July 2019: Extreme heat and Endless Work

Posted:   February 25, 2020                                    Most Recent Posts:
About:  July 2019                                      June 2019 at Greenfield Mountain Farm
                                                                                    May 2019 Back in Virginia

I didn’t take many pictures of all the work I did this month so most of these are from my visit to Carrie and her family.  With many thanks to my wonderful friend Pam for locating the journal that details the things in this blog and many more boring details of this month of solid work.

I spent much of July cleaning both inside the house and cleaning out papers of all kinds.  Seemingly never ending papers.  Shredding things with David’s social security number on them.  SO many medical statements and bills.  He kept everything for all 7 years of his illness. 

The table above me is in what we called the west porch where we had the computer, many reference books for school work and where I’ve taken to doing puzzles to while away the long evening hours here without David when I am too tired to do anything else.

It is so amazingly hot here, very unusually hot here – mid to upper 90’s and as high as 100 degrees for much of the month.  I’ve been keeping track of the weather in other places.  Like Bar Harbor, Maine where it is in the low 70’s and even Flagler Beach Florida where it is 10 degrees cooler than here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  What is going on?  It sure makes getting things done outside very difficult.  With a heat index of 110 it is becoming scary.  I’ve never experienced anything like this in over  40 years of living here.

With the heat here, I can barely keep up with the mowing of the grass in the yard and weed whacking the fence line.  I’m having a great deal of trouble with the riding mower which is old and has been badly abused.  David was very hard on mowers asking them to do things better suited to a tractor.  

In the cool  of the evening when I did most of the outside mowing and trimming, several times I saw this mother and her baby along the newly graveled farm road.

During June I got several estimates to paint the house and the shop in the yard which David always did every 7 or 8 years.   Our previous blog shows us doing one side of the house each year we came back to Virginia but nothing has been done since and it is over due. 

I think I’ve found someone to do it but the price is high.  Not the highest estimate, not the lowest and  not necessarily unreasonable given that it is a VERY old house and needs scraping and painting with multiple shades and there are porch railings.  

David only had a small life insurance policy as it was through his work with the University and after you retire, it decreases by about 50% every year until it gets to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of what it was when you were employed and there it stays.  So for me it’s about enough to pay to have the tree and road work done and the house painted and then it will be gone.  Not sure what I’ll do 8 years from now but I’ll worry about that then.

I rewarded myself for all this work with a trip to Maryland to see Carrie and her family. 

I took a Little People School House that had been Carries after sewing a bag for it and its pieces.  Celia loved it.  Colin, at 10 months, was more interested in the ribbon on the box 

I was happy to see Celia using what I guess is now an heirloom dolly cradle.  It was mine when I was her age and Carrie used it and now Celia.  That’s Amanda Claire in the cradle.  She was Carrie’s baby doll.

It’s hot there too but they has a pool in her backyard where we could all keep cool.

Celia and Nana read books and did puzzles.  Colin wanted to help too but as you can see, Celia thought she’d better not let him have the puzzle pieces.  Notice she’s looking at me while she has her hand on the puzzle he has.   As if to say, can I do this without getting in trouble?

And all too soon the week-end was over and it was time for all the adults to go back to work.

When I returned, a new problem showed up in the form of 6 fraud charges on my Discover Card which they graciously took care of, cancelling my card and sending me a new one.  That of course means that I have to change all my automatic charges for cell phones, utilities at the farm, auto and homeowners insurance and on and on. 

Still taking things to Goodwill, the local hospital donation shop and the library book sale.  I don’t think I’m ready to sell the farm but it needs to be cleaned out while I am here for so long this year.  It gives me something to do to keep my mind occupied and when the temperature is so amazingly hot.

Carrie and I have decided to have the Memorial for David here at the farm for mid September so that I will have time to finish getting the house painted and other things fixed but I sent out the invitations to his family and very close friends so that they can plan for it.  It will be a very hard day for me but I know this is where David should be remembered.  He spent nearly all of his adult life here loving and caring for this place and for us

** If you would  like to be added to the notification list for this blog send an email to RVDreamlife@gmail.com