Finished the homemade concrete park bench

Finished assembling the park bench today.   Cost about $50 in materials vs the $400 price-tag we were given.

Just on the end of the dock so I can fish/read/sleep at the water's edge. 

And I've done a bit of them all!

Oriental

Wow, I've been a lazy blogger!!

Nothing much happening....when we got to Oriental, the forecast said a low of 66 for the evening, so I thought we'd try it without the a/c running.  Opened up all the windows and turned on the fans.  Pretty good for a summery July day!

Nothing much going on - we're doing some "yard work".

Oh, and I happened to stop by the Piggly-Wiggly yesterday for groceries - it was their 1st year anniversary party in the parking lot.  What a zoo!

Everyone seemed to be having a good time, though.  Hot dogs/hamburgers on the grill and live music.  Good small town fun!  (I think the entire town population was there!)

Homemade Park Bench

I want a bench to sit out on the dock and fish/read/relax.  It needs to be very heavy so that it won't wash away when we have the inevitable hurricane. 

We found a bench like this for sale -$400 for a 4' bench!!!!

So, resourceful Duane decided it was worth the effort to just make one.

He did this yesterday -  made a mold out of scrap lumber.

 Getting ready to mix the concrete.

Concrete poured and setting up.

And this is as of this morning - first side out of the mold.  Ready to mold another.  You can't see it, but he has molded in thick strips of plastic composite "wood" at the edges to bolt the wooden seat and back boards.   Will update when we have a complete bench!!

Sailboat

I haven't posted much about our purchase of a catamaran - so I thought I'd go on and put that out there.  Not certain yet - will go to Texas to get it in October....  see it here. 

Kiddo's visit

We had the kids over for dinner....Richard drove his new electric car.  He took me for a spin in it - really cool!  Nice acceleration and quiet as a mouse!   Nice visit.

Flowers

I tossed out a bunch of zinnia seeds that I had harvested last year....they came up nicely along-side all my bulbs.  Since the bulb flowers are long gone, they lend a nice colorful air to the summertime garden!  And they were free!

Evening with neighbors

Diane and Pat invited us over last night for an impromtu cookout. 

Hmm hmm good!!

Diane made another one of those wonderful cobbler dishes - this time with some fresh blueberries added in.....now I need to get on a diet!

And we finished the evening with just a bit of "shag" lessons with new friend Leroy....I have two left feet!!  Good fun!

Blueberries!

Not to be outdone by my sis....I got some blueberries too!!!

Lindy was out of town for a long trip so told us we could go rob her tree.  I try to never ignore free fruit....pretty tree!

Diane was helping pick - we took a big bowl full...

A gallon bag full - to the freezer.  Can't decide what I'll do....maybe a cobbler!

Finished shoreline bulkhead repair!

Finally got the bulkhead repair finished!   I know it doesn't look like much, but we moved/placed 34 TONS of rip-rap!  And an equal amount of back-fill dirt.   Hope it holds up to the stormy weather that we are surely to have at some point.

July 4th

Well, it's not really July 4th yet, but the Town of Oriental put on their fireworks display on Saturday night....we had front row seats at the marina.....unfortunately, my phone's camera didn't want to take photos very well.  But you get the idea.   Sharon and Buddy came over for the night, so super fun!

This morning we went kayaking!  Duane and I were in the tandem kayak, Sharon and Buddy in the individual ones.

  Up Brown Creek and all the way up Spicer's  into the marsh.  Fun and so, so peaceful!

Rip-rap shoreline bulkhead repair

We've picked up where we left off a few months ago....more shoreline needing repair....the area between the two arrows is what we focused on today.  The existing bulkhead has eroded and there are just a few rip-rap stones left.  Our process is to bring wheel barrow loads of topsoil to fill the eroded voids.   New heavy duty fabric is used to hold it all together.  All the stones have to be moved one-by-one on top of the new fabric.

Lots of loads of topsoil....getting ready to move the existing stones.

Existing stones moved on top of the fabric.

Starting to add new rip-rap on top of the fabric/new soil.

This is our progress...the sun is going down so the sun is not bright.   Good day's work!!  More later!