Power wash
The last week of June was scheduled for the power wash of the whole building and the cottages. Two companies were hired so that it would only take a week instead of two, and the water would contain some chlorine. Balcony and patio furniture and outside plants had to be taken indoors and help was available when requested. Because a schedule was not available, most people had everything secured inside starting on Monday, but when we saw the ladders at the front entrance, we waited until Thursday to ask for help with moving the heavy potted plants into the garage. During the day we left the garage doors open, not because of the temperature – it was hot inside and out – but so that the plants would get some light. Would you believe that the Hibiscus, with large red flowers, after two days out of the sun now produces pink ones? I’m curious to see how long that no-sun influence will last. Our cottage was washed Friday night during dinner. On Saturday a young man came around the whole building washing the windows. Fast jobs and good jobs all.The smell of chlorine still hung around until Monday.
Bobcats in our back yard
We have added an unbelievable new animal species to our backyard menagerie: two bobcats. I saw them running, one behind the other, through the thicket in the Divide in the middle of the day, when I was out with a bottle of water to refill the birdbath I had hung in the tree two days before. How is it possible, I thought, that the animals I spotted over the last two years can exist in a relatively narrow band of forest between the freeway and populated neighborhoods? There must be a connection to a larger habitat where they can coexist somehow. I have seen two deer, a red fox, the two bobcats, and smaller animals like the turtles, the geese, and many bird varieties. It has been very hot lately, in the nineties, and the sprinkler system has not been working for weeks. Somehow nobody can fix it, the manager told us. I hope it won’t last long, because the grass is getting brown and flowers are wilting. The pond level got dangerously low, and the geese families were walking across the sandbar in the pond like they were walking on water! Thank goodness we got a couple of fierce rain storms to fill up the pond to a certain level again.
Women’s World Cup Soccer
On July 3 we were invited to come over to our son’s home and watch the semi-final World Cup Soccer match of the Netherlands against Sweden. It was not a very exciting game, because no goals were scored until in the first of two 15 minutes extended time, when the Dutch team scored a goal. With that, they earned a place in the finals against the USA last Sunday morning. We watched the game, which was more exciting after Megan Rapinoe, at 34 the oldest woman ever to score a goal, kicked the ball into the goal, unstoppable. The Dutch girls fought hard, but another goal followed a little later, and the US girls won the World Cup Soccer 2019 with a score of 2-0.
We’re packing
The time has finally come to start getting ready for our fabulous three-week vacation. The beginning and the end are long days, with 6 hour flights from here to the west coast, but then we can relax for three weeks. From Seattle, after a night in a five star hotel, a gift from our travel agent, we sail on Regatta of Oceania Cruises through the Inner Passage of Alaska and back. One of their smaller ships, it hold only about 600 passengers and we are so looking forward to it.
We will disembark one day early, in Victoria, where our daughter and her family live, and will spend eleven days with them. It has been a year since we saw them, during our family reunion in Duck on the Outerbanks, so the girls will have grown!
For now, this will be my last Blog Post until we are back in Cary. That will mean four weeks of no story in your mailbox! I hope you are going on vacation too! It will not be easy for me to stay away from my PC, because I LOVE to write! But next Wednesday I will be cruising under a full moon to Alaska, the Land of the Midnight Sun!
It’s a wonderful Life!
Until next time,
Ronny