Cherries, shelves, and a B&B infested vacation

Our cherry tree is heavy with cherries. Many are turning red but we want to wait to pick them until they are really ripe. The neighborhood squirrels and birds aren't so picky, so in an effort to at least slow them down a bit I have wrapped the lower part of the tree in netting.

We planted the tree four years ago. (That day is easy to remember since it was the day that the grandkid's dad, NCN - Needs Cool Name -  came over and said he needed to ask us something. Mrs Notthat and I were up to our elbows in the hole we had dug, and each wildly, but silently, speculating as to what this could possibly be about. It turned out to be good news - he was asking our permission to ask WHM - Weird Haired Mom - to marry him. Yes, it was a happy day and WHM even managed to get the answer right when he popped the question to her a few days later.)

This is the first year that I have not been able to cover most of the tree. I swear the birds were smirking and the squirrels were watching how I worked the ladder very carefully. Hopefully next weekend will be harvest time and we will still have most of the crop to ourselves.

Mrs Notthat is very good at sniffing out bargains, using a combination of Craigslist.com and Freecycle.org. She also does not handle clutter very well, especially when it is mine. So she has had her eye out of a bookshelf to put along my side of the bed so that I can organize my clutter a bit better. 

Yesterday she hit the jackpot - a guy was giving away a couple of oak bookshelves. The only problem is that since we got rid of the minivan, we don't have a very good way to pick up that sort of thing. The Boy let us use his Jeep though, and it worked well, even if it looked a bit goofy.

And here is the bookshelf in its place. Mrs sees this as an improvement and I see it as proof I need to get more books.

 

This is going to be a very bloggable week for us (assuming we are able to find internet connections). This is the last week that WHM has off before her summer session at school starts up, so Mrs and I are heading out on a week long tour of peculiar Bed and Breakfasts. 

On Monday we head up to Lassen Volcanic Park and a B&B named after a holy dog (St Bernard Lodge). They claim hearty breakfasts and some wireless internet. We've never been to this area of the state before so it should be interesting. The main road through the park is still closed due to snow, but we are hopeful it will be open by Tuesday.

After that we head up to a peculiar place in southern Oregon where you sleep in treehouses. (Ours is Cavaltree.) We've never been there before although I've tried a couple of times and they never had anything available. This time we had a choice of treehouses - I suspect this is due to the economy. 

In any case, this place is technically a B&B, providing breakfasts and bathrooms at the end of the hall (which means climbing down a ladder and walking 100 feet or so to get to the hall). They have a series of zip lines you can use for daytime adventure - Mrs Notthat seems to think I've agreed to try them out but my squeamishness about heights begs to differ. So we will see.

We don't have planned stops for the way home - we intend to drive back by way of the coast and Eureka (another place we have never been). The Boy will be staying home, working and enjoying his first week out of school. Our normal house- and dog-sitter, Ines (not his real name), will also be at the house, much to Idiot Dog Teddy's relief since IDT is fond of regular feedings and full water bowels while The Boy is mostly fond of his Jeep and his computer.

So here's to disappointed squirrels and birds, an end (HA!) to clutter, working snow plows, and a well fed dog.

That's it - move along...