Homer, Michigan

If you drive down Main Street of downtown Homer Michigan (both blocks) you will see banners on all the street lights proclaiming that “Homer is Home” and so it will be for us for the rest of the summer.

We got back to Michigan early this year, normally we would still be in the Tennessee and Kentucky area trying to dodge all the floods and tornado's that have been hitting that area, it's been cold and wet but nothing to bad. We got her April 20th and since the park opens April 15th we're some of the first one here, we came up early so we could attend our grandsons Confirmation on the 23rd, then Grandparents day at our granddaughters school and a couple of baseball games and we've been staying busy.

Last fall be bought a lot in the Lighthouse Village Resort, we got it right at the end of the year and didn't really have time to do to much to it, there was a big Ash tree that was dead and they cut that down right before we moved in which left us with a big stump right in the middle of the yard. During the winter they ground the stump out but there is still a lot of roots to deal with, we decided that this will be the main garden area and hopefully by the end of the summer we'll have it pretty much filled in. Cathy started this week with about 20 small plants from Home Depot, it looked like a lot in the back of the car but once she had them spread out in the ground they didn't cover much.

Cathy's big project is getting the yard in shape, hopefully we'll find a few farmers markets where we can load up on flowers and shrubs cheap and my project is making the shed into a bunk house before schools out for the summer so there will be no more sleeping on an air mattress or couch. No not the kids, me, I'm the one that always get stuck on the short little couch because it's to short for the kids to sleep on comfortably but apparently it fits me perfect. So I'm going to make a MAN CAVE out of the shed so I can stretch out on a full size bunk while I'm watching the ball game on my flat screen TV with Direct TV hooked up and if I get thirsty for an ice tea I'll just have to reach into my refrigerator for one.
I feel a Tim Allen (the comedian) grunt coming on.

This what we came back to , where they ground out the tree stump. It doesn't look like much now but Cathy will have it looking great by mid-summer, the little green patches you see our the ones we picked up the other day, she'll be adding to it all summer and I'll post another picture of it when it's full.



This is our lot at LVR, we're on the very last row as far from the gate as you can get. The lot is about 85 feet deep and about 42 wide and there isn't a ton of elbow room but it fits what we were looking for very well. The neighbors on either side are only out here for the 3 holidays, about 1/2 the park use it on weekends and for their two week vacation and the rest of the park is snowbirds using it to visit family in the area. The park is a none profit co-op so the yearly association dues are very very low, the amenities of the park match just about any park in Florida. Pool, hot tub, sauna, two club houses (one adult one kids) putt putt golf,15 acre stocked lake with two beaches, the St Joseph river runs along the one border, six miles of roads for biking or walking and a lot of other stuff. Of course if you want to go to a grocery store it's a 25 minute drive through Amish country so you may be stuck behind a slow moving horse drawn wagon for a while.

This is the view from the front of our lot looking towards the lake, one of the things we like about this road is the open space across the road from us, they were going to put in more lots, they cleared the trees and graded it when the State stepped in and said no more lots, you've reached your limit for the EPA stuff. So we have no one across from us.

Good news on May 1st Michigan became the 38th state to enact a smoking ban in public buildings and locations, so now we can go to our favorite locations for lunch without having to race home to get out of our smoky cloths.