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Hello everyone. It's time for John and Joe again. I know you've been anxiously awaiting our next podcast. And here we are. Here we are. Uh, Joe, you've got some things to talk about, uh, people who've contacted us. Yes. We've had, uh. Oh, well actually two grandchildren that contacted us, uh, one of which wants to know about how John and I dated and how we got together, and the other one said, don't edit. He, he said, you guys are too good. You don't need to edit. So, uh, so we'll keep that in mind. Those are the comments we've had. So, uh, but, uh, hang on, because after Joe tells us about our love life, we're going to talk about our newest escapade, which is, uh, gardening. So, alright Joe, those of you who've heard this story and many of you had, now's the time to go get a cup of coffee and, uh, relax for a few minutes because. Joe's gonna talk, okay, Joe, but you don't realize that we do. Your grandchildren know how you got together. Uh, it's important to take, let them know. Uh, there she was. Uh, her granddaughter was very curious. Well, John and I were 1200, 1500 miles away from each other, and, uh, we both worked for the same company. John's wife died in December and then my husband died in July. So uh, he sent me a sympathy card with a little message in it and I wrote back to him and told him how meaningful it was and we became pen pals. And then, you know, John and I worked for the same company and that that's how he knew that my husband had died. Um, but at any rate, and we, and we did a lot of telephone calls too. It got very expensive because we didn't have cell phones then it was, I think we spent$500 each, each, each, uh, month on phone calls, uh, to each other, because we always called each other all the time. So. We were lonely. Yeah, lonely. And, uh, then John said, this has gotta stop. Right? We can't afford this. So I said, let's move to Chicago, where the weather's beautiful. Now I lived in South Florida. Can you imagine moving from South Clark, Florida to, to, uh, Chicago. The winters are bitter up there, just bitter. I will, I wore long underwear all the time. And stayed in the upstairs bedroom because that was the warmest room in the house. Well, John was traveling and many times he'd go to Boca and call me and say, listen to the waves, Jo, Joe. Uh, doesn't that sound good? And have you walked the dog? Oh God. In the snow. In the snow, right. So, and, and cleaned up after, as we usually do. I had a tough life and she learned to use the snowblower. Uh, I said, it's not hard. All you do is plug it in, push the start button, and then once it starts, you roll it out and start pushing snow. And I said, just make sure when I come home from Florida or Texas or California, that the driveway is cleared of ice and snow, so I can just. Slip right on in, and when I call you from the airport, if you want something, you better tell me so I can stop and get it.'cause once I get home, not going out again. Now that was not nice because the wind would blow in my face and the snow was in my face and I thought, this is crazy. I hired somebody to do it. Yes, she did. Which was probably smart, uh, because they would come three or four o'clock in the morning and clean off the driveway so we could, uh, get the car out to go to work. So, uh, so I don't know, uh, if that answers our granddaughter's question, if she has more questions. We had a long distance romance, but we survived. Survived. We got together many times and, um. Uh, and here we are. And in June we will be married 36 years. 36 years. So it can, uh, it can happen and it will last. Okay, now what else we got to talk about? We gotta look at our notes. We take notes. Those of you who say, gee, how do you come up with all this good stuff? Well, we have notes and uh, one of the things that we've talked about before is my pasta making. And I have become a, um, pasta making king, so to speak. Um, well that's questionable. I want, I want to get all the stuff that the, uh, pasta grannys use over in Italy. You know, we talked, they're over a hundred years old, that's still, uh, baked pasta and, and get eggs from the chickens as they chase'em around the yard. Free range, free range chickens. So I looked at one of our favorite, um, cooks. There's a couple. The girl came from Italy and her husband from the United States, they got married. They have a cooking show, and they had one episode where they had all the equipment that they use. So I said, I need everything they've got. And Joe said, there's no way you're gonna have all that stuff. The cabinets are full. Well, guess what? We ordered a, uh, hyper hydroponic garden system. I've never heard of it. Can't pronounce it, didn't know what it was. But if they used it, John's going to use it Now. Why? What are you putting in that garden? Well, we need herbs for the pasta. We need, uh, parsley, we need rosemary. We need, uh, oregano, basil. We need oregano. You know, there's a lot of stuff. It, you top it with and you put in your sauce. And, uh, you know, if you're gonna be a, a gourmet pasta cook. Oh, by the way, I've ordered a pasta board that's coming. Um, should get it next week. So I'll be able to roll my dough out better than I'm doing it now. Now you have to be careful when you roll your dough out. If you have granite, the dough will be too cold. So you need a board. Uh, and the board that John ordered has a lip on the front of it so it doesn't slide right when I'm kneading it, uh, and push it, it doesn't slide forward. So that, that makes a nice, uh, a nice thing. And it's less cleanup too. So that works out pretty good. Uh, this back to this gardening thing, if any of you wanna do it, I suggest you look at a couple of YouTubes before you buy one because. This thing took a, uh, somewhat of a ma MIT graduate, uh, to assemble and, uh, understanding directions. And, uh, we got it started last night, laying stuff out. Um, from the box, Joe decided to put the, uh, seeds in. What do we have? 13. 13 containers? 13 containers. Of, uh, we have 13 different seeds, 13 different seeds, right? Some of those seeds are microscopic. You can't even see'em much less Pick'em up with a pair of tweezers, which you have to do to insert in a sponge, which goes into a funnel, which goes into the garden, which is full of five liters of water. So. Well, uh, I hope this works out well. Uh, this is not our first attempt at gardening. No. We had a attempt when we lived in Sun City, uh, over in South Carolina. We had a, what was it, 20 by 20 foot garden. Mm-hmm. It was Big Garden. Big garden. And we were, they had 60 plots. We were plot number six 60 at the very end. So what this meant. Everybody took their trash and dumped it behind our garden. Plug burned behind. Number 60, right? So when the garden police came, which they did regularly to make sure we were neat, right? Neat garden, you know, the garden was growing, the tools were where they were supposed to do water holes. What we got cited because we had debris in our garden. Outside of our garden. Outside of our garden, but it looks like we did it. Mm-hmm. So, Joe and her, uh, you know, knowing what to do all the time, she says, we'll just load it up, take it to the dump, where I've got a friend who will accept it because Joe made friends with the dump lady at Christmas time. So, uh, by giving her a box of candy so we could dump anything. So we load up this wood and wire and debris in our trunk. Go to the dump and the dump lady says, I don't take this. That's right. I said, well, Joe gave you a box of candy. She said, no, no, don't take it. I said, where can't we take it? And she gave some directions. You know, we're over in South Carolina, South Carolina, and there's a lot of dirt roads and a lot of semi dirt roads. And uh, I didn't understand her directions. I ended up at a gas station. I went inside and I asked about, uh, where this location was, and the guy said, I don't know where it is, but we got a box of puppies here. And he said, don't you want a puppy? And I said, no. Uh, we don't want a puppy. We want to dump this, uh, trash. So we started driving down the road and we found a building site. Yes. I told Joe they had a dumpster. They had a dumpster. I said, Joe, go up there and ask him. If we could use the dumpster. Well, Joe went up there, but they didn't speak English right? Joe didn't speak Spanish, but that assumed to me it was okay. So I told Joe, I said, Joe, you dump it in. Of course, I, I'll look out for, you know, anybody that comes after us. And, uh, if anybody's gonna be arrested, it's gonna be me. It's gonna be Joe, because surely they would give her nice quarters and probably a nice meal. Uh, before I bailed her out at my age. So we dumped it all and off we went. That was our experience. However, in doing that garden, um, we were told to use 10 10 fertilizer. Well, John, did you use that? I did. And I said, if a little is good, a lot is better. And what happened? So. Yeah, everything died in our garden. I went out, so we had to pull everything out. Rototill again, went out one day. There was nothing there but brown weeds. Oh my. So we re regar it, rebuilt it, and we had a beautiful garden with a cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, uh, peppers, string beans, string beans. We had everything. And uh, we would go every. Day in harvest our crop, right? Joe would wash it in the laundry, uh, tub, tub and attempt to give it away. I thought the neighbors would like to have fresh vegetables, but uh, when Joe came with a wagon of fruit or vegetables, they closed the garage doors and closed the windows wouldn't come to the door. So, so we had an abundance of a crop. Needless to say, we did not garden. The next year. But we did have our tools and we still have them. Some of'em are say number 60, we know what that means. So that means a lot. Number 60. So, so now we're doing a inside, inside gardening. Well, we can't garden outside. We live in a condo. Condo and we got HOA. We do have open field next to us and I would like to, uh. Put some free range chickens out there. Uh, we've mentioned that before and everybody said I can't do it, but including your wife, if accidentally chickens showed up, nobody knows who they were. Uh, and don't bring a, don't bring us these Easter chickens. And they hung out around our, uh, side door and we inadvertently felt sorry for him and fed him, you know. Uh, we might have some eggs. No, that's not gonna happen, John. So, and we, we went, we won't get a rooster. You know, we told you that story before. So, uh, alright. What else? Are we near completion of this, uh, episode? Episode? Yeah, I think so. I think so. Uh, we won't bore you anymore, so. We'll be on. Again, hope you listen to us. We do appreciate the listeners. We certainly do. We've got, uh, we use Buzzsprout to, uh, distribute our, uh, podcast out on to the different directories, you know, like Apple and Spotify. And we were notified last week, we had over a hundred followers and, uh, I'm sure. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. And, uh, we'll stay audios until next time. And goodbye. Goodbye.