59°F and clear skies this morning, going up to 81° today. This is day #2 of our brief mild weather respite. Back to 90° tomorrow and the rest of the week.
Wife and I visited a large mom-n-pop garden center about 40 miles northwest of us on Saturday. She's been looking to replace her grandmother's concrete bench formerly under the pecan tree. I found this place on the inturwebs, and they looked like they had a fairly large inventory of concrete statuary and benches, all molded and finished on-site. They certainly did, too. We found stuff we didn't even know we wanted (I hate places like that). In fact we found everything except the bench she wanted. The lady who makes them said she had one she was working on, but it wouldn't be finished for about a week. We bought it anyway (will go back for it when she calls), along with a new top for the twin swans birdbath and a life-size border collie statue. After lifting the dog into the truck bed, I'm going to guess that thing weighs well over 100 lbs. Wow. We also saw a bunch of really cool stone lanterns that would look nice in the new zen garden. I'm certain we'll be spending more money there this summer.
After we left there, I took her to an old drive-in restaurant in Wood River IL called Charlie's Drive-In. It's been open since 1950. My Father took me there a few times when I was a teenager, and he used to go there when he was in high school. It's typical drive-in fare; burgers, hotdogs, fried stuff. Everything is exceptionally good, and the carhop service is a nice throwback ... although I guess not technically a "throwback" since they've been doing it for 68 years. They make their own root beer, and are probably most famous for that. It's the best root beer I've ever had. Wifey thoroughly enjoyed her cheeseburger, and I had my usual pork tenderloin sammich. Good time.
Sunday morning we played golf ... finally. First time out this year, and it was obvious. We played terrible, but had a great time nonetheless. We went to a local course in Breese IL, just east of us off US-50. We like this course, and it was in pretty decent shape. We were going to play 18 holes, but play was so slow it took us 2-1/2 hours to play the first 9. It was 12:30 by the time we finished the 9th hole, and they'd started a tournament at 12:00, so we decided to call it a day. We went to a local diner in town for lunch, then back home.
Finally got the gas and diesel cans vented yesterday with those yellow plastic vents we found on Amazon. I didn't get to mowing the pasture, so I guess I'll find out how well they pour now when I fill the tractor for that, maybe one evening this week after work.
Roy, we have the five burner version of that Dyna-Glo propane grill. I guess this is it's third season. At some point during the winter, the drip tray fell off. The little C-channel rails that hold it are attached with rivets, and one side rusted through. I haven't looked yet to see if there's still enough metal there for me to tack weld it back in place. When I cleaned the grill grates last weekend for the first time this year, they were terribly rusty. It seems all of the ceramic coating is long gone. We looked online to try to find replacements, but everyone either doesn't carry them, or are out of stock. Needless to say, we are quite disappointed in it's lack of quality. Works fine, but seems to be falling apart entirely to fast.
unfortunately I managed to kill off the vines with some past fencing activity.
