These photos are really beautiful!

Heart, the window air units will work. The new ones are powerful and yet energy efficient. You can use a box fan in doorways to circulate air between rooms. We use window units here because this 100+ year old building cannot be converted to central air without about $25,000 of investment in a place that is only worth $40,000 because no one wants to buy a historical building. We do well with them.

Wow! You have been busy. We have a patch at the back rock wall that we let go wild with wildflower seed for pollinators. Did the seed come up? Nope. Did invasive plants that the DNR wants eradicated come up? Yes. Guess who has to get a burn permit, burn it down, dig, and then replant actual transplants of rapid spreading good flowers? Me. I am having a hard time making myself deal with it. 🤪😬

I am so glad you felt well enough to work in the blueberry patch! I know it is frustrating for you to not be further along in recovery, but honestly I think you are doing amazingly!

We are enjoying morning coffee and some chocolate chip scones I made last night. Everyone is just waking up slowly, but in about an hour, we pile into the mini van with the bachelor sons, haul the sailboat to the marina, and sail for 2 hours. We have a transient slip for the next 3 days. While we are sailing, our married son and dear dil are prepping everything for a big cookout for late afternoon. Once they are done, they will come up to the marina, our bachelor's will disembark and drive back to the house, and we will take son and dil out for a couple of hours. The boat is comfortable for 4 but with all the rigging and coming around with mast and crewing, it gets crowded after that. However, if one bachelor wants to sit in front at the bow sprit, so five can go together, I am happy to come back alone. We will see what everyone wants to do. Then about 4 pm Mark will build a fire in the fire pit and we will start the grilling. What is so nice is CG (the first initial of son and dil) planned the whole meal, bought all the groceries. They knew their grandmothers would try to do it all themselves, and though my mom is capable, mil is NOT since the fall but pushes herself to do things she should not. So they just stepped in an made a great plan. I am really lucky to have such thoughtful kids. We will probably sit around the fire most of the evening. The 3 musketeers have lights ayers and will have crazy duals while G watches C and probably thinks, "I can't believe my husband is doing that!" 🤣 Mark and I and G will visit with the grandma's. Then at dusk everyone gets sparklers. Tomorrow we take Mark's brother and sil sailing. I always enjoy that because I do not crew. Bil is a master sailor who teaches sailing school. When he crews with Mark, I am on easy street and sil and I have mellowed A LOT with each other over the years and now genuinely enjoy each other's company. Saturday, C wants to swim from the boat so we are going to leave the marina, turn east, and stay outside the buoys but close to shore deep enough to dive so we don't have the speed boats around, tie a floating safety device to the ladder with a good towing rope, and drop anchor. Mark and C will swim for sure but I never feel that confident even though I am a good swimmer and tread water well. I am not a fan of snorting lake water and will stay aboard to haul people in if something freak happens. Saturday night will be an exhausted laying around the yard on blankets and eating leftovers because we will be so tired from all the festivities. Sunday morning Mark and I will take a quick sail and then pull Ina Belle out of the water, bring her home, and wash her down. (Great Lakes Boating etiquette is to always wash your boat and examine for invasive species on the boat and trailer.) That is our whole 4th of July fest in a nutshell.

Ottakee, once probate is done, since finding a buyer for such tiny pieces of property would be very difficult, could you donate that land to a conservancy group? Many will take these odd pieces and put them under nature protection so they can't be developed, and seed them to native grasses and pollinator gardens. Then you would be out from under them. Just a thought. We finally had to admit that we can't really use a do it yourself estate plan. Our estate is too complicated for that. So we will have to bite the bullet and pay for a lawyer and figure that is going to be $1500-2000 possibly more. Mother in law is making some much needed changes to her trust right now, and her estate planning group recently closed the offices in this area so now they have to send a lawyer from the city to meet with her and they want to charge $1500 for 2 hrs. Mark said NO, he will drive to the city get the paperwork, bring it back help her fill it out, take her to the notary, and then drive that paperwork back to their office. I would be interested to hear reviews of Nokbox. My mother's estate is not complicated, but it is a simple will she tried to draft up herself on some freebie legal download stuff, and I have a feeling it is not going to stand up to scrutiny especially if my brother gets nasty. This might be a reasonably priced solution.

Llama, since you are still married, do you retain any POA over him? Since he under involuntary hold, do you or BIL make medical decisions for him, legal decisions? I am wondering if it would be possible to cut dh off from communication with his sister. She is clearly a dangerous person since she does not care if she riles him up or not, and doesn't consider the consequences.

I was a naughty girl at the nursery. And there might not be anything much cuter than a bumblebee. I tried to capture him when he was face planted in the milkweed, but he moved. Bumblebee butt is adorable!

I wanted rabbit manure enough to buy a pet rabbit. I dump her aspen shavings from the cage with all of the goodness directly into the new tomato bed which has terrible soil with poor water infiltration and zero aeration. That was bagged stuff from. Walmart which was supposed to be good (because Lowes was out of stock on the soil I used to buy) and Walmart cow manure compost because again, couldn't get my other sources stuff. The tomato plants were doing so poorly and no amount of fertilizer helped, and I think that is because the soil was so bad, they couldn't take up the nutrients. The tomato plants that got her 1st batch of bedding are really starting to flourish. I think her manure and the remnants of her food are decaying and adding to the soil. Already the water infiltration around those plants is improving. So my hope is that by the end of summer, every bed has had some of her bedding which also doubles nicely as mulch. Once Snow flies, I will clean her cage into the compost pile in the hopes that I will have some decent compost to add next spring. I started the new compost bin with a bag of high end topsoil from a local nursery (not cheap!), some properly composted chicken manure from a local farm, and a bucket of greens leftover from the kitchen plus some coffee grounds. I have a pitchfork for turning it. But it will be a while before the pile is deep and wide enough to get to any kind of good, interior temperature. Still, I have high hopes. Mulched fall leaves will go in it. My one regret is not getting a 2nd bunny. She isn't cheap given that I had to make a cage, buy the water bottle, and keep buying the young bunny alfalfa pellets plus Timothy hay. However, I am getting exactly what I want, and she is delightful. Several times a day I hold her on my lap. She loves to be petted. 2 buns would definitely give me enough to keep my raised beds happy.

I have decided that my cone flowers and black eyed susans make me very happy, and they are thriving. I have a big bed around a blue spruce tree that is quite naked, and have decided it needs more of these flowers. I am soon off to the nursery to see if they have any left, and ask if it is too late to transplant and have a good chance of them making it. I am so new to flowers, that I have NO idea about this. When I get back, the 1st cucumber of the year comes off the vine. I know our friends on the opposite end of the globe have hit winter. How did your harvests go? Melissa, were your kids able to come home and help dh put up the harvest? How are you feeling? I need to come up with some sort of inclusive monthly saying. At the moment, I am drawing a blank. I will post pictures of my greenhouse haul when I get back.

Oh, I am so sorry to hear that! May he rest in peace. I am so sorry for your loss.

That is tough. I think if they all commit to masking when entering public places, N95 or at least KN95, major hand washing routine, not taking her into public, and keep the windows open and fans running to ventilated air, she might manage it. Without that, I think the odds might be stacked against them. Her immune deficiency is just going to make her an easy target for every little virus and bacteria around. Something to consider would be masks for your children. You might want to require them to mask when in the same room with her. She is going to die, sooner than later, but if she got sick and died from something that you children believe they may have inadvertently exposed her to, the emotional fall out could be devastating to them, especially any younger ones who are limited in their ability to think critically about the situation. So a child sneezes in the room and three days later, grandma gets sick is a bad situation for your child. Others may not want to take the precautions for their own kids, but you can just insist or the children do not see her. This way you can have a layer of protection for your own children's emotional well being. When my father was taking chemo, we all worse surgical masks around him, and washed our hands with antiseptic and hot water for 30 seconds before entering the room.

Llama, I am agreeing with Rosie and Regentrude. Sil is one wicked woman. She won't back down even if you twisted yourself into knots over this. She will just think of some new way to make you miserable, or try to do so. You and bil are going through a lot of crap, and you need the friendship and family relationship. It is notable that Pops is NOT supporting her, and Pops seems to be a pretty amazing guy. Let her rot. Keep a journal of everything she does, screen shots of texts and emails, record the phone calls or have her on speaker phone when others are in the room. Bil may need this at some point in the future. But otherwise, just maintain that friendship. These children are your children's cousins, and they don't need the weirdness of yet another strained relationship and familial oddity created because their mother's Mad Bitch Syndrome was allowed to rule over everyone. I have seen this. My sil, brother's 2nd wife, is sooooo much like your sil. The consequences of everyone for years bending their relationships and behavior to suit her manipulation and deceit has had devastating consequences. If all of us could take a time machine and go back to when they married, we would start with refusing to allow her games to have any affect on how we maintained our own extended family relationships. We would have stood up to her and told her to pound sand. It is a huge regret!

I am glad to hear you are establishing strong boundaries. You can keep that distance there, and allow the kids to interact in short bursts. If it going off the rails, you can get the kids out. Definitely do not do care. I learned the hard way that family will abuse the snot out of anyone with endless care giving if you don't say no and walk out. I have been trying to put boundaries in after the fact with my mil and wow is that hard.

I am reading my son's book. It is not on the market now, so I can't say the title, but it will be out in 4-6 weeks as the cover art was done and approved, and it is in the final edit. Also, The Holistic Orchard.

I personally think you should not go. This dictating business is abusive. Let that nuclear family be together and make their memories. Without your dh around, you could have some gentle conversations with the kids about what the future holds for grandma, and what things they might expect if she deteriorates. I was forced to go on a vacation with an uncle who had advanced stage MS, and was rapidly going downhill. It was quite traumatizing, and especially so because there wasn't really a way to escape the situation for a while and process it.

I would bet dollars to doughnuts on this one!

That was one reason I didn't want to begrudge their friends some meals. I know one young man whose parents were really struggling, and his mum admitted that hamburger helper, off brand mac n cheese, spaghetti without meat or cheese, and rationed sauce was a thing. He got school lunch, but yikes, around here the food is terrible and mostly fried and carbs. So him pack away two baked potatoes and a very large bowl of chili topped with cheddar cheese and then eat an apple or banana was so important. But, the labeling in bold letters was important because otherwise I would go to cook dinner, and find many of the components consumed!

I bought these too!! Great minds....

According to Mark, every single time his friends came over, his mom made hamburger gravy and a huge bowl of mashed potatoes. It got to the point that his friends thought it was all she knew how to make. 😂😂😂

Okay, I need a "Garlic Scales for Dummies" type explanation. It sounds yummy.

I haven't tried garlic, however I am definitely intrigued.

Ouch! That is a whole lot of wrong right there.

LOL, I get that. I make a habit of making sure the labels are facing forward. I don't keep white sugar in the glass jars because I have a beautiful, purple glass canister that I inherited from my grandmother which keeps a 4 lb bag of sugar perfectly. Hopefully that will help me not make that mistake because that would make for a very very bad cinnamon rice pudding!

Wow! I have no idea, but I have to wonder when it comes to court, if the burden of proof is on her not BIL. I would also think character witness of your FIL and maybe your priest would go a long way since you have been BEYOND long suffering about trying to honor your marriage vows. Your SIL is a real witch! Many hugs.