Cherry Trees

Today is national tile day, so I thought I'd post a pic of my backsplash over my cooktop. It's a still life by Corrado Pila.

The latest puzzle. (#116) Notice the missing piece.

A very nice olio of photos today. (olio = a mixture, I do crosswords. LOL)

Sunflowers are blooming now. I didn't plant them. Birds must have from the bird seed, though the bird feeder is on the other side of the house.

I wish there was a "love" button.

P

Wow Moni we now know who you all look like lol!

Great photos

When I go to the nursery, I take photos of interesting plants and their name tags to look up later. This one is Calocephalus brownii (although spell check likes "brownie" much better and has already changed it twice without permission.)

Oh very pretty Nicole! I like rope trim.

Record temperatures around here in recent days, about 60 degrees today.

I brought the overcoat - over my arm, for it'll be dark when I leave, I figure ... though I may leave early, for I'm inviting a number of neighbours to contribute to Heart and Stroke research and support, these days (February being Heart Month) and there are only a few days left but a number of doors left on which to knock.

I'm slipping, I think, for I invited the old guys at coffee hour at church to participate, and one did, last year: this year - none.

Contributed myself, last year, as the stock that I gave to the United Way, which enables me to pay zero income tax on the capital gain, was for somewhat less than usual, so I agreed to write a check for a couple of hundred to four agencies, one of them being Heart and Stroke. Confession time ... I neglected to send a cheque to the other three agencies ... procrastination? laziness? lack of enthusiasm to pay them with after-tax money?

Anyway, last year's fund (to go out this year) was somewhat larger than usual, so I'll send a double amount, this year, to those three ... of after-tax money.

ole joyful

National Tile Day. Grrrrr. Don't talk to me about tile.

This was the front porch of the house we are moving out of.

The grout had cracked and many tiles were loose so to get the house ready for sale I pulled up the loose tile, and then started to remove the thinset beneath that, but the layer beneath that started coming up too:

... and the layer beneath that was cracked and loose so it had to come up also. and the front porch now looks like this:

and just today I finally got someone to give a quote for putting it all back, and it was $3400, not counting materials. Grrrr.

Dang, bob, that is a shame. Rather like pulling the loose thread--large scale. One never really knows with those hardscape projects--I've been there, too.

Bob- can you do stamped concrete?

We contacted several companies that do stamped concrete, and one actually came out at the stage before the third picture. They expressed doubts about whether there was enough space to put stamped concrete on top, and not partially block the doorway. Furthermore they noted that the top layer (at that time) had cracks which moved slightly and they said they'd need to see what the slab was like beneath that layer before they could say for certain one way or another whether stamped concrete would work. However now that that layer is gone, they haven't answered my calls or email asking them to come back out.

Was record highs for the past 2 days. Today, its back to 32 F, misting rain, and changing to snow tonight. The cardinals had started their spring-time song. This cold snap will quiet them.