Well. I am still alive and it looks like I will stay that way for a few more years so I had best make the best of it and get on with living. Some things in this life we have no choice so accept them and move on.

Sept 16 was the beginning of a new adventure for me and hopefully my last one. I turned 89 years old, I sold my mobil home in Port St Lucie and went into a new home with my son and his family in Melrose, Fl.

I moved all my worldly possessions, my hopes and dreams in a beautiful home not five minutes away from my sister. Holly, my daughter-in-law gave up her job in Iowa, took her two sons and moved here with me. It is her home and she has agreed to care for me as long as I live. My son Joe, will spend as much time here as he can but he still works and lives in Iowa and will stay there until he finishes his job there and can get a transfer closure to us. Thank God for Face Time, we get to talk and see him every day and keep him posted on our progress here.

We closed on the house on Sept 16, 2021 and moved in the next day. Joe got to spend the first week with us so we kept him busy moving in furniture and getting the house opened.

This house was once a beautiful estate on one acre of land, well built and well loved but the last six years it has been rented and you know what that does to any place so we have lots of love and attention that is needed to bring this place back to what it once was. The neighbors are all very nice and so glad to see the renters out of the neighborhood. For six years the neighbors have helped keep up the front appearance of the place because the rented didn’t seem to care so as we began cleaning up the area and doing many of the big things that needed doing they came over and welcomed us, telling us how happy they were to see someone in here that cared about the place and the neighborhood.

The first thing I did was get a local man to come in and try to reclaim the grounds. He trimmed all the bushes, pulled out the over growth of vines and weeds that had claimed so much of the landscaping and removed all the fallen branches that were littering up the grounds. That was when we found the big old oak tree that had fallen years ago in the front yard. At first we thought it was a stone wall that the vines had over taken but no it was a large oak tree that they had cut back off the drive way and then just left there. One of the neighbors said when the hurricane came though several years ago that tree fell and crushed three cars. I wish they had take to tree out at that time but they didn’t so we tried. What a mess that caused, the roots of the tree had grown around the water pipe to the house and when the truck tried to pull the tree out it broke the water line and we had a swimming pool in our front yard.

After much trouble we found a water meter and shut of but when we shut it off it didn’t stop the water from flooding our front lawn so we had to call for immediate help from the water department. They came right over, for a fee of course and found the meter we found was not ours but was the neighbors and we had shut off their water not our. Our meter was about six inches this side of theirs, under the grass so unless we had know to look for it we never would have found it. We got the water shut off and the pipe mended enough to turn the water back on and that was when we found that the water had never been put into our name. Joe had gone to Clay Electric and got the utilities turn on and put into our names but it turned out that the water is under a different name and in a different room in the building and they don’t exchange information between the two. The former owner didn’t know this either so had never taken her name off the water until they let her know she had someone fooling around with the water. So the next day when the plumber came to check the repair on the pipe and got us all set to move forward on the lawn, the water department came over and turned our water off for good.. Holly had to call and get the water into our name too and then they had to come back, for a fee of course and turn the water on again. Three trips to get done what should have been done before we ever moved in. Anyways it is done and now all we have left to do is to put in some grass seed over the flooded area and plant some nice looking flowers in around the stump that we could not get out and the front looks 100% better than it did when we moved in.

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done on the land and it will get done but not all at once. Time is needed in some cases just to get the bushes back ro fullness. They have been trimmed and cleaned up but time is needed to shape them and restore them to good health.

At this point I wanted to add some pictures to show you the new house and land but things have changed so much on this site and I have not kept up with them so can not figure out how to do that. I will publish this and then take a lesson on the new format and learn how to add pictures and then get back to you. This old dog has much to learn if she is going to stay active in this new world and I am not convinced it is worth the effort, but I will try anyways. Have a good day.