DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 May 26 - 09:56 PM

Sandra, when looking at your heron and mine it seems clear that they are direct descendants from dinosaurs! You have some great names for the birds in that park (Noisy Miner, Tawny Frogmouth, Willie Wagtail).

It was a loud and rainy afternoon and evening, so though there isn't much rain in the morning forecast tomorrow, I'll learn early if it is still too wet still to paint for the remaining touch-ups.

I looked out the window this afternoon in time to see two of the volunteer fire department folks loading their truck with those 4x4 posts that were free at the curb. It seems that away from work one them them has chickens and is making enclosures that can use sturdy posts to frame the base. Excellent!

This evening I emptied a forgotten bin that had some really old potatoes, and just for the heck of it I planted four of them in the garden plot. There were small potatoes growing on the rotting larger ones that might sprout. They may also just decompose into the garden and never make an appearance. The rest are going into the compost bin.

After a long absence from the sewing studio I'm going to go work on a couple of small projects this evening.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 20 May 26 - 02:00 AM

we have some good bird names - an old mild insult was to call someone a Drongo scroll to the end (Culture) for the insult, or a Galah, again scroll down for the Cultural References

And a cockatoo was the bloke outside an illegal gambling venue who kept an eye out for police & a cockie farmer was a poor farmer cos teh cockatoos ate his crops.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 May 26 - 10:44 AM

Not surprising that there are no painters this morning, I suspect paint would be really weird on the moist surfaces, with humidity at 93% right now. Like trying to make a bandaid stick to wet skin. Tomorrow is forecast to be quite wet (and I have a rescheduled hair appointment) - I think it might not be until next week before the work is finished.

I've started another round of what would be considered late-spring cleaning. Sweeping and vacuuming so far, but next I need to wash windows and mirrors and clean various counters and table tops (most have some kind of cloth or clear vinyl covering to protect wood). Wash some of the winter lap quilts and put them away.

Most mornings I drink a mug of hot tea, but as of today it's time for a seasonal switch and 1. make it a smaller cup and 2. mostly drink iced tea. With this humidity the tea has me breaking into a sweat.

patty, what kind of rocks or minerals did you go looking for on your latest trip? I was just looking at the rocks that have been moved around during the painting prep - lots of local limestone fossils. My favorites in the bunch are the round sea urchins. (I tend to bring rocks home and line them up somewhere, on window sills or the outside potting bench, or stack them on top of the stacked rock walls. Mixed in are a lot of quartz crystals picked up in Arkansas.)

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: pattyClink
Date: 20 May 26 - 10:46 AM

" I heave Inner Sydney" tickled me. I see a ship's mate hollering "stand by to heave yer Sydneys, boys!"

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 20 May 26 - 11:33 AM

> I see a ship's mate hollering "stand by to heave
> yer Sydneys, boys!"

Only if it's mess time, and he knows the cook's got it in for the crew.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 May 26 - 06:06 PM

The next time the painters are back it will be to finish the trim around doors and windows, so today I'm washing windows and glass doors. The decorative bars make it difficult to reach some of them, and as warm and muggy as it is, the work is slow going. I have bars to paint also, with a couple of them close to being finished from the last time I painted. Time to get out the step ladder because the window tops are all out of my reach and maybe finish painting (the paint on the bars over the guest room was almost finished last time I worked on them, I don't remember why I didn't finish.)

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 May 26 - 10:32 AM

The prospect of replacing window screens can be a math nightmare, both in ordering exactly the right size and in suffering the sticker shock. Part of the repairs after the hail is replacing a few, and I've opted to go with the old fashioned Marvin Adjustable screens for a couple of windows. I might order the fancy ones for the front of the house later. The thing about these screens on single-hung windows with decorative iron bars, it's almost impossible to the the old ones out without destroying them and fitting the new full-sized ones in looks impossible unless it is a window with unlocking bars (bedroom windows).

Another job is to power wash the fence and the next door neighbors have such a washer. I asked about borrowing it and seem to have set in motion the tuneup process (dig out of back of garden shed, change oil, spark plug, etc.) that I hadn't intended. However, once it is tuned up I'm pretty confident that they'll go ahead and use it on a couple of things at their house as well. Now that I have the spark plug wrench and gap measuring thingie I can offer those to help with the job.

We have a series of rain events washing over us until Memorial Day, so we agreed to wait until at least Tuesday before the paint touch-up is finished. In the meantime my handyman came by and trimmed a couple of large dead branches from the vitex out front and they're cut small and stacked at the curb (the village published new requirements for bulky waste and he keeps a photo of the letter in his phone to be sure people know the reason he is now cutting stuff so small.) No more quarterly mountains of whatever dragged to the curb. Now on Fridays only it has to be about 3'x3'x6' or the size of a smallish sofa. I'd call that a loveseat, but whatever.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Charmion
Date: 21 May 26 - 11:20 AM

I’d call that a settee. The loveseat, properly speaking, is a Victorian novelty piece with its two seats facing in opposite directions and an S-shaped divider.

Now that the trees are in full leaf, most of my back yard is shaded all or most of the time. The sunniest part is on the deck, so I guess it’s time to investigate containers. I’ll plant something that likes shade in front of the fence — astilbe, perhaps, and hellebores if I can find any that will grow in Ottawa.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 May 26 - 11:37 PM

How's your voice today?

Hellebore are found hiding in deeply shaded corners of gardens in Texas. They bloom in winter down here, and they don't survive much north of here, so you must have some specially adapted ones or maybe keep them in pots and move in during winter?

Looking forward to a few days at home with the rain pampering the garden and me pampering my house with more cleaning and some rearranging. I cleared some space in the sunroom with the donation of a stack of eight jigsaw puzzles today (only bought one to replace all of them) and stopped by a small library branch where I friend works to offer a puzzle I'd held back from the thrift store for their public puzzle table. It was nice to catch up.

Colbert's last program is tonight. I'll move myself into the den and watch it on the big TV and let the dogs hang out. (Usually I watch it in my office while I'm puttering on other things.)

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Charmion
Date: 22 May 26 - 07:31 AM

My voice is unchanged. I squeak, rasp and honk when I talk, and I can’t sing at all. Andrew says the Prednisone made it a bit stronger and clearer so he can actually understand me, but that’s all. I’m apparently in for a long haul.

I had hellebores in the shadiest parts of my garden in Stratford, where they’re very popular, and the nurseries advertise them as hardy to Zone 4. Ottawa is at the cold end of Zone 5. We had frost last night and probably more tonight.

Edmund’s bicycle and most of its accoutrements have finally left the building, with help from Andrew. We took it to Re-Cycles, a co-op of bike nerds that provides work space for amateur bike mechanics and refurbished bikes at affordable prices to people who need them, especially new Canadians. The only bike-related items I kept are Edmund’s anti-theft lock and chain, which now secure the gas barbecue to the deck railing.

A surge of mixed feelings hit me as we drove away from Re-Cycles. The bike had to find a new home, no doubt about that, but I still felt a pang of regret. I think I’m done parting with Edmund’s stuff.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 May 26 - 11:27 AM

Reasons for keeping things fall into three categories, I read in a recent AARP monthly newsletter. I don't remember 1 or 2, but 3 was "guilt." At somehow betraying the person an object used to belong to. I just pulled out my copy of Don Aslett's Clutter's Last Stand in which he offers a philosophical approach to how we deal with all of the stuff. He begins the chapter "The Economy of Clutter" with

The well-known 80/20 rule of business says: If all of a given category of items are sorted in order of value, 80 percent of the value will come from only 20 percent of the items. Think about that in terms of clutter. Eighty percent of the space on our shelves (and in our mind) is occupied by stuff we never need. . .

He applies this to beauty products, games and puzzles, books, clothing, accumulated paraphernalia in our garages, etc. I need to reread that book and get myself moving again on more than just selling eBay stuff. I pulled a couple of things out of the closet this morning that can go in the teacher donation box.

Guilt has kicked in discarding things from my parents though I've done better with stuff from more distant relatives. As I sold artifacts on eBay (antiques that I don't collect) there's a computer folder for photos and sales information as I researched them. That's enough.

The bank has written to say the house was paid off and in the next 30 days they'll wrap up the finances and send anything they still hold in escrow. And that I now have to pay my own taxes and insurance. Yup.

The Weather Service has gotten really dodgy lately. All of that rain forecast seems to have evaporated and the dew point at a respectable point for painting, if only they'd gotten the forecast right. This is what happens when you cut the staff and stop sending up morning weather balloons.

Along with the 3x3x6 stack of tree trimmings stacked at the curb I put at least 50 pounds of the rest (stashed out of view of the street for now) into the trash can. Next Tuesday's trash run will get the rest of it.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 22 May 26 - 07:10 PM

oops, a slight typo Don Alett = ASLETT I always check out books on Goodreads review from May 21, 2008. I really liked this book. I didn't even realize that I was reading a book written in the 80's until it said "You can make a video of all of your photos and then toss them out if you want. It is projected that most households will have video tape players by the year 1990." Ha ha.
So anyways, it is TIMELESS. Apparently junk in the 80's is similar to junk in the year 2008. I am still cleaning and organizing my house, but I am feeling SO MUCH BETTER. I didn't ever think of myself as a pack rat (I toss way more stuff than my husband, for example), but I didn't realize how many things have crept up on me over the last few years.
For example: when Benjamin was born, I got a LOT of very cute baby blankets. Enough that I could have been blessed with quadruplets. I have a number that sat in the top of his closet, never even used. But people MADE me those blankets and quilts! I couldn't toss them. (read on - she kept her sister's creation!)

Available on Internet Archive - 2nd edition 2005 - added 2024

---

Thanks - fixed the name typo. ---mudelf

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 May 26 - 09:42 PM

Phone and text tag with the painters and contractor today, but soon the touch up will be finished and I can hand a check over.

This evening I'll start moving some of the potted plants back to the patio next to the front porch. Also, I'm thinking about how to re-arrange and re-stack the limestone blocks to give a more interesting view of the driveway entrance to the house. I want to avoid having things so close that water can bounce onto the side like it did before. I have some beautiful pots but the sun hitting them full-on in the summer makes it harder to keep things alive, so if they are next to low limestone walls they get a little shade.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 23 May 26 - 10:05 AM

What Charmion is up against as a gardener in Ottawa: a recent revision of Canada's plant hardiness zones left our valley comparatively unchanged. :(

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 May 26 - 10:15 AM

Funny how one impulsive move can set a series of things in motion. Back when Mango first arrived she spent some time closed in the hall bathroom and one way to pass the time was to destroy the mat folded in the bottom of the tub. And the mat in my bathroom, different manufacturer, has needed attention, possibly replacement. The New York Times "Wirecutter" has some good product reviews and last night they got my attention with a durable bathmat. Via Amazon, it will arrive today.

So why, do you ask, did I strip the bed and put the mattress cover in the washer, then flip the thick rubber pad on top of the latex mattress? Well, it seems that once I've replaced the head on my new electric toothbrush and figured out how to program it to tell me time for a new one, and that I've pried the window screen (intact!) out of one of the barred kitchen windows and can replace the broken bedroom screen with it, that this clearly was the first step in a total refresh spring cleaning of the master bedroom and bathroom suite.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: pattyClink
Date: 23 May 26 - 10:16 AM

Congratulations on getting the house projects done! Being your own general contractor is a lot of work, and just clearing the decks so the contractors can work was a job in itself.

Gearing up for a trip west in 2 days. It was planned before the southern journey came up, and I really don't like having to hit the road again so soon, but no control over the dates. Checked the weather and I will be in cooler high country, so again will be packing flannel shirts and blankets while sweating around here.

With time short, my triage for the tumbleweeds is now to just cut them off at the root and not try to bag them up (burning is out of the question with dryness and wind conditions). Some can be chopped with a sharp hoe, the larger ones need to be lopped at the ground. The yard will have a lot of dry debris when I get back, but at least there won't be giant thorny things still growing.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 May 26 - 01:48 PM

patty, some plants, when cut, will manage to put out seeds on the dead stalks as a matter of survival. If the tumbleweed is such a plant, you might want to focus on that now rather than be stabbed by the smaller dried up versions they become by the time you're back home. (It's a guess - it happens with various weeds I pull here, I have to completely dispose of them if I don't want more seed in the yard.)

Contractor has been and gone, and we'll finish touch-ups probably Tuesday if the weather cooperates. When they're here we'll also rearrange some of the rocks and pots that were moved ahead of painting. I weeded and transplanted a couple of things this morning after more rain overnight and I should decide which pots need flowers and sprinkle in seeds. Right now most of my pots seem to be coming up volunteer basil so I'll harvest it in the pots where I want flowers.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: pattyClink
Date: 23 May 26 - 09:50 PM

Well I didn't need that anxiety! Literally don't have time to bag up that many plants right now. Perhaps I can bag up the ones that have made it to flowering stage, which is not many.

Gee, the grocery run was unpleasant in town today. Stores are not fully stocked, and both major groceries think it's fun to offer spreadable butter only in giant tubs and the heck with people who don't scarf down that stuff in mass quantities. Romaine comes 3 heads to a pack, yams not available solo but in 5 lb sacks, etc. Anything to get the total bill higher for each customer. Joke's on them. Force me to buy 3 of something or get gouged? Nope, make it zero.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 May 26 - 09:48 AM

Sorry to have been the bearer of bad garden news, patty, but your future self will thank you for dispatching as many seeds as possible now.

This morning as I stood at the kitchen counter making a large dice out of a couple of calabasa squash to steam for the dogs I had a quick flash to the videos Gwenneth Paltrow does of herself cooking in her Montecito kitchen with its high glassed in cabinets and a ladder rail behind her. (She's one of the folks I recently added to my Instagram following list to break the political algorithm it was dumping on me). We all cook, some of us are in tidier kitchens and have our hair up. I wasn't one of those today, but in general, the house is feeling more organized since I had to do so much to prepare for the painters.

Yesterday's accomplishment was the transfer of an intact window screen from one of the kitchen windows (that is rarely opened) to the screen slot on my bedroom window where there was a crumpled framework of a screen, in that state since before I moved in. The Robbing Peter to Pay Paul approach to home renovation worked. This was one of two intact screens on double windows and the other one is in place for all of the summer lizards that grip the screen and wait for bugs attracted to the lighted window.

The old window screen (broken frame, screen intact) is headed into the greenhouse for the time being, because once dismantled the screen itself might work to sieve some of my compost tea (compost soaked in water then brown liquid decanted into a spray bottle to "foliar feed" the garden). It would mean not needing to take one of the kitchen colanders or sieves out for the project.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Charmion
Date: 24 May 26 - 04:12 PM

At the back of my house, three window screens and the sliding screen door have large, ragged holes just below knee height on a human, probably the work of a small dog desperate to get in. The screens in my bedroom windows are the wrong type for the frame, so they don’t keep out anything smaller than a sparrow.

With bug season coming at us like the noon freight, I must get googling for a local screening business. Last fall I had an invasion of stink beetles in the bedroom, and I’m not going through that again.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 24 May 26 - 06:48 PM

Decades ago I had my bedroom & living room windows open 6" top & bottom, with my curtains pulled across most of the gap & a pigeon saw the perfect nest hole in my living room. OMG, it took a lot of effort from me & my neighbour Glen to get the little bastard out into the building hallway ... Since that day my 4 windows are only open 6" at the bottom, with portable insect screens covering the space.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 May 26 - 07:03 PM

"Googling" as a verb (or that use may be a gerund?) is under assault by the company itself, that has apparently announced (in so many words) that AI slop will be the text one receives when doing a search. I hate to say it, but I'm looking at Bing again, and have been using Duck Duck Go on one browser. Limited usability, but better than nothing. Good luck finding new window screens. The kits look extremely tedious to attempt. The custom-made ones remove the assembly aggravation but will break your wallet wide open.

Work in the master bath today involved a long hot soak in the tub for the vinyl curtain liner. This PVC curtain is old enough it stopped off-gassing ages ago and is probably relatively harmless. (A post by an influencer recently suggest replacing them every six months - they apparently don't know about elbow grease or care about the environment.) It looks good, as does the new bathmat. For now I'll leave the older mat in the front bathroom where it can be used if needed and ignored by Mango (hopefully).

I stopped painting decorative bars over one window when the weather started churning. I gave the concrete floor on the front porch a scrub and was thinking of putting up my string of lights, but there is a thunderstorm crawling over the top of us now.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: pattyClink
Date: 25 May 26 - 08:47 AM

You might make inquiries at the oldest hardware stores you can find. I had a whole set of screens re-done by one of the staff at an Ace.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 25 May 26 - 10:42 AM

.... Ah: methinks this "googling" I hear the youngsters talking of nowadays must be what us old farts call "grepping the net".

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: pattyClink
Date: 25 May 26 - 10:55 AM

Rare thunder as a storm cell approaches. It will hit just as I try to load the final stuff in the camper. I have loaded an awful lot already, and the wind slammed a hatch door down on my head--the magnetic catch wasn't enough against a gust.

Yes I remember 'grep' wasn't that a Unix command? Google built their empire on top of that, as did the other search engines. Pity someone didn't antitrust them to stop right there.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Charmion
Date: 25 May 26 - 03:07 PM

The silver maple tree in the back yard will have a radical branch-ectomy tomorrow morning. At present, anyone walking from the front porch to the deck will get a bonk on the head and a faceful of leaves before finding the back steps. I should have done something about it earlier, but I didn’t realize how dense that tree is until it leafed out completely.

In other news, my great-niece called this morning. Shit continues to happen to that girl. Back in March, mere weeks from securing her bachelor’s degree, her car was rammed from behind at speed, leaving her with a severe concussion and no vehicle. She had been working two jobs on top of her studies, but the brain injury forced her to stop. Both jobs were part-time, so employment insurance won’t replace her lost wages. She has a lawyer who is trying to wring some money out of the provincial government’s disability scheme, but that takes time. Worse, the insurance settlement won’t replace her totalled car. (I think she should sue the driver who hit her, but that would take years.)

So she’s not broke yet but she’s scared that she will be soon. I told her to figure out what she needs to bridge the gaps she can see right now, and I’ll tap the “Uncle Edmund fund” — the investment account started with Edmund’s army insurance payout. The stock market has been generous this year, and my main concern until now was finding charities to give money to so Revenue Canada doesn’t get it all.

She starts grad school in September with a stonking scholarship and a job as a lab assistant, so we just have to get her through the summer, and the move up Highway 7 from King’s College in London-in-the-Woods to the University of Waterloo.

Ah, well. So it goes.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 May 26 - 03:13 PM

The final step in the bedroom window interior work was to trim off a dozen feet or more of the window sill's pothos vines that had been looped and tucked up over a spring rod (so they could get sun and not die down on the floor). Trimmed sections of that were placed in a jar of water, others are in the compost pile and who knows what they'll get up to this summer.

A traditional hardware store does sound like a good starting place for window screen help. And sorry to read about the thump from the hatch cover. I've walked into those a number of times, and I always consider myself lucky if it doesn't leave a mark. It always leaves a tender spot.

Past paint jobs here (prior to when I moved in) were very sloppy, and their dabs and dribbles are still in view today. I'm seeing them as I work on the windows and have seen others walking around the house to examine the new work. I talked to the painter about how to remove some of those and am going to start on the front porch with a scraper used to remove old adhesive before putting down tile, etc. I also have a wire brush and need to pick up some of the paint remover that isn't toxic like the old fashioned stripping products were.

Once I finish painting the iron gate I'll take a photo of that window to add to my report to the insurance adjuster, evidence of work I've done myself (and suggesting I worked on more than one). Whether he realizes the iron has been painted or not, it will look a lot better than before and show my time and their money well-spent. I have a few photos of the painters working on the trim when planks were replaced, and they already have a report about the new roof. This week hopefully the project is done and dusted.

This week an incredibly long cat-sitting gig begins; her 20 days in Europe, a gift to her nieces, means many gallons of gas and hours back and forth for me. I apologize in advance if I lose my mind a bit, and will remind myself with sticky notes in strategic places One Day At A Time. It does help to tell yourself to just get through this day and not worry about the rest. I added a modest gas surcharge this time, it looks puny beside the fee I'll earn, but it helps with each $50 fill-up to know that some of it is covered. (In my never-had-kids friend's family they have the same kind of relationship as in my family; I had the children and raised them on a state salary and we all did a pretty good job but my unmarried sister has been able to add some frills and solid support, especially now that they're grown. I think Charmion is a subscriber to this family plan also.)

Wow. A note to say that Charmion's last post landed while I was still writing mine, I had no idea that the Aunt effect was in such strong evidence that I could feel it clear down here in Texas when I mentioned it!

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 25 May 26 - 04:46 PM

Correct, Patty: "grep" stands for Globally for Regular Expression Print, or "g/re/p" as typed in as a command to the U**X editor "ed". It even merits its own Wikipedia page, which neatly torpedos the urban legend I heard that it was an overnight hack.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Charmion
Date: 25 May 26 - 07:08 PM

The Aunt Effect? Yeah. That.

I never felt entitled to the hunk of money the government dumped on me when Edmund died. Between pension, annuities and savings, I have more than enough to live on, and God knows I don’t stint myself. But being in a family, even as an in-law, provides a wide range of obligations as well as opportunities. My great-niece’s situation provided some of each.

Edmund was compulsively generous with material goods and cash donations to registered charities. He was less inclined to attempt any adjustment to the economic imbalances within his own family, possibly because he did not want to ruffle his siblings’ feathers. But when Faith needed help getting over the financial barriers facing her in getting into and through university, I decided to bulldoze my way past her parents’ and grandparents’ pride. The kid was doing her part, staying on the Dean’s List and earning scholarships as well as holding down too many jobs. It’s not her fault that the funding structure for post-secondary education is simply not designed for working-class people.

So, instead of a registered charity, I decided to spend that money on Faith. No, she’s not tax-deductible, but I don’t care.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 25 May 26 - 11:58 PM

goodonya, Charmion

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 26 May 26 - 08:45 AM

Charmion, may I hazard a Maltese pun and suggest that you are Faith's hope and charity?

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 May 26 - 10:20 AM

Ewww, Andrew! (Good one!) Hear, hear! Cash going to a much better and targeted use.

I haven't thought deeply about my great aunts in years, but I had several who had a similar role in helping with school. Dad was estranged from his mother since his father's death before I was born. When I was 14 my parents were divorcing and Mom left mail for Dad on a table near the door, but he never took the letters from his mother. I was always curious about her so one day I took them and after reading a few I wrote to her and it started a communication that let me meet family I knew little about, and opened communication that she and the sisters she lived with had craved for decades. After my grandmother died her three sisters asked if I'd write to them since they also enjoyed hearing about us. I first traveled to meet them in my college years and we wrote letters for the rest of their lives.

Yesterday was a deluge so today's touch-up painting is postponed until tomorrow. If the afternoon dries I can at least finish some of my painting. Since I seem to be on a repair roll the cat gig income is going to go to various house projects. New faucets in the kitchen and bathrooms are at the top of that list.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Charmion
Date: 26 May 26 - 10:55 AM

Tree surgery has been postponed to next Thursday. The ash slowly dying against the back fence must go, and it only makes sense to prune the silver maple at the same time.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 May 26 - 01:15 PM

There are Montezuma baldcypress trees in both the front and back yard that are now in full leaf. The way the leaflets grow they hold onto a lot of water when it rains so today they are drooping low from the weight. (This gives you a look at it). They smell amazing in the rain and are native in this region so they do well with the soil and weather. I thought I bought regular old baldcypress but those send up cypress "knees" that are woody knobs all around the yard and can end up being tripping hazards. I was lucky getting the Montezuma variety when I bought these. Interestingly, the guy who posted that tree info realized his Montezuma cypress were actually the regular sort. In a couple of the bottom photos you can see the knees emerging around the tree.

eBay stuff rounded up this morning to list, then if the afternoon is warm enough, mowing and painting security gates.

Mango scored a direct hit on my breakfast this morning, nabbing slices of gluten free bread defrosting on the plate on the counter. My bad, not pushing it far enough back from the edge.