And Then There Were None

Yesterday was not raining so we headed out early to dispatch the remaining five day lilies.  The root system on the last one we dug up was unbelievable.  It had satellite clumps of roots.  There were no shoots above ground, but the main root ball had sent out other masses of roots.  I'm pretty sure it was intent on world domination.  Thursday Junk and Dump will come and haul them away.  That will be good.

It was good that we got it done when we did.  The atmospheric river of water arrived this morning, it's supposed to rain until next Thursday.  We have stuff to do inside.  After finishing the digging yesterday we took the 82 inch long curtains back to Pennys.  We thought we'd try 96 inch curtains.  We unpackaged one of the panels this morning, and they are going back.  They look pretty monolithic on the small sliding glass door.  So, we're back to online shopping, local brick and mortar has bupkis in the way of 84 inch curtains with back tabs or pinch pleats.  Grommets are no bueno because they let in light, which is what we don't want.  It's always something.

I took these two pictures on the last ride.

Google sent me this photo.  It appears that it munged the above two photos into a panoramic version.  I did not ask it to do that.  Apparently Photos feels free to rummage around in my account and do stuff with my pictures.  I'm not sure I approve of this activity. 

Today the sprinkler guy came to blow out the irrigation system.  It's kind of weird, they hook a compressor to one of the sprinkler hose bibs and put air through the lines until no more water comes shooting out.  We can't use those two hose bibs until spring or the system will be full of water again, and if there is a major freeze we'll have broken pipes.  In AZ we used the irrigation most of the year so we never had to do this.  The guy did something with the valve box, all we know is that he took the cover off and did not replace it.  We wonder if he did something in the box that needed to be undone, but he forgot.  Houses should really come with an owner's manual.  We left our new owners in Tucson information on stuff that they needed to be aware of.  Most of what we know came from the nice neighbor across the street.

So there you go, all the lilies are deceased.

Another Ride to the Lake

Here we have pictures from the always lovely Centennial Trail heading towards Long Lake.   We rode to the lake from the McClellan trailhead.  When we got to the trail head the phone said it was 60 degrees.  We had a frost the previous night so the air was fairly cold.  It's a road ride, and there are no cars allowed.  Love that.

At the trail head there is a helicopter landing site, always good for the grievously maimed rescued from the woods.

The lake.  That's a boat launch down there.   

This is taken from the Deep Creek bridge.  There was zero wind.  Any current was not visible to us.

After some internal debate we went with the following clothing choices.

Me:  Undershirt, jersey, light weight knee warmers, heavy arm warmers, vest, light weight polar fleece head sock under the helmet.  Full finger MTB gloves.  White Wrightsocks.

Jim:  Undershirt, jersey, heavy weight knee warmers, heavy arm warmers, vest, black Head Sweats under the helmet.  Full finger MTB gloves.  Heavy-ish socks.  Jim thought maybe he could have gone with lighter socks.

It was chilly starting out because you start with a down hill.  As we hit the climbs we warmed up.  Overall I would say we had clothing perfection.

Here is the agave under his new grow light.  The C clamp could be a little better quality, but the goose necks are very adjustable, and so I think I'm keeping it.

If the rain holds off tomorrow, we'll be back out murdering the day lilies.

Four Down, Five To Go

The plan today was to generate a small amount of yard waste that would fit in a plastic yard waste bag that would fit in the trash container which goes out to the street tomorrow night.  HAH!  Double Hah Hah Hah!  We started off cutting the peonies almost to the ground, and raking up maple tree and rhododendron debris.  Then we decided to determine if we could dig up the day lilies or if we'd have to pay someone to do it.  My nice neighbor loaned me her pitch fork and we started in on it.  Yes, the elderly can dig up giant day lilies with the proper tools. 

This is the first to die.  After getting it out of the ground we decided maybe we should not cut the tops off.  They ended up going everywhere.

These are the four we got out today.  Next Thursday, Junk and Dump will come and take them and any other bags of leaves away.  If we had gotten the yard waste container when we arrived, we could have put them in there, but we didn't.  For some reason we thought we wouldn't need one since the man who cuts the grass hauls it away.  Hah!  Double Hah!

These five will be biting the dust soon.  They just had to go, I hate these things.  Probability is high that we will spend the next ten years killing off the tubers we left in the ground today, but I can live with that. 

The black material is shade cloth, which we have stretched across two window wells.  I'm hoping they'll keep the leaves from falling in to the wells so that I don't have to go in there and pick them up.  See the concrete curbing that defines the edge of the grass?  That's a thing in Spokane, we saw that in many of the houses we looked at online.

This is a tree down the street.  It's an impressive autumn display of color.  However, soon the leaves will be in the yards.

Tomorrow appears to be the last good day for awhile, rain is coming.  Since Spokane is in drought I can't whine about it too much.  I think we will go ride out at Riverside again.

A Ride in the Woods

This is cool.  I took a picture of the agave October 9.  Look in the center of his petals, and notice the one in the middle is closed up.

This photo was taken this morning, and there has been change to the petal that was closed.  Now it's open.  So growth and progress are being made.  Cactus grow so slowly, it's miraculous to actually notice and see a change in them.

Here is the Japanese lantern as seen from the dining room window.

Today's ride was good.  We arrived at the Wilber trailhead around 1:00.  The sun was out, standing by the car we were feeling warm, and decided to ditch the jackets for vests.  It was 58 or 59 degrees.

Me:  Jersey, undershirt, heavy arm warmers, light weight tights, vest, full finger MTB gloves, gray Wrightsocks.  The lightweight polar fleece head sock under the helmet.

Jim:  Jersey, undershirt, heavy arm warmers, light weight tights, vest, full finger winter gloves, gray socks. The black Head Sweats under the helmet.

It had been cloudy all morning, making it feel cold, then the sun came out.  While riding we had periods of cloud cover and sun, but we were in the woods so there was also shade.  Over all it was a successful dressing.  The heavy arm warmers made up for no jacket sleeves.

There are old structures in the woods.  Part of it used to be owned by the military, so we guess that some of them date from when it was a base.  It's still military, the National Guard was out in the woods doing something today.  Fortunately it did not involve live fire.  We saw this on a concrete wall that used to be part of something. I have no idea of what message they're trying to convey.

It was a good ride, we rode more single track than before which was fun.  It's mainly nice single track, few big rocks or roots, mainly dirt and pine needles.

That's it!  That's all I've got.

Curtains and Weights

Greetings and Salutations.  We have been busy.  With what have we been busy, you wonder.  Buying and returning curtains is what.  Nothing should be this difficult.  The first thing we bought was 100 inches wide, we figured one panel would do well blocking out the neighbor's security lights.  It probably would have except for the fact that we were told we must use the middle curtain rod support because of its weight.  Well you can't do that and pull a curtain across it at the same time.  That curtain went back.  The second attempt was also an abject failure.  See photo below.

See the gap between the carpet and the bottom of the curtain?  The panels are supposed to measure 84 inches.  A tape measure revealed that it's actually 82 inches and now they will be going back, as well.  It just should not be this tedious. 

I took the next photo at 8:30 this morning through an open door.  There is a reflection of some part of me mid photo.  I am not sure how that happened.  Anyway, it was a lovely morning.  The terrible day lillies are reaching the stage where they need to be cut to the ground.  I am really looking forward to that.

Here is the always lovely Parryi in the morning light.

I have a grow light on order from Amazon.  Hopefully it will get him through the winter months healthy and happy.  Days are short up here.  We're at 47.65 degrees north.  However, London is at 51.50 degrees north, so their days are even shorter in the winter.  I did not know the following until I looked up Spokane's lattitude,  "Even the southernmost point of Britain is further north than the northernmost part of the contiguous United States (the 48 adjoining states, so this does not include Alaska or Hawaii), while London lies further north than almost all major Canadian cities, including Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec City, and Toronto."

Amazon came today.  I took this through the screen door.  This is my first lift gate truck delivery from them.

The home gym came.  Yay!  There are about a thousand pieces to it, all of which had to be unboxed and carried downstairs individually because neither of us could lift the three boxes it was packed in.

Since it was a perfect day, we went out and worked in the yard some after receiving the heavy packages.  It was in the upper 60's with full sun.  Tomorrow should be less sunny, but still good to ride.  The maple is sneaking up on dropping its leaves.  We moved the Japanese lantern over there, it looks nice under the maple.

Sooner or later we're going to need a new tea kettle.  Most of the new ones do not have a removable lid, which is something I really like.  We saw this one at Crate and Barrel while in Tucson and liked it.  I'm putting it here so I can find the name of it in the future.  Unposted pictures become lost over time.  It's a Haden Dorchester Kettle.  Please make a note of this, for when the current kettle become in-op.

Is it not lovely?  They also make toasters and coffee makers in this color.

This is from the department of you can't fix stupid.  Anti-vaxxers held a rally in front of the NYT building, waving flags and chanting "Defund the media."  Do they think taxes fund journalism?  Video is here if you want to hear stupid as well.

Other than this, I have zippity doo-dah all to report from the soon to be frozen north.

Riding and Doing Stuff in the House

Greetings People of Earth.  What have you been doing?  We sprinkled more art in the house.  We're done now.  We need something really big for the room that has no purpose.  It really doesn't, it's acting as furniture over flow storage.  Pieces that had functional homes in Tucson now are in there.  I think it was supposed to be a dining room or sitting room, but really, who does either thing anymore?  There is a big wall in there that needs something.

These two prints are small, all of the walls are fairly large.  They ended up leaning on a ledge underneath a large window on the staircase landing.  I like them there.

We got the Parryi repotted.  It's very heavy now.  This may be the last pot.  At present he's living in the office in a south facing window.  It's not ideal from an amount of sunlight perspective, but it's what there is.

Sunday we got the road bikes out of their packing boxes and assembled them.  This took place in the garage.  If the brake arches had not been removed, it would have been much faster than it was, but they were.  Anyway, we prevailed and they are now in their winter home in the basement.

Yesterday we got flu shots.  Since we're old, we got the high dose versions.  Afterwards I did not feel bad as I have in the past.  The flu season this year will be interesting since almost no one had it last year. 

We rode in the woods today.  It was cold, really cold.  OK not cold for many of you, but cold for heat acclimated people. 

We started from the McClellan trail head about 1:00 pm.  It was 53 and sunny.  However, the sun is low here in the north, so sunny here is not like sunny in AZ.  Also, one must be aware of how cold it was the night before.  We wore the following.

Me:  Undershirt, jersey, lightweight arm warmers, lightweight tights and the red jacket.  Heavy polar fleece head sock under the helmet and full finger mountain bike glove.  Gray Wrightsocks, mountain bike shoes.

Jim:  Undershirt, jersey, lightweight arm warmers, lightweight tights and a jacket.  Heavy polar fleece head sock under the helmet and winter full finger gloves.  Heavier socks and mountain bike shoes.

We were freezing cold, it was a complete fail on clothing choices.  We should have worn the heavy arm warmers under the jackets, and the heavy tights.  I should have worn my winter riding gloves, the mtb gloves were not warm enough.  If we ride much colder, or on the road, helmet covers will be required to keep the flow of air off our heads.  The only thing that was not cold was Jim's hands.  I remind us here that when we used to ride when it was cold in Seattle, that we would put a vest on underneath the jackets.

Other than this, I have zippity doo dah all to say.