Weather/Seasons

Out For A Walk: Honestly Just A Nice Stroll To See Where A Bridge Used To Be

/ Ally Bean / 199 Comments

PLEASE NOTE: Yesterday Elisabeth at The Optimistic Musings Of A Pessimist interviewed me for her ongoing series featuring bloggers. I was happy to participate. Go HERE to read the interview. 

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I like November.

In my part of the midwest it’s the calm before the storm, the pause before the whirlwind of the holidays. It’s a delightful time to just BE.

Grateful for cool nights and sunny days.

Peaceful and introspective, even.

Consequently while many bloggers worldwide are participating in NaBloPoMo [National Blog Post Month] or NaNoWriMo [National Novel Writing Month], I’m feeling pleasantly detached from writing, inclined to relax into each moment without wordiness.

To wit, as a few of you may recall I used to do posts on this blog in which I shared photos of where I/we went for a walk. Recently I realized that I got away from doing that during the pandemic, shifting into writing more, photographing less.

However today in light of my mellow mood and my lack of verboseness, I’ll post the following photos I took last Friday afternoon when the sun was shining brightly.

We decided to see what was going on with a state project to replace a pedestrian bridge, on a former railroad bridge, that is part of a popular bike path. We wanted to see where the bridge used to be.

And who doesn’t like a post that includes a photo of what isn’t there anymore? 🤔   

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This photo was taken while walking through Loveland OH on a beautiful autumn afternoon.

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Locally referred to as the Loveland Bike Trail, the official name of this path is the Little Miami State Park.

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On the bike trail, which is used by runners and walkers as often as cyclists, you can find this building, the Little Miami Conservancy.

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As you get closer to the closed portion of the path you now see this sign.

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And this sign, a free parking sign, that has been tossed casually onto the ground until it is needed again.

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The pedestrian bridge that you do not see here is being replaced by The Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

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This is a photo of the Little Miami River, part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. It is the river over which the bridge that used to be was, and the river that will again have a pedestrian bridge over it once the new one is built.

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As Summer Ends Happy House Is Happy: What I Learned About Exterior House Colors

/ Ally Bean / 242 Comments

Happy House

INTRODUCTION

What’s the word, hummingbird?

In this post I shall explain why having a freshly painted house exterior is a VERY BIG DEAL for us. And how this very big deal is the culmination of a project that we started, by signing a contract, ONE YEAR AGO this month.

At that time WE ARRANGED to have:

  1. a new deck built [read about it HERE];
  2. repairs to replace rotten wood on the exterior [read about it HERE];  and then
  3. the house trim and shutters painted by professional painters.

This has happened now and we ARE PLEASED with the results because it looks good. Plus it is never a bad idea to maintain the building that shelters you from the nature’s wrath and other people.

That being said an offshoot of this project is that I learned multitudes about CHOOSING EXTERIOR HOUSE COLORS. So much so that I’ve written the following in which I explain a bit about THE PROCESS that I/we went through before arriving at the color choices I/we did.

Please note: at the bottom of this post is a list of sources that I found helpful. 

OUR COLOR CHOICES

• The whole issue of deciding which colors to use on the exterior trim and shutters was contingent upon coordinating with the brick and the roof. Makes sense, right? Those two variables weren’t going to change in our lifetimes.

• Then we had to decide how light or dark we wanted the trim to be. Deciding this required an understanding of Light Reflective Values [LRV], defined by myperfectcolor.com as “… the amount of visible light that is reflected off a paint color, or conversely it represents the percentage of visible light that is absorbed by the color…. represented as a percentage with pure black being 0% and pure white being 100%.”

In our part of the world it’s currently trendy to use darker, more moody, colors on houses. While we both agreed it is stylish now, we don’t think of those colors as being cheerful or timeless.

Also the popular darker colors contrast less with the brick which contributes to, what I’d describe as, a bland uniformity; in my worldview the beauty is in the contrast between the brick and trim. Hence we stayed with a similar LRV [60 before/59 now], deciding to fine tune the undertone of our neutral.

• Thus we changed the color of the trim on the house from a gray with a slightly pinkish taupe undertone [SW7029 Agreeable Gray] to a gray with a decidedly greenish-yellow undertone [SW7050 Useful Gray].

The new color looks like the mortar between the bricks– or at least it does on three sides of the house. The reality is that you have to accept that the light hits your house differently on different sides of the house, therefore not every side will look spectacular with the same color on it.

• The shutters remained a dark green color [SW6261 Jasper] that, quoting Sherwin-Williams, “resonates with quiet force.” And I ask you, who among us doesn’t want forceful shutters?

The new neutral trim with the almost black shutters, while subtle and maybe not even noticeable to a casual observer, is wondrous, creating a cohesive color scheme that has made a big difference in the curb appeal of this property.

• By leaning into these earthy neutral colors that coordinate beautifully with our upgraded retaining walls made from natural golden gray limestone, the house looks more in tune with nature, less like a relic from 1999.

Now when I come home I see a house that looks soothing and inviting, pulled together, calm, in harmony with its surroundings, like the happy house we want it to be.

SOURCES

There are about a gazillion and two websites &/or articles that talk about how to choose paint colors, exterior and interior. The following were helpful to me. I’m receiving no paid compensation for sharing these:

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

What has been a VERY BIG DEAL for you during this Summer [northern hemisphere] or Winter [southern hemisphere]?

What have you LEARNED multitudes about?

Any PROJECTS PLANNED for the Fall [northern hemisphere] or Spring [southern hemisphere]?

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In Which I Admit To Joyfully Thwarting Some Youthful Shenanigans + Reader Comments

/ Ally Bean / 200 Comments

 Joyfully Thwarting Youthful Shenanigans

Remember Muttley, Dick Dastardly’s sidekick?

It’s good to be an adult.

[Bwha-ha-ha!]

A few weeks ago we had an unusually warm day. The temps were in the 70s and it was dry and sunny outside. Around 4:00 p.m. I went into the living room to read.

Before I plopped down on the loveseat I decided to open the window just a little bit, about 2″, to take advantage of the pleasant fresh air. As I began to read I heard rustling sounds outside the window. That’s not unusual when you live on a wooded lot, so I didn’t think much about it.

It wasn’t until I heard voices that I became interested in what was happening outside the window.

“So you gonna do it?”

[Do what, thought I?]

I got up from the loveseat and walked over to look out the window.  Immediately below me were two neighbor boys, about 10 years old, who were scrunched down hiding in our bushes while having a serious conversation about what one was going to do.

“Maybe.”

The gist of their conversation, that I could clearly overhear through the open window, was that one boy had challenged the other to run up onto our stoop, ring the doorbell, then run back into the bushes to hide.

A classic prank, no?

They figured, correctly, that from their vantage point crouched down in our bushes they’d be able to see whoever opened the door and watch that person look confused.

IT WAS GOING TO BE HILARIOUS.

They just knew it.

So I waited patiently at the window. Eventually one kid found the gumption he needed to be a prankster. He ran up onto the stoop, rang the bell, then darted into the bushes.

THERE WAS SNICKERING.

Lots of it.

I did nothing except stand quietly at the window looking down on the youth below, waiting to see what they were going to do when no one came to the door.

[Truth bomb, I may have been smiling a bit too much.]

As you can imagine when no one came to the door these two boys were defeated. Their classical prank had failed. Their shoulders sagged, they stood up in the bushes, and muttered. Then the one who’d rang the bell stepped out of the bushes and started to walk across our lawn to his house.

“Dude not that way they’ll see ‘ya.”

To which the first one looked exasperated as he shouted back to his friend still in the bushes, “THEY’RE NOT HOME, haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Oh yah…”

And with that the boys walked slowly across our yard in plain sight, looking dejected, in a way that only failed pranksters can look.

And me, what did I do? I started laughing and am still smiling when I think about how I thwarted this prank. There are moments when being an adult is SO FUN!

Then, of course, who could forget Huckleberry Hound?

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AND FINALLY FOUR READER COMMENTS…

About your take on the word Matriarch:

“I am the matriarch in my family, now that my mom is gone…and I don’t have a problem with that word. Or crone or even sea hag. So long as it is said to me with love, respect and good humour. No one laughs harder at me than myself 😂.”

~ Deb

“Call me any name you want to as long as I think ‘the shoe fits’…. ‘Elderly’ is a tough one, though. Some day, many years down the road, I may earn that particular stripe but only because of the eighty or ninety wonderful years leading up to it.”

~ Dave

“Matriarch is a word that means she is the head of her tribe, in my case, that would be my mother. My turn will come. Interpretation is a funny thing. Words are used in various ways and transform over the years, their original meaning becoming muddled.”

~ Dale

“Wow. I grew up in a matriarchal family so I see it as a compliment! Isn’t it funny how we all have our own perceptions based on our experience? Sea hag would raise my hackles!”

~ Kay

A 5-Question Multiple-choice Pop Quiz About A Power Outage That Rankled Ms. Bean

/ Ally Bean / 203 Comments

Yes, my little huckleberries, today I have a pop quiz for you. Anyone who answers all 5 questions correctly will receive a gold star ⭐️ which, I think we can agree, is quite nice. What more could you want? 

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Q1: What was Ms. Bean doing when the power went out at 6:00 p.m. on Friday?

A. Editing a new blog post about the meaning of life.

B. Playing an old-time word game, UpWords, with her sweet patootie whilst enjoying Classic Vinyl on SiriusXM.

C. Making a chocolate soufflé to celebrate the weekend.

D. Writing a strongly worded tweet criticizing Space Karen for ruining Twitter.

Q2: What caused the power to start flickering and turn off in a dramatic ending to a long week?

A. A roofing shingle on our house came loose, crashed down onto a utility line, and *bam* no power.

B. A crazed squirrel a few blocks over ate through an electrical line and *shazam* no power.

C. Torrential rain and high winds knocked over an old tree onto an electric substation and *kapow* no power.

D. Thor the God of Thunder, son of Odin and Freya and source of the name for Thursday, had a hissy fit and *poof* no power.

Q3: What did Ms. Bean mutter when she saw realized what had happened?

A. Now what?!!

B. Where is that damned squirrel!

C. The end is nigh, repent ye sinners while ye may.

D. Holy Fricking Mole-y! I’M. NOT. HAPPY.

Q4: How long did the power outage last and what was the temperature inside the house when it came back on?

A. A few minutes then all was well again; temperature remained at 68ºF.

B. A few hours just long enough for Ms. Bean to fret about the food in the refrigerator going bad; temperature went down to 65ºF.

C. 16 hours meaning that Ms. Bean slept fitfully knowing the food in the refrigerator had gone bad, but not the freezer… yet; temperature plummeted to 56ºF.

D. over 24 hours thereby causing the food in the refrigerator and the freezer to go bad; temperature bottomed out at 54ºF.

Q5: Did Ms. Bean and Zen-Den go to the grocery store on Saturday and spend mucho dinero to buy food to replace what was in the refrigerator when the power went out?

A. Yes, of course they did.

B. Nope, the power outage was just a blip.

C. Maybe, but first they went to buy a lottery ticket feeling it’d be the best way to finance the unanticipated expense of buying food for the refrigerator again having been grocery shopping on Friday afternoon.

D. What makes you think they went grocery shopping on a Saturday?

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