Pittsboro,NC

 Looks pretty good this morning!

Pittsboro also known as Inferno Central, NC 😀

 Yep, it's hot!  just 96 degrees right now.....

Still working on getting all the concrete and buildings clean from a couple of years of neglect.

Our garden shed is particularly "mossy" since it's in heavy woods. 

But a gallon of 10% pool chlorine and a bit of pressure washing makes it bright and nice.

Next is tackling the bigger garage concrete pad.  It's pretty badly moldy.

We ordered this little gizmo from Amazon - and it really works!!!  It has rollers and evenly distributes the power-washer spray.  MUCH easier/faster than using the regular spray wand.  You can really see the cleaned concrete in this shot.  (there is still a lot of "dirty water" left on the surface that we'll eventually get around to hosing off.)

This is as far as we got before the hot temps and sun have us retreating to the a/c....maybe finish this up this evening after the sun is a a better angle!

Pittsboro, NC

The blueberry pie is good.  Not fabulous.  The crust is actually very good so I'm pleased with that.  The filling is actually a little more tart that I was expecting.  I followed the recipe exactly but maybe these blueberries were more tart than most.  If I do it again, I'll remember to throw in a bit more sugar!

 

Project of the day - start power washing.  According to a quick blog search, we last washed the house 2 years ago.... (First had to go over to neighbor Pat's and borrow his big gas-powered power washer.)

In addition to the house siding, the sidewalk is dirty and moldy..... 

Late in the day, the shadows make it hard to see but the house is clean and the upper sidewalk is nice and bright again!

 The sidewalk has a few streaks where the wand starts/stops.  I may go over this again tomorrow.....

 

 

We ordered a little round power-washer attachment from Amazon to tackle the garage concrete pad.  It will be here tomorrow so we'll continue once it arrives.  Hopefully the gizmo will make it easier to clean the large surface of the garage concrete.

Pittsboro, NC

I spent most of the morning with blueberries!!

Preparing the jelly, jars and lids....  

 

I got quite a few jars. Tasted the leftovers - quite good and a bit tart.

I held back enough blueberries to make a pie.  I am NOT a pie baker.  Thru the years I've just avoided making pies because they always turned out gummy or dry or yucky....I think I just didn't read the directions well, mostly about keeping the butter cold and not handling the dough with warm hands.  But I decided to try to improve my skills.

Nothing unusual - just flour, pinch of salt, cold butter and cold water.

 Pie filled and ready for "lid".

 

 

Since I figured out that I left my rolling pin on the boat, I ended up using an empty wine bottle to roll the crust.  Worked pretty well - not beautiful but shouldn't affect the taste!

Baked for a while at 425°F.   Then fabricated little protectors for the edges from foil.  Then continued baking at 375°F. 

It's cooling now - recipe said let sit for 7 hours! Not sure we'll wait that long. I'll let you know results.

Pittsboro, NC

 We're settling back in at home....neighbors are out of town and had asked us to do a few things at their house including the invitation to help ourselves to some fruits and veggies from their garden.

The green beans are doing what green beans do....grow lots of beans!

Washed and now ready to cook.  I'll do several batches over the next few days so we'll be eating lots of green beans! (sorry, the photo is upside down...)

They also had some broccoli that was ready to "bolt" so we trimmed that all up.

And the big prize is the blueberries!!  

I'll make some blueberry jam either tonight or tomorrow....one of my favorites!

Mills River, NC

 Just a cheery morning. Mom had me pick a vase of various hydrangeas to take over when we went for a visit to Duane’s mom! 

Mills River, NC

 Just checking in…beautiful and a bit rainy in the mountains. View from Mom's porch.

Mom after radiation yesterday.  She’s feeling OK…not terrific though.  Looking forward to her last treatment on Wednesday!

Mills River, NC

 Easy drive down I40 towards Asheville. 

Staying with my mom a few days as she finishes up radiation treatments.  She’s looking great❤️

Pittsboro, NC

 We had a very nice visit with Ed and Cathy!  Not a lot to report, just lots of conversation, a walk, just a tiny bit of sewing, a card game and they treated us to dinner out at our favorite Mexican place in Pittsboro.

So nice to have them stop by - they're heading north to cooler temps for their summer trek with the camper.  

We did walk over to Lindy's house to do a bit of chores for them while they're away in Switzerland!!!  We filled their hummingbird feeders and got rewarded with this from the garden.  Yum!

Now we'll head up to the Asheville area to help my Mom out for a bit - she's on the last run of radiation treatments and it will be good to see her since we've been traveling.

Pittsboro, NC

 Ed and Cathy arrived yesterday for a short visit on their way north for a summer trip. Lots of catching up with great friends. 

Pittsboro, NC

 Getting back in the normal home behavior. Lots of time spent balancing my accounts and just generally catching up on little chores that were ignored during May. 

Neighbor Dick brought his airplane down to store it in our hangar for a few weeks. Looks nice doesn’t it?

Pat called Duane to let him know a local friend was moving and needed rid of his zero turn mower at a good price.  It wasn’t running but he thought it would fire up with new fuel.

It didn’t take too long to make a few adjustments…cranked up and ran reasonably well  

Loaded up after a little bit of difficulty…he threw in a little trailer for good measure.  Fun little outing  

Pittsboro, NC

 Getting settled back in at home… waking up at 2:30AM consistently since that’s 7:30AM BST….hopefully that will fix itself soon!

One of the things we knew we would have to address on our return to the house was a septic tank issue.....we'd had it "pumped out" because it was backing up right before we left in early May.  But it didn't solve the problem.  Too little time to investigate, we just left it be.

Fast forward....another pumpout and investigation revealed a complete blockage with tree roots in the piping!!  (Ours is a pump system - our drainage field is above the house so there is piping involved that is not normally in a gravity system).   Anyhooo....long process of digging it all up and removing and replacing the piping.  No problem for Duane but a tedious slightly messy process! 

Meanwhile....I had a month's worth of paperwork to do at the airport!  Busy day as well.  Lots of fun traffic.

I found a bag of "catering" that was left at the airport.  Apparently, a charter jet failed to pick up their (very expensive) catering!  I expect this bag was $100+ worth of delivered food.  It was several days since the delivery so we decided to use it rather than throw it away.

 

It was an interesting assortment....the veggies were still OK but another day and they'd be toast.   I know, I'm easily amused.

And then late in the day, Dick and Lindy invited us over for drinks and conversation before they leave on a trip to Switzerland!!

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London to home

Not a huge post today since it was a long travel day.  Easy to catch the city bus to the airport. 

Neat display at the airport entrance. 

We arrived at the airport almost 3 hours early per suggestions.  Probably overkill but made for a leisurely morning.  We had a sit-down breakfast…this is Duane’s plate - I show you because it included real haggis.  I asked him how it tasted. He said “I would eat it if I was starving “ and left it on the plate…

Waiting at the gate, there was a delay announcement…we eventually got under way over an hour late. 

Nothing much to report…with the delay, we were in our seats for almost 10 hours.  Meals are always fun and time consuming. They fed us 3 different times times with various items so that cut the monotony somewhat. I watched two movies and played on my iPad some. 

Soon the terrain was recognizable nearing RDU. 

Another 1/2 hours waiting at customs…home at last and we find that some one has mown our lawn…will find out who the mystery person is!!. 

The 4 weeks have been a blast but I’m happy to be home!

Glasgow to London

 Our last day for our Britrail passes. The train was ScottRail for the first leg so not very fancy....just 50 minutes to Edinburgh...transfered to the nicer LNER train for the remaining 5+ hours.

I'll just share some sights out the window. 

Lovely farm land and the view goes on for seemingly miles. 

Neat little towns. 

Pretty countryside. 

Not sure but I think this is probably clover.

And sheep of course!

I know, I'm sharing food photos...but it's part of the fun for me!  I chose a yummy hummus/chickpea/sweet potato/cous cous salad. The crew kept us busy offering tea and biscuits several times. 

Before we knew it, we were at London Kings Cross station. We needed to transfer all the way over to Heathrow Airport to be close to our hotel. Our Britrail passes include that travel, but it was via Thamslink, a railway we hadn't used before. But after several stops asking friendly attendants, we found the right train.  

One more transfer over to the Elizabeth line would take us directly to Heathrow.

The subway train was the busiest we'd seen!  Weekends apparently bring everyone out about town. 

Easy peasy walk out of the terminal at Heathrow to a city bus.  

Another very kind driver made sure we got off at the correct stop for hotel.   We have really enjoyed public transportation on this trip!

 So the rest of this post is just me having a bit of fun. We immediately noticed that the hotel room overlooks the runways at Heathrow...so I had a bird's eye view of landing aircraft. A plane landed every minute or so!  I had plenty of time to kill, so I sat by the window for about a half hour and these are some of the different airlines that landed. There were dozens of British Airways planes that landed but I didn't take very many repeat photos of them.  Not a single American branded aircraft landed while I was watching. 

British Airways

Iberia Air

Korean Air

Air India

Malta Airlines

Virginia Atlantic

Schenzin Airlines

Tianjian Airlines (had to look that one up!)

Sri Lankan Airlines

Vistara Airlines (India)

Air India

Air China

Air Lingus (Ireland)

Air Baltic

And finally,  Qatar Airlines.  I forced myself to stop but it was fun!  

Tomorrow we'll be up early for the 8 hour flight back to RDU after a great/fabulous/wonderful  trip!