Preparing to move (2) – May 2022

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A lot has happened since my last post about preparing to move back on 5/5.

We have packed a lot more boxes, of course. Our goal is to minimize items to go in the cars (precious/high value things, liquids, key documents, and whatever we need while the truck in enroute).

There is still some ‘messiness’ around the stacks of boxes but it is gradually being cleared away…with the rooms beginning to look ‘all packed.’ The very last will probably be the kitchen since we continue enjoying cooking/eating at home; about half the kitchen is already packed.

The boxes have been cleared from around the grand piano to make it easier for the crew that will prepare it to go on the truck. The box move was hard work since they were filled with books…the heaviest of our boxes. We managed to remove the humidifier box (which stuck out from the bottom of the piano).

I have developed a lot of skill in reusing packaging material like Styrofoam, foam squiggles, bubble/pillow wrap and paper. For example, I cut up a foam board yard sign to pad the top of a box, disconnected strips of Styrofoam from a larger piece/bent them to fill an odd space in a larger box and used squiggles to fill small spaces around paper wrapped breakable items to keep them from moving too much. I’m also realizing that plastic hangers work well to fill the top of a box without adding more weight.

The last ‘rooms’ to get packed (and the ones we are still working on are my husband’s office and the garage. We’ve made a good start and they will be packed more fully before this weekend. The before and after picture of my first round of garage packing is shown below.

We are getting rid of things we don’t want to move:

We’ve taken multiple loads of recycle and trash to our local facility.

Almost all the hazardous waste has been taken for disposal.

My husband called the county for curbside pickup of a ping pong table, glide, lawn mower, and karate punching bag for later this week – stay tune for pictures of the pile!

And I’ve scheduled another donation a few days before the movers come

Maintenance

The radon remediation has been completed.

The screens that were damaged/worn in the screened deck were replaced.

A light new bulb was put in the light fixture over the basement stairs (with some trickly ladder work).

Carpet replacement has been scheduled for after the movers are done (i.e the house is almost empty).

Overall – the progress we are making appears to be on track to be ready for the movers…and to be almost totally focused on our house in Missouri rather than the one in Maryland by mid-June!

The Pace of our Lives

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In April our preparation to move started an uptick in the pace of our lives  and May is continuing the upward trend. It should plateau at the higher level soon…..and hopefully  begin to decline by mid-summer. I find myself reverting to techniques I used during my career to organize my life – adding detail to my calendar, making lists of things to do, taking notes in key meetings, and adding to a timeline of events for reference later.

It’s not just the pace but the variety of activity and the amount of money involved with moving. Perhaps right now is the highest stress; even though everything seems to be happening as it should, there is always the niggling feeling that either we have overlooked something or there will something major that will turn up and cause a delay rippling through all the subsequent activities.

It will be good to have less stress…but perhaps the pace is not too bad. Maybe – we’ll decide we like this faster pace and organize our life after the move to achieve the pace we had pre-pandemic (not quite as ‘hot’ as it is now…but a significantly faster pace than we lived during the pandemic).

Irises

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The iris buds are enlarging, and one opened overnight. I cut the stem to bring it inside – early enough in the morning that the water droplets from the rain overnight had not dried. I brushed a spider from the flower as I walked back up the hill at the side of the house.

The rhizomes are from my parents’ garden more than a decade ago. Only one color has survived. There are more in the chaos garden than in front flowerbed.

In the front flowerbed there are plants that don’t produce flowers every year…only leaves.  This year there is only one with buds.

I am still trying to decide whether I will dig up any to take to my new house. Now – I’m leaning toward leaving them all with the house.

A New Family Member

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Adding to the overall drama of the month….

My niece had her baby! It was a milestone in our family – the first great-grandchild for my parents. One of my sisters became a grandmother. I became a great aunt as did my two other sisters. There has been a flurry in recent weeks to get pertussis vaccinations to safely visit the newborn. I was far from the event – in Maryland rather than Texas – but my sister provided enough texts for me to feel included. And I’ll get a pertussis shot in preparation for seeing the baby sometime in June.

The event was a good prompt to think about motherhood…how it has changed since my sister and I had children….how it has stayed the same. The basics are the same. Now there is more concern for the impacts of pollutants from the environment and potential COVID-19 infection on the developing fetus and newborn. The political climate that could impact care during pregnancy and delivery has degraded overtime and got much worse very recently. Still – the birth of a healthy baby is a time of hope for the future…a motivation for the adults of the family to lean into the actions necessary to enable this new family member opportunities on par with those we had…or better.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 14, 2022

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Why human brains were bigger 3,000 years ago – Some possible explanation: human populations reached a large enough size to share/divide labor and knowledge with others, writing….however, brain size/IQ relationship is not deterministic.

Operating rooms are the climate change contributor no one’s talking about – The health care industry accounts for 8.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Operating rooms represent 70% of waste in hospitals and 3 to 6 times as much carbon as the rest of health systems.

Where tornadoes strike most frequently is changing – More erratic tornado activity and the broad impacts of climate change.

Do you have a lost twin? - The rate of twins among live births is only about 1.3%. But as many as 12% of all naturally conceived pregnancies may begin as twin pregnancies.

Wild fox kills 25 flamingos and a duck at National Zoo – We see foxes in our neighborhood. They seem to have adapted to the suburban environment. This one was very efficient to kill 25 birds, though.

A 10,000-year history of geo-ecological change in Yellowstone’s lower geyser basin – A study using a 26.5-foot core from Goose Lake.

US could cut transport emissions by 34% b 2030 – The current trend will reduce emissions by 19% but a bit more focus would provide a bigger reduction.

Garbology: How to spot patterns in people's waste – We’ve been getting rid of a lot as we prepare to move. I try to do as much as possible via donations and recycling…but there is still a lot going in the trash. Some of it came from Texas with us back in 1983…and was still in the same box!

6,000-Year-Old Slate Rings May Have Symbolized Relationships – Friendship rings? Careful analysis revealed the rings had been intentionally broken…and shared (i.e. pieces of a ring were found in two separate burial sites).

How Taipei discovered an active volcano on its doorstep – Disconcerting. Even of there is some ability to provide early warning of an eruption…could the city be abandoned quickly enough?

Tenants of an Old Farm (eBook)

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I enjoyed Henry Christopher McCook’s books available on Internet Archive this past winter. My favorite is Tenants of an Old Farm first published in 1884 (the version in Internet Archive was a revised version published in 1902 so it must have been a relatively popular book during his lifetime). I’ve selected three illustrations from the book – there are more in the book…worth browsing.

McCook was a Presbyterian clergyman that ‘spent his summers studying ants and spiders’ according to his Wikipedia entry. Evidently many of McCook’s nature books were illustrated but Daniel Carter Beard (founder of the Boy Scouts of America); he is mentioned in the author’s preface as providing the ‘comical adaptations’ for the book but the illustrators were Edward Shepard and Frank Stout.

30 years ago – May 1992

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The highlight of May 1992 was the birth of my second niece. My daughter and I were in Dallas within a few weeks of her birth. It was a learning experience for my daughter who was very interested in babies at her daycare but had never seen one as young as her cousin. We all noticed the baby’s REM sleep when she was positioned in her carrier in the middle of the large dining table while my sister’s daycare swirled around the kitchen and den.

There were more mundane events too: doing the family grocery shopping every week together, my husband traveling for work using a back brace to make the longer plane trips tolerable, me with an ear infection after catching my daughter’s cold (she was outgrowing her tendency to get ear infections), my daughter trying to figure out the difference between ‘an accident’ and ‘on purpose,’ and a sister discovering that her new house had bearded iris in one of the flower beds.

As I read back through my notes of the time, I realized that it’s easy to remember the high points of out lives without them but not the details of how much energy keeping up with a 2.5-year-old took. Just reading a list I made of what we did on one Saturday was a potent reminder of how exhausting it was.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 7, 2022

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

A Watershed Moment: Key Findings About Potential Drinking Water Contamination – The sources of contamination are varied….but the list of primary sources is relatively short.

Better residents’ health after switch to electric buses – A study from Sweden. Improved health is a benefit of electrification of transportation!

Should people get rid of their yards? – Somewhat depressing conclusion: “Most people would rather make an aesthetic choice with their lawns than an environmental one.” My plan is not to eliminate the yard in my new house but to minimize it over time with the addition of bushes along the fence and extending beds around trees and around the house.

We talk the fastest growing green jobs with LinkedIn Sr. Editor – The “job vs the environment” is changing. The “green economy’s ability to expand job opportunities is too significant to ignore.” This growth in green jobs is like the 1970s for computer related jobs – a lot of new types of jobs and many of them will extend for the duration of a career starting now.

Discover the Microscopic Wonders of Olympus’ 2021 Image of the Year Awards – Taken with light microscopes…lots of finesse preparing the specimens.

Known to be toxic for a century, lead still poisons thousands of Midwestern kids – Two things I learned from this article about the state I am moving to: Missouri is one of the four states in the Midwest that is struggling to alleviate lead poisoning in children…and it is the number one producer of lead in the US. Hope they are making progress.

Top 25 birds of the week: terrestrial birds – Always enjoy the bird photographs! This group includes a roadrunner….a bird I always associate with Texas but the photograph was taken in California!

Tests indicate bronze age daggers had a practical purpose – Evidently the daggers were thought to be ceremonial objects prior to this analysis.

Should we be eating three meals a day? – The number of meals may not be as important as consistency….and giving the body a long enough ‘fast’ time to rest.

The Great Barrier Reef through Time – Landsat Images used to illustrate recent research on the growth of the reefs as the ocean changes. Evidently the reef has been more resilient to past sea-level and temperature fluctuations than previously thought….but increased sediment input has been a bigger problem.

eBotanical Prints – April 2022

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20 additional botanical print books browsed in April and added to the list. The list has quite a variety this month; the last two books on the list (about orchids) are part of a series of books; the rest will be on the May list. The publication dates have quite a range (1776 - 1926)….more drawings than color.

The whole list of 2,370 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The list for the April 2022 books with links to the volumes and sample images is at the bottom of this post.

Click on any sample images in the mosaic below to get an enlarged version. Enjoy the April eBotanical Prints!

Voyage a la nouvelle Guinée * Sonnerate, Pierre * sample image * 1776

Collection de planches pour servir au Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine * Sonnerate, Pierre * sample image * 1806

Jagttagelser over vextriget i Marokko. Observations sur le règne végétal au Maroc * Schousboe, Peder Kofod Anker; Betherand, Emile Louis; Lang, Joh * sample image * 1874

Le grand jardin de l'univers V1 (1785) * Buc'hoz, Pierre-Joseph * sample image * 1785

Herbier colorié de l'Amerique * Buc'hoz, Pierre-Joseph * sample image * 1783

Illustrations of Himalayan plants * Cathcart, John Fergusson; Fitch, W.H.; Hoooker, Joseph Dalton * sample image * 1855

A second century of ferns * Hooker, William Jackson; Fitch, W.H. * sample image * 1861

Illustrations of the forest flora of North-West and central India * Stewart, J. Lindsay; Fitch, W.H. * sample image * 1874

Illustrations of the British flora: a series of wood engravings, with dissections, of British plants  * Fitch, Walter Hood * sample image * 1908

Illustrations of the principal natural orders of the vegetable kingdom * Oliver, Daniel; Fitch, Walter Hood * sample image * 1874

A handbook of flowering trees and shrubs for gardeners * Notcutt, R.C.; Dykes, William Ricatson * sample image * 1926

Our ferns in their haunts, a guide to all the native species * Clute, Willard Nelson * sample image * 1901

The fern allies of North America north of Mexico * Clute, Willard Nelson; Clute, Ida Martin * sample image * 1905

The romance of our trees * Wilson, Ernest Henry * sample image * 1920

Aristocrats of the Garden * Wilson, Ernest Henry * sample image * 1917

Root and stem vegetables * Dean, Alexander * sample image * 1910

Roses, their history, development and cultivation * Pemberton, Joseph Hardwick * sample image * 1908

The Rose in America * McFarland, John Horace * sample image * 1923

Orchidaceae: illustrations and studies of the family Orchidaceae - fascicle 1 * Ames, Oakes * sample image * 1905

Orchidaceae: illustrations and studies of the family Orchidaceae - fascicle 2 * Ames, Oakes * sample image * 1905

Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge

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The Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge field trip was our second April visit to the place (I posted about our visit back in 2017: part 1, part 2). A new visitor center was under construction and the old one no longer had feeders (where we saw goldfinches last time) and the purple martin houses had been moved to another area, so we didn’t see them either. The field trip still started with a look around the visitor center grounds. It was a cool morning. There were several spring flowering trees (dogwood and redbud)…and birds flitting from the trees to the grass to the man-made structures.

We started around the auto tour route. There had been a lot of rain in the days before our field trip and the water level in the ponds was higher that I remembered. We also learned that because the area is tidal salt marsh, the water levels are not as easy to control as in some other refuges; the refuge management is challenged to maintain the marsh as sea-level is rising.

There were plenty of birds around: northern shovelers, red-winged black birds, green-winged teal, and mallards were a few I photographed.

There were relatively large numbers of great blue herons. They don’t nest at the refuge but come here for food.

There were also great and snowy egrets in mixed groups.

I took a sequence of a great egret landing.

There were bald eagles too. I photographed a scruffy looking juvenile settling on an almost submerged log.

The big surprise of the morning was a roost of black-crowned night herons. From the place we were standing…they were on the other side of large pond; they looked like fuzzy places in the trees…

I thought tent caterpillars at first! With binoculars and big camera lens, the birds were easy to identify. My husband provided a magnified/cropped image of one of the birds. There were over 70 birds roosting!

What a thrilling finale for a Bombay Hook field trip!

Harriet Tubman Byway/Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

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The 2nd of 4 Delmarva Birding field trips was Birding the Harriet Tubman Byway. It was a mixture of cultural and natural history of the area around Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and Cambridge, Maryland – an area Harriet Tubman knew well as she was growing up and returned to after she escaped slavery to help others make their way to freedom. There is a map of the byway available from the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center (we stopped there before the field trip…great orientation for the cultural history portion of the field trip) of the sites along the byway; our field trip visited a handful of them with excellent guides. From a natural history perspective - two species that are gone for the scene that she would have known are the American Chestnut and Carolina Parakeet.

The birding at Blackwater NWR was spectacular – just as every time I visit the place; it is where I saw my first Bald Eagle in the wild (in 1990 when my daughter was a baby). This year there were several Bald Eagle pairs that are nesting at the refuge. At one nest, the babies had evidently just been fed and were sleeping off their meal; the adult was still at the nest watching over them.

Osprey are making use of the nesting platforms and snags. There are more snags that ever because the water level is rising at the refuge…killing more trees that remain standing for a few years.

The muskrat mounds in the marsh were numerous. The color of the mounds is good camouflage for small birds. One of our guides commented that sometimes an eagle wll perch for a little while on a mound. If the muskrats are home…they probably go very still until the large bird leaves!

Rusty, the screech owl, is a well-known resident along the wildlife loop. The bird has a favorite perch in a pine with an hollow which provides protection for the bird’s back/sides. The hole where the bird might ‘live’ and raise young is in a nearby tree. The eyes moved while we watched but the bird was otherwise very still.

There are still parts of the refuge where the water level can be controlled; small fish swam in the shallow water….good snacks for some of the birds we were seeing.

Great Blue Herons are nesting at Blackwater. They like the tall pines just as the eagles do.

Great Egrets were also fishing in the shallows. I learned that they too were nesting at the refuge, but I didn’t see those nests.

Somehow moss and pine needles seemed an appealing mini-landscape on the spring day.

Redwing blackbirds were noisy….defending territory…finding mates.

The field trip group continued into Cambridge to the courthouse – a place where the laws governing slavery in Harriet Tubman’s time were administered. The short lecture and conversation were thought provoking and heartbreaking. Fortunately, the field trip ended on a happy note at the nearby Harriet Tubman mural in Cambridge.

Stay tuned for my posts about 2 more Delmarva Birding field trips!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 30, 2022

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

India’s fantastic freshwater fauna and where to find them – I was caught by the picture of the dancing frog at the top of the post. Other unusual animals featured in the rest of the post…some very different than what we see in North America.

Meat consumption must fall by at least 75% - And not just because of climate change. Health and economic effects also contribute to the rationale.

Top 25 birds of the week: birds communications – Pictures don’t impart sounds…so the post is really about bird body language.

Meet the Eastern Phoebe, the flycatchers that coexists with humans – It’s always easier to hear this bird than see it! We have one that visits our backyard almost every morning this spring.

A community of seed savers has a recipe to revive rare varieties of collard greens – I became a fan of collards in my CSA share…now I am thinking that I might try planting an heirloom variety! I like them better than kale because the big leaves are flatter – easier to roll and the cut to make slaw…or as a last ingredient into a stir fry.

U.S. has warmed by 2.6 degrees F since first Earth Day – This was my first look at this metric. Maryland is bright orange (3 degrees increase) and Missouri is white (1.5 degrees increase). Maybe another aspect of my move to Missouri could be climate related migration!

The US will phase out incandescent light bulbs – Ban takes effect in 2023…but lots of people have already made the transition to the more efficient bulbs.

Picturesque clouds of Greenland – Cloud streets and vortices.

22% of new cars in Europe have a plug! – Hurray! Hope the US will catch up sometime soon.

Spatial maps of melanoma – Diagnostics…enabling more precise medicine. Tissue samples must be supplemented with multiplexed imaging techniques to diagnose and treat melanoma more effectively.

Egyptian Mummies

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Sir Grafton Elliott Smith’s Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire N° 61051-61100 The Royal Mummies was published in 1912 and reflects the knowledge/assumptions from that time. I had never seen so many photographs of mummies presented in one book! Some of the mummies were very damaged – by looters or deliberate desecration in antiquity, poor quality of embalming, ravages of time, or damage occurring when the wrappings were removed. It’s awe inspiring to see remains that are so old…yet realize that they still are recognizably human. I selected 4 sample images from the book that is available on Internet Archive…enjoy more by following the link to the book directly.

Ancient Egypt has been a topic that has held my interest since my elementary school years – part of my first exposure to world history. So much has been explored and published…and yet there are still new finds in the country; I always scan the article that show up in my news feeds about ancient Egypt. This older publication demonstrated to me that there are nuggets in the documents that are over 100 years old!

Unique Aspects of Days – April 2022

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So much happened in April that was unique – or at least something we had not done in over 25 years! More that half the ‘days’ featured this month’s post are related to our move. I’ve listed then in the order they occurred and am surprised at the move milestones that occurred in April:

1st virtual house tour. This was not an option 25 years ago and both my husband and I were skeptical that such a tour would be ‘good enough’ to enable us to be comfortable bidding on a house. The first one convinced us that such tours were adequate to eliminate houses from consideration! Our realtor was very patient and good about highlighting aspects of houses as she walked through…and later in the month – after several experiences with virtual tours – we did indeed bid on a house before we saw in in-person.

Finding no houses available in Springfield that we liked. What a depressing day. Both my husband and I were primed to buy a house but there was a day that we had eliminated all the houses on the market.

Bid on house. And then a house came on the market. It wasn’t perfect but we had honed our idea of what we wanted enough to know that it was as close as we were going to get, and we could live with its imperfections. We scheduled a virtual tour and bid on the house the same day.

Contract signed. After one round of negotiations the contract was signed….and we were on the path to buying a house!

Seeing our house. Within 4 days we were in Springfield and walking through our house for the first time. It had a surreal quality after seeing it so thoroughly in the virtual tour.

Accepting a mover’s bid. Long distance moves are expensive and the last one we had done was paid for by our employers. The process has changed somewhat…the biggest one being the virtual way of creating the inventory of what is being moved!

There were some other unique experiences/sights in April:

1st long road trip with my husband post-pandemic.

74 black crowned night herons roosting.

A policeman – lights flashing - removing a deer carcass from a narrow roadway. I was thankful that he was taking care of it before the morning rush hour.

Several bald eagle and great blue heron nests…close together.

Zooming - April 2022

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I am featuring 12 pictures this month using the zoom feature of 3 different cameras (my phone which is digital zoom, my point and shot with optical zoom, and my bridge camera with even more optical zoom).

The point and shoot provided more than half the images: Sidling Hill, the Japanese garden and some of the spring flowers. The bridge camera was used for the spring looks at redbud and tulip poplar. The phone was used for the peacock horse sculpture (at a Kentucky rest stop) and the morning light picture. Using all three of my cameras in ‘zoom’ mode was a first!

Enjoy the slide show!

Ten Little Celebrations – April 2022

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April was a whirlwind month---with more than the usual amount of drama because of our plan to move to Springfield, Missouri. More than half the little celebrations I selected for the month have to do with the move:

Finding a house we liked and getting it under contract. It was new (and high anxiety) to do the contract with only seeing it virtually…thrilling to do the walkthrough to confirm that it was THE HOUSE for us.

A good driving day is always welcome, but we particularly celebrated one of the days heading home; perhaps a sunny, spring day is balm to the stress of the drive and the anticipated events of the next few months.

Home again is always something I celebrate. This time I savored the house that has been home since October 1994…realizing that soon I would be transferring the joy of homecoming to a new place.

Initiating contact then selecting movers. This was not a single day event, but I was pleasantly surprised at virtual inventories and other options. There are some things that have changed for the better since my last long distance move in 1983.

22 boxes packed in one day. I set a goal for myself to pack 20 boxes a day for a week and I achieved that goal! I celebrated the most on the highest day (22 boxes).

There were other things to celebrate in April…

Early morning at the grocery store. I love the quiet at the store before 7 AM with spring far enough along that it is light at that time…but still full of morning color.

A medical test that found nothing. Sometimes finding nothing is worth celebrating…particularly as we get older.

No traffic on the Bay Bridge. We made a 2-day trip to the Eastern Shore (birding field trips) and celebrated that we didn’t have traffic on the bridge – coming or going.

No traffic on the Bay Bridge. We made a 2-day trip to the Eastern Shore (birding field trips) and celebrated that we didn’t have traffic on the bridge – coming or going.

A wealth of birds. There were 4 field trips over 2 days…and we celebrated that we saw so many birds – some species in larger numbers than we had ever seen before. Stay tuned for blog posts coming next week.

Japanese Garden. I enjoyed our visit the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden in Springfield MO although the celebration came afterward as I looked at my pictures (too noisy from the mowers while I was in the garden).

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 23, 2022

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Virologists Identify More Than 5,000 New Viruses in the Ocean – Another indication that we still have a lot to learn about life on our planet.

Top 25 birds of the week: Bird Habitats! – Beautiful birds! I always enjoy seeing photographs…seeing birds I know and some I don’t!

The Jumping Slugs of the Pacific Northwest – A little different than the slugs I’ve seen. These have a vestigial shell on the top of their ‘hump.’ There was a new-to-me skeletal name in the article: slugs have a hydrostatic skeleton!

Aging clocks aim to predict how long you’ll live – Really? The value of the various aging clocks is still TBD.

Wildflower Fungi – This post was from the Master Naturalist group in Springfield MO. I am paying more attention now that I am moving to the area.

Deforestation drives climate change that harms remaining forest – Deforestation causes changes in a regions air temperature and precipitation…instigating changes in the whole region rather than just the part where the forest was removed.

Scientists Identify 50,000th Spider Species on Earth—but Thousands More Are Waiting to Be Discovered – It’s humbling to realize that there is so much about our world that we don’t know….have not discovered.

Amid Hopes and Fears, a plastic boom in Appalachia is on hold – Another sad trend in Appalachia…still hitching their future to fossil fuels. The jobs look good but the long-term jobs are few and the market for their products is not a positive one. Everyone wants to reduce single use plastics as much as possible.

Study suggests tree-filled spaces are more favorable to child development than paved or grassy surfaces – Playgrounds need more trees!

Germany’s Nature Society Crowns the 2022 Nature Photographer of the Year – The first picture is of a male kestrel. That caught my attention…and then I browsed the rest of the photos.

The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (eBook)

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Internet Archive has the 3 volumes of The Early Christian monuments of Scotland by John Romilly Allen and Joseph Anderson published in 1903 presented in two volumes: The Early Christian monuments of Scotland V1-2 and The Early Christian monuments of Scotland V3.

I enjoyed browsing them (particularly volumes 1-2) from a Zentangle pattern perspective. The patterns looked familiar with many variations of several presented in the book. Now that I am looking at the book again as I write this post…if feel a Zentangle project calling…maybe several. First up – tiles prompted by the ‘spiral ornament’ pages!

Maryland to Missouri – a road trip as passenger

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I’ve been making road trips between my home in Maryland to Missouri on my own until recently when my husband went with me to see the house we are buying. It was so different to be a passenger rather than driving myself!

The route was familiar and there were no cold weather hazards this time. More daylight made it possible for us to start the drive before 7 in daylight – leaving behind the fading blooms on the cherry and plum tree in the front of our Maryland home.

The first day of the trek was the easiest; it was cloudy with mists and sprinkles…occasional sunshine.

The daffodils were still in full bloom at the South Mountain rest stop; the elevation makes a difference; the flowers have already faded at hour home closer to Washington DC/Baltimore.

I took a few extra minutes at Sidling Hill to photograph the road cut. It is awesome.

There were plenty of rest stops along the way – a quick walk to the facilities through the damp.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

And the bridges at Louisville KY.

We stopped for the night at a hotel in Corydon, IN that has a historical marker in its parking lot!

The next day was harder after we were about halfway through the drive – very heavy rain. The early rest stops still held some beauty – trees on ridges, violets and spring beauties and dandelions.

It was safe to take pictures of the arch at St. Louis because I wasn’t driving!

The pictures taken at the rest stops in Missouri were through the window because of the rain. For some reason the fire hydrant near a picnic table tickled me.

And then we were at our hotel…glad that the heavy rain did not include lots of thunder/lightning and high winds that had been part of the forecast.

Bidding on a House from Afar

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We bid on a house in Springfield MO from afar (at home in Maryland). It has been accepted and we are starting a road trip to see the house in person – remove the ‘sight unseen’ rider in the bid and get the earnest money to the title company. I am writing the post about how we got to this point. There is a lot that has changed since we bought our current house more than 25 years ago.

I have been looking at houses that came on the market in Springfield MO via realtor.com for more than a year – familiarizing myself with the neighborhoods and the types of housing that were available. When my daughter was looking for houses last spring, I honed my search with her criteria, and she found the house she wanted quickly.

I thought I had my own criteria well defined…but it is only in the past few weeks that I realized that I was getting enthusiastic about houses that really would not work well for us. It was too easy to overlook the number of steps going into the front of house (and from the garage); I knew I wanted as few steps as possible; with this move, my husband and I wanted a house where we could ‘age in place.’ My husband wanted to do astronomy from our back yard. That requirement often seemed to be in direct conflict with an easy-care yard and connection to city water/sewer. I found myself toying with the idea of a larger property with well/septic and hiring someone to keep the yard/field cut. There was about a month when I thought we wanted a house that was all on one floor; I quickly discovered there were not many that had enough square footage and my husband pushed the idea that we needed a basement as a storm shelter since Missouri is back into the part of the country that has violent storms.

I made a trip to Springfield and looked at some houses; a learning experience – nothing to bid on and we needed to get our ‘proof of funds’ letter from the bank organized anyway. Over the past couple of weeks, we kept thinking that more houses would come on the market; there were quite a few but they weren’t perfect matches and many sold very quickly. We did 3 virtual tours – discovering more problems with them than we expected: no good view of the sky, too many steps and sometimes they made the third garage unusable for a vehicle, sloping lots, small closets, etc.

Then one came on the market that looked near perfect. The problem was the only picture of a laundry room showed it in the basement…which meant stairs to do our laundry. We asked if there was a laundry on the main floor and there wasn’t. We rejected the house for about 24 hours. After going to sleep frustrated with the houses available, I woke up realizing that if everything else was right with that house, we’d put in a way to get the laundry between floors. We asked for a virtual tour. Everything else was right….AND there was a laundry chute already in the house which would make it relatively easy to put in a dumbwaiter type device for the laundry!

We worked with our realtor on an offer. They had a system where it could all be done electronically. Our agent sent our offer to the seller’s agent via email. And less that 24 hours later, the offer was accepted. Our focus now is on traveling to see the house, being there when the inspection is done…preparing to move.

The house hunting phase of the process is complete.