HOME AND AWAY...........AGAIN!

STROLLING WITH GRAMMIE AND PAPA....


Well, we got back last evening from seven days away at our youngest daughter's new home in Princeton, New Jersey. What a beautiful, beautiful town! There's so much history there and the architecture and size of many of the homes is majestic to say the least. It is, however, a very expensive town to live in.
Our daughter works in Manhattan for a non-profit group and our son-in-law is a tenured professor at Princeton University. They made it through their move and are beginning to settle in to their wonderful new environment. They moved from a very small apartment so this new home with lots of space and lots of yard is making them very happy.
My husband and I spent most of the week doing some fairly major landscape work. Everything on the property was quite overgrown and many bushes, etc. had just died. My husband and son-in-law spent some time removing a stacked wall of rock in the front of their house. The grading wasn't correct so needed to be completely overhauled. We all went 'plant and shrub' shopping and once we had replenished the soil in all their gardens, we planted many new shrubs and plants. We also lucked out as their back area has a garden, but it had WAY too many plants in it. We dug some of the existing plants up and redistributed them into the new gardens.
On Saturday, before we left, we took a day off and went to a public farm and garden area just outside Princeton. They have strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, apples which you can purchase or pick your own. We opted to purchase some peaches and I made a peach pie later that day for dinner.
Now that our little grandaughter is walking, it was fun to watch her have fun walking around. They had little John Deere tractors the kids can ride on, but our little munchkin had more fun pushing them around.
There was a petting zoo, but she wasn't too sure about the animals....maybe next time.
I'm leaving again tomorrow to spend three days with a couple of my cousins up north. It's just 'girl time' with no men. Hmmm, can't wait to see what kind of mischief we can get into! My cousin lives right on a lake. It should be really beautiful up there at the moment. I baked an apple pie to take and stopped at the liquor store and picked up some 'coolers' to embibe.
Our gardens are in disgusting shape so when I get home, I know what I'll be doing for a few days...weeding, weeding and more weeding. My husband is suppose to start my arbor he's promised me while I'm gone..we'll see!
We have our Ohio friends arriving the first of August and I'd really like to have the yard looking in better shape.
We have guests in September and October as well. One of my girlfriends says she's tempted to buy us a neon sign advertising our 'B & B" (heehee). I enjoy having people come and stay and it's a compliment that many enjoy their stay here. With our friends from Ohio, it's almost becoming a tradition. This is their third year in a row coming to our neck of the woods. Fun!