Pepper Jelly - September 28, 2022

Yesterday's plan was to make pepper jelly with the last of the garden peppers.  I hurried home after work only to realize that I didn't have any vinegar, and I was not about to go to the store.  So I just washed and chopped the jalapenos and put them in the refrigerator.  It turned out that I was nearly a cup short of peppers, too.  So today I stopped after work and bought vinegar, plus an orange bell pepper and a green bell pepper, to throw some color in the mix.  Most of the little pepper bits wanted to float to the top of the jelly, so I let it cool and thicken a little bit, then I flipped the sealed jars over to better distribute the bits.  It's pretty in the jar.

Today my daughter-in-law dropped off three mum plants that the local agricultural students grew (I think).  I bought some mums from the ag boys a couple of years ago, and they dropped off the scraggliest bunch of mums I'd ever seen, which pretty much dampened my eagerness to buy any more from them.  But when The Granddaughter is the salesperson, it's a different story.  Happily, this new set of mums is stellar - nice ones, just in the right budding stage, and wrapped in a plastic sleeve to keep the limbs from breaking.  Or so I hope.  I haven't inspected them, yet, because I had to rush in and make pepper jelly and fix supper.

I'm sitting on the porch tonight, wrapped up in a shawl.  It's a little chilly.  Today, I noticed that the days are getting shorter.  It'll be soup weather pretty soon.

Still Harvesting - September 26, 2022

Nanny told me several days ago that there were LOTS of bright red jalapeno peppers in the garden.  Every day, I've said I ought to go get them, but just haven't, until today.  A bunch of them were shriveled or about to shrivel, but I got enough firm ones to make a batch of pepper jelly, which I intend to do tomorrow after work.

The tomatoes are still going at it.  They've grown huge - far taller than their posts - and they've doubled over and kept growing.  The tomatoes at the top of the heap are too high for the critter to reach, and so we're actually getting a few usable ones for a change.  I picked everything that was even THINKING about turning red.  Gave Nanny the ripest ones to put in her freezer, and lined our back porch rails with the rest.  They should be ready to do something with by the weekend, if not sooner.

One thing I'll do with a few of them is stew them with the okra I cut today (and some garlic and onions).  

The garden is horribly grassy.  There are giant squash laying among it, and decomposing cucumbers.  I probably brought home a million chiggers.  

A week or two ago, I cut some hydrangea limbs away from our A/C unit, and I chopped them into about two dozen sections and planted them, hoping they'll root.  There were left-over limbs that didn't get chopped.  They've been in a bucket of water ever since.  I tried to give them away, but nobody came to get them, so yesterday I chopped another dozen clippings and started more.  Won't it be grand if they all live?  Hydrangeas for errrrrbody.  

Not Bored, Exactly - September 22, 2022

Now that I have a "real job" (as my family says), I have to do my reporting at night.  (Or get up an hour earlier, which ain't happening.)  Unfortunately, I'm even goofier at night than in the mornings.  You get what you get.  ;)

Week 2 of the new job is - well, I don't quite know what.

I'm not exactly bored because I'm learning new things.  I am somewhat uncomfortable.  Still "squatting" at the conference table in The New Boss's office (while he works in the conference room, as he's always done), still no definitive workspace of my own.  Yesterday, the place - a cavernous, former bank lobby - was so noisy that I picked up my laptop and moved to the kitchen at the back of the building.  I stayed there until my laptop began to run out of juice; there was no electric outlet that my cord would reach without stretching it across the path to the coffee pot.  

And I do dumb sh*t.  A few days ago, I got a notice about a 2:30 p.m. webinar I thought would be helpful to watch, so I set my calendar AND my phone to notify me when it was time.  However, I had not noticed that it was to happen at 2:30 EASTERN time, so I joined the webinar just as it was wrapping up.  Nice.  Thankfully, it's a repeating thing, so I can watch it next week if I have nothing better to do.  I signed up for a different webinar that I booked for 6 p.m. tonight, and I really wanted to watch it.  I left work in plenty of time for a 6 p.m. webinar, but on the way home, it hit me that I might've missed EASTERN time on it, too.  So I rushed home.  I'd picked up a grocery order on my way home, and I'd have to put away the refrigerated stuff, at least, before I could get to the computer.  I flew in the house with one armload of groceries, fired up my laptop on the porch on my way back to the Jeep, got the rest of the bags.  The weather has been so nice this week that I've been driving the old Wrangler with the top down.  It turned chilly this afternoon, and the skies were kind of dark, like it might rain.  I needed to put the top up, but I had ten minutes if the webinar was at 5, and I needed to pee.  So, before I put up the groceries, or even dashed to the bathroom, I double-checked the webinar time.  7 EASTERN.  6, my time.  Whew.  (I must've learned my lesson from yesterday's mistake, but I don't recall using it.)  The groceries got put away, and the Wrangler top got put up, and I even found time to pee and gather some note-taking stuff.

The webinar was worth watching.  

  

New Job Progress Report - September 19, 2022

Well, week one is in the history books, and I am not quite sure what to think of it.

Co-workers seem very nice and seem to get along well.  

I don't feel that I accomplished very much last week.  My only assignment was to "look for grants, see what's out there."  I have been doing that ever since the job was first mentioned to me several months ago, so this task seriously bored me.  Around the middle of the week, a co-worker and I were given a specific project to focus on.  We had limited success finding funding, and The New Boss said to put it on the back burner for a while.  But, having nothing better or more exciting to do, I kept looking, if for no other reason than to educate myself.  Thursday I got my hands on an actual application for a beautification grant, and Friday I tried my hand at writing some of the narrative.  The writing is what I love to do.  I hope there's more of that to come.

Let me tell you how it is to start a new job after working at my former job for 28 years.

First off, I had to be there at 8 a.m.  Boo!  Now, the show-up time at my old office was not entirely great, either.  I had to arrive at various intervals from 7:15, 7:45, 8:15, or anywhere between 8:30 and 9:00, depending on the day.  (This was because we traveled to various counties for 9 a.m. hearings.)  Having a set start time might be nice, since I won't have to recalculate what time I have to leave my house each morning in order to get to work on time.  But I would've liked a 9 a.m. start time a tad better.

Also, quitting time is 5:00.  Boo!  At my old job, I worked until 4:30 on occasion, but many days when The Boss finished the hearings, she'd send me home when we got back to town.  Having some afternoons off was nice, especially since my tailfeathers start dragging the ground about 2 p.m.

When I arrived at my new work site (one block up the street from the old one), I didn't know where to park.  This new work site was formerly a bank.  The Husband worked at that bank not long after we married, and employee parking was then behind the building.  I eased down that alley this morning, but the parking spaces behind the building were all filled with mail delivery vehicles, so I circled the block and parked on the town square, right in front of my building.  This made me a little nervous, for when I ran a business on the square, every two hours a policeman would come by and chalk your tires, and you'd get a parking ticket if the chalk mark was still there the next time the policeman came around.  But The New Boss's Secretary said that's where we're supposed to park.

Because I'm going to be mostly working from home, I do not have an office in the county building.  Today's work directive was to sit with one of the other employees for some training.  She's a nice person and is very willing to share information.  But by late morning, she had some work she needed to finish today, so I set up at a conference table in The New Boss's office and started a research task.  But I could not concentrate and found myself reading the same paragraph over and over without having a clue what I'd read.  The problem was the noise.  There was a radio playing.  Loudly.  Rock music, like Aerosmith and Def Leppard.  Employees talked to one another across the big room.  People came and went, and every time the door opened, a bell dinged and a disembodied voice announced, "Front. Door."  I nearly lost my mind until 12:00, when everybody in the place cleared out for lunch.  Well, almost everybody, because somebody turned the radio down a couple of notches when everyone else left.

At a few minutes until 5, I went out into the main area.  The New Boss was at his secretary's desk, gathering up some papers for a meeting he was about to attend.  When he saw me, he asked, "You're still here?"  Then he announced to the room, "Hey, y'all, she's still here."  

"And I'm coming back tomorrow," I said.

Hydrangea Cuttings, Day 1 - September 11, 2022

Friday afternoon, almost as soon as I cut the hydrangea limbs away from the HVAC unit, I cut some of the limbs into sections and stuck them down in a plastic tub full of dirt.  I set them on the back side of the porch, away from full sun.

I put the rest of the limbs in a tub of water and offered to give the remaining ones away on Facebook, first-come, first served.  Although several people responded that they wanted some, only one person (my niece) came to get some yesterday.  To be fair, it was raining; maybe people just didn't want to get out in it.

This morning, I filled plastic picnic cups with dirt until I ran out of cups, chopped two more hydrangea limbs into cuttings, and planted them. 

If even half of these rascals survive, I should have enough to plant the glorious hydrangea bed I envision.

The niece just called and said she's on her way over here for more limbs.  She must have the same vision.

Movin' It - September 10, 2022

After I left meeting yesterday, I stopped at the garden center to see if they had any hydrangeas on sale.  My plan for the phlox bed that I just cut down is to turn it into a hydrangea bed.  The garden center had been having a sale, and all of the hydrangeas were gone.  Nuts.  But I really need to do a lot of work in that bed before I plant much in it - need to get in there and dig up old those old phlox roots and till up the soil and (Mother Nature forgive me) use some weed killer next spring to nix the new plants.  So, I came home, changed clothes and went outside to work in the yard.  Land sakes, this place is a jungle!

When I was younger and dumber, I mail-ordered 48 English ivy plants, intending to plant them along the edge of the back yard, which drops off into a gulley.  The plan was to stop erosion.  Being in a tree line, the digging was hard, and after planting a couple of dozen plants, I scraped out one large patch of bare ground and buried the rest of the ivy in a mass grave.

It was years before the ivy really took off.  When it finally did, it took off straight up the trees instead of crawling across the ground as I had intended.  Most of the trees along the gully are now covered in ivy and more than a few have died and fallen; whether this is the fault of the ivy or the fault of growing on the edge of a gulley, I don't know; it may be a combination of both.  And it seems we are losing more of our back yard every year.  In one place, ivy growing from the ground up has intertwined with ivy dangling down from tree limbs and created an impenetrable curtain, behind which probably lives lord-knows-what kind of wildlife.  Weaving through all that mess is a grapevine with a trunk as big around as my arm. Yesterday, I attacked the ivy with the weed whacker, starting with the ivy closest to the mown area, and hacked my way into the jungle.  When the trimmer string broke for about the fifth time, I gave up, but I'd already reclaimed about 10 feet of lawn (until the ivy sprouts again).

After that, I divided and replanted some daylilies and some bulbs, set a mole trap, lopped down a bush that keeps growing at the corner of the driveway and impeding our view of oncoming traffic, and hacked some hydrangea limbs away from the HVAC unit.  Never made it to the phlox bed.  

When I cut back the hydrangea, it occurred to me that I ought to root my own hydrangeas with cuttings from those limbs.  In the past, I've had about a 50/50 success rate with getting the cuttings to root.  Of the survivors, none survived in the ground (possibly the fault of the lawnmower).  But I watched a video about rooting hydrangea cuttings and decided to give it a try.

I was at the dollar store up the road, buying dirt, when Son #2 called to see if I was up to babysitting Granddaughters #3 and #4 for the evening so that the rest of the family could go to a football game.  Of course, I said, "Of course!" and went to get them.  Upon my arrival, Granddaughter #3 announced that she was spending the night at my house.  Granddaughter #4 (the Little Rotten Baby) had just had her nap interrupted, and she was not in the best of moods.  She squalled and tried to escape from the car seat half the way home, and at her normal bedtime, she had a minor meltdown, wanting her normal routine.  But made her lie down with me on the bed and started telling her about Goldilocks and the Three Bears, using a deep Papa Bear voice and a squeaky Baby Bear voice, and she quit crying, got still, and listened to the rest of the story.  It didn't work to get her to sleep, but it did make her forget that she was supposed to be pitching a hissy fit.  She was asleep in my lap when her parents came to take her home.

Eight-year-old #3 (whom the LRB calls "Mar-Mar") stayed the night.  She insisted on sleeping in The Husband's recliner instead of in the cute "girl room" I fixed up for the granddaughters.  About 1 a.m., she shined an i-Pad in my face and said, "Grandmama, look, the i-pad says it's morning."  I replied, "Technically, that's true, but it's too early in the morning.  Go back to bed."  She was asleep on the couch when I got up at 6.  I tip-toed through the living room, poured a cup of coffee, took it out to the back porch.  About an hour later, "Mar-Mar" found me.  I set her to work making biscuits while I fried bacon and scrambled eggs.  Later, we went shopping.  As we were on our way home, Son #2 called, wanting to know if we'd watch the LRB again for a little while.  I said, "Sure!  Bring her on over."

This baby is a mess.  Twenty months old, talks a blue streak, knows colors, can count to five (when she feels like it).  Will tell you "NO!" in an instant.  Needs a beating, and I'd give her one except she's so cute.  ;)  She's not big as a minute.  Has a head full of curly hair and the sweetest smile you ever saw.  She had a few mishaps today - bumped her lip on a bar stool that is exactly lip high, fell down a step, dripped chocolate syrup down her brand new shirt.  By the time her daddy came to get her, she was asleep in my lap, wearing nothing but a diaper (I did stain treat and wash the new shirt).  

And I am worn slam out.

Yard Work - September 9, 2022

Well, I did what I said I was going to do: I cut down the phlox beds yesterday.  The weed-whacker ran at stop speed and made short work of it.  Still, it took about 2 hours to get it done.

When I finished murdering the phlox, I mowed our yard, then went down to Nanny's and mowed her yard.  Nanny's yard is big, and there are a lot of things to mow around, and a hill so steep it's scary. Took me another 2 hours.  

* * * * * * * * 

This morning I had my final meeting with the county executive about my new grant-writing job.  I start Monday, 8 a.m.  

First Cool Morning - September 8, 2022

This morning's back porch temperature is a perfectly wonderful 65 degrees.  Today should be a work outside day.  I say "should" because - well, you know what they say about "best laid plans."  Sometimes things just don't cooperate.

Take yesterday, for instance.

It started with a text from my bestie that reminded me of a gift she'd given me - a burr for my Dremel.  I'd had it over six months and hadn't used it, just hadn't been in the mood.  Thinking about the Dremel burr reminded me of another trinket I bought six months ago and hadn't used, a re-chargeable pen-sized carving tool.  I dug around in a craft drawer, found the tool, and took it out to the back porch to try it out on a "totem" (walking stick, really, made out of a straight crape myrtle limb) that I started carving last summer.  It's been leaning against a corner on the porch all this time.  Had a few spider webs and some dust bunnies on it.  It depicts characters/things from in my immediate world - birds, flowers and plants, bugs, a leafy vine spiraling around the stick.  I'd roughed in most of the images but hadn't fine-tuned them because all of my Dremel bits were a bit too large for detail work.  Hence the pen-sized tool.  I got it out and tested it.  It will work well for details like feathers and antennae, but as I examined the stick, I realized that I hadn't roughed-in the vine all the way down the stick.  Removing excess material is a Dremel job.  I decided I should finish the vine before starting on the details.  Besides, the re-chargeable pen tool was running out of juice.  I plugged it into my computer to charge and got out the Dremel stuff, including the new burr.

The last time I used the Dremel on my totem, I made a huge sawdust mess on the back porch, so I decided to do the rough carving outside.  My fold-up work table was already set up on the driveway, so I dragged it over to the outdoor electric outlet at the end of the house and went to work.  The new burr worked marvelously to remove a lot of material fast.  But crape myrtle is very hard wood, and it wasn't long before the Dremel motor started to labor.  I laid it down to let it cool for a while, went back to the pen tool until it ran down again, went back to the Dremel.

By this time, it's going on noon, and the shade over my work table was gone.  I couldn't move the table back to the shade because the Dremel cord wouldn't reach the outlet without stringing extension cords across the yard, and I was too lazy to do it.  I put the Dremel stuff away and returned the totem to its corner.

But while I was outside, I looked around the yard with a critical eye and admitted what a mess it was.  Weeds and saplings were taking over the flower beds.  Everything in the bed along the driveway was wrapped in cow-itch vine, Virginia creeper, and poison ivy.  And I've been meaning to cut down the phlox beds.  A couple of weeks ago, I even got out the push-type weed whacker and started toward the first bed, then I noticed that the phlox were positively ALIVE with butterflies and hummingbirds.  I didn't have the heart to cut down their food source, so I left the phlox alone.  But now that they are going to seed, it's time to cut them down.

I cranked up the weed whacker and started to on the bed by the driveway, but the head was spinning too slowly to do the job.  Wouldn't even cut grass, much less tough vine stems.  In a previous post, I told you about how The Husband had repaired the whacker's broken clutch bar (or whatever it's called) with a bar salvaged from an old lawnmower.  I wondered if that was the problem - maybe the bar wasn't pulling the cable enough.  I'd gotten a new bar weeks earlier but hadn't yet put it on, so I put on the new bar.  The weed whacker suddenly went from a wimpy, half-hearted piece of junk to a straight-up badass weed-chopping machine.  I congratulated myself and went back to work.  

As I was working on the last, weed-infested bed, a serious problem arose.  I heard a SCHUMPP and a wheeze, and the motor quit, and when I dragged the whacker out of the weeds, there was A TOMATO CAGE, which had been hidden by the weeds, wrapped around the spinner head.  

I thought, Well, sh*t, and proceeded to try to untangle the tomato cage.  Easier said than done.  Evidently, this was a premium tomato cage, for I could not budge the wire, not even with a pry bar.  The only solution was to cut it off.  

It could not be done - at least, I couldn't do it - with wire cutters.  Time for Plan B.

It seemed that the tomato cage might slide right off the shaft if I could remove the spinner thing.  There was a bolt on the bottom holding it on.  It was a sunken bolt, requiring a socket to turn it.  It took 10 minutes to round up a ratchet and the correct socket, and another few minutes to dig enough dirt from around the bolt to enable the socket catch hold of the bolt head.  But, guess what?  Not only was I not strong enough to budge the bolt, the tomato cage, itself, got in the way; I could not get enough leverage to really bear down on the ratchet.  

Back to the cutting idea.  

I got the Dremel out again, put on a cutting disc, dragged the lawnmower onto the porch (where I could work in front of a fan), and began cutting.  (Did I mention that I am scared to death of that cutting disc?).  Sparks flew.  There was a time or two when I thought I smelled hair burning, and the whole time I wondered if it was a good idea to be making sparks so close to a gas tank . . . .  I soldiered on, and slowly but surely managed to chop off enough of the tomato cage to remove it from the spinner.  

Whew!

Lord Jesus, I was worn out by the time the last piece came off.  

But, thankfully, the weed whacker cranked up again, and I finished the last bed near the house just as the motor started sputtering, running out of gas (I hope that's the problem).  I hadn't yet gotten around to the big phlox beds out in the middle of the yard, but I didn't know if we even had any more gas, and besides that I was tired.  I said, Screw it, and put the weed whacker away.

Today, I'm going to tackle the rest of the beds and, if I have enough energy left after hauling away the debris, I'll mow the yard, since it's supposed to rain this weekend.  The riding lawnmower and my big yard wagon are both at Nanny's.  I'll have to go get them at some point but, first, these phlox are COMING DOWN.  TODAY.

I'll start right after I do a Wordle.  Or two.  ;)

 

After writing yesterday's post, I thought to myself, Get your butt up and DO SOMETHING!  

Since we were out of groceries, I got dressed and went to the grocery store.  

On the way up the road, I spied a backhoe digging in a field up the hill, on the same side of the road as our house.  I'd been hearing that backhoe running for days and had been wondering what was going on.  It worried me.  Behind our house is a big gulley that drops into a bottom.  A not-so-heavy rain will flood that bottom fairly quickly.  I feared that whatever digging was going on uphill from us might make the situation worse.  I also feared that some developer was about to put in a subdivision close to us.  As I drove on to do the grocery shopping, I decided that I'd go find out what was going on when I got back from the store.

When the groceries were all put away, I cranked up the Wrangler, drove up the road, and went into the field where the backhoe was digging.   At the opposite end of the field, a guy was working on a tractor, and another guy was sitting in a truck, talking on his cell phone.  I drove over to them and motioned to the guy in the truck to come talk to me.  He turned out to be the guy who'd done some dirt work for us when our gulley caved in several years ago.  I told him who I was, and that I was concerned that the digging was going to cause more water to run into our bottom.  I asked him what was going on.

He said that they were building a shooting range.  They'd already built a berm at one end of the range and were going to build another one at the other end.  He said that the berm on our end would probably make our bottom-flooding situation better instead of worse.

I left the field feeling better.  

Then later that afternoon I thought, SHOOTING RANGE?!  

Geez.  And I was worried about new neighbors coming in, making noise, shattering our quiet!  If the landowner is building a shooting range for his own use, that's one thing.  Being country folk, we are used to hearing gunshots - hunters and people plinking at targets - but if he's planning on some kind of commercial venture. . . .  Rumor has it that the landowner is going to build a house in the immediate vicinity, so hopefully he won't want to live in a neighborhood that sounds like a war zone any more than we do.  

* * * * * * * 

It looks like my retirement will be over, come next week.   Meeting Friday to hammer out the details.

   

What Day Is It? - September 6, 2022

Thank goodness my computer knows what day it is; otherwise, I'd have to ask somebody.

I still have not heard from anybody about the new job, which I have been told is a "done deal," a "sure thing."  It's a bit irksome.  I need a target date to start.  It doesn't matter if the target date is tomorrow or six months from now, I just need to know so I can plan my time. 

My sewing/craft room is full of things to do.  When/IF I start the new job, it may have to become my office (The Husband has taken over our "real" office).  It is a total wreck at present and needs to be re-organized before ANY kind of new project gets underway.  I could start cleaning now and probably finish today, having a clean slate for tomorrow.  

But what to do tomorrow?

I need to make a quilt for Granddaughter #3.  She is 8 years old.  

When Granddaughter #1 was 6 years old, I asked her what kind of quilt she wanted.  She said, "Hmmmm...a PRINCESS quilt!"  I pondered a good while before finally deciding to use pre-printed panels showing various princesses in their finery.  On blank blocks between the princesses, I quilted a glass slipper, a pumpkin carriage, a mouse, a tiara, etc.  My skill set then was not quite as developed as it is now; I could do better now.  But Granddaughter #1 is long past the princess stage, and her family has moved several times, so the quilt is now boxed up and in a storage unit, somewhere, and probably hasn't been seen in years.

Granddaughter #2 was 11 when I asked her what kind of quilt she wanted.  She pondered and pondered and couldn't come up with anything.  Finally, wanting to get started, I took her to a fabric store and let her pick out one piece of fabric - anything she wanted - thinking it would lead to an idea.  She picked out a blue-green-black diagonal stripe (I think I've bitched about that fabric in several previous posts), which screamed "BORDER FABRIC," but a border for WHAT?  I ended up ordering more of that fabric and chopped it into triangles to make diamonds and squares.  I interspersed those squares with 3-D log cabin blocks.  It would make your eyes go crossed to look at that quilt top.  When Granddaughter #2 saw it (before I'd gotten around to putting the BORDER on it), her disappointment was obvious.  By this time, she'd decided that she what she really, really wanted was a superhero quilt.  I started over.  She was tickled pink with the superhero quilt, but it probably won't be long until she will see it as "kid stuff."

I have not yet asked Granddaughter #3 what kind of quilt she wants, or even what color she likes.  Maybe I should ask before I start something.

Or maybe not.  

Temporary Retirement Day 1 - September 1, 2022

It's 11:45 a.m.  

I'm on the back porch, still wearing my nightgown.  The sun is shining.  The birds are chirping and bees are buzzing.  My laptop says it's 80 degrees.  Seems about right.

So far, I've eaten breakfast, checked my email, read headline news stories, worked an online crossword puzzle, and talked to my sister on the telephone.  Big day, so far.