings as plants come along.

The tree ring.

On the way back from grocery shopping, there was a stop at WalMart to see if the plants area had been reset. There were racks of fresh new flowers including mums in several sizes and I got a tray of ten cute little mums for $1.44 each. Back at home, the two new flower boxes each received dirt, three holes, and three little mums, and the area under the tree got the rest. Tomorrow I will harvest some of the plentiful dried needles from under the hedges and use them as mulch under the tree. 

Also on the list will be getting ground cover plants for the slope between my yard and Mom’s to reduce some of the mowing, and some dirt and gravel to fill in the area along the concrete slab in the back of the house that has been pummeled by the rain.

Filling holes with plants and dirt felt pretty good, but it didn’t do much to fill the brother shaped hole in my heart on  this, the fifth anniversary of his death. At least the yard will look nice.

random thoughts – Day 2,333 (Tuesday) – fresh new day

Curly bark tree.

The rain moved out and the fresh new day was clear and sunny. The dew on the lawn and the bushes  sparkled. Despite the morning light creeping in the bedroom, I slept late again this morning. It looks like 8:00 is my new 6:30.

The extra sleep had me feeling peppy, and at 10:45, instead of the more sedentary grocery shopping task, I was out front digging out more grass from around the tree with the curly in the front yard so I could set some plants Mom wants thinned from her front flower bed. Halfway through the grass removal, I remembered Mom usually goes out with her friend on Tuesdays. I finished the digging, but I’ll get the plants tomorrow.

Later, there was a search of the websites of nearby retailers for garden edging. Ollie’s in Fitchburg seemed to have it, so a stop was planned there after dance class. On the way to dance, I stopped at Dollar General. Which has yard stuff was on sale, but there was no edging found in the store, which is being taken over by Halloween décor.

Dance was a small group with four of us. It was fun. We changed the barre routine up a bit, then did the usual center work and ran through some of the repertoire. We use decades-old recordings of the original music that were done by our studio pianist. It was very cool back in the day, having our classes accompanied by a pianist. She could slow down the pace of the music until we knew the choreography well enough to be up to speed.

The first ballet studio I danced with used records for everything, including some of the basic technique. The voice on the record would announce things like “piqué turns, diagonally across the floor, continuously” and we would execute the moves across the black and white tiled floor while our teacher watched. When I was in high school and at what is still my favorite dance studio, the only activity we did to records was our initial warmup and stretching, which was led by a studio assistant to provide time for our teacher and pianist to have a quick break.

There was a wildflower tour outside of our dance space (which I forgot about). Unlike the last wildflower walk, which was rainy, the weather was perfect today, but I stuck to the original timeline with stops for gas and then Ollie’s. There were a lot of patio chairs, hoses, and planters, but I couldn’t find edging (despite circling the yard stuff for several laps) or even a store worker to help me. I got bargain grocery items including microwave rice, hot sauce, canned tuna, cinnamon, and cookies, plus pain patches, makeup wipes, and two window box planters. No target item, but still a productive stop.