Goodness, how time flies - even in a pandemic with a halfhearted lockdown. We only brace for the worst as we see no improvement in the statistics for Covid19.
Nevertheless, I've started to hit my stride with a few attempts at travel planning and that feels good. Plans are for the fall of 2021 - which on the one hand seems far away but on the other hand is probably way too soon for us to get on an airplane and head for Europe. "Time will tell" has probably never been more apt so I'll spend a lot of time keeping an eye on cancellation deadlines. The good news is that the cruises we canceled for 2020 have resulted in a 125% refund that must be used within two years. This means we have more moolah to apply to the next cruise(s) and we can spring for a bigger cabin just in case we are quarantined on the ship.
Speaking of which, as we tentatively start to plan cruises for next year we note with some discomfort the fact that two ships, one in Norway the other in the South Pacific, started cruising last week and guess what? Yep, despite what they called state of the art preventive techniques both ships are now docked for two weeks' quarantine since crew members and guests contracted Covid. As the great Yogi Berra once said,"It is deja vu all over again!"
I asked Cindy to glance through her daily journal for ideas that we might want to include in this blog, and she lost count of the number of times these words appear: mowing, weeding, and mulch. Pretty exciting times here at Casa Embee, and of course the references to mulch included buying, hauling, unloading, and spreading ... and by the end of June we realized we needed some help in the form of a truck.
Therefore we have swapped out our fleet of vehicles. We are giving Cindy’s beloved Tweetie Bird, a bright yellow 2006 Chevy Aveo with only 25K miles, to granddaughter Emily so that she has a reliable ride when and if Florida State opens again. Cindy has greatly missed her old Ford Ranger so we looked around and found a lovely 2008 ebony-colored Ford Ranger to replace Tweetie. It is in great shape and with all of our gardening needs, we really needed a pickup not only for mulch but for rock, sod and sand. Her name is Vol de Nuit! Here is a story Cindy wrote about her first solo flight in Vol de Nuit.
No Good Deed Shall Go Unpunished
- or -
The Good Idea That Wasn't
The first was my title; Wm weighed in with the second one ... trying to make a long story short here, but we've had a minor issue in the neighborhood with tree branches hanging over the sidewalks. This forced the walkers and runners into the street so I posted a nice message on our "Next Door" app requesting residents to trim their trees. It was amazing how much action ensued - almost everyone with offending branches cut them (including me; those trees keep growing). The other morning I was running past one of the last hold-outs and he happened to be outside mowing, so I stopped and asked him if I could cut the lower branches off his tree. He was only too happy to accept, so an hour later I drove the truck over, loppers and gloves on board.
I started my work and within a few minutes he joined me and offered to help. I started to put branches into the truck bed and he said he'd take them, but Smart Cindy said, oh no - I'll take those branches (since I was thinking that was part of my offer to help). In my defense, I was only planning to cut 3 or 4 small branches. But Jorge (or whatever his name is) decided to trim the entire tree, all the way around, far beyond what was needed to clear the sidewalk. See attached photo! I was very glad that Wm was in the backyard and did not see my pyrrhic victory before I had time to get all the branches out of the truck and bound together.
Those of you who reply, don't be TOO hard on me. Ha.
Stay healthy and don’t worry, be happy! Cindy and Wm
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| Vol de Nuit and the Yard Crew |
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| Heaping Helping of Greens |
