Today is Jessie’s birthday. We had her little birthday party cake & presents fun time last night at her parent’s place. She got a lot of gardening & baking stuff and everyone was jealous. Cindy gave her a whiskey barrel planter, so today we had to head back to Inches Nursery to buy more plants. Tip: If you’re buying plants, don’t get them from a big home center or department store; Go to a nursery. They’re less expensive and are much better cared-for.

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Home Improvement, Pictures by Jack

Inches Nursery in Coraopolis had young herb plants for $1.69 each today. We got a bunch. We have sweet basil, purple sage, orange mint, italian oregano, garlic chives, taragon, mexican sage, rosemary, lavendar, and thyme. I don’t know if we’ll cook with any of these herbs (we probably will), but the sure will smell nice all summer.

Note: The barren wasteland in the background is going to become a flower garden soon.

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Home Improvement, Pictures by Jack

This past weekend was the 13th anual installment of RuffinItt. It was something of a scaled back affair this year. First, the PA Fish Commission decided to have the opening day of trout season during Easter weekend this year. So we held RIXIII on the second weekend of the season. Ryan couldn’t get off work on Friday, so he flew into town on Friday evening. He and I got to the cabin at about 11:00 on Friday night. Robert didn’t come this year. He lived it up in Bush Gardens Williamsburg instead. Jamie had to leave early on Saturday afternoon to go to his godson’s birthday party. Ryan and I had to get out on Sunday morning so he could catch his flight back to Durham in the afternoon. Even with all that, we all still had a great time. Oh, and the creek was high & muddy from all the rain that fell throughout the entire weekend, so we hardly caught anything. Supposedly Jamie & Bob caught some real fish on Friday morning, but nobody else saw them, so they were probably lying. On saturday all we caught were chubs & tiny native trout in a feeder stream.

Click here for the pictures.

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Pictures by Jack

This is a picture of the Christmas Cactus that Cindy gave us a while back. It’s doing pretty well and has taken to blooming right on schedule – in December and April. I’m actually learning how to care for plants once again. When I was young – very young, maybe four or five years old – I was developing a green thumb. I remember helping my mother to plant the vegetable garden each year. I always made the zucchini mounds. I also remember never wanting to water or weed the garden, but that’s another story. As the years passed and I moved on to adulthood, I forgot about gardening. Now, with the major reconstruction work on our house mostly complete, we’re ready to start the fun stuff, like gardening and landscaping.

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Pictures by Jack