THE WEISS CHRONICLES

 

That is not my house i the background but it is my flowers in the foreground.

The lily 'trees' are doing well so far and even though they are not completely in bloom I thought I would take a picture in case they were attacked by deer (deer have eaten at least half of my day lily flowers.

The pink flower is in front of a white trumpet lily tree.

Some other lilies are visible and also some red cone flowers to the left of the pink lily tree. They are seen better when the picture is enlarged (by clicking on it).

 

I haven't done this in a while.  We have two sets of from-the-store chrysanthemums surrounding home picked flowers.

 

The home picked flowers include a big trumpet lily (sticking out on the left), a purple Siberian iris (on top - Ann specifically asked for this flower to be in the vase) and both purple and red cone flowers (best to enlarge this to see them via clicking on image).

 

We also have both the red and pink roses in bloom and tall phlox just starting to bloom. 

 

The lily has a nice sweet fragrance.  Many people say not to use fragrant flowers at the dinner table but I've found that the fragrance really isn't detectable unless you are within a foot or so of the flower.

 

On June 15 I donated plasma again.  I got there a bit after noon and was out by 130pm or so. It went much faster than the previous donation. MASK WAS OPTIONAL 😛😛

Metrics: pulse=84, bp=120/80, hg=15.3

One reason it went faster was the machine malfunctioned. It only took 318 ml of plasma went it was supposed to take 400.  This was, they told me, still a usable amount. 

Since masks are optional I may donate platelets next time.  We'll see how I feel.

 

At the Breakers a 130,000 sq ft mansion used only during the summer during the last 19th and early 20th century by a NYCity

family.

There were a number of big mansions on Newport island and the people who owned them referred to them as the cottages.

From left: me, Gerry Berg, Glen Kruiser, Rocky Kelman. Picture taken on June 10.

The Breakers was called that because ocean waves broke against the end of their property (see map) However, the mansion is about 500' from the breakers and can't be seen at all except from the third story.

 

Last week, we went on a 3 mile round trip on the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad.

They use rail cars from the

19th century.

 

The rails are only 2 feet apart (second image from the museum facebook) shows how narrow it looks).

In the first image, bottom row from left, Glen Kruiser, Gerry Berg and the RR Conductor. Top row from left, Rocky Kelman and me.

 

The various RRs were, in the 19th century, used for carrying coal, timber, shale and other heavy materials to the various ports in Maine. This was a period before most roads in Maine were paved.

 On my visit with Gerry, Rocky Kellman and Glen Kruiser. 

At one stop we saw a famous Victorian mansion in Portland, Maine.  It was built in the 1800s but badly damaged by a hurricane in the 1930s but, since

the 1970s, has been preserved in places and restored elsewhere.  The interior is in the second image. The exterior is in the third image.

The mansion has its own youtube channel with several videos to see.

The mansion was built by a man who made his fortune in the hotel industry. He had a large mansion in New Orleans that he used in the winter and this smaller (11,000 sq ft) one that he stayed at in the summer. 

The china and silver has been preserved and is original as is much of the furniture.  Most of the carpets are reproductions as they suffered water damage from the hurricane (which cause a skylight to break).

While at the mansion grounds a Maine Coon Cat (image 1) came to visit me. She was pretty friendly as this breed is rumored to be. 

 Another big tree went down today.

Our neighbor had a massive oak. It was probably over 100 feet high and over 6 feet in circumference at the base.  The top 30 feet or so of the tree was bare of leaves.

My neighbor asked if his contractor could use our driveway and I agreed.

The first image is cutting the base of the tree. You can also see the temperature was in the 70s F and otherwise they had good weather for the event. 

Yesterday would have been a bad day for this. It was hot and humid until about 4pm then we had heavy rain off and on for a few hours.

The second image is loading part of the trunk into a truck.

 

I had the thermostat setting at 73F during the last part of May and raised it to 74F at the end of May.

 

On June 1, Ann said it was too cold in the family room. I reset the thermostat for 75F.

 

Later that evening, Ann said it was too warm upstairs in the bedroom.  I lowered it back to 74F.

 

Too bad it only increments by whole degrees.