What a gifted writer......... and a kind soul.....it's not like Chipmunks are endangered, but we probably would have done the same thing. YOUR apples look twice as large as ours. OUR trees are near the property line, and the neighbors pine trees are overtaking everything and blocking sun, DAMN. Oh well. More to know about your real estate agent....they are a freeloading bunch in general, only a few truly earn their money. HOpe things work out. The housing slump should NOT affect that gorgeous property you both live on. Best of luck in that venture.
hubby is jealous of your apples. he covets our neighbors' apples. his little tree has 2!
sorry things went sour with your real estate agent. glad you were able to get out from under the contract if you were unhappy.
by the way, we saw 2 humpbacks and one minke whale on saturday but NO orcas. this means another trip before october...i am determined to see those rascals! 
I wish more people took the time that you two take while deciding what to do with animals in distress. Sorry to hear about the real estate agent, I myself loath dealing with them when I have had to.
Always nice photos and story! And the apples look delicious! ; )
The "1001 stories and naked city" line is oh so true. That's what makes the "internets" so interesting. So many people around the world sharing their lives in ways we'd never know since most of us don't travel too much.
Hang in there. When we were trying to sell the rental house we owned, we went through about a half dozen agents before we found one worth her salt. When we found her, she sold it.
What had yours done that ticked you off? We had one that moved out of town and never told us. We had another that messed up and took our house off the listings. Another listed our house much much higher than we were asking. Top those screw ups.
Yep, life is a book waiting to be written. Thanks for writing parts of yours.
Wonderful story with a good ending. Glad that roger noticed the chipmunk go down into the drain so that you could rescue it. Oddest thing, but when I first looked at that second photo of the chipmunk, that's not what I saw - it looked more like a piece of tiger skin in the bottom of the hole and I was thinking "What the heck is that?!" A few years ago, during a summer of bad drought, I was renovating our bathroom and installing a larger window. I didn't have any easy way to close off the big opening for the couple of days that I was working on the wall. There were no mosquitoes around, so I just left it open. Sometime during the day when I was taking a break, my collie, Maggie (since passed away), came and got me from another part of the house and led me to the bathroom. She went to the toilet and looked down and then looked at me. I looked in and there was a red squirrel swimming like mad around in the toilet. I grabbed a stick and put it in and it raced up and then ran out the window. Later in the afternoon, I went back into the bathroom to resume work and there was the squirrel, back in the toilet again. The only thing I can think of is that it was so dry outdoors, that the squirrel was attracted to the water. I put a tray of water outside in the garden in case that was the cause. No more squirrels in the toilet after that!
Glad that you were able to part company with your real estate agent. Better to do so now rather than wasting time. Perhaps you would do better on your own, especially as you know how to build web stuff and could create a nice site. A couple of people with unique properties in our area have done this.
Your apples look much further along than ours!
Now that you have your home all spiffed up, it's a wonder you still want to sell. (It looks so snug and homey - not to mention what you've done with the gardens.)
You're lucky the agent let you out of the contract. My sister once had a house that was negetively leveraged, and the bank was an overly strict one, so she and hubby were between a rock and a hard place. They appealed to their realtor who, after hubby gently suggested that the house might just sell if she(the agent) would just reduce her commission...
Well. The woman went on a rampage. She refused to nullify the contract, and went by the house every day to push the sign over with her car. Sis had to drive over every day and put the sign back up. Whew!
Good job guys. That would have been a terrible fate if Roger hadn't noticed it.
Sorry about your realtor hassle. I have had a few of those also over the years. We sold and bought homes twice without a realtor and it can be done if you are good at judging human nature, don't take money or an offer from someone unless you have good reason to believe they are going to be able to finish the purchase.
You could try putting up your own property listing website and even linking it to your blog. You certainly have the lovely photos to tempt buyers to look. You might be surprised how effective websites can be for selling property.
Also Craig's List is a free place to list. I haven't bought or sold from there but have seen a lot of interesting properties listed and it's free.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
what a wonder
ful story (well, not abt the agent).
that's one of the great things abt the internet - we can share these stories far beyond our normal scope,
Hi Robin and Roger,
Thank you for rescuing the chipmunk! I love those little guys.
Sorry about your realtor, bummer.
Hope the days a nice one.
And Sky where did you see the humpbacks? What cruise did you use?
oh and halo scan is letting me post again yeee haaaaawww!
thanks
Dawn
Alvin, Simon and Theodore
Meant to include the link, sorry:
http://thumbsnap.com/v/Mq2qYPtL.jpg
I hope you are getting more rain for those apples! This is the time they need the water!
The thing about chipmunks is that as cute as they are, they're still wild animals. And wild animals, when scared, will bite.
The thing about real estate agents is that they are just animals.
I'm so relieved you saved the scared little chipmunk. A very old woman instructed me to always keep a stick in any watering cans or buckets outside so if a frog fell in, it could get out. I do that. I was thinking of the Chipmunks singing, too - singing, Let Me Call You Sweetheart!
As for the real estate lady - she is banished like the bad witch.
condolances on the real estate agent. good to be out of a bad situation, thought.
poor bitty chipmunk! glad he found his way out with a little help from his friends.
i thought of you the other night. one of our cats has taken to dining on his dry food al fresco -- in his elder years, in summer, he prefers the great outdoors of our front yard to the confines of the house, where annoying young cats sometimes pounce on him for fun. so we have kept dishes outside for a few months.
imagine my surprise when i went to let another cat in, flipped on the porch light -- and a racoon was placidly feeding on the cat food. my other cat [mainly an indoors type] was totally unruffled by the racoon's presence, so i guess it has been hanging around a while. this explains how the water dish gets so dirty, too. we watched it for about 10 minutes, from a distance of maybe 2 feet, through the screen door. guess we have to make the old man cat come inside to eat now....
I love you for the stories you tell about your relationships with animals.
Good luck on the next leg of the real estate journey.
follow your heart and your intstncts. They've gotten you this far. Power to the people, my friends.
Funny about all those stories that never get told. I guess being the judge of such things at my blog I do draw lines and much goes unsaid, and sometimes things that have been said should have been left behind the line. Oh well! It never worked out, really, my firmest declarations that it would be simply a documentation site.
In the matter of the real estate agent, at least she informed you of the basic matters that you've written about - making everything perfectly acceptable for a wide range of buyers. I'm assuming that she simply didn't supply that wide range of buyers as her part of the deal, but perhaps her deficiency had to do with other things.
I've never had to sell a house I'd lived in so can't really appreciate the amount of work it takes. My parents did, though, many times, and that just underscores all that you and roger have written about doing in preparation. That's been done now (well, other than fixing the spiderweb), and hopefully you'll find another agent with a little more oomph. Or sell it yourself, as you said.
Add me to the throng of folks who are happy about the chipmunk rescue. Every now and then we find the remains of some poor trapped animal in the overflow drain at our lake. They can get in, but they can't get out. I've thought about putting some sort of ladder in there, but anything made of wood would float and perhaps clog the drain itself. A metal ladder? In any case, I'd have to take off the cage over the top of the drain, and I don't know if I could ever get it back on again.
I love the way you describe the poems that lurk everywhere. My mind went to There are nine million bicycles in Beijing...
Aw, the poor little thing. Glad it got out.
Must be something in the air, the firing of realtors. Unless, by some miracle, the pending deal goes through, we're canning our realtor who's been working with us on the rental house in Stepford.
Oooh. Apples. So pretty. And pretty sure I can't grow them here.
Apples ...mmmmmmmmmm!
We can't grow them well here, too hot.
Thank you for rescuing the chipmunk.
A guy is traveling through England and he has a delicious traditional fish and chips dinner at a monastery. It's so good, he goes to the kitchen to thank the chef.
In the kitchen, two monks are cleaning up, he asks the first one, "Are you the fish friar?"
To which the man replies, "No, I'm the chip monk."
Wackawacka!
Have a great weekend.
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