Juicing

We have now cleared out the fruit from this year - almost. Most of the fruit has been picked except for some lemons and a few oranges left on one tree that we will use for fresh fruit as we need them. We also have some oranges in the refrigerator that we will use on an as needed basis. The bulk of the time spent over the last two days was spent juicing the lemons and oranges and "bottling" the juice.

Here are a couple of shots of our efforts:

The bottles were then placed in our spare freezer and in order to make room for those, we had to rearrange the main freezer in our kitchen. Needless to say, we are on overload for our freezers. It was a job that we were finally pushed into completing as the fruit flies were beginning to multiply at a rapid rate outside. They only liked the damaged fruit, but we felt it was necessary to finally get rid of all of the fruit that was left.

We have lots of new growth and buds on our trees for the crop that we will harvest next season. We expect a great one as our landscaper did a fabulous job trimming and fertilizing the trees. It will really hurt to have to buy lemons and oranges again at the store sometime next Fall....

End of Visit

Yesterday was our farewell to Patty for two weeks. She returns on March 13 for another week with Brandon for his Spring Break. Jordan goes to Lake Havasu with friends for his Spring Break which, I believe is the week before Brandon's. I do know that Brandon will spend some time in Jordan's room (taking up the bed of Jordan's departed roommate) the weekend they arrive from Chicago. We look forward to another great week.

We took Josie to work in the AM so she was not here for Patty's departure. Patty and I went to lunch at Tokyo Joe's before leaving for the airport at 1 PM. There was construction on I-10, so we went to the airport via Grand Avenue - not the best way to go. She made it in plenty of time and arrived safely back in Chicago last evening.

That about wraps it up for the week...

Another Update for Patty's Visit

The main activity for yesterday was the pruning of our fruit trees.

We did, however, spend more time in the AM going through the storage cabinets in the garage and finding more "material" for the dumpster and for the charities. That was a breeze compared to Tuesday's effort.

The landscaper arrived at around 1 PM and began the task of pruning the trees and fertilizing them. He did the largest two trees but had to leave early before completing his effort because of an emergency family issue. He will return sometime next week to complete the third tree, prune the agave and clean up the yard. He did a terrific job on the main trees and these shots will provide an idea of the extent of his effort.

Starting with the "before" shots of the main trees:

The "during" of the two big trees:

and the "after" shots:

The nice thing about the trees after he was through is that we can now pick fruit from inside the tree as well as the outside. He cleared all the deadwood from the inside and we can actually climb the inside if necessary to reach fruit.

Patty will spend most the day today at ASU with Jordan helping him to get around to places to get a haircut, shop and do other errands. We will probably see him again this evening if he can come home with Patty for the night. Tomorrow, Patty leaves for home and we will probably drop Jordan off at the campus on the way to the airport.

Oh, and we went out to dinner last night at Oregano's Italian Restaurant and celebrated both Patty's birthday and mine. It was delicious, as usual...

Patty Visit Update 1

So far, everything has gone according to plan during Patty's Visit. We even had some extra stuff thrown in, such as a pizza dinner with George, Cheryl, Brian and Amy on Tuesday night to provide all the oranges and lemons that they could take.

We have almost completed the garage project. There is now enough room to park the car in the garage and we have emptied the dumpster once already. There is still a portion left to do as we have to go through and sort out the stuff that is in the storage cabinets in the garage. It has been a fun project actually, and we expect to wrap that up today.

Almost all of the fruit has been picked and we made a trip to the Food Bank in Surprise with all the extra oranges and lemons. The landscaper is due today to perform the pruning of the fruit trees and fertilize them for next season. It is going to happen just in time as the new growth has already started on these tress with blossoms beginning to appear with the new fruit.

I will continue to update the activities and events during Patty's visit but here are some shots of things that have happened so far.

Starting out with the garage:

The Crew:

The end of the first day with the car finally fitting into the garage:

The dumpster being emptied for the first time:

Our fruit picking party:

The rest of our effort to clear the trees of the fruit and the breaks we took along the way:

This is a sample:

And, finally yesterday, the bins at the Food Bank:

Patty and I also stopped at St Vincent DePaul to drop off items for charity. So, our working crew is about ready to start another day in the garage, so I will end this entry for now and try to get more for an entry tomorrow...

Patty Visit

Patty arrived at the Phoenix Airport at 12:30 yesterday to begin her first of two visits to our home. This one will last five days (until Saturday) and involve primarily work in our garage to create some kind of order. That might be a dream. The fact is that Patty wanted to help sort through all our stuff to see if there might be some things that the boys can use and also some things she might be interested in keeping after they relocate to Arizona. Most of the goods have not been touched for years and will be as much a surprise to us as to her when opened from the boxes.

We started the visit with a stop at ASU to visit Jordan and to take him to lunch. We went to Varsity Tavern on the ASU campus and it was terrific - more than any of us could eat.

Here is a shot taken outside the restaurant:

We had a nice visit with Jordan before stopping at Walmart to pick up some items for his room and then returning to his dorm.  He is all alone now for the rest of this school year as his roommate dropped out and they didn't replace him. Here is a shot of his nice dorm room:

We then returned to our house where we sat outside and had a nice cocktail hour before watching some TV and going to bed.

Our plan for today is to work in the garage and end the day with a pizza night with the rest of our AZ family - George, Cheryl and Brian and his family. Aside from having a nice visit, we have lots and lots of oranges and lemons that we would like to offer everybody so that we can pick the fruit from the trees to ready them for a pruning by our landscaper this Thursday.

Patty had a taste of one of the oranges this morning for breakfast that she picked from one of the trees and it passed the test:

We look forward now to having a very productive week and a great visit with some very nice weather to share....

Changing Seasons

It is about that time of the year when we can sit outside without wearing a sweater or a jacket. That is probably our favorite time of the year when we don't need A/C and don't need the heater. It might be nice to live in Hawaii.

I wanted to show a couple photos of the sunsets around here. Josie is very active in that department. She took these two shots last night:

It is amazing how quickly the sky changes at sunset. It is always a beautiful sight.

Josie is off for the next couple weeks which includes the time during Patty's visit the last week of February. It's time to get some projects done around the house...

Happy Valentine's Day

Just like every other Valentine's Day that we have been home- Josie works long hours the entire week. I have lots of things to do myself while she is working. Some of our projects are on hold though until Patty comes to visit on the 24th of February for a week. We have a dumpster reserved for that week so we expect to have major surgery done on the garage during that time.

We still have lots and lots of oranges and lemons for anybody that would like some. I contacted the St Mary's Food Bank to make sure they would accept what we don't use. We are good to go for that when we are ready which should be in about another week or so. We still have to schedule our landscaper to prune the trees and we keep delaying that until we get all the fruit picked.

It's pretty quiet around here now without the truck and RV. I guess that means that any trips we take will have to be in hotels. That isn't all bad as we haven't traveled that way for a long time. We will miss the RV and just hope that maybe someday we can do it again only with a much smaller configuration.

The next big hurdle for me is to complete our taxes for 2019. I don't think we will fare as well this year with all the changes in the tax code. At least, I can't see any advantage to us. We'll find out pretty soon...