Trips to Oliver

We've just got back from another quick visit to Oliver, the third one this year.  Okay, it was nearly two weeks ago now, I'm just really slow at getting this done.  In the Spring, it's always fun to see what is blooming when we we are there.

The daffodils along the driveway put on a good show.  We were talking to a neighbour and she commented on them, and thought that the previous owner had planted them.  Oh no, it was me.  I set her straight on that one!  The first Fall we were there I planted 50 or more daffodil bulbs and I think they've multiplied since then.  The previous visit there was a whole mass of them in bloom on the far side of the stairs.  They must be earlier because they get the heat reflected off the south facing wall of the house.  

A stubby little Iris starting to open.

The Wallflowers too were just starting.  We'll probably miss them at their best.  They remind me of England, I think it is the smell.

And one lonely Bergenia by the carport.

Quite often when we go to Oliver there is some project or other that we have in mind to get done.  Sometimes it takes a few visits to accomplish that.  This past visit we got one length of the irrigation set up and operational.  A got a real deal on three boxes of it at a thrift store, oh, probably a couple of years ago now.   Ten of these little microsprayers water part of the lawn and the flower beds.  Saves a lot of moving of the sprinkler around.

The first visit in the new year was this project.  The kitchen sink is just a single one, which is fine for the most part, but I find it really inconvenient when I am making jam.  I had a double sink that I had picked up on the roadside (I think), as well as another faucet set given to us I think (Ken?).

So near the end of our January/February visit we spent the best part of one day changing the sink from a single to a double.  At one point both of us were laid in that cupboard together.  Romantic it was not.  I tried to get one of the border collies to take a photo, but they wouldn't cooperate.  It was very squishy and uncomfortable.  It was a freakin' nightmare trying to get the old faucet undone.  It was all corroded under there, and in the end we broke something which made that faucet unusable.  Thank goodness we had the spare.

It all came together in the end, but there were plenty of trying moments.  Like the time when you realize that the new sinks did not have a center drain, but they were offset to the back.  That meant the adaptor kit that connected both sinks to the drain pipe that I had already bought wouldn't work.  I came up with an idea to make it work, and was trying to explain it to the guy at the hardware store so that he could help me with the right parts.  He was making sounds like he didn't know what I was talking about, and was suggesting another way, and I was making sounds like I didn't know what he was talking about, because I didn't.  Finally I drew him a picture so he understood, and we got a few extra parts to make some fancy angles so we could get the two sinks to drain into one drain pipe.

The bonus was when the dish rack fit perfectly into one sink.  It spends most of the time in there, until I need that extra sink.

I think that is probably the original mid-fifties counter top.

I can't think of a project that we did in our early March visit.  Maybe climbing up Mt. Oliver, first to a little peak to the north, and then to the radio tower which you can just see sticking up into the white cloud to the left of Larry's head.  Even though it was early March, it was a crazy warm day, and very windy.  Beautiful though.

Not sure when we will get back up there.  I'm working on getting most of the garden planted here at home.  My mother isn't doing very well.  Eating very little and sleeping a lot.  She's not really there, if you know what I mean.  It's almost four years now since she had her stroke.

One day at a time.

I can't believe I've published four posts in five days.  You probably can't either.