Sunny weekend

Yesterday was one of those days in the Pacific Northwest when it's the most beautiful place on earth. About 75 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. The trees are green on green, the azaleas and rhododendrons are mostly blooming brilliantly, and I want to go outside in my shorts and a t-shirt and no shoes.

So I did. I started up the pressure washer and worked on the downstairs deck and the playhouse for three hours. It feels like good exercise even though I'm mostly just standing there directing the spray. When I was finished I was filthy and soaking wet and tired but there was grass to lie down in and PowerAde to drink and about five hours of daylight still left. Ah, June!

Art attached a chain to the back of the pickup and pulled a brambled plant out of the ground in the side yard, and we'll replace it with an asparagus bed. I love that gradually we're putting more food into our yard and less ornamental stuff. We set up our garden two years ago. Last year the cherry tree produced one cherry, which got eaten by some critter. The apple tree produced nothing. We harvested five tiny pears. This year all three trees were laden with flowers, so I expect we'll have the special pleasure of fruit from our own trees. And the raspberries are spreading like crazy - I thought only blackberries did that!

We have a hot tub we installed way back in 1995. We haven't used it much in the last few years because I got tired of messing around with the maintenance. Yesterday as I was pressure washing, my neighbors with the chickens were planting squash in their garden. We share a greenhouse, so when Jennie came over for the squash starts, I asked her if they were hot tub people. She said yes. I offered to share our hot tub with them if her husband Jason would maintain it. He's the guy that already mows our lawn when he's doing his (one of the benefits of us being older). Jennie and Jason talked about it and said "we're in". So we'll provide the supplies and he will do the work and we'll all use the hot tub. They're big into organic gardening and sustainability, so I suspect Jason will find ways of keeping the water clean and balanced that are healthy. A win-win for our two-family community.

Today I'm going to watch my blogging buddy DJan (www.eyeontheedge.blogspot.com) skydive. It seems surprising that we've never met since we've been reading about each other for over a year. She's an avid hiker and gets WAY more exercise than I do. One of the things on my bucket list is to overcome my fear of heights, but there is no way I'll ever skydive. Just watching others doing it today will be a bit scary!

I can hear a weed whacker in some neighbor's yard. The deck is sunny already. Larissa the Designer Cat is pestering to be fed. Time to go watch some skydivers on a beautiful sunny Sunday.