New Year’s 2024 Island Trip – Day 5

In no particular order I:

• Removed the brick from the truck and placed it along the top of her slope. Stella’s garden will have the most eclectic edging of any garden I’ve put my hand to!
• Took the shop vac to the pump room and removed all (visible) trace of the former rat that I found late fall. There were still unmentionables in corners… Places a broom couldn’t get to. I also left Stella’s thermometer in the pump room to monitor the temperature with the wall heaters on low. We are being threatened with some very cold weather (teens), and electricity is cheaper than burst pipes…
• The line trimmer is sorted out. It didn’t need more line, it needed to be reminded that it still had line on the spool 🙄. I’ll exercise it tomorrow.
• Took another pass at the tile in the shower, this time reading the instructions on the cleaner… One is suppose to rinse the product off within 3-minutes, not leave it overnight. It’s as good as it’s going to get. I also figured out the the lower tiles were coated in soap scum. A drywall spatula removed most of that. The finish was to remove the shower drain cover, sandwich it heavy mil plastic and then reinstall it in order to keep grout dust out of the drain when the grout gets worked on.
• Got a load of laundry done.
• Pruned the alders back off the roof and side of the upper barn using a pole saw. I was quite pleased not to need a ladder, tho my mid-back is not very happy with me about all the 12’ up, over-the-head saw work. It’s now safe to use the stove in the upper barn. No tree bits are too close to the chimney.
• The floor of the house is a lot less dirty for a vacuum job. I’ll save mopping until the end of the month, after the grout is dealt with. I really like my tile guy, but our definitions of ‘spotless’ are quite different 😂.
• The ravens got the last of Christmas dinner today! The bones were big. Maybe too big for them. Suddenly I saw what I thought were two huge ravens swooping together across the field. It was almost a dance. They were bald eagles! It could be that the ravens lost their treat to the baldies!
• Walked over to our neighbors to the north with some Christmas goodies after lunch. He answered the door and let me know that she was back in the hospital on the mainland 😓. He was clutching the phone and said he was waiting for a call so he knew what his next move was. They’ve had a really hard time the last couple of years. I encouraged him to let us know how we can help them.

At 2:30, with my back squawking at me, I called it quits. Just as I settled in with a snack and mineral water, I remembered I needed to get cash for our AN. Off to town I went, then to their place, and then back to the couch, where I am now sitting, feet up. And it’s time to go check the thermometer in the pump room…