We have been pretty busy since we arrived. First off was to complain to our MC that they had not reported some pretty bad stains on our new carpet. I spent several days having a go at it and have finally almost removed the stains which were a sort of blueish colour. Next thing is to completely shampoo the whole thing and I think it will be OK.
Next the irrigation - we had one or two dry areas of grass and guess what the grass roots had grown across a couple of the sprinklers and were stopping them from popping up. I would have thought that the gardener would have realised, but no just let the grass die back, honestly.
We have now finished pruning back the fruit trees which are absolutely laden with grapefruit, lemons, oranges and tangerines. We have taken out the banana tree as it never really produced anything worthwhile.
Now Arthur is busy washing round the guttering before putting up the outside Christmas lights, we put up the Christmas tree in time for Thanksgiving. We bought a new one this year, you just have to set up the stand and pull up the tree and hey presto, it is fully decorated, with ribbons, balls and lights. Bought it from the Sky Mall magazine which was on the Delta flight. It looks nice and will be easier for the MC to remove as we won't be here ourselves this time to take it down. Our friend across the road offered to take down the outside decorations for us. What it is to have great neighbours who live here permanently. We give thanks for them all the time, we even had Thanksgiving Dinner with them which was lovely.
We are having my cousin visit from Ohio next week so that will be nice, we don't see her too often as although we have driven up there, it is a long drive and as we come in Autumn and Spring the weather there is a bit cold compared to Florida.
The biggest job we had done this time is to have the roof insulated by a company called Retro Foam. It helps to keep the heat or the cold out and it has a waterproof membrane so that it we have roof damage during a hurricane it should prevent water ingress to the house which will be a help. The guys who did it were very tidy and apart from our having to drag all out stuff (and boy did we have some stuff) out of the attic it caused us not trouble. We have got rid of loads of junk and have packed some of it ready to have a garage sale next time we come out. We had one a couple of years ago and got rid of loads of bedding, towels etc. which were too good to throw out but we had changed out colour scheme. I was surprised how easy it was to sell stuff, I think we made a couple of hundred dollars for a morning's work.
Well that is all for now, I hope we can now just have a holiday. I don't know people do it who are still working and only have a couple of weeks, it would kill me and I would feel that I had not had a holiday.
Arthur always tells people who say to us that we are off on another long holiday, that it is not a holiday, just a change of sink and more work!!
Andrena
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