How was your weekend? I hope it was wonderful!
We had a great weekend! It was productive, successful, and filled with pretty things.
We did some some plant shopping and came home with some beauties. Here's one of the flowers we got for our front yard. Isn't it gorgeous?! I love the colors in this verbena!
We planted these and several other kinds of flowers in our front yard. Shortly after we'd finished and we were standing in the yard admiring the pretty new flowers and how nice our yard is looking, a hummingbird buzzed around and discovered some of the new flowers. It quickly started eating from them. That made us so happy! I love having flowers that the wildlife enjoy! In fact, we bought two bushes that are supposed to attract butterflies. I'll be sure to post pictures when they start blooming. Maybe I'll even get some butterfly pictures.
Our spring and summer garden is shaping up nicely, so far. We continue to add more to it. And, we're already enjoying food from it! Our lettuce and arugula are doing so well that we haven't been able to keep up. It's so cool to go out and pick fresh food right before a meal. I'm excited that the arugula is successful because I love arugula! It's so tasty! I usually buy a bag every week or so and they often have a lot of moisture in them and don't last long. Right now, I get it fresh whenever I want some and don't have to worry about it spoiling in the fridge. I find myself munching on it whenever I'm in the backyard. It makes great pesto too!
I twisted my ankle a couple of weeks ago and have been resting it since. It's feeling quite a bit better than it has been. So, I went out Saturday morning and tried to hike on it. It felt SO good to get back out there again! I love hiking SO much! I was encouraged that it felt pretty good. But, it started to hurt a bit after about 20 minutes. So, I turned around and kept my hike short so I wouldn't make it worse again. It was a short hike (only about 40 minutes) but a hike nonetheless. So, I counted it for my 52 hike challenge and I'm still up to date.
Here's one of the pretty flowers I saw on my hike...
Probably the best part of the weekend involved our SUV (aka what we use to pull our camping trailer). About a week ago the brakes locked up and started smoking. We were near a mechanic/dealer that we thought we trusted and pulled in to have it checked out. It made sense because the only other way to get it home would have been by tow truck. Well, to make a long story short, they told us the entire brake system and more had melted and that they needed to do $8,000-$10,000 of work on it. What?!!! That's insane! We thought, explored, and shopped many options and ended up having it towed home. The tow truck driver told us that he tows cars from that mechanic to other places all they time because that place is so crooked and expensive. Well, now we know! And, he looked underneath and didn't see anything melted. Hubby took it apart, found the problem, and fixed it this weekend for about $200! Whew! He's going to change out everything in the brake system and more just to be on the safe side. However, the total cost will be significantly less, about $1,000!
It was a good experience to go through because we learned not to trust that mechanic. And, we found out, after lots of shopping, that we still like our Yukon XL better than anything we could find to replace it with. It has so much of what we want on it. And, best of all, it's paid for! Besides that, fixing things is so much better for the earth than constantly throwing things out and getting new.
Wishing you all a wonderful week!
4 comments:
I love that color of that verbena. Really pretty and unique. Glad to hear you listened to your body and kept your hike short. I put my back out because I tried to do some silly exercises a friend told me about for my lower abdomen. It took me 2 weeks to get over the pain. I have scoliosis so have to really be careful what kind of exercises I do. I'm so glad you found out about the crooked mechanic. Seriously! But it reminds me of the time when Yusef was traveling from Denver back to his place and he had a dashboard light come on that he was worried about. He went to a Firestone and one of the guys there told him what the problem was and that it would cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars to fix it. I forget what the actual cost was now, but at the time, Yusef messaged me to get my opinion. Of course, I quickly googled it and we made the decision for him to just let it go, drive home and see what happened. Plus, another guy at Firestone told him he probably didn't really need to worry about it so much. Turns out, we made the right choice and saved money. The problem likely was just caused by air getting into the tank when he filled it with gas before leaving. He's not needed any kind of repair. Shame on people who try to scam us when we rely on them for their expertise.
Nice to see the Spring foliage! Glad the rest helped your ankle!
I am so envious of your fresh lettuce and arugula! I would eat arugula every day if I could...there is nothing that sets me off more than crooks like that mechanic/dealer. We have quite a few of them around here and it's taken a while to sift the wheat from the chaff. I have a great and honest mechanic now, thank goodness! Glad you are going back to hiking gradually - you don't want to reverse the healing process! (BTW, that verbena is gorgeous!)
Glad to hear your car troubles turned out okay!
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