Today! The very last day of January 2018!! (Seems like it just got here!!)
Just to let you guy now that the landlady didn't flip out when she saw her palm trees. There are about half a dozen of them or so, each in a VERY large container that formed a sort of "Green-Belt" around our deck, making it rather private. As I mentioned yesterday, the 20*F temps had wrecked havoc on them, first turning all the feathery fronds a sickly greenish/brown and evidently softening the heavy center ribs, for a few strong gusts of wind bent them over, leaving our deck looking like the Ho Chi Minh Trail after a successful Agent Orange spraying run.. sickly looking... very sickly looking..
Instead of freaking out (which I had figured would probably be her instant reaction) she whipped out a rather long serrated knife (scared the crap out of me!!!) and began hacking (sawing actually) each frond off where it grew out of the main trunk. As each soft, sickly looking branch was removed she passed it to me to pile on the boardwalk, so they could all be thrown away. When she had finished, each previously proudly waving palm, looked like a spindly spire of hacked off fronds, from which she is convinced new growth will soon sprout! I just smiled and nodded enthusiastically, hoping against hope they weren't all as dead as frozen fish..
So, I guess we dodged that bullet! Things are looking up again!
The maintenance guy here, cut down an 18-foot tall stub of a large red cedar tree that was broken off by hurricane Irma, the top of which fell into the swimming pool! The tree was nearly 2-feet through at the stump and he has cut up sections of it to make benches from. I talked him into giving me some hunks of it, which I will take home (somehow) and make into keepsake boxes for some of the ladies down here..
I had three large hunks of this very aromatic wood tucked behind the open spiral stairs and if the landlady saw them, she never mentioned them.. She has a tall, carved, wooden flamingo on the other side of those stairs, I figured if she could have a wooden sculpture, so could we... Ours is just a little blocky lookin', is all....
38*F here this AM, the cold hasn't retreated North yet.. Boo-Boo is probably sitting over a heater with his teeth chattering..
Well, that's it for today... BIG flea market to go to this morning after the sun comes up. No graying dawn around here, one minute it's as black out as the inside of your pocket, and then the next minute, P-O-P the sun comes up over the horizon and it's light out.. Weird... The sun isn't as eager to show itself in Maine. A gray dawn drags on for an hour or more before the sun actually make it's appearance. No wonder it's cold as hell up there!!
Y'all have a great Navy Day, now, ya hear?!
Roger
