Gorgeous Weekend

It was a lovely, glorious weekend complete with junk, banks, trash-to-treasure, planting, wine and new people, and no homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream. Maybe next weekend we'll have time.

Saturday morning, we got up early and took a load of metal scrap to our local bulk recycling center. I always enjoy going there, it is a working farm but the barn closest to the house is only for weighing and storing bulk aluminum, copper, brass, etc. I would love to go scavenger hunting through there! But, no. We left with over $200, which is fantastic. Prices are up right now. Lovely.

From there, we went to our new bank and opened up another checking account. We had the most wonderful conversation with the lady who handles that, we must have sat there talking for over 2 hours! She told us about her time in the Air Force, she was in Germany when Libya was getting boisterous and we retaliated. BOY did we retaliate!

From there, we went to close our accounts at our old bank. They were feeing us to death. Goodbye!

Then, lunch. We headed home from there with full intentions of going over to help Matt’s mom, who is cleaning out his recently deceased uncle’s rental house. I believe the rent is paid up for another month or so, but I know they want to clean it out and be done with it. Well, we decided to wait and go over on Sunday instead.

Mid-afternoon, I went to a local greenhouse to get some replacement plants for things that didn’t make it. It turns out they were having quite a sale! Peppers and tomatoes were all $.50, and a lot of flowers were on sale, too. I came home with three peppers, a dill, four tomatillos, and a Forget-Me-Not for Matt. I also eyed up the yuccas. They were blooming, and I noticed one pot had two plants in it. That’s a little trick I do, look for pots that have more than one plant.
I came home and found that Matt had delivered my squash mound dirt for me.

Around 5, we left for another Meetup event, this time with the Chambersburg Meetup Group. Hauser Estate Winery has an event every week this summer complete with a band and catered dinner. Admission is free, you have to pay for your food and drink, though. It turned out that only one other meetup person was coming. Ah, well.

I’ve been told that Hauser is very ‘young’ for a winery. They are new, yes, but they specialize in hard ciders and apple or peach wines. They are built in the middle of Apple Country here in PA, what else could they do? They put their building on a hill, it is a FANTASTIC view! Really incredible. They have outdoor tables with umbrellas and they sell sandwiches and things in a cooler. So, you could go up, get a bottle of your favorite wine or cider, a sandwich, and sit out on the patio or deck and take it all in.

Can you tell I’m really tickled with this place? I’m already trying to decide when Matt and I can get up there next for a nice, leisurely lunch.

Anyway, Matt and I had a mini-wine tasting. He really liked the Merlot, and I wound up really liking the Apple Wine, which is fantastic ice-cold. Their ciders were good, too, fairly light and beer-y. The band was a bit loud, but our meetup guy was nice, talkative, and above all – normal. I always worry about meeting people for the first time, especially if no one else you know is there, that they’re all going to be wackos. We wound up staying until almost 9.

Sunday, Matt went over to his uncle’s house with his parents to help work. I was planning on going, too, but I realized how much I had to do at home. So, I set off the dishwasher, raked out the squash mounds to get the weeds, rocks, and sticks out, then planted the squash. I also planted the 4 tomatillos I’d gotten, and I wound up going back over and getting a yucca, a Box Car Willie tomato to fill in a spot where one of my tomatoes died, and a watermelon. Not a vine, the melon itself. You know, to eat.

Matt called about mid-morning to tell me that the refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher at his uncles were ours if we wanted them for a combined price of about what we got for our scrap metal the previous day. I did the measurements and yeah, it seemed it would work out. So, looks like we’ll be storing some appliances in the garage for a bit. It’s a good deal, they’re fairly new. The stove is a glass (ceramic?) top and will go in the kitchen, while the current electric stove was destined for the garage, anyway, as that is where we’re planning on doing the canning. We also wound up with about a dozen and a half quart canning jars, with a pint and a half-gallon jar thrown in, and a mix of other things. Anything that doesn’t go to family will be going to a yard sale sometime this summer.

General clean-up commenced along with pea picking. We burned our paper trash, Max scared the bejezus out of a baby bird, and we watched the fireflies while having a drinky on the back porch.