Raincharm’s Weblog

Usually packing for a trip is a slow gathering followed by the concerted counting of shirts, pants, etc, and then an hour of so of into the suitcase. I had started the slow gathering as normal, and then did the counting step a few days ago. Today I got to the into the suitcase step, even though I don’t leave until early morning Thursday.

This into the suitcase was different because I decided to try using packing cubes. These had been gifted to me for retirement, but I had not tried them out yet. I finally really looked at them and realized they had a regular zipper plus a compression zipper.

Three are in use, in the suitcase, although one was too full of socks to compress. I decided to take another to use for dirty clothes segregation, just because it was handy.

I will still need to do the last minute items, at the last minute.

Yard work today included mowing the lawn. All of the lawn, even the parking strip. This is the area that had extensive crow damage. But really invasive grubs damage. The crows were merely removing the tasty invasive treats who would have killed the lawn eventually. So the crows may have been doing a public service by attacking an invasive interloper.

After essentially removing what was left of the “grass” (mostly weeds) we put down compost, topsoil, and micro-clover seed.

The result is mostly clover and some other green plants. There are a few bare spots. If they don’t fill in I may seed some more. The rectangular spot next to the sidewalk is our water meter box.

Side note: I play Wordle. On Sunday on guess 3 I had two letters in the wrong location, in both guesses 1 and 2. I was having a very difficult time finding a word that fit with the letters I had, and those that had been eliminated already. I put in a set of letters that worked but were not a word I knew. It was accepted, not the answer, but more clues for another guess.

Flawn. Never heard of it and didn’t know what it meant. A bit later I looked it up to see what it meant. From AI

A flawn (short for “flowering lawn”) is an eco-friendly lawn alternative that blends traditional turf grass with low-growing, perennial wildflowers and clovers.

So apparently we have a flawn. Who knew.

We manage to get to the street fair most years. It’s weather and conflicts dependent. This year the planets aligned. The fair has been around for decades. When we were first in the area it was huge, with good quality merchandise. This seemed to ebb for a while, but it seems to be rebounding.

This year I had a particular item I was looking for. I believe they are referred to as noodle bowls. Bigger than cereal bowls, with a flatter bottom. We stopped in several pottery stalls without finding what was in my mind. Or just one, and I wanted multiples. Then we found our stand. Not only did they have them, they were about half the price of other close items we had seen.

With that errand successfully completed it’s off to the Mariners, in the sun! I am warm for the moment.

Today’s sports were fun, even though both of the home teams lost.

Josh Naylor got at least a single while we were at the game. And 2 home runs were hit very close to us, one for them and one for us. And we left in the 6th inning, with the score Mariners 2 – Padres 5, to head to game 2.

The Sounders lost to the LA Galaxy 0 – 1. It was nice to see Peter Kingston playing for the Sounders. The first time we watched him play he was with Ballard FC, the USL division 2 team we watched last night.

We’ll be back in Seattle Stadium for the Egypt vs. Belgium World Cup game on June 15th.

Hopefully it will be a little warmer for that game.

We have a very busy next few days planned with in person sports. Two soccer and two baseball games through Sunday. And rain is predicted. And cool temperatures.

Tonight will be Ballard FC soccer, their opening match for the season. No place to hide from the rain. Ponchos and seat cushions will have to do. Now we just need to decide whether to walk, bus, drive, or carpool. We want to be early enough to get a seat in the back row where there’s a small overhang.

Ballard FC beat Olympia FC 3 to 0. It was an entertaining game, but cold. It rained a bit, but not enough to pull out the ponchos.

Tomorrow we start at a Mariners game (they have an umbrella style roof). Then, probably before the Ms game is over, we’ll cross the street to see the Sounders play. We have great seats, but they’re exposed to the elements. My hope is that the rain has subsided by game-time.

Other than dinner our evening delight was watching our neighbor play coach pitch. We walked to the field (at an elementary school), about 3.6 miles from our house. It was a good walk, with much more up than down. What was even better was that we got a ride home from our neighbor.

Carl had baseball time with his elder-buddies earlier in the day. One of them locked their keys in their car. It sounded like they McGyvered their way in using bits and pieces they had including a small crowbar and a bungie cord.

While this was going on I was working in the yard. Mostly in the raspberry patch. I added some compost on top of the fertilizer I put out yesterday. And hooked up a hose to a drip line I set amongst the raspberries several years ago. I wasn’t sure it would still work, but it seems like it did, so watering was done.

I also found that I had left a half bag of topsoil closed, but in a bucket for the last 4 – 6 weeks. It was outside, under a bush, but outside. It dawned on me that it had rained more than once since then. What could possibly have happened?! So I emptied the incredibly smelly water from the bucket and lugged the very heavy soggy (still in the bag) topsoil to the hole in the backyard where a dead rhody had been removed. The sodden soil was excavated from the bag, into the hole, where it is currently drying out. Until it rains tonight. Sometime soon I will move it around to  incorporate it into the ground. I may add some other, dryer topsoil I have as well.  I’m not going to replace the rhody this summer. I want the area to recover from whatever killed the rhody, and also from the rhody itself. Rhodys are notorious for not allowing things to thrive under their canopy.

And I saw a squirrel stripping bark off of our fir tree. Apparently they do this to get to the cambrium. If they do too much it can kill the tree, and they have done a lot.

I feel like our yard is a place of doom right now.

Orzo salad and Giordano’s deep dish pizza, followed by tiramisu for dessert.  I had more than I should have, but it was worth it. We had the usual suspects over. So there were sports on the TV.

The Chicago Cubs first. Giordano’s is a Chicago pizza, so that matched. The Cubs lost.

Then the Mariners. The Mariners lost.

I had checked the Sounders soccer score near the end of their game against San Jose. The Sounders won – after I checked. There was only 1 minute left when I checked, so it must have happened right away. Yeah finally a winner.

And then onto hockey. We caught the end of the Colorado Avalanche vs. Minnesota Wild. Earlier we had noted Minnesota was ahead 3-0. When we checked back after the Mariners ended the score was tied 3-3. Colorado prevailed, winning 4-3, and taking the series over Minnesota, moving on to the next round of playoffs. Our son is an Avalanche fan, so we’ll count this as a win.

Were there basketball games on tonight? I’m not sure, and we didn’t look for any. Enough was enough for tonight.

Dinner was good, and the Chicago style pizza was the impetus for the gathering. There is some pizza leftover, but even more leftover orzo salad. This is my fault. It was eaten, but I made way too much. As I was starting on it this morning I considered making a half batch. Why did I make a full batch? Who knows, but we will be eating this salad for the rest of the week at least. And this is after forcing takeaway boxes on most of our guests.

Friends over on a weekday night. This part of retirement I could get used to.

What I didn’t do was take a before picture. This is the raspberry patch. The weeds in general grow wherever they want and there were raspberry plants trying to establish outside the boundary we have set.

That means I had to pull out some raspberries that had gone wild. It always hurts to do that, but I have to be brutal. It didn’t physically hurt because I had leather gloves on.

During the first foray to the patch I did a lot of pulling, and a bit of digging. I spent an hour, maybe more, but finally needed sustenance. After a rest I went out again, but only lasted a half hour before I had to stop. I blame the blood letting from yesterday and the higher temperatures today.

Assuming it doesn’t rain all day tomorrow I may even get some fertilizer added. There are some blooms starting to show, so I hope it’s not too late.

I think it’s actually the 4th time, but I finally passed the iron test to give blood.

I have given before, many times. But as of recently I have been on a deferred run.

Not much else got done today, by me. Carl did get some weeding done, shopping, laundry, cooking. After making that list I feel really lazy. I don’t plan on doing much after giving blood because I get winded climbing a flight of stairs. Perhaps I should have scheduled the appointment later in the day.

My mother was never a big fan of Mother’s Day. Perhaps she was, and just really disliked a certain song associated with the holiday.

In any event, we do miss our mother’s.

We can’t wish them Happy Mothers Day, whether they wanted to hear it or not. Both were highly capable, intelligent women who were not expected to have independent careers. They both did eventually have their time adding to society, but I don’t think it necessarily matched their younger dreams. My Mother’s memorable advice as I left for my first job in engineering was, “Don’t let them know you can type.”

And now we’re grandparents, which means there are mothers in the next generation down. Both raising exceptional grandkids (in my opinion).

With respect to how times have changed, they have both had working careers barely interrupted by the addition of children.