As of today I have been “retired” for two years.  It has been a very busy, and very satisfying, couple of years and I don’t see that trend changing anytime soon.

Madeline in her Junior Park Ranger outfit.

Starting around this time of year the Howell Farmer’s Market sets up outdoors every Sunday morning around the old courthouse in the heart of downtown and operates from 9:00 AM to ~1:00 PM.  During the colder months the market moves indoors and only operates every other week, featuring crafts and prepared foods, such as baked goods, jams, and pickles rather than locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables.  When we were both still working we used to spend Sunday mornings at Panera.  We still go there on occasion, but if we are around, and the weather is nice, we prefer to spend an hour walking through the market and buying locally grown fresh organic produce.

Our son, Brendan, called last night to check on our health and we suggested that he and Shawna, and Madeline drive up in the morning and we could all go to the Howell Farmer’s Market and then visit at the house.  Shawna is deep into her professional life as a professor and researcher at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and is currently putting her tenure package together, so Sunday is not really a day off for her.  Brendan drove up with grand-daughter Madeline and met us at the market around 9:45 AM.  She was finally big enough to wear the “Park Ranger” outfit we bought for her at Yellowstone National Park last summer.  Too cute.

Madeline in her new Adirondack chair with matching table.

June 1st is still early for the fresh produce that will eventually be available in abundance at the Farmers Market, but it’s a great time of year for locally grown organic asparagus.  Linda bought some to use for dinner along with onions, potatoes, and eggplant.  One of the things we like about the Howell market is that several local area farms set up stalls and sell produce they harvested the day or two before.  Other vendors sell fresh baked goods that they made or preserved foods that they personally prepared.

On our way to the market we stopped at Meijer’s to get a blow up beach ball for Madeline to play with in the yard.  While we were there we found a small plastic “Adirondack” chair with a matching table that she was just big enough to use.  Back at our house she picked up quickly that this was her special chair and seemed to enjoy using it.  Brendan and Madeline stayed until about 12:30 PM.  She is usually down for her only nap by 1:00 PM, so Brendan changed her outfit, got her buckled into her car seat, and headed back to Ann Arbor.

Madeline and her dad.

We had a light lunch after which I decided to work on our fire pit project.  I am not sure why I felt I had to do this in the afternoon sun on an 84 degree day, but I did.  I believe my thinking was that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and thought the physical activity and deep breathing would be good for me, not to mention the feeling of accomplishment at getting some blocks set in the ground nice and level.  The base course is where all the work is; it requires digging a trench in the dirt and then filling  it in with gravel and sand and compacting it to create a proper base that allows the first course of block to be firmly planted, fully supported, level side-to-side (block-to-block), and sloping back slightly towards the inside of the curve; all while making the curvature of blocks as circular as possible.  I worked all afternoon, with help from Linda, and by 4:30 PM had seven first course blocks set with six second course blocks on top.  We are building the fire pit into the side of a slight hill, so the second course of blocks will be the first one that forms a complete circle and should take about 28 blocks for the diameter of fire pit we are creating.

Madeline knows about cameras.

We are using the blocks for the fire pit from the old retaining walls by the basement walkout as these walls are being replaced with low boulder walls with proper drainage and grading.  We will have many more of these blocks than we can use in the fire pit project and most of them will be used to edge planting beds around the house.

We have been thinking about getting an umbrella for our patio table so Linda looked for one online.  Lowe’s had a selection, so we headed to our local store to see what they had in stock.  We found one we liked, got a base to go with it, and picked up four bags of paver base and two bags of paver sand.  There is a 30% chance of thunderstorms in the forecast, but if we get a break on the weather we will have the materials on hand to continue working on the fire pit tomorrow.  We would also like to get a small street-legal utility trailer that we can tow behind the Honda Element and the Cub Cadet lawn tractor.  Lowe’s did not have anything like that so we stopped at Tractor Supply Company.  They had what I was looking for, sort of, but they were not street legal (no lights) and used a pin rather than a ball coupler.  We will keep looking.

Looking to the north. There is a lot yard in that direction.

Linda made roasted vegetables for dinner (asparagus, onions, potatoes, and eggplant with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper) and served it with a simple green salad and a side of “power grains” consisting of red and white quinoa, millet, and buckwheat.  We finished off the evening with Season 1, Episode 3 of Doc Martin on Amazon Video, which we get as part of our Amazon Prime account.  Our AT&T High Speed Internet is not very fast, but it seems to be able to keep up with streaming video to an iPad, at least most of the time.

Lots of yard to play in at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.