Finally, we have a (semi) firm date for my cousin and her husband to visit us, and see our farm. I’ve never met her husband, but mom likes him. Of course she would; when she first met him, he spent an entire day working on the iPad dad used before he died, to get it up to speed. He even tried to teach her how to use it. Mom’s not good with anything electronic, or mechanical for that matter. She can’t even change an AA battery in an analog alarm clock, and reset it, or change a lighbulb. She puts that on her honey-do list for whenever we visit, or my cousin does.
Anyway, my cousin and her husband are driving up from NC to visit her niece first, for a day, then my mom for a day and a half, and swing by our place on their way back home. She wants to spend half a day here, seeing the place, and take us out to dinner. She refused my invitation to spend the night here, even though they could have had the entire annex to themselves. The annex is set up to be it’s own apartment, which can be closed off from the main house. Mostly, she wanted to be sure to get to Longwood Gardens the moment they open the next morning, so they could go through it, and hit the road back to NC early afternoon. They won’t have time to visit Winterthur after Longwood, this trip, which is unfortunate; she would love it.
So, tomorrow, I am tasked with weeding the foundation plantings around mom’s place, so they look good for when my cousin visits her. Mom is all about appearances. She is what she is.
I may or may not have enough time to weed my place before my cousin visits. She is a Master Gardener (yes, there are courses you have to take and pass to become one). Besides, she’s not as anal as mom is, so if we still have some weeds around, I doubt she’ll care. And, I don’t think she’ll care if I have cat hairs on my sofa, because although she’s down to two now, she had four for many years.
The weeds and the ground-level poison ivy could easily be killed with Round-Up 360, but I don’t want to poison the neighbors’ chickens, so I can only use it around the two sides of the house on which they don’t forage. The rest of the weeding is manual labor.
I’m thrilled to have my cousin and her husband visit. They’ve tried to visit before, with tentative plans, but they never quite worked out. This time sounds like for real.
On another subject, I managed to find replacement pool filter baskets for both the intake and pump end, online for 2/3 the price my local pool company charges, plus got a manual pool vacuum for $15, all delivered prices. Sometimes, the automatic crawler vacuum misses spots, and it’s simply more efficient to hook up a manual one to the hose and a pole, and spend 20 minutes using it, rather than guiding “Mr. Wiggly” into the spots it missed.
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