Do You remember Edna?

Do You remember Edna?

Edna Anderson has been trying to rid the west side fence of sandburs. She has spent endless hours digging away at them. Edna used to be a resident of the park but had to move due to the number of pets she adopted. She still lives nearby.

I have a suggestion if you would like to take a stroll through the good old days of Magnolia. On this page you are reading this, scroll to the bottom and on the right side you will see a list of the years. Click on any of them and have a look around. The one above happens to be from 2004. Have fun!

Winter in the Rio Grande Valley

 What a difference from the last time I posted. We once again got extremely cold down here in the RGV. This time was not as bad as the "Big Freeze" in February of 2021 which lasted almost a week with no power but that time we were in the 5th Wheel and had a generator and we were snug as two bugs in a rug! This time it got down in the upper 20s and about 2:30 this morning our neighbor's generator which he installed last year, came on. I thought wow, we have power, I wonder why they don't. Well, silly me, yes we had power B U T. . . down here it is called 1/2 power and at home we would call it a brownout. We had power for the lights and TV but that was it - no coffee maker, no stove, no microwave and most importantly, no furnace, thus no heat. We are all electric here. As it turns out there were very few homes that had lost half their power. A transformer on our end of the street had a wire hanging down off of it so two streets were affected, our street and the one in back of us. All homes affected were in a relatively small area but we were one of them. AEP came in and fixed the problem and about 10:30 this morning the furnace was humming away. It did take a long time to heat the house and everything in it, back to a comfortable temperature but tonight everything is just fine and has been ever since it came back on.

Ron and Chris Pearce both have covid and Darlene had it a short time ago. Everyone (not us) went to the New Years Eve party and that turned out to be a super-spreader so lots of sick people in the park. Once in a while we will run into former Magnolia people and it's always nice to see them. Barb & Butch Brooker  who live over at Trophy Gardens in Alamo went square dancing and ran into Mary and Dave Bruun  and Barb had posted a picture of them on her blog. It was nice to see and did remind us of the "good old days" when we all were part of the Magnolia family.

Lots going on in our park this week, a big shuffleboard tournament which has had to change the days due to the extreme cold, a Welcome Back dinner tomorrow night put on by Encore, the corporation that owns this park and many more, and then a big shuffleboard dinner Sunday night which will have lots of guests. Everyone keeps busy that's for sure.

I hope all is well with all of you and as always, if you have news to share do let me know. I hear from quite a few prior Magnolia people quite often including Mabel Zoot and Edna Walker, just two of them I'll mention. We do wonder about others that no one seems to have any contact with. Lots of good memories, that's for sure.

Do keep in touch, it's always nice to hear from you.

Summer in January!!

 It got pretty warm here today, I believe our thermometer read 89 degrees this afternoon, had to turn the air on. We really haven't had to use the air or the heat too much this season. When we first got here in early November we had the A.C. on once in a while and then we needed the heat once in a while but most days we just turn the ceiling fan on and we're comfortable. It was extremely windy here today too which is not too uncommon down in the Rio Grande Valley. 

We went to Mexico last week and on the walk back over the international bridge from Progresso we encountered lots of immigrants who were camped on the side of the bridge that returns to the states. These are not people who are trying to sneak in and enter illegally but they are people who appeared to be from European countries looking to escape Ukraine and other countries where living is very tough. There were lots of families with children, some folks were sleeping in their tents and others were just gathered together talking. We could hear them and most everyone who has encountered them suspect some are from Russia, and other countries in that area just overhearing the languages spoken among them. I noticed that someone had placed ziplock baggies with toothbrushes and other hygiene items for them to use. They were evenly spaced all along the railing all the way to the middle where there is now a checkpoint at the US border and we had to show our passport to get through. We, who live in the United States sometimes forget how fortunate we are because in spite of the issues we all face, nothing is comparable to what people in some other nations are going through.

Last week the parrots decided to visit and they settled in trees right next to our house. How lucky is that! It was great fun, I took lots of photos and here are just a few. Remember how they used to visit us in Magnolia. It was fun then and it's still fun. They make so much noise you can't miss them when they are overhead.