From the back porch - May 31, 2020

We (mostly) finished weeding the garden yesterday.  And, no, that's not a royal "we";  a few minutes after I began working, I looked up and there stood The Husband, hoe in hand, chopping around the tomatoes.  I felt sorry for him.  He is bothered by arthritis in his hands, and that hoeing would probably make them hurt.  I said to him, "Let's just chop the grass that's right close to the plants, and do the middles with the little tiller."  After a few minutes of chopping, he went to the shed and dragged out the little tiller.

Of course, it wouldn't crank, even with the chuck and the electric drill.

I said, "Let's load it in my car, and I'll take it to the small engine shop."

The small engine shop closes at noon on Saturday.  It's 25 minutes away, and the clock was pushing 11:25 when I hit the road.  My progress was hindered by three different tractors on the way, but I made it with less than 5 minutes to spare.

When I returned to the garden, The Husband was nowhere in sight, but he had (mostly) finished chopping around the vegetable plants.  Back at the house, I found him lounging on the back porch with a tall glass of iced water.  He said, like he was surprised, "It got hot down there!" 

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the back porch, making music together.  Get your mind out of the gutter; we were LITERALLY making music.  He plays the ukulele quite well; I play the mandolin quite badly.  We pulled up some play-along music videos and plucked away for a couple of hours.  I feel like Guitarzan - "makes A & E, and he's workin' on B, digs C & W and R & B...."

After a few minutes of this, the neighbors left home.  ;)

Garden Maintenance - May 30, 2020

If you have begun to read this post thinking it contains pearls of wisdom about garden maintenance, keep googling; this post is about griping about garden maintenance.  ;)

You'd think we live in the tropics judging by the way it has rained here in western Tennessee this month.  The vegetable garden is hairy with grass, and the ground has been too wet to do anything about it.  Yesterday, at last, the soil dried up enough to work.  I got off work early, came home, put on my hat and gloves, and went to the garden.  It was about 1:30 when I started. 

Ordinarily, I would have pulled out a tiller for the weeding job, but I'd read an article in Mother Earth News that said tilling the soil only brings more seeds to the top, so I decided to do all of the weeding with a hoe.  Although The Husband had sharpened my hoe about a week ago, it seemed dull.  I tried to sharpen it three times on the bench grinder, but couldn't get a good edge on it.  Also, the business end of the hoe felt wobbly, like it was about to fall off the handle.  Nevertheless, I hacked away for well over an hour before I decided to stop and see if I could find a video on how to properly sharpen a hoe.  By then, I'd only made it down one side of one green bean row, and was feeling a sunburn coming on.

Before going down to the garden, I'd tried (and failed) to crank our push-mower.  The grandchildren are coming this weekend, and I wanted to mow the yard before they get here.  Usually, we mow the tight, tricky spots with the push mower, and finish it off with the big riding mower, which we store in the shop at Nanny's.  My plan was to ride the big mower home, do the yard, watch the video, and go back to the garden with a sharp hoe when the sun was not so hot.

The riding mower would not crank.  It will fire right up for The Husband, but not for me.  Every single time.

And, as usual, when Nanny heard me trying to crank the mower, she came trotting out to the shed to advise me.  She can never get the mower to crank, either.  She said, "There's a kill switch, somewhere."  I'd never heard anything about a kill switch.  The mower won't crank if the parking brake is on, but the parking brake wasn't on.  She started fiddling with buttons and knobs and levers, looking for the kill switch that I believed did not exist.  I get so frustrated when she does this.  Finally, I said, "I'll just go home and ask The Husband about the kill switch." 

He said there's not a kill switch.

The article on sharpening hoes said not to do it on a bench grinder.  It said that the bench grinder would heat the metal too hot, and that if you do try to do it on a bench grinder, you should have a bucket of water nearby in which to cool the metal after every few seconds of sharpening.  It said to do it with a file.  I have NEVER been able to get a sharp edge with a file.

Meanwhile, The Husband came out to the porch where I was reading and examined the hoe.  The metal part of the hoe - the part where the handle fits into the "tube" - was crumbling.  Time for a new hoe.  I went to the hardware store and bought TWO hoes - one regular hoe, and one - I don't even know what it's called, but it has a flat edge on one end, and a fork on the other.  The guy at the hardware store sharpened both of them for me.

With TWO sharp hoes in hand, I went back to the garden.  The forked thing was amazing.  The flat, sharp end of the blade was narrow enough to slip between the plants, and the forked end did a good job of digging up deep roots and cracking the crusted soil around the beans.  I worked for hours.

During this time, I heard the front door of the shop roll up.  I'd left the back door open during the sharpening attempts, and from where I was in the garden, I could see The Husband gassing up the riding mower.  He climbed on, turned the key, and the #)(!@ mower fired right up.  When he looked up and saw me, I shot him the bird.  He shot it right back and gave me a couple of Three Stooges hand signals (BBBBBbbbbb, snark, snark) for good measure.  He went to mowing, and I went back to chopping.  By the time he finished mowing our yard and Nanny's yard, I'd weeded less than half of the garden, but I was whipped, and when he put away the riding mower, I put away my hoes and we came to the house.  It was 7 p.m. by then, and I hadn't eaten lunch.  I showered, put on my pajamas, fried a piece of bologna for a sandwich.  Every part of me was aching.  I took two Tylenol, and went to bed.

Gonna get after it again this morning, as soon as I eat breakfast.

Finis - May 26, 2020

Can I get a Hallelujah?  Can I get an A-men?

We are no longer have a cat.

If you've read my previous post, you'll know that we finally succeeded in trapping the cat this morning.  I believe I left off the story where we were waiting on the animal control supervisor to call me back.  She'd said that she was REQUIRED to be at the shelter when the cat arrived, but she had appointments until after lunch.  She said she'd call me when she got back to the office.

I'd scheduled my grocery order for pickup between 1 and 2 p.m., and my hope was that the supervisor would call me at just the right time for me to deliver the cat and pick up the groceries in the same trip.  No such luck.  Noon came and went.  At 1:30, I called the animal shelter to see if the supervisor was back.  Nope.  I went on to town to pick up the groceries.  Came home, put away the food, stuck a ham in the oven.

Meanwhile, the cat has been in the cage since about 8:30 a.m.  I know she must've needed to go potty (what pregnant female doesn't?), but there was no way I was letting her out for a bathroom break.  Then it began to rain.  I laid a rug over the cage.  Best I could do.

At 3:30, I called the animal shelter.  The lady on duty has been very nice to me throughout this whole endeavor.  She said she had still not seen the supervisor, but would call her and call me back.  A few minutes later, she called back and said that she'd gotten no answer, but that I should go ahead and bring the cat.

So I did.

And I'd no sooner gotten home and taken my seat on the porch when I heard ANOTHER cat - a big yellow tomcat - stalking around my back yard and meowing at the top of its lungs. 

He is not getting a bite to eat in my yard.  Ever.

Cat Saga - Part 3.5 - May 26, 2020

Well, the cat is in the cage.  Finally.

It was a week ago today that I had a vet appointment to have the cat spayed and vaccinated.  That day, after an unsuccessful attempt at catching the cat, I called the animal shelter and asked them for help (for the third time).  They are short-staffed because of the corona virus and have not been eager to help, other than to suggest that I lure the cat in the trap with tuna instead of cat food. 

Before trapping the cat this morning, I called the animal shelter to make sure they were open.  The person on the phone said that the supervisor was not there but MUST be there for "intake."  She gave me the supervisor's phone number.  I called it.  The supervisor remembered my prior calls and said to go ahead and catch the cat and call her when it was done.

We caught that cat in nothing flat.  Put the food w-a-y back in the trap, and when the cat when in after it (we have been conditioning her for a week), The Husband shoved her booty in, and I let go of the door.  Mission accomplished.

I called the supervisor back.  She was surprised that we'd caught the cat so soon.  She said, "I've got some appointments this morning, and I'm not going to be at the shelter until noon or later."

She could've told me this before we trapped the cat, eh?  She's supposed to call me when she gets to the shelter.

So, anyway, we've got this hugely-pregnant black cat in a cage in the shade, awaiting a call from the animal shelter supervisor. 

Something tells me this isn't the end of the story.  :-\

From the back porch - May 22, 2020

I had hoped to work in the vegetable garden today, but it's raining.

Instead, I am digitizing embroidery designs, testing them, and uploading them to Etsy.  The embroidery machine is humming away as we speak, sewing an A-frame camper design that I did weeks ago.  This design was requested by one of my customers while I was too busy to test it.  My customer tested it and said that it sewed just fine.  I am sewing it so that I will have a picture to upload with the listing.  When it finishes, I will test a crowing rooster design that I have created to go with some other farm animal designs already uploaded to Etsy.

The cat-catching operation is still in limbo.  She's going into the trap to eat, but not all the way yet.  It's hard to get the food/bait all the way to the back of the trap without spilling it.  I am going to have to switch my baiting tactics over the weekend.  If I can trap her before she births the kittens, she's going to the animal shelter.  I'm tired of the struggle.

Last night after dark, I heard the pellet rifle go off and went out to the porch to see what was up.  The Husband said, "The coon is back."  The Husband shot above its head and it ran back to the woods, but we knew he'd be back the minute we went inside.  He's a gnarly old thing (the coon, not The Husband).  I suggested that The Husband should actually pop a pellet in the coon's ass to discourage him, but he won't do it.  He said he doesn't want to just wound it.  I get it, I do.  But a little pain might at least make him think twice about raiding the cat food.  The Husband suggested that a BB might get the point across without actually wounding the animal.  There were three loaded BB guns (belonging to the grandchildren) on a high shelf on the porch.  I grabbed one and cocked it and peered out into the darkness, but didn't see the coon.  After a few minutes, I gave up and went to bed.

But tonight, I'm going to have a margarita on the back porch, and then I might do a little coon huntin'.

The cat saga continues - May 21, 2020

The plan:  feed the cat in the trap every day, twice a day, with the trap not set, putting the food farther and farther into the trap each time, until she'll go far enough into the trap to spring it.  Then set the trap and catch her.

Last night at the cat's suppertime (she comes to the door when she smells supper cooking), the cat was not to be found.  About 9:30 last night, she showed up, meowing, while I was doing some computer work on the back porch.  I got up, put some food in the trap, and went back to the computer. 

In a minute, the cat gave a terrible, vampiric hiss.  I jumped up to see what was out there, but saw nothing, not even the cat.  I went back to the computer.  A minute or two later, I heard a growl, more like a dog growl than a cat growl.  I jumped up again, opened the screen door, and looked out.  There was a huge raccoon eating the cat food in the trap.  I screamed, "GET OUT OF HERE!" but it just looked at me and kept eating.

I went inside and told The Husband.  He went out to the back porch and grabbed the pellet rifle that we've been keeping propped by the back door ever since we were armadillo hunting last fall.  It's almost as loud as a rifle.  The Husband thought the sound would scare the coon away, but it didn't; it stood up on its hind legs and looked at us, like, "What?" and returned to its meal.  The Husband re-loaded the pellet gun, and shot at a galvanized tin wash tub that was right behind the coon, thinking that the PING would scare the coon away.  It did.  For a minute.

I said, "Shoot it if it comes back!" 

He said, "The pellet gun won't kill it, and it might put its eye out." 

And I was, like, WTF?  WHO CARES?

The Husband went back inside, and I went back to my computer work, and the growling continued, ferocious and insistent.  I heard scampering noises from two different directions, and I'm pretty sure one of them was NOT the cat.  I came inside and got a high-powered flashlight and shined it around the yard just in time to see a raccoon tail disappearing over the hill, but I could still hear scampering noises coming from another part of the yard.  I think we had two raccoons arguing over the cat food.  I went inside and told The Husband we should set the trap and catch the raccoon.  He said, "Then what?"  Neither of us has the heart to shoot it in the trap - how sporting would that be? - and then what would we do with a dead raccoon?  If we chose to haul it away and release it, we'd have to drive it 10 miles or more to keep it from coming back.

I tell you, I am about sick of this animal business.  We thought that keeping the stray cat would cut down on snakes, mice, etc., but it seems like we're just drawing other critters to the yard. 

I am still waiting on the call from Animal Control, still determined to get them to help me catch this cat so I can take it to the vet to be spayed.

Meanwhile, the cat will probably drop a load of kittens on us.

Animal Control should come get this cat while there's only one to catch!

Cat catching - May 19, 2020

While I'm waiting for some glue to dry, let me tell you how my day started.

The cat had an appointment with the vet at 8:00 this morning to get shots and get spayed.

This is not our cat.  Or wasn't our cat.  It adopted us a few weeks ago.  When we saw it catch a rodent in the yard, we decided to let it stay.  I called the vet to make an appointment to have the cat "fixed" and vaccinated.  The soonest appointment I could get was three weeks from when I called. 

During this three weeks, we began to suspect the cat was pregnant.  The vet said they would take care of it, but it would cost me extra.  I said, "Whatever.  I do not want kittens."

This cat is about half wild.  It is not so leery of us that it won't rub our legs, but sudden moves send it packing.  Ever since I made the appointment, I have been planning how to capture the cat to get it to the vet.

The Nephew has a live trap big enough to catch a raccoon.  I borrowed it from him yesterday.  At the cat's suppertime, I fixed the trap so that it wouldn't spring and put the cat food in the trap.  She was a little suspicious, but eventually she went in and ate.  I thought, Game on, cat.

This morning she would not go in the trap.  She went half-way in at one point, and we should have just shoved her ass in and been done with it, but she hissed when we tried to block her exit, and she got away.

Now, we both had to be at work this morning, and the clock was ticking.  I waited a little, and she calmed down and started rubbing on my leg.  I just reached down and picked her up under her belly (which was bumpy with little cat titties - a sure sign she is with child).  When she did not protest much at being picked up, I marched her to my car, opened the back hatch, and tossed her in.

She got out before I could close the hatch.

I gave her a few more minutes to calm down, then enlisted The Husband's assistance.  He brought her to the car, holding her straight out in front of him, with her kicking and squirming, and I opened the hatch and he stuffed her in.  Aaaand she got out again.

I said to The Husband, "F*ck this cat.  I'm calling animal control."

I have been trying to talk animal control into catching this cat for me for weeks.  They seemed like they wanted to help, given the fact that I was going to adopt the cat rather than send her to the animal shelter, but they are apparently short-handed (because of the corona virus) and not all that eager (or perhaps able) to help me get the #(!@ cat to the vet.  But this time I was going to give them an ultimatum:  either come help me catch the cat, or come get the bitch and keep her.

On my way to work, I called the vet.  They put me on hold for 12 minutes before I could say the first word.  When they finally answered, I told them I could not catch the cat and asked them if I could bring her in later today if I could catch her.  They said sure, but it would be a few days before they could get to it, and they'll charge me room and board until then.  I am NOT paying room and board for a cat that's NOT EVEN MINE (it won't be my cat until I actually lay out money on it, not counting cat food).  I couldn't make another appointment, because I have NO IDEA when I will be able to catch this cat.

The next call I made was to the animal shelter.  I told them in a very heartfelt manner that they could either promise to come catch this cat for me so I can get it to the vet (after I make another appointment), or they can COME GET IT NOW.  The person on the phone evidently did not have the authority to make this decision.  I am waiting on a call from the boss.

The cat was still here when I got home from work, so I guess they didn't choose the COME GET IT NOW option.  I glanced over at the patio a little while ago, and the shithead was in the trap, eating cat food.  Apparently the trap is not set, and if it were, I'd have to turn the cat loose since today's appointment has come and gone and I can't get another for several days.

Meanwhile, she's probably going to have kittens.

If that happens, my next call to the animal shelter will not give them only one option:  COME GET THEM.

Garden Progress - May 18, 2020

I checked the vegetable garden Saturday to see if anything had come up.  Nothing.  But I'm still hopeful.  I uncovered a seed or two in a green bean row, and they were swollen and about to burst open.  We had a good rain yesterday, so maybe that will help.

The day after my daylily shipment arrived, my sister sent me two buckets of daylillies from her garden.  She sent them by my niece, who texted me Thursday afternoon to tell me she had them.  I told her I'd come get them the next day when I got off from work.  Well, I forgot, and my niece texted me again Saturday morning and said that she would not be responsible for the death of the daylillies, so I went and got them on my way to the grocery store.

Since I'd planted twenty new daylillies only a day or two earlier, I was kind of out of the mood to plant more, plus I was running short of good places to put them.  But Nanny said she would like to have some of them, so I took half of them to her house and planted them near her back porch.  They should do beautifully there.  Meanwhile, I scoped out a couple of locations in my own yard where I can plant the other half.  I shall do that today, after work, if it's not raining when I get home.

The rain storm we had yesterday was a doozie.  Our electricity went out not long after the storm started and stayed off for a good while.  I'd put a roast in the oven about an hour earlier and worried that it would not get done in time for dinner.  Just as the power came back on, The Husband saw a stranger walking around in our back yard and went out to investigate.  It was the power company guy, checking on things.  It turned out that the wind had blown over a tree in our neighbor's yard, which had grazed their house and yanked the power line loose and zapped the transformer.  Our house and the neighbor's house were the only two houses affected.

The neighbors are elderly and had no way of removing the tree from the house themselves.  Our chainsaw is at the repair shop, and we had to hunt the neighborhood for one that would work.  Finally, we found one, and we mustered the local sons, grandsons, and nephews to come help cut up the tree and get it off the house.

Thankfully, the roast did get done in time for dinner.  :)

Daylilies - May 14, 2020

A package arrived in the mail yesterday.  It was the right size and shape to be some shoes I had ordered a few days earlier.  I tore into the box, and it wasn't shoes.  It was daylilies that I had ordered w-a-y back in the fall.  Twenty of them.  I was so sore from wrestling the tiller Monday that my first impulse was to stick them in a bucket of water and deal with them later, but I knew what would happen if I did that; they'd most likely sit there and rot.  So I grabbed my little digger and stuck them in the ground, here, there, and yonder in the yard.  The exercise was good for working out a little of the soreness.

While I was resting on the porch after the planting, I kept hearing a strange, moaning noise coming from the woods behind the house.  There are squirrels and birds and frogs in those woods, and they make all kinds of weird noises, but this was something new.  In a few minutes, I caught some movement in my peripheral vision and looked up to see a big old turkey hen slowly strolling past the porch.  She ambled around for a few minutes, making that crazy moaning noise, then turned and eased back into the woods.  Just as I got up to go tell The Husband about the turkey, he came out to the porch.  When he heard the news, he grabbed his phone and started playing turkey calls, hoping to lure the hen back to the yard so he could take her picture.

Who keeps turkey calls on their phone???  Geez.

Yesterday was Planting Day - May 12, 2020

I was grateful - and THRILLED - that the menfolk had plowed the garden for me.  Knowing that weather reports were predicting rain for today (Tuesday), I was determined to get my seeds in the ground Monday.  Since The Boss turned me loose from work at about noon yesterday, I had the whole afternoon to work.

I started by re-tilling the rows I intended to plant.  As I began to work, the Ghost of Gardens Past brought some thoughts to mind.  One of the biggest problems over the years has been the fact that my garden spot is kind of in a bowl and stays too wet for too long when it rains.  I wanted to make some actual raised rows that might keep the plants out of the puddles. 

The Big Black tiller has a furrow attachment that has sat, unused, for most of the time we've owned it.  The attachment reminds me of a seagull in flight, with a pointy body to tear into the dirt and wings to funnel the dirt to each side.  It was right in the gardening shed where we'd left it.  The Ghost reminded me that I'd had trouble attaching it that one time I'd used it.  The instructions were still in a drawer in the shed.  I found the necessary wrenches and pliers, and sat down on the ground behind the tiller to figure out what I needed to do.  A nephew on the hill has a new puppy - a yellow lab with more energy than any dog I've ever seen - and this puppy was out in the yard while I was trying to work on the tiller.  He kept licking my face and jumping on my back and trying to crawl into my lap.  I hollered for the nephew to "come get this #)!(@ dog," and he came out and corralled the dog, and lifted the tiller up while I installed the furrow attachment.  Soon, I was furrowing like crazy.

The sky began to darken, and I felt pressed for time.  I tilled up a few rows and planted them.  Tilled up a few more, and planted them.  I was down to my last pack of seeds - a good-sized bag of purple hull peas - when it began to sprinkle.  Boy, I was irked, knowing that once it rained it would be several more days before the garden would be dry enough to plant the peas, but I put up all of the gardening tools and came back to the house. 

Five minutes later, it quit sprinkling. 

I put my shoes back on and went back to the garden, hauled everything out of the shed again, and finished the tilling.

The Husband showed up with his gardening gloves just as I was dropping seeds.  He helped me cover the seeds with soil, and we came on back to the house.

I was so tired I would have cried if it would have helped.  When The Husband started talking about what we were going to fix for supper, I said, "I DON'T CARE!"  Sensing my mood, he volunteered to drive to town and get us a hamburger.  That suited me just fine.

While he was gone, I showered and changed into my pajamas.  As we were eating our burgers, I said, "I'm going to bed at 8:30."  And I did.

But, land sakes, I ached.  I got up at midnight and took some ibuprofen, and crawled into the spare bed to read until the pain-reliever kicked in.

Thankfully, getting out of bed this morning was not as hard as I'd anticipated.  My muscles aren't so sore, but my right boob is bruised (from the tiller handle) and swollen.  Big Black fought back!

Mother's Day - May 11, 2020

My family was very nice to me this weekend.  The Husband gave me two hardy hibiscus, AND he planted them for me.  My younger son, who is w-a-y across the state sent me a sweet text.  And my older son, plus my might-as-well-be-my-son, plowed and disc'd and tilled my garden.  The whole thing is now ready to plant.  I am going to try my best to get the seeds in the ground when I come home from work today.  It's supposed to rain tomorrow.

The cat that has adopted us is pregnant, I think.  I made an appointment to have her spayed and get her some vaccinations, but because of all the virus stuff, the first appointment I could get isn't until May 19.  I will be surprised if she doesn't drop a load of kittens before then.  She is blowing up bigger every day. 

It's almost official.... May 9, 2020

I am about to go nuts from boredom.  Since I can't do anything else, I think I'll just sit here and complain.

With all of the craft stuff in this house, this should not happen. The problem is that all the projects I want to do have missing components, and I don't want to start them, for I already know how that works; I don't need any more UFOs (unfinished objects) hanging around this house.

It won't quit raining, so I can't work in the garden.

And it's cold.

Nanny called about noon yesterday and said I'd better come cover up the tomatoes because there was supposed to be frost this morning.  I had not heard that news and found it quite hard to believe.  I told her that The Husband and I would watch the evening news and come cover them with plastic if the weatherman doesn't revise his prediction.  By the time The Husband got home, I'd stirred up a blender of margaritas and some guacamole dip, and we enjoyed them while we waited for the weather forecast.  The weatherman said probably high 30s.  The Husband said it was supposed to be windy, so probably it wouldn't frost.  We decided to chance it, and finished our margaritas.  I bet Nanny was having a fit by nightfall, thinking we should have had our butts down there, covering up the plants, before dark.  And we probably should have, that's true.

I'm kind of in limbo about the garden.  The Husband has been thinking about buying a small tractor and some farm implements to go with it, like a tiller and a bush hog.  I would love that, but if he's going to do it, I'd rather he'd go on and DO IT before the garden gets dry enough to work, so that WHEN it gets dry enough to work, we could do it with the tractor tiller instead of the garden tiller. 

I think I shall go have that discussion with him right now.

See ya.

From the back porch - May 7, 2020

I doubt my brother is one of the two or three people who read this blog, but happy birthday to him.  He has been good to me since the day I was born, and I pretty much love him.  :)

I had to go to work again today.  The Boss called last night and said, "Have you heard the news?  Courts are open tomorrow."  She said that she wanted me to station myself in the main hallway to see how smoothly the entrance process was running.  So I got up this morning and got dressed, and tried to find my car keys and my shoes, and get to the courthouse by 8:45.  I hung out in the hallway for thirty minutes or so, shooting the bull with the lawyers while I watched how things were working.  Only people who had to be in court were allowed in the building until court was over.  A deputy was taking people's temperature on the porch, and would have turned away anybody with a temperature.  Less than half the people were wearing masks (I wore mine), and the rest of us were periodically removing them for a minute or two.  Our Clerk's office had positioned tables in front of the counter in an effort to stay 6 feet from the people on the other side of the counter, and there was a sign that said, "Please don't lean on the counter."  One young, smartass lawyer deliberately violated that rule.  I told the girls to spray him with Lysol if he did it again.  The judge backed me up on this.  The lawyer got a warning squirt, but not a full-on disinfecting.  If I had been wielding the can, there would have been a mushroom cloud of Lysol all around him.  Punk.

We only had about a half-day of court, so I left after lunch-time.  Hurried to the grocery store to pick up my grocery order, stopped at another grocery store to get things I'd forgotten to add to my list and things that the other grocery store didn't have.  Came home, put away the groceries, cleaned out the refrigerator, folded a load of laundry and washed two more, and put a roast in the oven, and then I came out to the porch to chill for a minute.  About 15 minutes later, I thought, "I should go ahead and put the carrots in with the roast.  So I got up, went in the house, chopped some carrots, and hauled the heavy roast pan out of the oven.  Almost dropped it as I was getting it out.  I put the carrots in and came back outside for a few minutes, then thought, "I should have cut that meat up so it will cook faster."  So I went back inside, took the roast out of the oven, and cut up the meat, and when I was putting it back in the oven, I DID drop it.  Gravy and carrots went all over the oven.  Of course, I had to stop and scoop most of the mess out with a spatula and a sheet pan.  Meanwhile, my supper is NOT COOKING, time's a-wasting, and it's not going to get done if I have to stop and clean the oven. It's too hot to clean, anyway.  I rinsed off most of the carrots and put them back in the pan and set the roast to cooking on top of the stove.  It's simmering nicely as we speak.

I was kind of cussing myself for messing up the oven to where I couldn't use it, for I'd wanted to make some kind of bread to sop up the roast gravy.  Then it occurred to me that I have two ovens, so I made some beer bread.  It just got done.

Now I have to go peel potatoes to go in the roast pan. 

Tomorrow will be self-cleaning oven day.

From the back porch - May 6, 2020

The Granddaughter for whom I am making the quilt (and her parents and sisters) came over Monday night.  They currently live waaaaay across the state and were here for a short visit.  I took her into the sewing room and showed her the quilt top.  The blocks are not sewn together, but I had pinned them  to a giant sheet of quilt batting so that she could see how it will look when assembled.  Her comment was, "Cool.  Where is the Marvel Comics stuff?"  She seemed moderately satisfied when I told her I will line the quilt with Marvel Comics fabric, if I can find any.

It seems I was a bit premature with Monday's "Back to work" post.  I did go to the office Monday, but learned that the courts where I work have not yet re-opened.  We are waiting on the state Supreme Court's approval of our re-opening plan.  It'll probably be another week before we hear if the plan is approved. 

I spent part of the day yesterday practicing my mandolin.  I'm trying to learn to play "I'll Fly Away."  It's a bit of a mystery as to how this came about, but I jokingly told my boss that The Husband and I will play that song at her funeral.  She has not let me forget it. 

Y'all, I SUCK at playing the mandolin.  My fingers are barely long enough to reach around the mandolin's neck, and they are stiff and swollen from arthritis.  Hopefully, I will have many years to practice.  Both of my boss's parents lived to be 90+; her dad even made it to 100.  If she inherited their tendency to longevity, she will probably out-live me!

Between yesterday's practice sessions, I worked on some embroidery designs.  Back in the fall, I did these farm animals to put on some placemats:

These designs are meant to be used with fabric that does not ravel, such as felt or flannel.  The stitches that hold the animal appliques to the fabric are running stitches that don't encase the raw edges of the appliques.  Earlier in the week, I had two customers request modified versions of the designs.  One lady wanted a "regular" horse (yes, that's a horse in the first picture, though The Husband says it's a mule).  Another lady wanted the same animals, but with satin edging that fully covers the raw edges of the appliques.  I'd already done a "normal" horse, just hadn't uploaded it to my Etsy store (shameless plug:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/sfancy?ref=seller-platform-mcnav ) because I haven't tested it, yet.  It's going to take a good bit of work to turn the running-stitch-edged designs into satin-stitch-edged designs, almost like starting from scratch.  Got two of them done yesterday, will work on the others today, then I have to test everything before I upload it.

Some time today, I need to walk down to the garden to see how the tomatoes and peppers are doing.  We had a hail storm Monday afternoon - marble-sized hail - that may have beaten the plants into the ground.  It needs to quit raining so that I can finishing plowing and get some seeds in the ground.

Back to work (kinda) - May 4, 2020

I am going back to work today.  The courts are re-opening on a limited basis.  I won't be going to court with the judge as I did before the virus outbreak; I'll stay at the office.  There will be only a few cases on the docket, and no one but the parties and their attorneys will be allowed in the courthouse.  If the judge needs some typing done, she'll just have to call me on the telephone.  I'll do the typing and email the file to somebody at the courthouse for them to print.

I did basically nothing yesterday, except make a grocery store run, cook dinner, and practice my mandolin a little bit.  All of my muscles are sore and most of my joints are swollen from Saturday's gardening frenzy.  I planned to go back to the garden to do more tilling, and probably would have done so to work out the soreness, but a storm came up and soaked the garden.  It'll be a few more days before I can get seeds in the ground. 

There's a rabbit living under Nanny's back porch.  When I am finally able to put seeds in the ground, he will probably eat everything that sprouts.  One year a rabbit (or something) ate the green beans as soon as they had two leaves on them.  When I went to the garden the next day, all that was there was a bunch of Y-shaped stems.  At the time, there was an old guy who was a security guard at the courthouse entrance, and we used to talk about gardening.  I told him about the rabbit eating my green beans, and how I was going to have to re-plant.  He said, "Just be patient."  A few days later, the green beans leafed out again, bushier and healthier than ever.  When I told the security guy about it, he said, "See?  That little bunny knew what he was doing!"

Tomatoes and Peppers - May 3, 2020

Yesterday was yardwork day.  Both our yard and Nanny's needed mowing, and I wanted to get the garden tilled and planted.  In retrospect, I realize that this was a rather ambitious plan.

While The Husband mowed Nanny's yard, I worked on our yard with the push mower.  Our yard is crazy.  There are hills, ditches and small spaces that are difficult to mow with the riding mower.  There's a wrought-iron garden arch that is too narrow for the riding mower.  I took care of those places with the push mower.  It took about an hour and a half to cut it all.  When I finished, I was pooped.

But not long after I finished mowing, a friend called, and while we talked, I rested enough that when we finished the call, I was ready to start working in the garden.

It has been two years since I've tried to raise a vegetable garden.  The garden spot gets mowed with the rest of Nanny's yard, but the ground hasn't been broken since 2018.  I dragged the big black tiller out of the shed, checked the gas and the oil, crossed my fingers, and yanked the cord.  It cranked on the first pull.  YES!

I went to work.

It took nearly two hours of plowing to get one row ready to plant.  I sent The Husband up to our house to get the tomato and pepper plants that I'd bought two weeks ago while I began "hilling up" the row with a rake.  Then I remembered that I'd bought epsom salt to sprinkle in the holes, and I jumped on the riding lawnmower and rode it up to our house to get it. 

While I was in the house, I decided to fix myself a bottle of water to take back to the garden.  The instant I started to fill the bottle, I realized that I had not visited the bathroom since I rolled out of bed at 6 a.m. (it's pushing 5 p.m. by this time).  I thought I could probably finish filling the bottle and still make it to the bathroom in time.  I was wrong.  Had to change my underwear and my britches before going back to the garden.

I'm moving a little slow today.  My daddy would have referred to it as being "stove up." 

And only one row done.

After we finished the day's work, I said to The Husband, "We need a tractor."  His eyes lit up.  I may hold off on tilling for a couple of days to see what happens.

The baby wrens in the window box flew the nest yesterday.  I am going to miss them.

Make It Work - May 2, 2020

I used to watch a television show called Project Runway hosted by a guy named Tim Gunn.  Tim would go into the `workroom where the contestants were creating their clothing designs to check on their progress, and before he left the room, he would say, "Make it work!"

Well, that's what I'm doing to The Granddaughter's quilt.  In case you haven't read my previous post and don't know this, when I finished the log cabin quilt blocks, they were wildly inconsistent, despite my best efforts.  Yesterday morning, I stood at my sewing table and stared at them for a few minutes, then I picked up my rotary cutter and my ruler, and I trimmed those suckers down until they were all the same size.  Doing so resulted in the outer strips being narrower than the inner strips, but at this point I do not care. 

When I began to sew the blocks together, I quickly realized that I needed a "design wall."   The "standard" log cabin block starts with a square in the center of the block, and strips are added all the way around it until the block reaches the correct size.  My blocks begin with a 2" square in a corner and grow outward on two sides.  My plan is to sew them together "on point," meaning that I'm rotating the blocks 90 degrees so that they are assembled as diamonds instead of squares.  I kept sewing the blocks together upside down or sideways.  Finally, I stopped sewing and cleared enough wall space to hang a big piece of wool quilt batting.  The quilt blocks will stick to the batting, and I can stick all of the blocks up there, arrange them like I want them, then pull them off two at a time and sew them together in the right order.  Hopefully. 

It is such a nice day that I might try to start planting the vegetable garden.  I hope the ground is dry enough.  I hope the tiller will crank. 

Friday Round-up - May 1, 2020

Well, damn.

The best-laid quarantine plans are only as good as the plans of the few people with whom one comes into contact.  The Husband and I have been limiting our exposure to people who we MUST see.  He has 28 co-workers, some of whom are working from home.  Of the handful of people who are coming to work, one of them went to a birthday party last weekend.  Yesterday, that person got a call from the health department informing her that one of the party guests had tested positive for COVID-19.  She was told to get tested, and she immediately did so.  The results probably won't be available until Monday.  Meanwhile, we bite our nails, hoping the co-worker did not catch the virus. 

This has been a frustrating week.

I have been working on The Granddaughter's quilt.  Until yesterday, I felt pretty good about it.  The quilt top will require 30 log cabin blocks and 20+ striped square blocks.  I finished the 30th log cabin block Wednesday afternoon.  When I laid them out on my sewing table, I discovered that, despite very careful attention to every step of the process, the 30 blocks were wildly inconsistent in size. They are supposed to be 8.75" square.  Some are 8.75" square, some are 9" x 9" square, and some are 9" x 9.5".  How the f* did this happen?  I was so careful!

Google provided the answer.

These blocks are assembled from 1" strips of fabric that I cut horizontally across the grain.  I should have cut the strips vertically, as fabric tends to stretch less on the vertical grain (I guess that would be called the "warp").  I knew that bias-cut fabric was stretchy, but I did not know that the horizontal weave stretches more than the vertical warp.  That mistake won't happen again. 

Meanwhile, what do I do?  Do I remake all 30 blocks?  I would have to get more fabric, even if I wanted to tackle that chore.  Do I cut the oversized blocks down to the correct size?  I guess I can, but they won't look the same.  Does that matter?  I don't know, since this design is meant to be a bit visually confusing, anyway. 

Maybe, like Scarlett O'Hara, I should think about this another day, when I am not so frustrated. 

Lord knows when that will be!