Purge!

Many people have told us that when you retired you would really never have enough time.  Possibly it's because you go leaping into those things you were going to do "when I have the time."

Project the First:  Tidy up the butterfly garden.  While butterfly gardens should be a bit "rustic," mine was mostly dead stalks and stems.  It didn't take too long to cut/yank all that dead stuff to expose the new green plants coming up, but I had to be specially armed for the process.  I've done this before in my usual "casual home" garb, aka a sweatsuit.  But I end up covered with thousands of sticky tag-along seeds.  So this time it was jeans, boots, and a windbreaker.

 

Time for a break after that.  For Bob's birthday we headed down to the coast to enjoy a beautiful clear blue day while the rest of the country was knee-deep in snow storms.  The day didn't exactly go as planned--we were going to go to the fort at St. Marks--but it's closed on Tuesdays.  We went to the lighthouse instead and hiked around a little.  Not too many birds, but we saw a few.

 

 

 

And we hope that the alligator never got interested in the little heron that was just a little too close.

 

 

 

Then we headed to our favorite little dive for oysters and shrimp--except that it was closed on Tuesdays.

 

Sigh--went to another place--and they didn't have raw oysters.  We settled for some shrimp (poor us!)  Afterwards we went to a fun nursery that we like in the area to get some fertilizer for the fruit trees--but they are closed on Tuesdays . . . (do I sense a theme here?)

 

Project the Second:  The bathroom vanity. We sort of store everything under the vanity--and of course lose track of what's under there.  You know how it goes--you're down to a sliver of soap in the shower, so then next time you're at the store you buy some--two bars, while you're at it, so you won't run out again.  One goes in the shower, the other under the sink.  At the dentist, you get a little swag bag with a toothbrush and a little sample tube of toothpaste.  The latter is good for trips--but when you come back, the partially-used tube goes under the sink again.   And so on and so forth, and after a number of years you end up with this.

 

 

Sometimes, even though you know you have something, you go ahead and buy it because it's easier than searching under there for whatever it is.

 

So I dug it all out.  Rather embarrassing to admit that I had over 6 pounds of garbage.

 

 

 Things like very dry (and in one case, moldy--yuck) wet wipes, dried out nail polish removers, dried up samples of hand cream--you get the idea.  Got it all sorted out--including the 9 bars of soap and 30 brand-new unwrapped toothbrushes (we go to the dentist on a regular basis) (most of those--the ones still in the fresh wrappings--went to Goodwill).  8 partially used sample tubes of toothpaste (didn't toss those but we'll use them up).  And so on and so forth.

 

Of course, projects have a way of getting bigger.  There was a rack on the right that I really wanted on the left.  Bob moved it for me, and then Famous Last Words--"oh, while I'm at it I'll drain the P trap."  He quickly found out that the entire unit was being held together by corrosion.  So the project had to be put on hold for a couple of days until we could go to Lowes and pick up a new unit and install it.  But then everything was sorted out and in labeled boxes.  The item I'm really happy with is out toilet paper holder.  We simply cut one end off of a storage bin and screwed it to the door.  No more awkward fumbling trying to get some more toilet paper while one is indisposed.

 

 

So that's done.  Then I had a fire workshop to attend, and have spent the last two days putting in a *lot* of hours on Project the Third. Details to follow.