Russellsphere

Its been a tiring week; all kinds of projects have kind of all grouped up into this one week – which is odd! I am looking forward to the weekend where I can relax.

The patio is looking great; I want to buy a couple more bags of rubber mulch to finish off the edging and then thats a wrap.

Jeanne has returned back to SC; she has a job interview tomorrow at Palmetto Health – so good luck to her!

We have around 75 gigs of photos/video – that I do not have a good backup of; it sits on my 3 year old 500 Gig external USB drive; where I am sure it is safe; but Ive needed a backup. Thankfully; both Jenny and I fixed our external 160 gig drive (had a faulty usb connector) – and I am in the process of copying over the files now. It will be so good to have a backup of these files !!

When others go and worship; we go swimming! Its nice and quiet (I presume) – and we won’t be bothered by other mortals. We really need to clean the house; it is in a dire state; but swimming is easier – maybe it will knock the kids out, and give us the time we need to clean the house properly.

I am so proud of the patio; its looking fantastic – I am putting down finishing touches, but the hard work is done (thank goodness) – it was an intense project!

UPDATED As is typical for a Russell swimming outing – we didn’t do much swimming; but the kidz had a good time

Been a while since I updated the Parks 09 Tracker; I updated it with the Finlay Park trip we took last weekend – and I have a feeling the park we are going to this morning is a subdivision park; so may not be on our awesome map. Last weekends trip was nice; cos the weather was not so humid; but its humid today!!!

UPDATE: We actually met Fran at her local park; which happened to me on our local map! Pictures here. We then went to her house to meet the rest of the family; and everyone had a blast. Matt even rode his skateboard by skillfully holding Lauren in an interesting move across a public street!! – We had a great time! & their kids are amazing.

Reference:
Finlay Park
Hollywood-Rosehill Park

This weekend – we are visiting with a friend at work (Fran) and introducing her kids to our kids – they are very similar ages – and it will be interesting to see the dynamic between Emma and Nick; they seem to have similar personalities. Wonder who will have the dominant personality?

I don’t really want to work on the patio this weekend; I slept for 11 hours last night – I’m just tired of it; but it is 90 percent complete. I am very proud :-)

Been working hard; the end is in sight.. all I have to do next is fix some wonky pavers and then spread sand everywhere; – then tidy up the borders. YAY!!!!

The patio wasn’t doing to good; it wasn’t straight; or level; or anything. So I decided reading instructions might be helpful; and I’m building a border. Got the wood from Lowes; and connected some metal steaks. The pieces of wood are going to go in great! Its going to be awesome; once its finished..

The Patio is really kicking butt; its hard – but I think the result is going to be spell binding. Also want to take an opportunity to post pictures of our gardening; and completion (apart from more soil) of my raised flower bed. That was a lot of fun.

My little lab – my corn and tomato are growing; plus I have ‘unknown’ seeds I have picked up on my walks around work.

This Irish moss smells lovely and will be planted out back near the patio; it sprouts really awesome tiny white flowers.

This was really easy to make – and inexpensive; about $7 total for ALL of the wood; got my reciprocating saw; did some chopping; some screwing with decking screws and voila – a raised platform. I need to completely fill it with soil; and will be my experimentation area.

This is a draw crape myrtle – stunning flower heads; we might see some bloom this year; it’ll get up to about 3 feet; a good place to put it; the grass isn’t growing right there (too much sun) so will eventually be a planting area.

This is Charlie; we have a lot of flowers on our covered porch now; including a Palm – and Charlie likes to sit on it. He is a good boy as he eats bugs. He changes color; he’s freakin wicked!

Ah the pato; getting there; a lot of hard work – but it will be awesome