Summer arrives

The summer solstice slipped by on Tuesday, with about 16 hours of daylight in Seattle.  Add another 4 hours of dusky light, and it's only dark (sort of) for a couple hours around midnight. But it's all downhill from here, folks, as our northern hemisphere begins the long march toward the winter solstice.

We got a fancy new light-blocking roller blind for the bedroom window.  We had an old-fashioned cheap one for over 20 years, and amazingly it still worked, although was getting pretty tattered.
This new one has a chain on the side to yank, instead of pulling it up and down with your hand, like every roller blind I've wrestled with since the 1950's.

It looks nice, but I'm not sure if the mechanical part is an improvement over the old classic.  John had some choice words for the inventor.  But we'll get used to it.  Senior citizens aren't crazy about change.

Well, the dreaded hedge-cutting day has arrived. I'm using a new company this year, and the plan is to take about 3 feet off the top and cut back the inside pretty drastically.  It will be ugly for a few years but needs to be done.  It is slowly but surely creeping across our valuable little piece of front yard.
Ha.

On the website, this company makes it look oh-so-easy with their fancy bucket truck.   What could possibly go wrong this time?  Stay tuned.