Land Barons

 Tongue-in-cheek :)  But we do have 1 rental home as well as take care of my mother's rental.  Seems like this past summer we've spent quite a few weekends (and weekdays) at one or the other fixing something.  The above photos are from the front yard of our rental - we have a very nice young family living there right now, but the yard has just gotten away from them.  It is a hard yard - I struggled with it when we lived in the house.  The above photos show that a few of the trees are suffering from bores (or so our local nursery thinks), and you can see in the top photo that the plant/shrub areas of the yard have gone pretty wild. 

 We sprayed Round Up on things a few weeks ago and last night went over there and pulled, chopped, raked, and sawed until it was pretty cleaned up.

We are far from finished.  Need to get the stump guys over to grind up the stumps of dead or removed trees.  Then the cement edger guy over to lay edging down so the grass stays in it's own area.  Then lay down weed barrier and haul in rock to make things look nice and neat and it is easier for renters to keep the yard crisp and clean.  Next year we plan to start the same process in the back yard.

 We finally got renters in at my mother's rental. When we went over today we were happy to see that the lawn was all nicely mowed....a good sign.   We finally are getting around to replacing some broken boards on the gate to the back yard.  We also needed to trim the bottom of all the gate boards so they didn't scrape on the cement.  That gate has bothered me since we bought the house.  Finally fixed :)

Wedding Anniversary

Then

Now

(Well, actually this was taken last year when we were in Logan for my Dad's burial)

Today is our 39th wedding anniversary.  We've been together twice as long as we weren't together, does that make sense?  So many things in those 39 years, and we now find ourselves in the "golden years" - those words actually make sense now.  Other than losing parents they really are pretty golden, much easier than earlier ones.  As life would have it, we're spending the day apart - Dave has a bank meeting out of town and I have such a backlog of quilts with upcoming deadlines that I felt pressured to stay home and keep working. It's okay, we'll do something this weekend, part of being together long enough you get over fussing about the little things.

We are so grateful for 4 wonderful children who continue to make us proud, as well as their spouses and our grandchildren - the legacy we'll leave behind.  They are the gold in our lives.  

On to year 40!  We're already talking about an Alaska Cruise :) 

Book: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

I admit that I read weird books.  This one was extra weird.  I liked it, but its one of those stories that sticks with you for days afterwards.  I found myself dreaming about it while up camping in the woods -- not sure that's what I was really looking for.  It has some holes in the logic of the story, my initial thought was that it was dumb - nobody would ever really do this - but then when you think about what normal people actually do, how they justify horrendous actions, maybe they might.  It's easy to see what the author is pointing out, interesting. Gets you thinking.

"The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights.  The chilling resolution:  Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen.  Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end.  Connor is too difficult for his parents to control.  Risa, a ward of the state, is not talented enough to be kept alive.  And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound.  Together, they may have a chance to escape -- and to survive."

Chapter 61 was the part that really got me....the process of a teenager actually going through the process of being unwound.  Chilling.

This is a stand alone book.  Unusual these days of multiple sequels.  Despite everything, I did like it -- had a hard time putting it down.