HOME AGAIN

We arrived at home a week ago with no fuss at the border and no surprises at home.  The trip was only about 2 hours from Deer Park and it was good to have the rest of the day to get settled in and start unloading the trailer.  There was a lot to do at the house as we had to turn the water back on, turn appliances back on and get the radiant floor heat downstairs back up to temperature.  That took about 3 days to get the concrete floor slab up to 20 degrees as it was down to 11.5 degrees when we got home.

It didn’t take long to start feeling comfortable at home again and the winter months in Arizona are beginning to seem like a distant vacation.  The environment is so different here and the green trees and grass are refreshing after the desert.  We have robins in the yard and of course, the deer have been around leaving their “marks” on the lawn.  It looks like our transplanted bushes by the side of the house have survived the winter and I enjoyed pruning them in the sunshine yesterday.

Not everything is the same here, though.  We found out that one of our neighbours died about 6 weeks ago while on vacation in the Philippines with his girlfriend.  That was a shock as he wasn’t old or sick at the time.  One of our other neighbours, a fairly recent widower, has decided to sell her place so we will likely have 2 new neighbours sometime this summer.  Here’s hoping they’re nice, quiet folks, just like us (ha-ha).

We have a list of projects for the home season and the first priority is establishing a garden, complete with deer fencing.  After that, we are thinking about more fencing on the property line, building a pergola over part of the deck and replacing the front sidewalk with paving stones.  It sounds ambitious right now as we also plan to go fishing this year, play more golf and ride the motorcycle.  With all these activities, I may not be posting to the blog as frequently as I have been doing so if you get anxious to know what we’re up to, just send us an e-mail.