Blueberry Fields Forever...

Since we seem to be living indefinitely at our temporary home in the outer boondocks of Silver Spring, we are becoming well acquainted with nearby Ashton and all it has to offer.

Dempsey's is a great place to get excellent breakfast all day long. After our breakfast for lunch Doug wanted to go pick blueberries since Blueberry Gardens was just down the road on Route 108. At Blueberry Gardens they offer pick-your-own organic blueberries, massage, acupuncture, and yoga and QiGong classes. How handy is that? Very handy if you live in Cloverly, Sandy Spring, or Ashton.

Since I am somewhat immobile these days I decided to stay back and take some pictures of my foot on the hood of the car. At least I can still do that. It's just wonderful having to hobble around on something that looks and feels exactly like a ski boot.

The last time we went blueberry picking was about 15 years ago in Oregon, near Mt. Hood. We picked quarts and quarts of them and ate them all that day. The next day we both had green pee.

Doug was back in about 15 minutes with these yummy petite organic blueberries. It's the end of the season now, but they still taste good!

The other good thing about today is that our real house, or fantasy house depending on how you look at it, is starting to somewhat resemble a house at the beach. I kind of like that.

More Clarinda

Okay this is the last one, I promise! I was recently sent this link to a 10 minute TV feature about the Jack Million Band's trip to play at the Glenn Miller Festival in Clarinda Iowa. It took place during all of the flooding and tornados back in June. It is quite interesting to hear all of this described in Dutch, and also to see some of the recreational activities the locals decided to share with the visiting musicians from Europe. I didn't know about the guns - that must have been the day I was out exploring on foot. Anyway this clip is highly entertaining, at least it is to me - because I'm in it!

sometime it's okay and sometimes it's not

Last week we took down a whole bunch of the lower branches on our birch tree so that it would be easier to mow under and so that it no longer looked like an enormous bush. It is beautiful now.

When we came back from taking the branches to the recycling area at the dump we continued to work on the siding. We've made pretty good progress, but it's not going nearly as fast as we'd like.

Towards the end of the day my left foot suddenly started hurting a lot in one spot just above the arch. I'd sprained my right foot a few days earlier and since it was almost all better, with the help of an ankle support, I was back working at the house again. I guess my left foot had been working extra hard to accomodate my sprained right ankle.

I iced it when I got home. It continued to hurt all night so the next day I went to a podiatrist. The x-rays showed that I have a couple of extra bones in my foot and that apparently the one above my arch has a rather pointy chip sticking out that looks like it might be a little fracture. She sold me a $275 boot that I'm supposed to wear for six weeks.

That means I can't climb a ladder, or go for walks, or play bass standing up, or mow the grass, or do anything else that I need to do, for SIX WEEKS. The timing of this is absolutely horrible. We have so much work to do on the house and now I'm totally useless. I'm starting back at UMD this fall too. That's going to be fun.

That was Friday. And I had to cancel out of a gig Friday night, which totally sucked. On Saturday Doug had a gig in Wilmington that included a hotel room. Since I wasn't working that night, I went along so that I could sit on the bed and watch TV all evening, giving my foot some rest and elevation. In our temporary place we don't have a TV or a couch so it's not that much fun hanging around the house. I can only take so much time in front of the computer.

On Sunday we had to get up at six to make it back down to DC for my brunch gig. I took a stool and it was fine. And I could walk about twice as fast as I could the day before. But it's still really slow with this boot thingy. Anyway here's a view from our hotel room in Wilmington at 6AM Sunday morning:

How do you like them apples?

The apple tree is producing a huge quantity of excellent apples this year. They are so crisp, tart, and juicy. Yum! I love McIntoshes. And there are plenty for the deer and for us. I just hope they don't learn our trick of shaking the tree to get the ripe ones to fall off.

Beautiful Day

Wasn't the weather today just perfect? We were putting up siding and it just felt great to be outside all day long. Look what we did. The front is well underway.

The clouds today were amazing.

And here's a little backyard rabbit action.

We worked until 8:30 and then went to see "Bottle Shock" at Bethesda Row. Delightful movie. Very tired now. Must sleep. More siding tomorrow, then a gig.

Assateague

On Friday we took the day off to celebrate passing our inspection and headed down to the beach for the day. I love Assateague because it is usually uncrowded, the scenery is beautiful, and it's fun to see the horses.

Unfortunately there a ton of flies, more than I've ever seen down there, and they were biting. We ended up spending the whole time in the water, which was actually an excellent way to spend the day.

Assateague is a very narrow island.

The flies were driving the horses crazy too!!!

The sea gulls were handling it okay though.

On the way home we did our usual stops for crab cake sandwiches at the Assateague Market, and eastern shore veggies and goat feeding at Wright's Market. We picked up a few bargains at the outlet mall in Queenstown and headed across the Bay Bridge. The sky looked like a giant crab crossed with a bat.

There is two-way traffic on the Westbound span on Friday nights.

The End