Mayo Clinic Shoulder Surgery

Randy had an appointment with his physician the day before surgery.......this is reassuring.....please get the right shoulder!

We arrived at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix on Friday morning. He had a 7:30 check-in and a 9:15 surgery time.

The Mayo Clinic in Phoenix is plunked in the middle of the desert. But the grounds around the hospital are like a desert botanical garden.

This is a waterfall on a path near the front of the hospital.

The surgery went well. He needed a fair amount of pain medication once the nerve block wore off. They final discharged him at 1:30 in the afternoon on Saturday.

Our wonderful neighbors, Megan and Mark, got The Coop out of the Vet Hotel so he didn't have to spend the weekend there as we were going to miss the noon check out.

Randy is now figuring out how to do things with one arm......some things are doable and some things....well.....we will see. He had a good first night at home.

Making Our Property Fire Safe

We have been trimming dead branches off the trees on our property.

We went to the fire department and got a burn permit. The battalion chief came out and okayed our piles. At this time of year we can only burn from 10:00 to 2:00.

Randy has been trimming a lot....not sure this is the best thing for the rotator cuff that will be having surgery in a week.

Sometimes he needs the chain saw....

Dragging it all to the burn pile....

We had to leave a hose on all night in case we needed to put out a fire. (It's was 20 degrees this morning and the water freezes in the hose.) Luckily there was no wind last night and we didn't have any problems.

We had a Cooper scare that started on Friday. On one of his walks he almost tore off one of his toenails. He kept licking it and it wasn't getting better so we took him to the vet. She decided to give him a mild anesthetic and take the toenail off. Well.....he had a reaction to the anesthetic and was a "zombie" dog for over 48 hours. He wouldn't come, bark or do anything. We were so worried. He was nauseous and would not eat or drink. We took him back to the vet and they gave him fluids as he was dehydrated. Eight hours later he started to perk up and he took a short walk with us last night. This morning he is back to his old self again. Thank goodness!

Pump House Completed

The pump house/garden shed is all finished! It's painted to match the house including the "cherry bomb" door.

The tank holds 1500 gallons of water and the trees and pump house keep it hidden. We will plant some more bushes around the pump house soon.

The inner workings........pump, pressure tank and controllers.

It's rather cute if I do say so myself and it will be so nice to have a spot for the garden tools and supplies.

We bought a test kit and tested the water for a variety of things.....lead, iron, pesticides, bacteria, copper, nitrate-nitrite and hardness/chlorine. All is good so we took ourselves off of the city water system and now we are using well water only inside and out. There is no sediment and it tastes great!

A neighbor down the street gave us some iris bulbs which we planted near the garden area and also in the front yard. I am thinking they probably won't bloom this year......or maybe they will.