🕊️When snow birds stay home🕊️

December 13, 2025 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

Ken and I had an eventful fall with out trip to Ireland. Last winter we decided, after going south for the winter for 10 years, that we were getting bored. I guess in a way we went south for winter out of fear of being bored in the winter here, but only now I realize that there are far more ways to get UNBORED at home than in an RV with 252Sq feet so share with a husband and a dog. Then all the OTHER stuff happened making it even LESS appealing to go south.

We had a VERY busy fall, with final harvest and putting the garden to bed. We got about 6000 garlic planted and this year we did NOT PLANT any puny garlic. They tend to grow puny sized garlic and who wants to buy puny garlic.

We ended up with about 50 lbs of Dried Beans for the winter. For the most part, they dried while we were in Ireland, we put the whole pods into this big blue bin.

We enrolled the help of our favourite stomper to stomp on the dried beans…….. and jump up and down…..and we did our fair share of jumping up and down too….

Then we poured the stomped on beans over a big fan…..and the pods few at Talon and the beans fell into the bin.

These beautiful beans are called Nonna Agness blue pole beans…after a person who brought them to the US, but more accurately they are called San Bernardo blue beans originating from northern Italy. It has taken me years to build up this many of the beans . I started off with 8 seeds, quite expensive, 3 died, but I did get enough to plant the next year and now I have LOTS of them (took 3 years)

Once the colder weather encouraged us Indoors, I decided that we needed to organize ever spare inch of our house having lost quite a few square inches to the AIRBNB suite we created this year. This is a beautiful cabinet Ken built and fronted it with doors we have been packing around for years. We have discovered this wonderful stain I found from a guitar making company. It stains the wood, but remains translucent. And we can experiment with shades and colours.

Experimenting with Knobs here…

I then decided that the hall closet took up WAY TOO much real estate on our main floor ( our dwindling in size main floor) And while this photo does not look up to a spot in FINE housekeeping, you do get the drift. I guess the point here is that I am too lazy to go down stairs every time I want a canning jar etc.

We also added these little baskets inside all the closet doors in the house….. (a wee bit of valuable space is wasted just inside closet doors)

Some of our projects we did in the beginning did not work out very well. The rock floor we did about 3 years ago, we sealed with epoxy to get the nice shiny finish. What happened over time was that the epoxy yellowed and since it is a high traffic area, it also became quite scratched. It really looked terrible.

SO we decided to take it all out….. UGLY JOB….UGLY….

Then we put in new tiles and just LOVE our new project. The ceramic tiles, easier to clean and deal with.

So with the wonderful tiles… we decided to replace the cutting board on our counter top with the same tiles. We are not going to use it as a cutting board, more as a little centrepiece on the counter.

WOW until I started to write about the stuff we have done this fall, I had not realized quite how much we have done this fall. Of course Ken did most of it.🤔

I DID mention the down stairs….. and yes we have done some stuff there too.

When the house was built, the builders left the stairs going to the basement, as just particle board (I guess thinking we would carpet? )

But Ken has gotten some wood from a local smaller mill and stained them with the same wonderful guitar stain.. and they have worked out beautiful (maybe I am no longer as lazy to go downstairs)

We just need to find some funky hand railing that we can stain blue.

We sold the motorhome, and bought a 2004 sprinter van …. which gets at least twice the millage that the motorhome did. We have had a few over nights with it and quite love it. It might be cramped for long duration trips, but we plan to make shorter trips now.

Well I guess that catches us up for the last few months

what would a blog be without a photo including Talon… and his cousins. Cooley and Razzy.

Best wishes to all from Janet, Ken and Tucker

Enniskerry The end of the trail.

October 4, 2025October 4, 2025 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

We finished the trail yesterday, and what a gorgeous day it was. We certainly saved the best for last, very spectacular views. Hope my pictures do it justice

we spent the day with the knowledge that it was going to start raining at about noon. We had 24 KM to go and 800 metres in elevation.

We did not get into Enniskerry until 5 pm, and it still had not really started raining. Stormy, windy with a heavy mist, but no downpour, so we feel…. We got away with it.

The last part we climbed and climbed and saw this at what we thought was the top….nothing…..ness.

When the weather is like this it is very hard to know where the top is, which is likely a good thing, it was like more mountain kept appearing like an escalator going down while you are going up.

This is Lough Tay, also known as lake Guinness with its black colour and white beach at one side…can you see it?

Ken has been faithful about supporting the Guinness industry by having a Guinness draft each day. I guess no blog about Ireland would be complete without some information about Guinness. Guinness is a stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St James Gate Dublin in the 18th century. It is one of the most successful alcoholic beverage maker in the world.

So this all started in 1759 in Dublin where he signed a 9000 year lease at 45 pounds per year.

On a recent search I have made on google, I found at least 3 film representations of the Guinness family. One of which is called “the house of Guinness” and is streaming on Netflix.

I thought I would look up the Guinness connection in Canada

It turns out that the engineer interesting in building what is now called the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver (was first the 1st narrows bridge) convinced Walter Guinness to invest in the land on the north shore of Burrard Inlet. He purchased 4700 acres of West Vancouver mountainside through “British Pacific properties”. The Guinness family sold the bridge to the province of British Columbia in 1955 for 5,873.837, which was the original cost to originally build it.

There was a toll instituted by the Guinness family to cross the bridge, and this remained until 1963 Interesting since the Lions Gate bridge is likely as well known to Canadians as the Golden Gate Bridge is to Americans.

Back to Ireland……

We are now in Bray drinking fancy coffees and the wind is howling with “storm Amy”. We got off the trains just in time

Warm and safe and cleaning clothes

Janet and Ken in Bray, Ireland

One more day on the Wicklow way…..

October 2, 2025 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 1 Comment

Well the past 3 days have been a bit underwhelming. We have had no more rain, The thing is that it is truly beautiful, large valleys lined with big healthy trees is kind of like what I look out at every day at home. I can see why others would find it more striking than we might…but we live in the forest.

So it is hard to wrap my brain around anything interesting along the way….. In fact there ARE some differences in the logging practices. Although I do not know exact details, but it sounds like the countries of the EU all have a commitment to maintain a certain percentage of their land as forests. They all have different percentages, but each has a commitment to maintaining what they have.

There are certain financial incentives to allow part of your property to be planted in trees. They take about 20 years to harvest. They also seem to be planting a wide variety of trees, including deciduous trees. …. Which certainly is a good plan for forest fire control.

The trees certainly seem healthy.

Irish round towers…..found mainly in Ireland, with 2 in Scotland and one on the Isle of Man. They were originally used as bell towers. They are generally found in vicinity of churches or monasteries. The door of the tower usually faces the west doorway to the church. This knowledge,where towers exist, has allowed searchers to determine where the remains of churches are, without excavation.

These medieval buildings were part of an early medieval monastic settlement founded in the 6th century. The order was Celtic Christianity

The dissolution of monasteries was a set of administrative and legal processes between1536 and 1541, when Henry Vlll disbanded all catholic monasteries, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland, seized their wealth, and destroyed their buildings. Much of the funds raised by these actions went towards Henry’s military campaigns of the 1540s

There was a similar process taking place in Europe and Scotland but led more by the mass discontent among the common people against the powerful and wealthy ecclesiastical institutions.

Personally I find it interesting that the roofs of these buildings survived all this time, made of stone rather than wood. It seems that the steep pitch is how they were able to make the roof of stone.

Saint Kevin who founded this monastery, was an interesting guy, should you choose to look him up

So today will be our last day on the Wicklow way, and we both feel in great shape after all of that climbing. We have climbed almost 3 KM in elevation over the 110 KM we have done, but most of it has been gradual, and it has seemed easier as we have gone along. I would say that this has been a great way to see part of the wilderness of Ireland, but we feel we that we have enjoyed in our past walks the small villages you go through, and people you see along the way. The isolation and the quiet would clearly be something that others might enjoy, but we live in isolation and quiet……. The getting to and from the trail to the lodgings have been complicated. Some places have worked like clockwork, others not so much. Yesterday was supposed to be our shortest day, but turned out as long or longer than the rest. The turn to our lodging from the trail was 2KM. And there were no amenities at the place we were to stay at, so we needed to go to Roundwood, a town also off the trail, but 4 KM in another direction. We phoned the lodging and were told we could get a ride from town. So we walked the 4 KM to town, had a wonderful lunch, wine, Guinness…. Got groceries and then phoned for ride back to lodging. The guy said no can do….. he could not give ride for several hours…; So we walked the 6 KM to the lodging. I guess we ARE getting into good shape. Then I tripped and fell into stinging nettles … and am STILL itching…

Not to end on a negative note….. This was in the Wicklow national forest and a display of the more common minerals in the area…kind of cool

Lots of love …Janet and Ken

The Wicklow Way….the beginning anyways

September 29, 2025 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 1 Comment

It may not show here…. But it is pouring rain, and the taxi driver offered to take a picture of us at the beginning of the Wicklow way. It seemed ridiculous at the time, but now, it more seems like evidence. It was not like we were going to take our phones out of their dry pockets any time over the next three hours…. It poured for the first 3 hours of our first day, a time when we both questioned what the hell we were doing. Flying half way around the world so we could walk uphill in the pouring rain.

There is basically almost no accommodation along the Wicklow way. It is a trail/path/road pieced together to pass through the Wicklow mountains, heading north from Clonegal to Dublin … or the other way around. The accommodation is basically a group of bed and breakfasts that work together with the trip planners to pick up and drop off people from places along the trail and then take then back where they left off the next day.

The rain had lightened at about half way along and by the time we ended there was not rain at all and we vaguely remembered why we came.

The first night we left the trail to walk 2.5 km into Shillelagh. (Yes the town where the Shillelagh originated. Gorgeous town, only 300 people.

Fortunately there is a bar/ B&B centrally where a lot of the hikers stay. Instead of the regular breakfast room, there was a large room with a large table and a well stocked fridge and pantry. The host just said to help ourselves…. And to make sandwiches for the next day as well. We met a couple of guys who were from Scotland. The older man said that he and his son in law were doing the hike in honour of his daughter and Hussain’s (the son in law) wife. She had died recently of a pituitary cancer. Hussain was originally from Iran, and had lived in Scotland for 20 years. They felt he was likely the first Iranian to do the Wicklow way.

There are others along the trail who are tenting, which seems to be more in line with how the trail was set up. There are essentially very few amenities along the trail. In fact the only place along the trail so far that was an actually a business, was a bar called the dying cow ….. So far we have always found a place for dinner, and breakfast is provided so only lunch to worry about. We DID get supplies in Wexford, so are stocked for another day with lunch ….sandwiches, but we hope by then to find a store.

It really is a beautiful hike when you get out of the clouds.

The trails are all lined with gorse …. (The scourge of the Oregon coast). According to legend, Lord Bennet was the one to name Bandon (a town on the Oregon coast where we lived for 13 years). He named it after a town in Ireland called Bandon, and brought with him a gorse plant being his favourite to remind him of his home land. And ……Gorse went on to destroy many parts of the Oregon coast, as well as the cause of a fire that destroyed Bandon (gorse burns like Rocket fuel). There were those who questioned whether he was really a lord, but I guess half way around the world, who would know ? 🙂

A unique stile, every area has different ones

I guess it just goes to show that there is more than one way to climb a fence

So starting today on our third day of the Wicklow way, we will pass the half way mark.

Bye for now Janet and Ken

Wexford, where the opening scene in saving private Ryan was filmed (Normandy beach scene)

September 26, 2025 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

It was actually the thin spit of land in the distance. Other claims to fame…a place that Oliver Cromwell stormed the town in 1649, October, during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland at around that time. From all I have read, Cromwell was not a friend to Ireland.

The town dates back much further than that though. There was a siege of Wexford in 1169 and was the first clash of the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. The seaport of Wexford was somewhat independant at that time and were Norse-Gaelic. Wexford surrendered and the surrounding area became the first Norman colony in Ireland.

Beautiful art work made from broken ceramic dishes that appear to be tumbled after being broken..look am like a fun hobby

The town dates back much further than that though….. Ireland was inhabited some time shortly after the ending of the last ice age. (10,000-8000BC). Rough estimates place the first humans in county Wexford between 5000-3000 BC. It is felt by many that Wexford was the first area in Ireland to be inhabited by humans.

There are many findings from the Neolithic time. There are also many examples of standing stones in the county and one stone circle, kind of a big deal amungst archaeologists.

The harp, I guess we had thought was a Guinness logo, but turns out it is the other way….. the harp has long been a symbol of Ireland, but is no longer the flag. A green flag with a harp is the flag of the united Irishmen.

Ken and I are just hanging out here in Wexford waiting to go to Bunclody where we will start the Wicklow way, a 6 day hike up into the Wicklow mountains. It is an 81 mile hike that we are just realizing that most people start in Dublin and walk south towards where we are now, however we are all set up to start the walk tomorrow. (We are currently 140 KM south of Dublin)

Apparently 24,000 people walk the most popular sections, and it is the most popular of Irelands waymarked walks. It apparently gains 3300 metres in elevation … yikes….. that is like…. 3 KM up???

Needless to say we are a wee bit nervous about this….

The area we will be travelling will be remote, so we are planning ahead meals we can carry with us. There are apparently spots that there are no restaurants…..or stores.

We have the bus to catch soon

Bye for now….. Janet and Ken

Portluce castle and Portrush.

September 24, 2025 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 1 Comment

So after the causeway we walked towards Portrush and happened upon another castle along the way. The Portluce castle was a medieval castle that is now in ruins, however much of the structure still stands. It happens to have the ultimate in “moats” in that steep cliffs surround it. There IS a bridge to get onto the ‘island castle”. But if there is a giant on the bridge..you are hooped

It was built in the thirteenth century by Richard Og de Burgh, 2nd earl of Ulster. There were many different “owners.”,of the castle. In fact there was once a town adjacent the castle, built in 1608.

In 2011 an archaeological excavation discovered remains of the “lost town of Dunlace” which was razed to the ground in the Irish uprising of 1641.

The castle was fought over for many years, Irish VS Scottish. Macdonalds vs Macdonnels, and finally came to an end in a storm in 1639, when the kitchen fell into the sea. It was abandoned after that.”

Then we came back to Dublin

Gwen has purchased a “secret city tour” which is basically a scavenger hunt, introducing us to various historic sites in the city.

We were given clues to look for and some directions and finally a question that you had to answer to release the next hunt. Lots of little historical tidbits along the way.

The tour started at the spire, which is a very tall metal structure, which I did not take a picture of. I will not give away any clues in case someone chooses to do the secret city tour in Dublin.

The significance of the spire is actually more significant in what it replaced. It does have significance to the 1919 Easter uprising in Dublin. The Easter uprising, also known as the Easter rebellion was launched by the Irish republicans against British Rule in Ireland with the goal of establishing an Independant Irish republic. The uprising (another shibboleth) (those supporting the republicans would call it an uprising, while those who were against them would call it an insurgency) (freedom fighters vs terrorists) another shibboleth. You can see it is my favourite new word.

The first action of the uprising was to occupy the post office (the GPO). Outside the GPO was a large pillar called the Lord Nelson pillar. It was topped by a statue of Horatio Nelson. The statue rankled Irish nationalists as it honoured a prominent Englishman. The area around the statue was essentially a war zone during the uprising, and a bullet took off the nose of Nelson. The statue otherwise survived.

Ken having a staring competition with a seagull

The statue continued to be controversial after the partition when Ireland became a free state, and many proposals over the years were made and unmade…. Nothing happened to the statue until March 8 1966 the statue was destroyed by a bomb at a time when the streets were empty. The statue crashed to the ground amid thousands of tons of granite. What was left was a 70 foot stump.

There was a scramble for souvenirs, and Nelsons head eventually made its way to a museum.

It was originally thought to have been the Irish Republican Army, which they denied saying that they were more interesting in destroying foreign domination than in Symbols of foreign domination. There was eventually a confession in 2000, but no charges were made.

Of interest, there is also a Nelson column in Montreal Canada erected in 1809, which is still standing. But I guess we Canadians were granted our freedom from the UK more readily than was Ireland.

Gwen has gone home, and we SHALL miss her. Ken and I are on a train to Wexford, and in 2 days we begin the Wicklow Way hike.

Janet and Ken

The Antrim causeway

September 22, 2025 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

The giants causeway is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the results of ancient volcanic fissure eruption. It is part of the North Atlantic Igneous province, active during the paleogene period. It is considered to be the 4th greatest natural wonder in the UK. The tops of the columns form steppingstones that lead from the top of the cliffs down into the sea below

Many are hexagonal, but many have 4,5, 7 or eight sides. The tallest is 12 metres and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick in some places.

50-60 millions years ago the area was subject to intense volcanic activity. Highly liquid basalt intruded through chalk beds to form an extensive volcanic plateau. As the liquid cooled, contraction occurred and the horizontal fractures were in a similar fashion of drying mud.. The cracks propogated down into the mass leaving pillar like structures that also fractured horizontally into biscuits. The horizontal fractures resulted in a bottom fact that was convex and the upper was concave, creating ball and socket type joints. The size of the columns were determined by how fast they dried.

We saw many smaller columns on our way to “causeway”. Even the remains of the Dunsverrik Castle, one that Cromwell destroyed in the 1500s, makes for great photos now, but…..no tour….

The whole walk was 3 days long, however the day we went to the cause way was the longest of 3 days with lOTs of ups and downs and to top it off, there was also a marathon going on with many shorter/longer options, so lots of people we had to move off the trail for, which was fun, but clearly made for a much longer day.

There were Others that we had to”steer clear of” as well. LOTS and lots of sheep. You will notice if you expand this photo that this ?ram has devices on both of his ears (like earrings ). My guess was that perhaps this was for locating them, and knowing when one had gotten out of the fence….. onto the cliffs. This photo is a good example of what the day was like.

One of the towns we stayed at was Bushmills, the home town of the famous whiskey Bushmills Irish Whisky. Since 1608……

On this trip I have learned the meaning of the word Shibboleth. Which is a custom, principal or belief that distinguish a class or group. For example if you drink Bushmills Irish whisky, you are likely from Northern Ireland, whereas if you drink Jamison’s Irish whisky, you are likely from the Republic of Ireland or “Ireland”

In preparation for this trip I have read about 30-35 books involving Ireland to better understand the conflict and how Ireland ends up being divided in 1920.

The Island of Ireland comprised 2 parts, the Republic of Ireland (Ireland) is now a sovereign country, whereas Northern Ireland is a part of the UK.

The Island of Ireland has been ruled by Great Britain since the 1300s. Although there have been many conflict over the years to gain independence, it was not until the Irish nationalist party “sinn Fein” declared Ireland a republic in 1919, then in 1920 Britain partitioned the island into separate parliaments, predominately Catholic in the south and Protestant in the north east. The republicans opposed the formula and in 1922 an Irish free state was formed, and almost immediately the north east (Northern Ireland) with drew from the free state and accepted self governance with the UK.

Grossly abbreviated story.

The years that followed were difficult in Northern Ireland, Belfast and Derry. Derry is another Shibboleth, the people of Northern Ireland call it Londonderry, whereas the people of the Republic of Ireland call it Derry ….. for obvious reasons.

I will end here with more of the story to come.

by for now, Janet and Ken

The titanic…..

September 20, 2025 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

Belfast is where the titanic was built, thus they have an amazing museum there . Our grandson Talon is currently obsessed with it. Hope he is still obsessed by the time we get home

Sadly we did only have an hour to see the multimedia presentation. They went through all the aspects of building it, details about the launch. And the all the way to the iceberg, the rescue and even the actual voices of the survivors. There was even one guy talking about snow ball fights after the iceberg hit the ship. There clearly was a period of time before they realized the seriousness of the situation

We are traveling through Northern Ireland with Gwen, a friend from med school.

We are starting a three day hike along the very northern coast of Northern Ireland. Today we will hike around Rathlin island which is where one goes to see the puffins, however it is not currently their season. Apparently it has long been a mystery of where they winter. Only recently with the help of geolocators, they have discovered that they spend the winter out at sea in the waves ???

Not much time to ✍️

Janet and ken

thoughts on 2025

September 15, 2025September 15, 2025 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 1 Comment

I have not written for quite awhile. I guess there did not seem to be much to say. World events have left me aghast. So hard to believe that Israel can do what they are doing to Gaza and get away with it, AND that so many people are silent about it. I guess that is the hardest part, people who speak out daily about political events, but never say a word about……. Gaza. SOOO I have turned to murder mysteries. There is ALWAYS a good cop/detective who artificially renews my faith in humanity. You know them…. that one guy/girl who goes that step beyond for someone they do not know. Risks their lives, their reputation to speak out for some underdog, even when no one else does. I have discovered audiobooks and ear buds and have even sorted out all of the secrets of blue tooth…. Even when it says “forget this device”, I had to accept that it would “remember it”, when it next got picked up on my phones bluetooth. In our age group we would rarely want to intentionally FORGET anything 🤔 but that is the key to figuring out bluetooth

We are just on our way to Calgary to get flight to Dublin, where we are going on 2 different hikes. One in Northern Ireland and one in Ireland.

We have sold our motorhome and are presently looking for a more fuel efficient camper van for shorter trips in the future. We decided last winter that we have gone down to the US for the winter for 10 years and it is time to do something else. After that, our plans were further reinforced by changes south of the border.

We started an AIRBNB suite this year by taking a part of our house and making it into a suite. It certainly made for an interesting summer. We got very good at changing beds,and washing sheets. We found that using the dryer so much was cutting into our solar abilities, so started drying sheets on clothesline, which was kind of fun too. We met lots of people (well Ken met lots of people in that he is the ambassador while I am the booking clerk )

We had a perfect 5 star review record until our neighbours dog bit one of our guests dogs and even that guests apologized for the 4 star review but she felt she needed to warn other dog owners.

We do allow dogs, yet it seemed to be the most complex part of our airbnb . I guess mostly because our neighbours dogs frequent our house …. And sometimes Tucker goes down to their house as well, and for the most part, this arrangement works out well. All of our dogs have sorted out the dominance stepladder. However throwing in a whole bunch of other dogs complicates things. The Great Pyrenee dog …Willow is totally, wonderful, we love her. She guards the chickens they have and so likes to have a better view of them from our place. Our neighbours have a video of her barking away a bear from the chickens.

But willow is very large and a bit intimidating. We had people from Toronto message us that a very large white dog was there and did not have a leash.

We shall continue to sort out the dog problem, by fencing the area around the suite, hopefully next summer will be easier.

We have also had our weekly market stall in Scotch. Creek, and occasional weeks in Sorrento. We have sold, likely a few hundred pounds of fruit, all of which we have grown.

And of course all the garlic

One might wonder why we do all of this, being retired and all. I guess partly so we can take these wonderful European trips, and partly because we do enjoy farming/gardening. There is a sense of pride as well sending off all of those locally grown fruits and veggies into the community.

I did also want to show everyone the amazing cabinet Ken made this summer for our entry way. We decided we wanted a place to store the vacuum cable AND the jars of tomato sauce.

So. There it is, my first blog in ??10 months.

Bye for. Now,

Love Janet and Ken and Tucker who is NOT going to Ireland

yuma our little nest..

December 15, 2024 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

We are still just outside Yuma, at a place called Ogilby road, a vast desert that happens to flat enough to drive motorhomes for a long ways away from the road. The area is a place where many people seem to spend the winter. The area extends many KM in each direction, and there are absolutely no services. However the views are amazing and….. you can see Mexico from our kitchen window. 🫢

We have been doing this winter thing of travelling down here and spending about 5 days at each stop along the way for about 10 years now, and have decided to try staying basically in one place. We have the experience of many many place to have some idea of each and which places we like best. This is a picture I took last year from here.

We are about 10 miles outside of Yuma, being just over the border of Arizona and California, and a wee bit north.

Ken and I have a significant problem of not being able to be idle. We realize that this is a problem that many people solve soon after retirement, but we are still struggling with it. Although it might sound like a virtue, it really is not, we both wish we were able to sit still.

So we have decided to try spending the winter here. See if there is enough here to keep us amused, busy, and engaged. Funny enough, as soon as we decided that we have found we are much more “settled”.

There is a very “rustic” RV park about 4 miles from here, that actually was once the site where the troops were based to train (in WW2) to fight in Northern Africa. It is a place where once a week we can empty our septic and fill with water. It is also a wee bit of a museum.

We have “sites” in all directions from here that we can wander a day away looking for rocks and being in one spot allows us to work on projects. This one is a way of “cleaning ” rocks. Citric acid is the acid from oranges and lemons and can be bought as a powder. And making a solution and soaking for 2 days, gets rid of the calcite and dirt on many of the rocks. Great fun.

Another “project” this winter has been attempting to from basic in water. It really is pretty amazing as these “branches” were just taken from a bag of basil we bought at Trader Joes, so off of a plant for awhile before being in the store. I have since trimmed it, we shall see how it grows new leaves.

Oh and here is Tucker doing his Yoga “DOG” poses. Tucker loves this spot too.

OH and another new “project” is a bike for Ken

We have gotten well versed at how to Order and have delivered parcels for repairing motorhomes etc etc… So it was pretty easy to order a new bike and have it delivered to Calexico a few days ago. Calexico sits on the border of California and Mexico. It has an adjacent city on the Mexican side of border called Mexicali. Interesting play on partial names. Ken sold his Ebike last summer.

The very sad thing though that while Ken was putting the bike together is slashed 2 of his fingers with recently sharpened knives. (Ken is a very good and diligent knife sharpener)

This is a common scenario for us, however I am usually the one with the cuts………. chopping vegetables. The cuts are often significant, and might at one time been worthy of sutures, we are both pretty skilled at making good use of “steristrips” and keeping the area protected long enough for some healing to take place. We DO have a fairly extensive first aid kit.🩺

We are about 1.5 hours from Quartzsite, and have friends who stay there, and have great adventure ideas.

So there is our rough winter plan. A few little trips, but overall, not our usual major jaunt into New Mexico and Texas. Perhaps we are settling down.

There are some truly interesting places close to here.

So Bye for now

Love Janet, Ken and our little yoga dog Tucker