Today I noticed...I REALLY like digital accessibility!

I have become a person who really appreciates and looks for ways to make almost anything digitally accessible. 

Since my retirement, I have volunteered a bit in our local community. One focus of my efforts has been with the Nolensville Historic Cemetery. I am in the process of digitizing all of the records associated with lots at the cemetery. Each lot is assigned a certificate of ownership. Since the 1930s, the deeds and certificates of ownership have been on paper and need to be digitized. Each of the sales receipts, each burial documentation, each transfer of ownership upon resale from one owner to the next has been documented with paper. There are more than a dozen four-inch notebooks full of documents. So, I am in the process of scanning page after page of documents and saving them to cloud storage. Plus, I am linking each document into a couple or three spreadsheets to make searching for information more streamlined and easier. Already, we have found this to be helpful and efficient. 

Win! Win!

The other day, when our daughter-in-law sent me a photo and explained that she is organizing her classroom library, my immediate thought was that we need to enter that information into a spreadsheet so that she has a digital listing and can easily search her inventory.

We can use her color-coding strategies that she is applying, include the author's name, title, and reading level information, (and more) as ways to label columns. This will make it easy and efficient for her to search and sort book information.

Of course, I volunteered to help out with creating the spreadsheets. This sort off nudged me to notice that organizing and making lists and files and documents digitally accessible is something that makes me happy - and does the same for others!

Hay Week!

It has been hay week here on the farm! 

Mike has been moaning and groaning about all the rain without a stretch of sunny weather because he had hay that needed harvesting. We are grateful for the rain and cooler temperatures that May gave us but he also wanted to get the hay out of the field. 

Well, on Saturday, the rainy weather gave way to hot, hot, hot temperatures. 

As I pulled out of the driveway to go to our eldest grandson's baseball tournament, Mike was beginning to cut the hay.

When I returned on Sunday morning, the field with the cut hay is what greeted me.

Mike had already fluffed the hay with the tedder. That process just sort of picks up the hay and allows air to help to dry it out. He was beginning to rake the hay into windrows to prepare it for baling.

Then, for the past couple of days he has been baling the hay. It yielded fifty-plus bales and one hot, sweaty, dirty guy.

Next, Mike and Stephen will haul the rolls to the barn and get it all stored away. It will make good winter feed for the livestock - ours and son, Stephen's. There will be a day or two of rest and hay will will come again later in the summer when the second cutting is ready for harvest.

Wildlife Friends

 Since we live on a farm, we have several animals. Oh, we aren't over run with farm animals. We do have a couple of goats and a miniature donkey. However, most of the animals we see around here are wildlife. 

Last year, we had a whole herd of deer who lived here and grazed our front yard and front field. Some of them have moved on. However, we still have a resident deer or two. Mike said that he saw a couple of babies when he was cutting the hay in the front field. So, we knew there was a mother deer somewhere nearby as well. 

One afternoon last week I made a delivery next door and visited some of the grands as they were playing and eating outside. When I came back down the hill and circled the buggy round to park it next to the back porch, I saw the mama deer!

She and I just paused and stared at one another for a few minutes. She was sizing me up and I was trying not to scare her. After a moment or two, she turned and ran across the front yard and around the side of the house to get away from me. Then, she slowed and headed up the hill toward the hay barn.

Today I noticed...Families are the same - only different.

I had lunch with a friend who I had not visited with in quite some time. We sat and talked about our children and grandchildren. So many of the tales she shared were almost mirror images of our family experiences. There was a bit of difference but so much was the same. 

She has a grandchild who just graduated college and is working as an intern this summer before starting grad school and we have one who just graduated high school and will be going to school this fall. She has one in high school who is being home schooled and we have three in high school and a couple of them are home schooled. They each have their own interests and personalities but they all have commonalities.

I truly left the restaurant thinking of how I had enjoyed the visit with my friend and that I am really blessed to have the family that I do. While her family is the same as mine in lots and lots of ways, they are also very, very different. We both are blessed and love each and every member of our family and are grateful to have them as a part of our lives.

It's the same - only different.

Good Spring for Flowers

 I have always been a flower lover. I think I inherited it from my ancestors. Both of my grandmothers were flower lovers. My mother is also a flower lover. So, I guess I just inherited their green thumb.

I can remember visiting my Granny and she would take us on a walk around her yard and point out different flowers and plants and tell us little stories about them. "This one is called Artemisia and that was my (some relative)'s name...This one is a shade lover...This one is a ground cover and the color and texture really makes the flowers around it look prettier...Geraniums do well in this pot because it drains well and they don't like wet feet..."

So, I sort of think of my ancestors when I am selecting, planting, and tending to my flowers. This year I stumbled across some beautiful geraniums with a deep crimson bloom. So, I decided that they would be the base for my back porch plantings. 

I selected some that had only a bloom or two but lots of buds. They have been beautiful!

I added a deep blue/purple petunia and a white trailing plant that I think is called Bacopa. I also have some sort of plant that grows tall and has blooms along the stalk of it that is just now coming along and getting ready to bloom.

The rainy conditions we have experienced has made flower growing simple. I've only had to hand-water them a few times because we have gotten downpours almost daily. 

In the smaller pots, I added purple petunias and a variegated Lantana. It has yellow, orange, hot pink, and red in the bloom. 

I spend a while each morning wandering round sipping tea, plucking off spent blooms, and just enjoying the beauty of these flowers! 

A Quick and Easy Project

 One of the things I've noticed in my retirement is that I tend to procrastinate. So, with that being noticed, I also have noticed that I am not getting things done as quickly as I thought I might. I guess I thought that by now all of the closets, cabinets, and enclosures in our house would be cleared out and tidy. I guess I thought that by now our acreage would look like a well-tended garden. I don't really know what I thought would change about me to get those things into such a shape, but it hasn't and it doesn't all look and feel like that. 

Oh, I have done some clearing and straightening and cleaning out and tidying. However, we are still far, far from having a place for every little thing and everything in it's place!

One project that I did tackle is one of our mailboxes. Yes, I said one of them because we have three. One is on a post at the back porch and holds gardening tools.

One is at the end of the driveway and the postman leaves our mail there.

The one I took on as a project is on the end of the house near the basement entrance. We added it years ago when my mother-in-law first moved in with us. I thought it would be a great place for us to leave her mail after gathering it from the one at the end of the driveway and we would not have to disturb her. I did that for years when I brought the mail to the house. 

Then, it became Mike's 'job' to get the mail and he used that as an excuse to go inside and check on his mother each day. So, it became just a decorative element beside the door. Since Mrs. O has passed, it became an easy spot to leave something small for others to pick up or a place to stash the cash bag for a Facebook Marketplace sale. 

Over time, it had gotten sad, rusted, and unsightly. It is still functional and handy for leaving something to be picked up when we are not going to be handy. So, I didn't want to just remove it. I decided a paint job would do the trick.

There was also a stinging set of residents who were keeping house inside there. So, I took some soapy water and a brush and cleaned it up a bit. Then, the next day, I wedged large pieces of cardboard around it. I dug out a can of anti-rust spray paint that was left over from another project and gave it a coat of paint.

You can see that it has an insignia on it to indicate royalty. I think the advertisement for it said that it was modeled to be like Queen Elizabeth's way back when I bought it. So, I thought it was a tongue in cheek way of honoring my mother-in-law. I think I am the only one who ever even know that, though.

The new coat of paint gave it new life and I am quite pleased with it. It is a nice decorative piece and even if we never use it as it was intended, it sort of brings a little smile to my face. 

Plus, one project has been checked of my list!