The second monthly lunch in our neighborhood group of ladies was beautiful. Kelly hosted the group and said she enjoys using nice things. How do you spell “understatement”? Here’s a picture of the table we saw when we arrived. Each place setting had a charger, a dinner plate, a salad plate, and a dessert plate. Kelly described her decorating theme as “French country,” and each chair had a little gift for its occupant–a zippered bag with a screenprint of something French. (You can see one of the bags hanging on the center chair.) There were also small bottles of wine and a fruit punch with a bit of a kick for those who wanted something more than water or iced tea to drink.

Like last month, we all brought more than one food item. Each item was large enough to allow everyone to try everything and to take a serving or two home for family members who are not ladies and, therefore, were not invited to the luncheon. The take-aways are great for dinner after we go home. Kelly was prepared and had restaurant take-away boxes for each of us. Main courses are in the first photo, then there’s a quiche, followed by desserts. The oatmeal raisin cookies were Kelly’s contribution. She used brandy-soaked raisins. Guess who brought the scotcheroos. As usual, they all disappeared. They’re simple to make, but everyone loves them.

The lunch gathering is expanding. Last time, we gathered, ate, split the leftovers, and went home after two hours. This time, we did all of the above and then went out on the deck to play games and talk with each other for another two hours. We played a version of dominoes, Catch-Phrase, and St. Louis trivia. A good time was had by all and we now have a tradition that’s been ongoing for two months. It’s been so much fun to get together as a group rather than one-by-one as we see each other, that I have a feeling this will go on for awhile. What a great idea!

P.S. Last month’s lunch was served on paper plates, take-aways left the hostess’ house on paper plates, and there were no adult beverages (or cookies). The rest of us conceded that Kelly wins the hostess prize, but she should expect paper plates again next month! No pressure allowed for the hostesses.

Ted was fertilizing the backyard flowers today and thought they were so pretty, he took some pictures. These firecrackers have bushed out nicely and fill this flower bed.

The hibiscus tree produces fresh blooms every day. They open as the sun rises, close as the sun sets, then drop to the ground overnight. We’ve had as many as ten and as few as one bloom on a single day. Three to five new flowers daily is typical. The marigolds are great for keeping the bugs away while we sit around the pool.

These crepe myrtle bushes used to provide a privacy hedge around one end of the pool. Then we had a hard winter and most of the bushes died. These two survived, but they die back every winter and no longer grow tall enough to provide privacy. Ted didn’t want to throw them away, so he stuck them in the ground behind the storage shed where he keeps his brush pile until he has time to chip the brush into mulch. The bushes bloom every year, but the only way to view them in our yard is to walk behind the storage shed. I’m sure that chipping brush is a nicer task for Ted with some pretty flowers to look at while he works.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Ted and I decided it’s time to give the interior of our house a fresh look. The interior designer we hired gave us some very good ideas, and we’ve been following up on them. If all the stars aligned, we hoped we could have at least 90 percent of the work finished before the kids and grandkids come for a December visit.

My assignment today was to call the carpet lady, the electrician, and the painter to set up appointments for walk-throughs and bids on the work. These are post-pandemic times and contractors have been unusually busy for the past three years, not to mention all the labor shortages we keep hearing about. I crossed my fingers and picked up my phone. Here’s how it went.

The carpet lady. She and her design partner will be here on Friday to get a feel for what kind of designs they should plan for us and to measure all the rooms for carpeting. They can install the master bedroom carpet and all the second floor carpeting next week. Yikes! I wasn’t ready for that. Ted and I are fully booked for the entire month of September and we have plenty to do in the remaining days of August. We scheduled carpet installation for early October.

The electrician. He can do a walk-through tomorrow, submit a bid within 24 hours, and finish the work by the end of next week. Yikes! again. It turns out that I called at a serendipitous time. The company had two electricians assigned to a total house gut and remodel–a job that took a year–and they finished it last week. Four other electricians were working on a huge commercial project which also took a year and also ended last week. This means that six electricians are available for new work. We need the electrical work completed before the painter can start, so Ted and I decided to drop everything we’d planned to do in August that wasn’t necessary to keep the world turning, and we scheduled the electrician for a walk-through and a bid tomorrow, with work to begin ASAP after that.

The painter. No problem. He can fit us in around other jobs and finish ours by next week. Now my jaw is dropping, my head is spinning, and I’m feeling a little giddy. The painter is happy to work with the carpet people so that we only need to move the furniture in and out of each room once while the carpeting and the painting are being done. He’ll be here tomorrow for a walk-through and will give us a bid on the spot. We scheduled him for early October with the carpet crew.

After three years of delays, delays, delays on outdoor house work and yard jobs, if we didn’t already have September completely filled, we could have had the entire interior of our house freshened up with new lighting, new carpeting, and new paint by the end of next week. This time, it’s the customer (us), not the contractor, who is delaying two-thirds of the project until October.

Unbelievably, all the stars aligned. 1-2-3, hat trick!

Today was a perfect day to be outdoors. The temperature was around 90 degrees, but the humidity was low, the sun was bright, and the clouds were pretty. Ted and I picked up Dylan and Theo (Teddy is growing up) and headed for the Boat House in Forest Park. A lot of other people had the same idea, judging by the number of parked cars and the number of people we saw. The Boat House rents paddle boats, canoes, and kayaks. We opted for kayaks and paddled from the dock into Post-Dispatch Lake. Here’s the path we took for our one-hour adventure.

I took a picture of Dylan and Theo as we approached a pedestrian bridge and an oncoming paddle boat. Notice how synchronized their paddles are. What a team!

Here are the boys at the Lagoon Drive end of the Grand Basin.

Facing the opposite direction in the Grand Basin, Dylan took a picture of Ted and me heading back toward Art Hill and the Art Museum. The fountains all around the Grand Basin were really pretty.

This is another of Dylan’s pictures, also facing Art Hill. Theo’s smile shows how much fun we were having.

On our way back to the Boat House, we passed a family of ducks.

At the next bend in the canal, we spotted two herons. The one on the right is harder to see–look at the center right in the water beside the dying weeping willow tree.

This bridge made a pretty reflection in the water.

After an hour of kayaking in the sun, we were all in the mood for ice cream. The Boat House café told us the closest thing they have to ice cream is a vodka smoothie, but we had two underage people in our group, although Theo joked that he might be able to handle a vodka smoothie. We all voted for Dairy Queen instead, and we splurged and ordered medium-sized cones. The dip cone is Dylan’s and my DQ favorite. Theo went for a dip cone too (no vodka) and Ted, the individualist in our group, chose a twist cone. Yummy!

We all had a good time. None of us had kayaked in Forest Park before, but we’d all enjoy doing it again. According to the boys, our next get-together should include swimming in our pool and playing sheephead. That works for Ted and me. Our grandchildren are the greatest. They share their photos, their smiles, and their time with us. ♥♥

It’s been nearly 25 years since Ted and I re-furbed/freshened our house and we’re getting tired of the same old look. It’s time for a change. We both lack decorating skills, so we hired an interior designer to help us make some decisions. I mentioned to the designer that we have very little display space. Her suggestion was to get rid of some of the books and use those shelves as display space. “Gasp!” thought I. “Blasphemy!”

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

Henry Ward Beecher

I cannot get rid of my books, but if I add up all the empty space on my shelves, I might be able to clear two shelves in the family room for display and still have space to add new books. We’ll see. Or I can forget about displaying things and stick with the books. With that said, when Kari called to ask if I’d like to go to the library book fair with her and Teddy, I immediately said “yes.”

I cannot live without books.

Thomas Jefferson

The library has not had one of its three-day book fairs since 2019 (before COVID), and they had so many books, they had to move the event from the Convention Center to the Family Arena. Professional sporting events and medium-name concerts take place in the arena, so it’s huge. There are four different gates to accommodate four simultaneous indoor events and the library used only one venue space. The parking lot was nearly half-full and it looked like Elvis might be in the building. (Or maybe someone else–Elvis would have filled the entire building.)

I came prepared with my largest carry-all bag, but I saw immediately that I was an amateur. A number of folks brought wagons or rolling file boxes. I might do that next year.

But that was still only medium level prep for book purchasing. These two came with dollies and four large packing cartons each. I won’t do that next year.

The Book Fair opened at 9:00 a.m. for a limited group of library friends and members; after 12:00 p.m., entry was free and open to everyone. Kari, Teddy, and I met at the gate at 12:30 p.m. and were given maps to guide our browsing. Hardbacks were $2.00, over-sized paperbacks were $1.00, and paperbacks were $0.50. What a deal!

The floor space within the outlined area on the map below was large enough for an official indoor soccer, football, hockey, etc. game (audience seating is outside that area) and the entire floor was covered with tables that were, in turn, completely covered with books. Under all the tables were boxes containing just as many more books. Volunteers patrolled the tables, and when the books started to lean over because people had removed some for purchase, the volunteers reached into the boxes below and pulled out more books to fill the empty spaces. Other volunteers continued to bring in boxes of books from the dock area to replace the empty boxes beneath the tables.

We browsed for nearly an hour before Teddy noticed how long the check-out line was. I had another appointment and had to leave in about 40 minutes, and Kari and Teddy were finished browsing, so we got in line. Keep in mind that the oblong outline in the above map is the size of an indoor sports field. The end of the line was at the red arrow and, from that point forward, moved clockwise around the floor. The exit to the cashier was at the green arrow, so we needed to move nearly all the way around the floor. Yikes! The good news was that the line was never stationary. I tried to look through some of the children’s books (green tables) as we passed them because I didn’t get to those tables before we got in line, but when I paused to extract a book, Kari and Teddy moved forward 4-6 feet before I even had a chance to examine the book.

Checking out was fast: Several staff members were available to count books for customers. They did the simple math to calculate the cost, and wrote the total on a piece of paper. Customers then took the piece of paper to the next available cashier and handed her their money–cash only, no tax to calculate. We made it from the back of the line to outside the front door in about 30 minutes. Not bad at all!

For the price of one new book, I now have 15 new-to-me books. There goes some of that display space the designer thinks I have.

I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.

Margaret Atwood

A week ago, the St. Louis area made the national news for the prodigious amount of rain we had in a 24-hour period. We weren’t really excited about breaking the 24-hour rainfall record by over 2 inches, but it happened. State and federal disaster aid is available to flood victims.

River floods are a result of heavy rain or rapidly melting snow upstream and affect areas along the riverbanks. Rainfall events are different: the rain falls faster than the ground and drainage systems can handle it, forcing it to accumulate in any low-lying area at the bottom of any hill. Unfortunately, we had three heavy rainfalls over short periods of time in fewer than seven days, severely affecting many homes and businesses. The owner of one business said his ground floor was covered by water three times in a week. Countless cars were completely submerged by flood waters. Because of the power of the moving water, rescue teams had to exchange smaller boats for larger ones.

Our rain gauge overflows at 5 inches, but the official reading for our area was 12 inches. Ted and I looked at the TV meteorologist’s map showing contour lines representing rainfall totals on a map of the metro area. We estimated that we fell in the 9-10 inch range. The following two rain events brought lesser amounts–around 2-3 inches each time, according to our rain gauge. After the St. Louis “practice session,” the storms moved into Kentucky and that state had far more flood damage than we did. Ted and I were fortunate. We had nothing worse than a very soggy lawn.

A few days after the last rainfall, Ted and I decided the Katy Trail was probably dry enough to bike. We headed for the Greens Bottom trail head and planned to bike westward to Weldon Spring–about 11 miles one way. We hadn’t thought about the fact that the rail trail on which the Katy is built runs along the Missouri River (low ground) and that it might have flooded, so we were surprised when we entered the trail and saw a sign announcing it was closed for flood damage repair.

The trail looked ok and there was plenty of room to bike past the warning fence, so we decided to try it. If it was washed out or blocked, we could always turn around. The first 2 miles were rough, but the trail rises gently in elevation from its eastern to its western terminus, so all was well after the first two miles.

The trail was badly rutted in several places. Obviously, the water was running from the trail into the creek.

There was a lot of accumulated debris on the upstream side of this bridge. The grader is ready to go.

Our first street crossing required dismounting and walking our bikes across. The ruts were 4-6 inches deep all the way across the trail.

This might have been a huge source of water runoff. The Katy runs along a limestone river bluff at Greens Bottom. The standing water at the bottom of this point of the rock wall led Ted and me to think that the rainfall from the top of the bluff tumbled down these rocks like a giant waterfall, then ran over the trail.

Our assumption about the water running down this bluff was supported by the piles of silt the bobcat piled up when workers cleared the trail. The arrow points to the base of the “waterfall” point in the above photo.

As we biked westward, we noticed a lot of trees that had been washed out by the heavy rain and the powerful flood waters. The Park Service has already been hard at work clearing the trail.

Along the way, we saw a volleyball that apparently floated away from its home and became stuck on a fencepost. Given its beat-up condition and the brand name facing us, we couldn’t help thinking “Castaway” and “Tom Hanks.”

We had to slow our biking speed for the first two miles in order to navigate around the ruts in the road, but the rest of our ride was smooth. It was another good 22-mile ride on the Katy with a flood adventure for added interest.

When I went outside a few days ago, I noticed a mushroom fairy ring growing in our neighbor’s yard. Then I saw another one in a nearby subdivision when I took a bike ride.

Fairy rings are sometimes seen as hazardous or dangerous, linked to witches or the Devil. On the other hand, they are also linked with good fortune. Take your pick. The rings can be 30 or more feet in diameter and can become stable over time as they grow and find food underground. I don’t think that will happen to this one. The lawn service mowers demolished it the following day.