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| in my front flower bed |
What a good, but busy, weekend we have had around our house!
It's Sunday evening, about 7:15 and the sun is shining after a cold, dreary, rainy day! It's still chilly but......there's no snow like in the mountains and it IS Spring in the Northeast where it tends to be very fickle.
Friday was a gorgeous day...it actually got up to about 83 degrees! I did some housework in the morning and then my husband, who works from home on Fridays, wanted me to dash over to Lowes for him so I did that. I had had horrible low back pain all day Thursday and couldn't figure out why, until I remembered I had lifted 2 bags of garden soil (no, not at the same time) but by Friday morning, after icing, doing the fitness ball routines, yoga stretches and rubbing Deep Blue on it, I woke up with no pain and it stayed away! After the Lower errand and a lunch of fresh raw veggies and garlic hummus with whole grain crackers, I repotted some flowers I had bought and finished cleaning the deck.
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| repotted violas, a new solar lantern and a swept off deck |
I also prepared the wildflower mini garden for putting seed down in a few weeks, and prepared and planted morning glory seeds in what I call my trellis garden.
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| This little mini garden is where wildflowers will grow later this year....this is located in a corner of our backyard near the firepit and the white pine tree. |
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| This will be where (hopefully!) morning glories will grow and climb. I had really nice ones here from 1996-2020 and then they just vanished. That green plant you see is some kind of wildflower that grew last summer. It felt great to get all the leaves and dead stuff out and get the new soil down and some seeds planted after they soaked overnight in a cup. |
After an early dinner of slow cooker sloppy joes, steamed broccoli, and tossed salad, Dave had a gaming thing he wanted to do, and I took a library book I was finishing up, outdoors to sit by the pear tree. It's a bit stinky (It's a type of pear tree that looks gorgeous but has a yucky scent). Needless to say, I moved to the deck after finishing a chapter. It's so pretty though in bloom!
I also drove over to a part of the bike path, after lunch, that parallels the Mohawk River that I sometimes power walk or bike on. I hadn't been to this section of the bike path (aka the Empire Trail aka the Erie Canal Trail) since last October. I spied this baby turtle in the grass sunning himself.
Friday evening found me finishing up a movie on Netflix while Dave had a gaming event he was involved with. I finished the book and wrote up a book review for my blog and also wrote for the next letter in the A-Z Challenge.
Saturday morning we had to go to the bank where we've had our joint checking and a joint savings for 36 years! We are no longer doing business with this particular bank as they have really gone downhill and are no longer getting good reviews.
We had opened up a new joint checking in a bank closer to our home and are so pleased with the service there.
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| our new bank for checking account |
We have our own separate savings accounts and CD accounts in the credit union near our home as well. So we closed out the account, deposited what was left in Dave's savings as his is smaller than mine and we agreed we would use that money for a down payment for him to get a new car next year. The credit union is in a new location near where my daughters went to elementary school and only about 3 minutes from our house. It's a gorgeous new building and even has a coffee station. We love it!
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| This is the building where the credit union(Broadview) is now located although the name on the sign is the former one that was there. |
After we ran those two errands, it was time for me to get ready to go meet a friend from my childhood hometown who was driving out to this area and we were going to hike to a firetower that is only open a few times a year. Yesterday was one of those days!
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| a very short walk up this old road to the firetower cabin and tower |
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| the Cornell Firetower was open so we climbed it and had an ok view of the Vermont Mt and the southern Saratoga County Region |
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| a pretty pond walkway at Wilton Preserve/Camp Saratoga |
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| Delgaden Pond at Camp Saratoga/Wilton Preserve |
The "hike" was disappointing. It was really just a walk, less than a half mile, up an old camp road (Camp Saratoga used to be a Boy Scout Camp and now the town and state allow groups to camp there with a permit). The firetower is kept up by volunteers and is only open to the public a few times each spring and summer.
The entire preserve is very pretty and I may go back to hike the 2.5 mile loop around the pond on another day. It was nice to get together with my longtime friend and get caught up and spend the day outside. It was 72 degrees and only about a 35 minute drive from my house. We had a really good time!
After our 2 hour jaunt poking around the Boy Scout camp, we parted ways and I drove home to cook some dinner for Dave and I. We had baked salmon and salad with some leftover new potatoes and zucchini.
Dave wanted to finish up the gaming event he had started the evening before, so I chose to watch a really good movie on Netflix called Danny Collins with Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer (I'm a huge fan of him), Annette Benning (Love her!) and Jennifer Garner. It was such an endearing film. That's two films I've seen on Netflix in the last week that were top notch.
After the movie, Dave was done gaming so he and I spent some time chatting and reading books in bed......we were laughing that we were in bed by 10:30 on a Saturday evening when back in our early years of marriage, we would still be either out with friends, or hosting game nights, or sitting around the firepit.
Sunday morning we woke up to chilly temps so I went around the upstairs shutting the windows and it was pouring rain! We showered, had breakfast, did our devotions and were in church for the 11 AM service. After church, we spent some time talking with Courtney and Tyler and his parents, then spent some time making plans with our "third daughter" Hannah (our choir leader and friend) and her hubby Scot who is our Production Manager at church, for them to come over in a few weeks for Sunday dinner. Dave and I were wanting some "comfort food" so we popped over to our local diner and it was PACKED. There were NO parking spots at all so we drove to the other diner in town and that too had a long waiting line. So...we ended up at my fave Italian place where I had just gone Wednesday night with some book group friends. I had driven us to church so Dave ordered a glass of wine and I had some iced tea. He got one of the meatball paninis and fries and I ordered a MiniPoint (a 4 slice pizza and a small salad): I chose the Bruschetta pizza and a Caesar salad. Everything was delicious and I brought home some of the pizza to have tonight. MidPoint Pizza offers 28 different signature pizzas (you order by the number...the Bruschetta is #7 and my fave the Chicken Pesto is #11) along with "make your own" where you can basically create any pizza you want. They also offer vegan crust and two different kinds of gluten free crust (rice and cauliflower). You can make any pizza vegan if you don't order animal meat or cows milk cheese. Our vegan daughter really likes this place, too. I eat cows milk cheese so I always get mozzarella on my za.
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| My lunch |
By the time we arrived back home from church and our lunch date, it was 2:30 pm so we changed our clothes and Dave wanted me to watch an old movie from the 1930s with him starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. I had seen it years ago with my dad and now it's available on You Tube for free.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing, talking, reading and I got caught up on some blog reading.
How was your weekend??
