Sunflowers and Powwows

It’s slowly drawing towards the end of summer, the end of blistering heat moving towards snow.

A couple of weeks back we went to Groton to see the sunflowers and get ice cream with about a million other people.

Work has been busy with a new manager and a couple of houses have had their survey. I found this in an old 70s first aid manual when I had a clear out… it’s the old Heimlich manoeuvre which I thought was funny. You have to climb on top of the choking person!

The humidity has been pretty crazy so I haven’t been walking as much as I would have liked, sometimes stepping out of the air conditioning is like walking into a warm bath with your clothes on.

Luckily there’s a lot of thunder storms to cool things off and it gets less humid for a day or two! Our little portable A/C has been worth it’s weight in gold, which is saying something as it weighs about a ton.

I went to the Mohegan Powwow which is like an Indian festival, they sell a ton of hand made items, clothes, various dead animals which I did not purchase…

I tried some grilled corn and some fry bread which was really good with honey.

Indians from lots of different tribes came to compete at dancing and they had drum circles and singing, it was really different and really loud.

But a lot of the time I’ve been spending inside… where it’s cool!

Green Fingers

The weekend before last Kim and I went to Elizabeth Park in Hartford.

They have a very large, very beautiful rose garden in bloom.

It smelt gorgeous, in the background you could hear the pulsating buzz of zillions of bees that thought the same.

My grandparents used to have a lot of roses in their garden and I seem to remember they took a lot of upkeep so I haven’t bothered looking into getting any but the rose garden is all of the benefits without any of the upkeep.

The Park also had different styled gardens to walk through and it was blisteringly hot so we were thankful of the shade.

After that we drove to Logees Greenhouses, they had a Summer Solstice event on with food carts. Kim hadn’t been before so we trawled through the humid greenhouses browsing for a while and picked up a few things.

One of the plants we bought was catnip but alas it is no more, destroyed by Barclay.

Other than that, not much news.

Cornwall Part 3

The day before our last day in Cornwall Bronte, Chris, Kim and I went to the Eden Project (the others fancied a cider farm and walking).

The Eden Project is a large botanical garden with outside plants and then two biomes, one which creates a rainforest environment and one which creates a Mediterranean environment.

The tickets were about £30 which is pricey but you can visit as many times as you like for a year and walking around you could tell it must cost a lot for the upkeep. Everything was geared towards conservation and sustainability.

We had a nice morning ambling about the plants and reading the plaques. The Mediterranean Biome was a pleasant temperature and they hold weddings in there.

 The Rainforest Biome was boiling hot.

It had a waterfall and huge water feature which made it humid as hell, it had it’s own cold room you could rest in part way round. I think in the summer when there are a lot of visitors it must be horrible to queue in that heat.

Roul roul partridges live in the Rainforest Biome as well as lizards.

Once we were done and had had coffee and cake (vital part of all trips out) we took a ride back up to gift shop up a ridge in a tractor and we could see all of the gardens from above, it was built in an old mine.

After that we met Mum, her boyfriend Kerry, Charles and Ellen back at Crantock and took a trip down to the beach.

I made a highly artistic sand sculpture as I’m not much of a sunbather.

Then we looked round the caves and rock pools the others had found a few days before.

One of the caves had carvings in them, they had been head height but over time the sand had eroded away which made them look a lot higher up.

Charles and Chris headed up a sadly unsuccessful crabbing expedition which mainly involved them throwing bits of bacon in the water and poking rocks with a hot pink fishing net.

And then we walked back up the beach which took ages because it was a very large beach. We were lucky with the weather whilst we visited but the sea was freezing.

The next day we left Cornwall and drove back to Wiltshire.

We stopped off in Devon.

For a good old cream tea (for any American readers a cream tea is a pot of tea that comes with scones, clotted cream and jam – not tea with cream in it).

Once back in Devizes, Bronte showed Kim and I the miracle that is Derek’s Deals. Derek is the manager of a Spar shop who seems to have a lot of time on his hands and has become a cult figure in Devizes. Every week he releases a new youtube video every week detailing his savings often with a current affair theme. The video the week we went had Kim Jong Un in it.

Then we visited the white horse carved into the hill near my Mum’s house and petted the cows.

Mum drove Kim and I to Heathrow the next day, Harrods and a lot of the other shops were cashing in on the latest royal wedding. We picked up Kim’s Auntie Debbie a themed tea towel.

Our flight back was a day time flight this time and it was lovely, we had a nice lunch.

And watched some movies, although I was distracted half the flight wondering what the hell this man’s belt was supposed to be made of and why he thought that gold, silver and orange was a winning combination.

Then we had a little snackette before landing.

I had to have my photo taken a billion times re-entering the USA and made a game of it by pulling stupid faces until a security guard told me to stop smiling. Spoilsport. And that was our trip to England.

Merlin Bird ID

I got a great app a couple of months ago on my iPhone called Merlin Bird ID.

Moving to the USA all the wildlife is different so I didn’t really know what anything was called and we have a bird feeder in our garden (or yard) but I hardly knew any of the birds that came to it. Enter the Merlin Bird ID, it works in every country, you just register your email and it’s all free. It’s been designed by Cornell University and you download the packs for your area e.g. North America, UK etc. When you see a bird you log where you saw it.

The date you saw it.

You select the size of the bird.

Then you pick what colours the bird is.

Then you select what the bird was doing.

Then the app guesses what bird it was you saw, it shows you photos and gives you a description you can hear clips of the bird song etc.

It also has a function where you can upload a photo of a bird and it will guess what it is if you don’t want to go through the selection stages. I’m not exactly a bird watcher but it’s been really nice to know what all the new birds in the garden have been since I’m not used to them. It’s a shame I didn’t have the app when I lived close to the Norfolk Broads because there were so many unusual birds there. I’m hoping there’s a similar app for plants so when the spring comes round again I can find out what else I have in the garden and what our trees are.

Hop River Trail

Kim and I went for a nice walk last week down the Hop River Trail.

The trail follows a river and an old railway line that isn’t in use anymore.

There’s some wildlife along the trail like chipmunks and red tailed hawks but it’s a popular walk way so I think that scares off most of the animals.

There’s a lot of little waterfalls along the trail draining into the river.

Parts of the trail still have old railway sleepers on it.

We parked at Bolton and did about 6 and a half miles out Vernon way and back.

Then we went to try the ‘best’ fish and chips in the area… they were good but not the same as England… English fish and chips has a stodgy quality that isn’t quite reached here. They did have malt vinegar for the chips though which isn’t popular in the USA – no one seems to put vinegar on their chips.

So that was a nice Saturday… until my poor car Ruby decided to flash the check engine light, doom!! $$$$

Gay City State Park

Last weekend we decided to celebrate the brief break from snow with a nice trip to Gay City State Park.

Gay City was settled by a religious sect (honestly, a sect!) as a mill town that was eventually abandoned and is now a state park. There were a few graves that we saw that hinted to the history but we didn’t come across much more in the part we walked in.

There’s a lake to swim in (perhaps when it’s a little warmer…?) and picnic areas.

There’s a bridge over a dam that leads to some walking trails.

And for once the trails are actually marked out and colour coded. The state forest near us is purely guess work!

So we walked the two and a half mile trail which was very pleasant apart from when I managed to lose an earring that I had only bought two days ago! Ugh!

We drove home and put the kettle on for a cup of tea and after a few minutes noticed our house was surrounded by 3 police cars, so being nosy we looked outside. The house across from us is up for sale and the chap who owns it has been completely renovating all of it for the past 6 months and was urgently waving me over. So I stepped outside and he said “Can you tell the police that I live here? I locked myself out and had to climb through the window!” Briefly considered lying and saying I’d never seen him before but as he helped me shovel out our driveway one time I decided to own up to knowing him and off the police drove after saying “thank you ma’am”.

The rest of the weeks been pretty busy with work for Kim and I. We went out to dinner with one of Kim’s coworkers and her boyfriend to the Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant which was a treat.

The snow is back though, and that’s decidedly not a treat. Although I did get to see this parade of turkeys on my way to work this week, young mister turkey guiding all his girlfriends across the road.

There were zillions of turkeys outside this house… I haven’t seen any wild turkeys this year and then about 20 all at once! This weekend Kim and I are off to celebrate out second wedding anniversary a bit early so hopefully it doesn’t snow anymore whilst we’re away and we can get in the drive way on the way back! Roll on spring.

Thanksgiving 2017

Just a short post about Thanksgiving – I had the day off from work for Thanksgiving (and also black Friday off – score) and Kim was working in the afternoon so one of my colleagues invited us over for lunch which was really kind. I asked what we should bring and was told potatoes and I’m not a big fan of mashed potatoes so I made sauteed with herbs etc and I was thinking we’ll need a lot so I almost tripled the recipe for two people and created a production line of potatoes – needless to say my fridge is still full of millions and zillions of potatoes.

So we had a tasty lunch then Kim had to go to work and I stayed and won a very inventive game of pictionary with another colleague.

Accompanied by 4 weeny dogs – super cute.

My nemeses, the leaves, have been slowing down finally. I tried a new trail out in Nathan Hale State Forest.

Again the leaves were against me and hid the path at one point on the way back so I just followed my GPS on my phone back to the car – nice try leaves.

Weekly Goings On

I've had quite a bit-y week this week. We finished off decorating the upstairs bedroom.

We borrowed a plaster draw sheet from Kim's Dad which was the most annoying thing known to man because it kept sticking to the underside of my bare feet (and it is HOT here) as I painted so in the end I pulled it up with annoyance – next time we're just using newspaper.

This cupboard was a pain to paint as well. I'm not entirely sure what's even in the cupboard because there's just boarding behind it and behind that is insulation… a mystery cupboard.

But everything is sort of done, there's a couple of speckled patches I need to go over with a brush.

It's meant to be a sort of mauve but my half brother thoughtfully termed it liverwurst (I can only assume out of jealousy).

We browsed the farmers market last week (we avoided it this week as it's theme is 'child friendly') and the theme was corn (or as I now call it – maize). We picked up some hummus and baklava from a Lebanese baker and got a nice quiche from another stall.

They were giving out free grilled corn and you could pick toppings.

Kim and I had coconut milk and scallions which was so good. I picked up more corn at the grocery store. I really want to try Indian corn some time with all the different colours in them.

There was music at the market too and it was quite atmospheric country markety type music until the guy started singing songs from frozen… then we slowly started edging away.

I took a trip back to the hardware store for more paint for the lounge, we've been going there a lot for bits and bobs. You order the paint and they mix the colour for you there so you can't pick a can off shelf. When I asked for a can I was told it was called a gallon, and when I went looking for white spirit I was told it was called mineral spirits and we wouldn't need it as the paint washes off with water… not sure how reassuring that is… anyway I like to browse the gardening section when the paint is being mixed because they get a lot of huge butterflies visiting.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this little thing, I really couldn't figure out what it was because it looked like a little bird but then it was more like a large beetle. You get to the point as an adult I think where there's rarely an animal you haven't seen on tv and can't identify but I was stumped. Turns out it's a hummingbird moth that mimics hummingbirds, I'd never even heard of it! And nor had Kim even though she's lived here most of her life.

So that's been my week, I had a job interview Friday and I have another one Monday, even though I'm still waiting on my licence to go through I thought I may as well start applying. Job applications are so dull to fill out, I like the ones where you can just send in your resume.

Life in America is still a novelty to me, I still enjoy chuckling to myself when I see different signs and inspecting things in stores. The weathers been good most days and we've swam a lot in the lake which has been nice.

Settling In To Coventry

My first week in the USA has come and gone and I’ve been settling in nicely. It’s alternated between boiling hot and rainy so that’s made it pretty humid. Kim bought us a house at Coventry by the lake and we’re lucky because there are no main roads near by so the cats are safe roaming about. Also there are no pavements – now you might think this is a bad thing but in the winter by law you have to shovel your driveway and pavements (or sidewalks) within a certain time so we get out of doing that.

The houses are all different looking compared to the UK where usually the houses are built in clusters so they tend to match their neighbours and there isn’t a lot of brick like in the UK, it’s mostly vinyl siding. We’re 3 minutes walk from Coventry Lake and you can see it from the end of our garden (or yard).

The area is really green and there’s small bits of forest either side of our little neighbourhood. As a teenager I used to have a job at a tropical garden center in Norfolk which I absolutely loved (actually I think if the pay was better I’d still be working there!), a lot of the plants that are popular here I recognise from the garden center. There are lots of hostas and we have some of these already in our garden.

There are also orange day lilies absolutely everywhere (also in our garden)

Kim’s working as usual and I’m waiting to take an awful exam which I do not feel confident about at all and am pretty sure I’ll need to retake but until then I’m without a job and not searching until I know if I’ve passed or failed so I’ve been watching a LOT of TV which I don’t usually do. In fact my friends in England liked to make fun of me because for the last few years in England I didn’t actually bother having a TV. Kim is addicted to terrible TV shows so we had to have one here but luckily she owns a smart TV and we got the Amazon Fire TV with Alexa and it works great. People in the USA pay a lot for their cable TV (think $200+ a month) which I wasn’t happy about so instead we’ve set up Hulu and Netflix and it costs a fraction of the price. There’s also some live TV apps which work great and I can connect the TV to my laptop so we’re saving a lot of money that way, also I get to annoy Alexa.

So I haven’t been too bored whilst Kim works, also when it’s nice out I’ve enjoyed walking around the neighbourhood and seeing all the wildlife. The other day I almost walked into this lovely deer in sight of our driveway then to my horror realised my iPhone had decided to turn itself off when I went to take a photo of her. Luckily she was very polite and waited for my iPhone to restart itself so I could take my photo then tripped prettily off into the woods.

I also saw a groundhog on the neighbours lawn the first morning I was here. We have a bird feeder that’s attracted a lot of blue jays, sparrows and cardinals – I think it would attract more if it wasn’t for our resident squirrels who are very sweet but figured out how to open the bird feeder faster than I did then they proceed to dump all the bird seed and meal worms out onto the floor so they can sort through to get their favourite bits. So we need to invest in a squirrel proof bird feeder which we haven’t got round to yet.

In the mean time we have a lot of our own wildlife though, the house has a lot of little cubbyholes and viewing points that the cats love.

I got my social security number through in the mail which is the equivalent to the national insurance number in the UK. I got treated to a trip to the DMV (like the DVLA) where there was a very long wait but I got told I can use my international drivers permit for a year which is great as I’ll have to retake my driving test and I don’t really want to just yet!

I did buy a little car with the money I’d saved up from my job in England, most people seem to buy their cars on finance here but as I don’t exist on credit reports here and I’m not working yet that wouldn’t be an option so I needed to look for something outright. This was made all the more difficult as the Americans favour very large cars, very very large! And I just wanted a small European car, so I found a few I liked online and settled on a little red Fiat 500 2012 which I bought from a dodgy car dealer guy from Kosovo who did not stop talking. Still, I like it and it drives great. I had to buy it in Kim’s name because I have no Connecticut state ID or drivers licence or insurance. Although, strangely Kim added the car to her insurance and her insurance went down. That would never happen in England, you might expect a discount for a multi car policy but she’s actually paying less insurance now with my car added to her policy than she was for her own which I think is mad. To continue the theme of Goldie my previous car we’ve called this one Ruby.  I had to get a satnav (GPS) though or else I won’t know where anything is! Funnily enough my sister Bronte leases a Fiat 500 in blue so we are car sisters, much like in life her model is younger and better looking than mine haha. Fuel is ridiculously cheap compared to England, to fill up my car with petrol from almost empty cost $23, which is about £17.60 which wouldn’t even give me half a tank in England!

Our neighbours have been very friendly so far, there are a few differences though, everyone here is completely obsessed with the American flag and have it plastered all over their gardens, houses, cars etc. It’s actually illegal to burn a flag here, which is fair enough I suppose but if you’ve gone to the trouble of buying a flag to burn surely you’re just burning your own flag that you’ve bought which is your own problem isn’t it? The previous owners of our house left an American flag on our shed (see the middle photo) which so far I’ve kept up there because it makes me laugh.

Another difference is that no one has a letterbox fixed into their front doors, they have mailboxes. Ours is across the street (outside our neighbour Darlene’s house, Darlene is very friendly and enjoys walking about in her nightdress and going on the trampoline with kittens… yes really) and you collect your mail from it, if you want to post a letter you don’t need to find a mailbox, you just stick your letter in the mailbox and put the little flag up and the mail carrier picks it up for you – which I think is very convenient. The United States Postal Service has proved to be every bit as incompetent as Royal Mail though when it managed to deliver 2 of the new address postcards we sent out back to ourselves… great. But I do like the mailboxes and lots of people decorate them. We got a decal sticker with our last name on it which I put on the box a bit wonky but I think the effort is still there. This is also a frequent occurrence in people’s front gardens… I just find it weird though.

So all in all it’s gone fine. Everything is still a bit of a novelty like going to the grocery store. Kim’s been helpful as always to me adjusting by pointing out little tips (“That’s margarine, it’s like butter”… err yeah… thanks for that).

We usually try and do something on Kim’s days off, we went blueberry picking the other day which was fun. Blueberries are widely grown in New England so that was tasty.

But when it’s hot we try not to over do it.

Kim’s Auntie Debbie came to visit us out in the boonies (Auntie Debbie taught me that word, it’s what UK people would say is ‘out in the sticks’, it’s USA war slang for boondocks from when they fought the Philippines) and bought us a nice ice cream cake. I haven’t tried ice cream cake before so that was exciting (as all cake is). All in all a good start.

Center Parcs With My Family 4

This is belated as I’ve had a lot on with the big move but these are the last parts of our family trip.

So our last full day we took a nature walk with a park ranger which was fun.

And we swam in the subtropical swimming area (incident free!). Later in the evening we went for a nice dinner and then we went bowling. Bronte and I had the bumpers up, Mum and Charles said they didn’t need the bumpers up until they started bowling gutter balls and then they stopped making fun of our bumpers!

We also had an air hockey tournament which Charles won.

And then the next day we packed up and off we went which was sad because we won’t see each other for a while but we all had such a fun time. I went to Barking on the way home and saw my Auntie Lily and cousin Elaine so that was good to get to see them before I left.