new deck, new year

I haven't done much this week besides be around to put in my two cents, answer and ask questions while the deck was being built. 

And here is the finished deck, two sets of stairs, one in front and one on the right behind the yew tree.

They finished up a little after noon Wednesday. Rocky had some lattice in his trailer that the previous owner was getting rid of so he used that to dress it up around the bottom. The lattice is a little beat up and dirty but basically in good condition otherwise. I'll hose it down and paint it the rose color to match the house. The deck still needs to have sealer put on it and I'm contemplating whether or not I want to paint the railing, white if I do. One thing for sure, I'm going to have to pay more attention to the flower beds in the front now.

The luna moth is out of the kiln and I've cleaned off all the plaster. It came out with a major flaw at one end of the caterpillar where for some reason it looks like a bubble came up and left a clear spot about the size of a dime in the solid white background. We're mystified. This is a real problem since it's going in a stand. I have an idea how to disguise it or at least mitigate it using enamel paint so we'll just see how that works out.

It looks like our warm weather is coming to an end and we're going to have our first light freeze. It's supposed to dip down to the high 30˚s Saturday night and Monday night and if that was as cold as it was going to get I would have left everything outside but the prediction is 29˚ Sunday night so Tuesday I cleaned up and reorganized the garage to accommodate the plants and Wednesday set up two of the plant etageres inside and all the plant stands and brought in all the small pots, moved all the bigger pots (plumerias, bird of paradise) over by the garage to be moved in. I still have three plumerias to dig up, somehow move the big night blooming cereus into the garage, and decide what to do about the pink and yellow angel trumpets in pots today or tomorrow. I pruned back the pink so it will be relatively easy to move but the yellow is huge and covered in buds. I'll have to prune back the porter weed which is still blooming and cover it if I want it to survive. I'm not going to bother trying to cover anything else. Sink or swim baby, sink or swim.

We got some unexpected bad news, sad news for Marc, yesterday. One of his first cousins died yesterday morning. Covid. We don't know if he was vaccinated or not, didn't even know he was in the hospital, haven't been close to that branch of the family for a while, but he also had some serious health issues. He was 65, younger than us.

Omicron has made it to Wharton and the Elders, the two young Mormon men who volunteer at SHARE, have been exposed and so they weren't there Thursday. Jan decided to limit people to food only (usually they can select clothing and housewares as well, masks required) and we closed an hour early yesterday. None of us volunteers want to be exposed.

It's New Year's Eve. Twenty twenty one has been choppy but far better than the previous four years. Let's hope for continued improvement and some sorely needed indictments against the principals who supported, planned, financed, orchestrated, and participated in the attempt to overthrow a legal election and our democracy.