Mills River, NC

 View from my mom’s living room window. 

Mills River, NC

 We’re up in the mountains helping my mom for a bit. Beautiful up here and mom is doing much better!

Pittsboro,NC

 Duane has done a nice upgrade to our golf cart. (Thanks Pat and Diane!)

The lead acid batteries were at the end of their life…barely holding a charge. The new battery is lithium and is wonderful. Very light compared to the old batteries,  the cart is a real speedster now!  Imagine this space holding the original 6 batteries.

  

Pittsboro, NC

 The remnants of Tropical Storm Chantal dumped a lot of rain !!  No real damage but a lot of woody debris.  

Pittsboro, NC

Our neighbor put on a nice fireworks display - mostly for his granddaughter (who apparently goes to bed early).

 

A bunch of really nice fireworks but a little too early for optimum viewing.

We sat up in the golf cart at Dick and Lindy's for the show - then we we were invited in for a visit and fresh blueberry pie!

On the continual home-repair front, Duane is addressing some rot at the base of one of the basement doors.  We've done this several times on various doors.  The wooden brick molding that comes standard with every exterior door is just not up to the task of  exposure to wet conditions.  

So Duane removes any rotten wood and replaces it with a combo of "plastic" wood and/or Bond-O.  No further rot can happen!  All good for another 20 years (hopefully)

Pittsboro, NC

 Not a lot of noteworthy happenings lately!  Just more house chores - mainly stripping the garage clean in order to repaint the aging cement block waterproofing. This means bleaching for mildew then etching with muratic acid to remove anything left. Then we’ll paint the walls and floor. 

We did wander over to check the progress on our neighbors construction.

Going to be an interesting house….

Pretty cool…looks to be extremely sturdy!

Pittsboro, NC

 Second attempt at blueberry pie. Doubled the sugar…added some ice cream. Pretty darn good!!

Pittsboro, NC

I know you’re probably getting tired of me talking about power washing!!!

The ramp at the hangar was very moldy too…can’t even remember the last time this was power washed.... 

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All nice and bright now....

I think we're done for now.....still hot and sunny.  Outside activities are done in spits and spurts....typical Eastern NC summer.

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.