5/19/2013–Another Week in Spring Branch, TX

Another week in Spring Branch…we made a couple of trips to San Antonio to see doctors for Ken’s knee which has been giving him more trouble again, and he got another cortisone injection on Tuesday.

I completed another Impossibles jigsaw puzzle.  They’re always interesting to do…750 pieces, no edges, 5 extra pieces, and no picture that shows it how it looks when completed.  That’s okay…just makes it more challenging.

We made a trip to New Braunfels on Thursday to pick up some groceries and visit the Verizon store.  We’ve been thinking of breaking our ties with Hughes.net satellite internet and wanted to see what was available.  They had a mifi jetpack available which was good for 5GB of service in a month for $50 and that sounded reasonable so we came back home with it.  It is now Sunday night, and we have used up close to 2GB of that service, so that obviously won’t work for us, so it will go back to Verizon this coming week.

Last week Ken built a stand so he could get our Splendide washer dryer out to see if he could find out the problem with it.  We knew by the codes, that it was either the timer or the circuit board.  Once he got it out of the cupboard, he couldn’t see any damage to the circuit board, so we decided to take a chance that the less expensive timer was the problem.  We ordered the part from Westland Sales in Oregon and the part came in on Friday.  Ken’s project for Saturday was to rebuild the stand, pull the washer dryer out and replace the timer.  Once that task was completed, it was pushed back into place and hooked up and two loads of wash went through the cycle without a problem!  Alright!!

The timer is the round piece in the middle of this photo and it connects to the selector knob on the front of the machine.

The first load is churning right along.

My transplanted cactus had another nice blossom on it this afternoon.

We had a visitor this afternoon.  This doe decided she needed a break from her newborn fawn and left it hiding between the property stake and pole behind her.  You can just barely make out the fawn’s head to the left of the property stake.

After 2-3 hours, it decided it wanted to move to another hiding place and moved back into a better hiding place.

Here it is standing at the first hiding place right by the road.

And here it is moving to it’s new hiding spot a bit more to the left.

We did show our property again today and they seemed to like it, so we’ll see if anything comes of that.  At this point, we try not to get our hopes up too high.

That’s it for this week.

5/12/2013–Happy Mother’s Day

Not too much going on this week for us.  We did go out with friends for our usual Sunday breakfast.  As it was Mother’s Day, there were larger groups and longer waits for food.  When we exited the restaurant I spotted this very unique obviously “girly” car complete with eyelashes, etc.

Back at the lot, we didn’t do much today other than some very minor work on the lot.  I didn’t take any photos, but Kenny drove his bobcat over and moved our burn pile over to Jerry and Sue’s lot which is moving it to the next destination of Trey’s lot which is behind J & S’s.

Earlier this week I posted some photos of cactus transplants to be moved to Arizona.  One of them actually blossomed today.  So far my black thumb hasn’t done any damage. 

After dinner, we stopped by to see Kenny and pay him for the work he did on our property.

5/6/2013–Cactus Update

My cactus on an earlier post has been identified!  A neighborhood friend identified it as a Horse Crippler Cactus.    I also found another one on the property and and transferred them both to pots that I can take back to Arizona (if I can keep them alive that long).

Sunday was a busy social day with breakfast out with friends and a happy hour that evening.

Today we spent some time doing more yard cleanup taking advantage of the burn ban being lifted.

5/3–5/4/13–A Trip to San Antonio & Removing Dead Trees from the Lot

Due to cold and windy weather, we spent Thursday inside and didn’t go anywhere.  Friday was our anniversary and we decided we needed to get out and do something…so it was off to San Antonio to the Bass Pro Shop.  At the entrance they have a tree made out of antlers.

And something you don’t see too often in other Bass Pro Shops or Cabelas…a Texas longhorn.

Our neighbor Kenny has a bobcat and we had him give us a bid to remove several juniper trees that had died.  We wanted the fire hazard removed from our lot and we knew it was something we didn’t have time to do.  He showed up Friday evening with the bobcat and didn’t waste any time pushing most of them down.

Saturday morning, Pete and Jo picked me up at 8am to check out some local garage sales.  Kenny and his crew showed up at about 9am to take down the rest of the trees and clean up the mess

This photo is looking back at an area where we had quite a few trees and you can see Jerry & Sue’s lot in the middle right of the photo.

And here’s the burning pile of the remains of the juniper trees that have been removed…they’ll be burning all night.

Sunday will be another busy social day with breakfast out in the morning and a happy hour in the late afternoon.  Life is good!