Junkin' - February 27, 2023

We call it "junkin."

Basically, it's spending a lot of money to shop for old stuff that other people have discarded.

I know.  It's ridiculous.  

But that's what we did this weekend, for the first time in a month of Sundays, with our junkin' partners, The Sister-in-Law and her husband.  They are good travel partners.  

Originally, it was not going to be a junkin' weekend.  I have been wanting to hear some live Zydeco music and had picked out a little town in south Louisiana where we might find some.  The Husband and I set aside a 4-day weekend (Friday through Monday) to drive down there, listen to some music, eat some good cajun food, and do some sightseeing.  We invited our junkin' partners to go with us.

Our original destination was to be Eunice, Louisiana, a little town close to the corner where Louisiana extends below Mississippi.  There's a long story about why I chose that town, but I'll spare you.  The upshot is that when I chose the town, I did not realize how long it would take us to get there.  When The Husband checked the mileage, we realized it would be nearly an all-day drive, not counting emergency U-turns at roadside flea markets.  On top of that, The Brother-in-Law discovered that he needed to work Monday, so that cut a day off our trip.  We decided to limit our drive to about 4 hours.  We could have gone in any direction but chose to go south because rain was predicted up north.  We ended up choosing Meridian, Mississippi as our turn-around spot.  

It was fun.  We went to breakfast Friday morning then headed southeast, hit up three or four places in Tupelo, then drove on to Meridian for the night.  The next morning, we took to the streets looking for junk stores.  Jackpot!

Being an Antiques Roadshow fan, I always dream of finding something marvelous for $3 that turns out to be worth thousands of dollars.  So far, it hasn't happened.  Most of the time, we come home empty-handed because the last thing we need around here is more junk for our kids to throw away when we die.  But this weekend, we found some good stuff and brought it home.

We got a big box of baseball cards at one place, and the whole Ken Burns Baseball series (on VHS) at another.  $20 total.  They'll be going to a nephew's house.

At one place, we found a lovely dulcimer.  It was in great shape.  SOLD! (We already had a dulcimer, one we built from a kit many years ago, but the head has come off, so it isn't playable.)  At another, we found a nice, full-sized violin in a good case, with four bows.  SOLD!  (We used to have a violin, but we loaned it to someone who subsequently died, and we have no idea what happened to it.)  $210 total.

One store had two paintings that I sort of wanted, a still life and a portrait of an old man.  I googled the artists and found a little bit of information about them, which was encouraging.  Hmmm.  Neither of the paintings had a price tag.  When I inquired about them, the owner of the "antique" mall called the owner of the booth and came back with the news that one of the paintings - the one I really wanted - was $350 and the other was $250.  Uh, no, thank-you.  

Counting gas, meals, road snacks, and hotel, the trip probably cost us a thousand dollars.

Junkin' can get expensive.

 

Happy Monday - February 21, 2023

No, wait...it's not Monday, it's Tuesday.  Yesterday was President's Day, and we were off work, so today feels like Monday.  I don't know why; since I work from home now, every day is pretty much the same (weekends included).

Sunday was Son #1's birthday.  His wife threw him a mini-party Saturday evening, and we went over to their house for an early birthday supper.  There was good eatin' and a little pickin' and singin' - two guitars and a baritone ukulele.  I even pulled out a mandolin and played the 3 chords I know.  ;)

Sunday, I got a bee in my bonnet and worked in the yard until I nearly dropped in my tracks. The new leaf shredder got a heck of a work-out, too, and now the rose bushes are all pruned, and the vegetable garden has three more tractor buckets full of shredded leaves dumped on it.  

I hope this shredded leaf filler project doesn't totally screw up the pH in the garden soil.  And I hope the leaf shredder ground the sweet gum seeds into powder; otherwise, there may be a sweet gum forest sprouting in the garden next year.

When I got out of bed yesterday morning, I felt Sunday's yard work from head to toe.  Mid-morning, I put on my gloves and did more raking to work the soreness out.  It was not much fun, so I didn't do it all that long.  Piles of leaves and sweet gum balls dot the yard.  I should grind them before it rains on them, but I probably won't.

We are planning a little get-away this weekend.  Sister-in-law and her husband are coming along.  I am not entirely sure where we're going.  The original plan was to go to Louisiana to listen to some live cajun music and eat some good food.  But the place I picked (not really knowing where it was on the map) is 8 hours away by car, so we all decided that so much time on the road would eat up too much of our long weekend.  Instead, we picked a place about 4 hours from home, and we're going to go "junkin'" instead of listening to music.  That's quite ok with me, for I like junkin'.  

Not that I need any more junk.

I'm getting that itchy, want-to-plant something feeling.  It's been coming on for a couple of weeks.

Last week, or thereabouts, I discovered that one of my African violets was producing a seed pod, which excited me since I'd been trying to make that happen.  That same day, in the freezer I found a bag - two bags, actually - of vegetable seeds that I'd ordered last year when they went on sale at the end of the season.  Sugar snap pea seeds were among them.  It's time to plant them, but it's been raining since Noah was in knee pants, and the garden hadn't been (and still hasn't been) prepared, so I put the seeds back in the freezer.  The next day, I took out about a dozen snap pea seeds and planted them on a pile of loose dirt in the backyard.  Sprinkled a few carrot seeds on top for good measure.  Birds have probably eaten everything by now, if the armadillo didn't beat them to it, but we'll see.

My tabletop greenhouse came in a few days later.  I haven't even opened the box.  It's too small.  I need something big enough to shine on a whole flat of tomatoes, but the light that came with the greenhouse will probably get only 3/4 of the flat.  Maybe I can subsidize the light situation with a sewing lamp.  

There's a big potting soil in my car.  I'm ready.

But it's too early.  Winter ain't over, yet.  There was a marble-sized hail storm last night, followed by a hard rain. Though it's nearly 70 degrees on the back porch this morning, temps are supposed to drop into the low 30s before the week is over.  

So I wait . . . . 

Anniversary - February 15, 2023

Forty-three years ago today, The Husband and I married.

We were married in a Methodist church by a pregnant Presbyterian minister and were prayed over by a Church of Christ minister.

How all that came about is another story.

We were as poor as church mice when we married and did not have money for a honeymoon.  Our plan was to just go home to the little house we'd rented (in which we had never spent a night together) and - well, do what newlyweds usually do.  But during the wedding reception, the matron of honor invited us to go with her and husband to a Valentine's Day dance at the local V.F.W. club after the reception was over.  She said we could ride with them.  Having nothing better to do (*wink*), The Husband and I looked at each other said, "Why not?"  We took our cars back to our house, changed our clothes, and climbed in the car with our friends.

They brought us home at 6 o'clock the next morning.

We slept all day.  Mostly.

Come suppertime, the phone rang.  The Husband's grandmother called to say that she'd made a pot of soup and we should come eat.  Why not?  We hadn't eaten all day.

When we arrived, the house was full of folks - aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, in-laws....  The menfolk were all in the living room, having already eaten.  The ladies were gathered around the dining room table, lingering over their dessert.  The Husband and I dipped up two bowls of soup and joined them.  One of the aunts asked, "What have you newlyweds been up to today?"

I replied, quite innocently, "We've been in the bed all day."

A couple of the aunts gasped out loud.  

Another one said, "Well, my goodness!"

 

Granddaughter Day - February 12, 2023

Yesterday, I had the joy of babysitting the LRB and two of her older sisters.  The oldest granddaughter brought them over here.  She will be graduating from high school this year, and she and her mom had a "girls' day out," just the two of them, while the rest stayed with me.

And what a day we had!

Eight-year-old "Mar-Mar" (per the LRB) finished her wedding dress.  Yes, she's started a bit early, but one must stay on top of things.  She began designing it on a wire dressmaker frame that a co-worker saw at a thrift store and gave to me.  She has been hand-sewing the pieces on, a few at a time, each time she visits.  Yesterday, she declared that it was finished.  It still looked much like this . . . 

. . . and she did not think to devise a way to get in/out of the dress (e.g., a zipper or button closure), so we had a devil of a time getting it off the dummy (had to more or less crush the wires together to make it smaller).  A piece or two came loose in the process.  But we got it off, and she tried it on, while the LRB bellowed in the background, "I want to wear it!"  With some basting clips and a yard of shiny fabric, we satisfied her with a bridesmaid's dress.  ;)

Twelve-year-old Lou-Lou has been operating the sewing machine since she was Mar-Mar's age.  It occurred to her yesterday to make a body pillow for her bedroom.  Her Papi donated an old T-shirt to the cause, and she sewed up all the openings and stuffed it so tight it looked like the top half of the Incredible Hulk.  Then she said, "It needs legs."  Once again, Papi came to the rescue with a pair of old flannel house pants.  We had to un-stuff the Hulk to sew the shirt to the pants.  The damned thing was six feet tall when finished.  By this time, the grandfather had left the house to attend a funeral, and the LRB was begging to go outside and "swide" on the swingset, so we sat the Hulk in Papi's recliner, put on our coats, and went outside.

The LRB swid and swid and swid, and briefly complained when Mar-Mar wanted a turn.  After Mar-Mar had a go at it, the LRB cried, "Baby's turn!" and ran to me with her arms out to be set on the swide - uh, slide.

When I could not stand the cold anymore, I swooped up the baby and herded everyone inside.  By this time, the Hulk (who objected to bending) had swid out of his chair and was laid out in the living room floor.  For an instant, he scared the sh*t outta me.  I said to Lou-Lou, "That thing is going home with you!"

After that, we visited with Nanny for a little while.  Since it was so cold, the LRB and I took the car to Nanny's, while the other two sisters walked/ran the long driveway.  On the way home, I let the LRB sit in my lap and drive.  She thought she was big stuff.

Back at my house, Lou-Lou decided Bob (he had by then acquired a name) needed a little more work, so she fashioned a head out of an old sweatshirt, stuffed it, and hot-glued it in place.  (He doesn't have much of a neck.)  Then he needed facial features.  A strip of gray faux fur yielded eyebrows, a moustache, and a toupee.  

Following a fine dinner of macaroni and cheese and jelly beans, the LRB looked tired.  We found Goodnight Moon in the book stack, but before she'd found the second mouse, the LRB was out cold. 

The girls' daddy showed up to get them about 15 minutes later.

Bob went home with them.  ;)

P.S. - I forgot to mention the coolest thing . . . . 

My father and the girls' father had a secret handshake.  Yesterday, before Granddaughter #1 left my house to go shopping with her mother, she and the Little Rotten Baby did the secret handshake.  The tradition lives on.  :)

A Seedy Day - February 5, 2023

I was very nearly worthless yesterday.

It was cold, and ice from Tuesday's ice storm was still hanging around, so I stayed inside except to make a run to the Dollar General up the road.  Earlier in the day, as I was watering my African violets, I spotted something unusual in the center of a withering bloom. 

A seed pod!

I did a happy dance.  

You see, I've been trying to pollenate my violets.  I wasn't sure how to do it, but I knew that the principle was to move pollen from one bloom to another.  As I'd water them, I'd rub the blooms with my index finger, or sometimes a small paintbrush.  Been doing this for months.  And yesterday - voila!

The next problem was how to treat it.  Logic said that the pod needs to dry on the stem, as it would do in the wild.  But how long does it need to stay there?  I googled, and discovered that if left too long, the pod would - I forget the fancy name, starts with a "d" - explode, and seeds would go everywhere.  The seeds are tiny; I'll never find them if the pod does the "d" thing.  

Later, as I was rummaging around in the freezer for something to cook, I found a freezer bag full of seed packets.  I forgot about dinner and took the bag out to see what was in it.  Tomatoes, peas, lettuce - all sorts of wonderful things.  

My first attempt (last year) at growing my tomato plants from seeds wasn't too successful.  They started out leggy, even though they were growing under a bright, "full spectrum" sewing lamp.  When I set them outside to harden off, a storm came up and beat them all to heck.  Out of 20-something seedlings, only five or six made it to the garden, where a couple more of them died.  The ones that did survive were flattened by a tree that fell across the garden.  W. T. F.  

Anyway, I was excited to find the seeds and decided that I will try again.  I put the seeds back in the freezer and went straight to the computer and ordered a tabletop greenhouse, complete with its own adjustable light.  And when I made that run to Dollar General, I got a fresh bag of potting soil.  

I'm ready.  

Ice! - February 2, 2023

If the Pennsylvania groundhog (I mean, really, who can spell - or even say - Punxsutawny?) were in the South, he would wake up to the sound of ice-coated trees and limbs snapping - it sounds like gunshots - and crashing to the ground.  Sitting on the back porch in my thick housecoat, with an electric heater running full blast at my feet, I hear that sound right now.  With trees all around our house, it's a little unsettling.

This mess started Monday night.  Our whole family (almost) had tickets to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra in Memphis.  Prior to the concert, because of the weather predictions, there was debate about whether we should go and risk sliding home on ice.  Eventually, we decided to give it a try, and check outdoors at intermission to see what the weather was doing.  At intermission, a misty rain was falling.  One car-load of us gave it up at intermission and headed home; the other stuck it out to the end and still made it home ok.

But the next morning...ice, ice, baby!  

It's starting to melt a little now, and probably will be gone by tonight (it's supposed to be 50 degrees today).  

We'll need to pick up limbs again.  It'll give me another chance to use the limb-grinder.  ;)