Garden Check-Ups - May 1, 2024

I checked on the sweet peas and lettuce in the office's community garden plot Tuesday morning.  The peas are 6" tall or better, blooming, and putting out runners.  I hammered 3 stakes into each of the 3 rows (the plot is only 10' x10') and ran jute garden string between them.  The jute will likely stretch and sag, but it will have to do.  I also planted two of the purple grape tomato plants I sprouted from seeds.  I'd hope to have all the tomatoes in the ground by now, but the rest of the tomato plants that I sprouted look pitiful.  In the next few days, I'll be buying tomato plants, both for the community garden and for our vegetable garden.  

We walked down to Nanny's last evening to see if the peas we planted on Sunday had sprouted after the rain.  They had not.  The broccoli and cabbage plants are growing well.

We haven't planted our squash, okra, and cucumber seeds yet, but I hope to get them in ground this week.  

My work on the archive has kind of stalled.  I am ready to get to archivin', but we do not yet have space.  The wheels of government turn slowly.  Committees have to meet, and discussions must be had.  You know how that goes. 

Peas planted - April 29, 2024

Yesterday morning the weatherman predicted rain for much of the coming week.  Our yard had not been mowed since the day before we left on our trip. After a few days of rain, the grass would be up to the roof.  Nanny's yard needed mowing, too.  Since we keep our riding lawnmower in the shed at Nanny's, I'd do her yard first, then ours.

When I got to Nanny's, The Brother-in-Law was already there, mowing with his big zero-turn monster mower and was already halfway done.  Woo-hooo!  I cranked up our mower and joined him, and the two of us knocked it out in nothing flat.  I came back to the house to do our yard while he did the weed-eating at Nanny's.  Bless him.

In our yard, we have a swing-set for the grandchildren.  Our lawnmower fits perfectly between the legs.  One end of the swing-set has a glider, the kind that seats 4 little butts.  The lawnmower fits through that space, as well, but you gotta push that glider with the nose of the lawnmower, then grab it and raise it up high enough to get under it.  It takes some doing not to get knocked out cold in the process.

I was ALMOST all the way under the glider when there was a terrible metallic noise, and the lawnmower just STOPPED.  Long story short (too late?), I had run over a mole trap that was hidden by a clump of clover.  

I thought, Ohshitohshitohshit....

So I'm sitting there on the lawnmower, holding the glider over my head, wondering how I'm going to get off the lawnmower without maiming myself, certain that I had killed the lawnmower.  When I finally disentangled myself from the seat, I managed to push the lawnmower back enough to get the mole trap.  It was mangled.  

But the lawnmower cranked right back up and cut grass.  Whew.

While I was mowing the yard, The Husband went to get a battery for my Wrangler.  It has been sitting in the driveway for months without being driven or even cranked.  Since we are thinking about driving it to a Jeep rally in Florida next month, we didn't want to tempt fate.  Once the battery was installed, we checked fluids and washed off the tree sap.  It's ready to roll.

Later that afternoon, I talked The Husband into tilling the garden one last time, and we planted the purple hull peas.  This week's rain ought to bring them right up.  We really should have gone on and planted squash, cucumbers, and okra, but by this time I was tired, covered in dust, and hungry, so we just put all the gardening equipment away and came home.

Tomorrow, if it's not raining, I need to stake the sweet peas in the community garden.  I haven't laid eyes on the plot for two weeks, but the plants were only 2" tall when we left on our trip.  By now, they may be a tangled mass.  I am thinking about planting tomatoes amongst them if they don't hurry up and produce.  When I planted them, I kind of expected them to have made peas - or at least bloomed - by now, but the seeds took a long time to sprout.  

Needlework - April 28, 2024

Before we left on our trip, I went to Hobby Lobby to get some little project to do in the car.  I was thinking of something like pillowcases or tea towels to embroider, but I ended up with a "punch needle" kit.  I'd never done this craft and still cannot do it; each stitch pulls out the previous one.  I put it aside.  Who needs this kind of frustration?  

At the end of the first leg of the trip, The Husband and I went "junkin'," where I came across an unopened bag of white 18" quilt squares stamped with hearts and flowers to cross-stitch and embroider.  $10.  The picture on the bag showed a drawing of a quilt - 12 squares with sashing between them.  Although my track record for finishing big needlework projects is not too great, I bought the quilt squares just to have something to do.  The next day, after taking our granddaughter to breakfast, we went to Hobby Lobby and bought the necessary embroidery thread and needles.  As we started toward our next destination, I opened the package and discovered that there were only 6 squares in the package.  In tiny print (which I did not read at the flea market), the package clearly stated that there were 6 squares inside, and that it would take 5 packages to make a queen-sized quilt.

THIRTY IDENTICAL SQUARES?

I might've had the gumption to finish 12 squares (might've taken a few years), but 30?  It didn't seem probable.  Nevertheless, I threaded a needle and got to work.  Maybe I could finish just one or two squares and make a pillow instead of a quilt.

Square #2 is almost finished, and the process has been enjoyable enough that I will probably make few more.

But 30?

Or even 24 (for a double bed quilt)?

I dunno . . . .  :-\

Oh, dear . . . April 27, 2024

After lunch yesterday, The Husband and I went down to Nanny's to check on the garden.  There's nothing planted in it yet, except for a few broccoli and cabbage seedlings that I planted before we left on our trip.  I was hoping that the ground would be dry enough to work, and that the tomato seedlings I left in Nanny's care would have grown enough to transplant to the garden.  

As soon as we drove up, I noticed that the mole trap I'd set in Nanny's yard two weeks ago had been sprung.  The Husband pulled it out of the ground and, sure enough, there was a mole in it.  The scissor-like blades had closed on its back end, and it was still alive and kicking.  Neither of us wanted to "off" it with a shovel.  I laid the trap on its side, with the mole dangling upside-down, hoping gravity would somehow do the trick, but it continued to squirm.  I left it where it was and went to check on the garden.

The broccoli and cabbage plants were doing fine.  The soil was dry enough to work in most places, but the low end was still a little damp.  If the tomatoes were ready, I intended to plant them.  I went in search of the seedlings.  They were not on the back porch.  They were not on the front porch.  They were not under a tree or anywhere else they should've been.  I thought, Oh, please, please, let them not be in the house.

They were in the house. 

Nanny had moved them inside one night when the temperature went down to 38 degrees, and never took them back outside.

They'd been on the dining room table since about the third day of our trip, more than a week. 

They'd barely grown a millimeter and were a sickly yellow color.  

On the bright side, three or four lavender seeds had sprouted (I wasn't expecting any of them to sprout).  They were leggy and pale, too.

I loaded the trays into the back of my car and brought them home.  Hopefully, they're not too far gone to perk up, but it's going to be a while before they're big enough to go in the ground. 

I wanted The Husband to fire up the tractor and run the tiller over the soil one more time, but we had some other things that we needed to do, so we put it off until today.

And it rained again last night.  

There's No Place LIke - April 26, 2024

HOME!

Made it here around 8 last night.

The best three days of the trip were the last three.  My BFF picked me up at the hotel at 10 Tuesday morning.  We spent the rest of that day and most of the next sitting on our butts and drinking margaritas on the patio.  The weather could not have been more pleasant.  

She has three retrieving dogs who initially tried to rope me into their little games.  Having once owned a retrieving dog, I knew what I'd be in for if I threw even one thing:  slobber, dog breath.  When the first one brought me a frisbee, I just said, "Nope, ain't gonna do it."  The dog nudged me with the frisbee:  Do you not see me standing here? Come on, throw it, throw it.  Same thing with the other two.  I held firm. By the time I left yesterday, there was only an occasional Maybe just once? before they'd take it to their "mama" to throw.  

Did I mention the puppy?  Eight-week-old ball of fur.  Cutest thing you ever saw.  BFF pretended that she wanted us to take him home with us, but we knew she was only kidding: we would not have made the cut as puppy-owners if we'd turned in a resume.  The Husband and I have been pet-free (except for occasional grand-pet-sitting) for a long time, but we've had pets over the years, none of whom have lived in the house, except for unusual circumstances such as bad weather or a surprise litter from a teenage hussy rescue kitten we'd thought was too young to bear offspring.  BFF knows how it is around here and wouldn't have sent the furball home with us if we'd begged her.  

We started for home around noon, avoiding highways, and canty-cornered our way across northwestern Georgia and into Alabama, some of the most beautiful scenery one could want.  Highway 72 runs straight across northern Alabama and Mississippi.  At Corinth, around 6 p.m., we stopped for dinner, then drove straight north into Tennessee from there, missing big towns all the way home.

My plan for today was to plant the vegetable garden, but it rained here yesterday and the soil will be too wet to work.  I am anxious to find out how my seedlings, which I left in Nanny's care, have fared.  I'm also anxious to see how the sugar snap peas are doing in the community garden.  They were about 2" tall when we left on our trip.  They'll need staking soon.  I will look for staking supplies this weekend and do the job Monday, if I can.

  

Greetings from Atlanta - April 21, 2024

Yesterday morning, we checked out of our hotel in Gatlinburg and headed to Knoxville to take Granddaughter #1 to lunch.  After we dropped her off at her dorm, we hit the road to Atlanta.  No more of that backroad stuff we'd been doing; we braved the interstate.  The traffic was ridiculous.

Tomorrow a friend who lives about an hour away is coming to rescue me.  I'll go home with her, and The Husband can pick me up on his way home when this conference is over.

The end of last week turned out to be productive to my archive plans.  I visited archives in two counties - one small historically-focused archive, and one "records center."  After viewing the records center, my sincere hope is that our archive will go the history route and not be a records center. Unfortunately, that decision is not mine to make.

Day 3 - April 17, 2024

After dropping off The Husband at his conference Monday, I hit the road in search of an embroidery hoop - not just any embroidery hoop, but a double-decker hoop suitable for punch-needle work.  I did not find one. Yesterday, I did some web-surfing and thought I could get one at JoAnn's.  Nope.  Hobby Lobby?  Nope.  Walmart?  Nope.  Looks like I'll have to order one from an online store once I get home.

But a funny thing did happen. While I was in Hobby Lobby, I encountered a lady who looked familiar. I smiled at her and she smiled at me, and we moved on.  Silly idea that I might know her, being 400 miles from home.  Last night, at The Husband's conference dinner/party, he dragged me over to meet a fellow conference attendee who had set up a table to sell jewelry and baked goods.  This lady also looked familiar.  I asked her, "Were you in Hobby Lobby today?"  She burst out laughing and said, "I was about to ask you the same thing!  I thought you looked familiar when I saw you in the store!"  Evidently, we've seen each other at these conferences often enough to recognize one another on the street.  

The plan for today was to visit the county archives for this and the surrounding counties.  Knowing that many archives are not open all day every day, I made some calls to line up some visits.  Haven't connected with anyone to visit today, but I'm set to visit one in the next county Friday morning.  

I'm not sure what I will do today.  This place is a shopper's paradise, but I am not a shopper.  I thought about hanging around with a book outside, but one of the hotel guests told me he encountered a bear yesterday in the very spot where I intended to read today.

I don't do bears.

Greetings from Gatlinburg - April 15, 2004

OMG!  Somebody come rescue me!  I hate Gatlinburg!

We drove part of the way here yesterday.  Spent the night in Cookeville.  Left the hotel at 8 this morning.  The Husband had a meeting in Gatlinburg today at noon.  We should've had plenty of time to get here by noon, only we were on Central time, and did not consider that Gatlinburg is on Eastern time. We made it here at 11:54, Eastern time.  I dropped him off at the convention center and went to our hotel. Of course, we couldn't check in yet, so I decided to drive around in search of something interesting.  

Big mistake.

This is the most awful place in which to drive. Pedestrians everywhere.  Bumper-to-bumper traffic (on a Monday!).  Crazy intersections.  I doubt I'll try that driving thing again.  If you're looking for me, I'll be holed up in the hotel until we leave.  

Cabbage and Broccoli - April 14, 2024

Yesterday was a busy day, with much to do before we leave for our road trip.

Mid-morning, I called Nanny to see if she would foster-parent my tomato (and other) seedlings while we're gone.  My plan was to take the seedlings to her back porch rather than asking her to tend to them here.  She said she would be happy to do it but suggested that I wait until late evening to bring them to her, since there would be carpenters (family members) coming to work on her porch after lunch.

For most of the morning, I did laundry and gathered up clothes for the trip while The Husband cleaned his truck.  After lunch, we both went to work in the yard, which we'd let grow tall for the sake of the bees.  With the yardwork done, The Husband went to Nanny's to help the carpenters while I gathered up the seedlings to move to Nanny's.

I went ahead and planted the broccoli and cabbages in the garden while The Husband helped the carpenters.  The seedlings should have been in the ground a month ago.  I only planted about a dozen of them and have a bunch more that will probably croak, left unattended while we're gone, but I didn't want to ask Nanny to tend them since I don't plan on planting them.  I'd like to drop them off at the community garden on our way out of town, but they are planted in plastic drawers that I would like to keep but would probably disappear if left at the garden for two weeks.

Somewhere between the laundry and the yardwork, I got out the kit that I'd bought from Hobby Lobby the previous day.  It's a punch needle kit.  I've never done that kind of craft.  It looked easy in some videos I watched.  After fooling with the kit for about an hour, I decided that punch needle is not a craft that should be done in a car, rolling at top speed down the interstate, even for an experienced puncher.  So far, I have yet to produce a line of stitching that did not immediately pull out of the fabric.  Once we get to our first destination, I will have time in the hotel room to try again while The Husband is at his meetings.

I am also taking my watercolor/drawing supplies.  We will be in the mountains, and I just might be inspired, if I can work up the gumption to fire up the truck and battle my way through tourist town traffic to get somewhere with a view worth painting.

It will be time to plant the garden when we come home.

Errands - April 12, 2024

Yesterday, I called a halt to the inventory of the courthouse basement, having reached a point where I need some guidance. But there's now a fairly informative spreadsheet listing all the documents in Administration's storage rooms, and where they are, and people should be able to find what they need without much trouble.

This morning, after I sent the spreadsheet up the chain, I took my car back to the body shop to have them look at one of the front flasher lights.  The car has been out of the shop for two weeks, but it wasn't until Monday morning, when I pulled up behind a shiny chrome bumper at Burger King, that I realized the light wasn't working.  It only took them about 10 minutes to fix it.

After that, I went to Big Lots and loaded up a tote bag full of road snacks.  $47 worth.  Don't judge; we'll be on the road a lot, and they're moderately healthy snacks.  ;)

After that, I went to the new Hobby Lobby to get some busy work for my hands while we're on the road.  Got a "punch needle" kit. Only spent $15.  I told the lady at the cash register, "This place may explode when I walk out of here having spent under $20."  A lady coming in the store said, "Girl, I hear ya."  

I'm taking my watercolor paints on the road trip, too, with visions of "plein air" painting dancing around in my head.  It probably won't happen.  We'll be staying smack in the middle of the towns we'll visit, and I hate driving in unfamiliar places.  On the other hand, we've got time for a state park visit between towns, so it could happen.  

Shoooo-WEEEE . . . - April 10, 2014

...I'm tired.

The past three days have been non-stop doing.

The Grandson spent the weekend and the past few days with us.  He's a sweet, bushy-headed, 6'3" munchkin.  Sixteen years old.  Grandmama's Boy.  I'm so proud of him and have been so happy to have him here.  I've fed him breakfast and taken him to school for the past three days.  (It's been a while since I've had to get a kid off to school!).  One of his friends, another bushy-headed munchkin, has been driving him home in the afternoons, which made me a little nervous, not knowing the kid.  

Yesterday afternoon, he asked if we could go to Walmart.  He wanted to buy some CDs to listen to in his truck, which he can't yet drive because he doesn't have a license.  I consented and took him to Walmart.  His music choices were Nirvana, Willie Nelson, and Creedence Clearwater Revival.  We tried to listen to one of the CDs on the way home, but there's a CD stuck in the player in my car.  When we got home, he went to his truck.

I said, "You want to drive it?"

His eyes lit up.

We drove for miles and miles and miles.  Backroads.  The highway.  He did fairly well, but he needs more practice, especially at coming to a stop then turning; he almost laid rubber a couple of times.  And he was a little too focused on the music.  

He went home to his mama this afternoon.  

We'll practice again soon.

What's got me so worn out is the inventory I'm doing at work.  Heavy boxes, heavy books.  Every time I think I'm about done, I discover more stuff.  I hope to get this basement room (which is actually 5 rooms) done this week, because we're leaving town Sunday and won't be back for nearly two weeks, and I hate picking up where I left off after a long break, regardless of what the job is.

Today I cleaned out a closet under a stairwell to get to some 30-year-old financial records that need to be disposed of, anyway, once we get proper authorization.  It was a nightmare of junk, tossed in haphazardly.  There were computer program manuals for computer programs that don't exist anymore. I pawned them off on the IT guy, who was stoked about their "historical value."  

At the bottom of the pile were half a dozen nasty, moldy rugs.  I called maintenance and asked them to come get them and some warped rubber chair mats that had turned brittle.  The guy who came to get them said he wasn't going to throw them away, that maybe somebody could use them to lie on while working on wet ground.  Whatever floats his boat, but there's no way I'd walk on them, much less lie on them.

Lavender Seeds Planted - April 7, 2024

About six weeks ago, I shook a package of lavender seeds onto a moist paper towel, sealed it in a ziploc bag, and put it in the refrigerator to "stratify" the seeds.  Today, I planted the seeds in dirt in a tray on the patio.  

Crossing my fingers that they come up.

Progress - April 7, 2024

Though I expected to be finished inventorying the records in the creepy courthouse basement room by the end of the week, I didn't make it.  There were three file cabinets that contained one series of documents, but they were all mixed up.  It seemed that when one file cabinet - A to Z - was full, they simply started a new A-Z file cabinet.  On top of that, it seems that at some point someone had taken handfulls of files and simply stuffed them in the cabinets wherever they would fit.  Thus, in order to make sense of what was there, I had to empty all three cabinets, alphabetize the contents, and put it all back in the cabinets in the correct order.  After that, I made a spreadsheet list of the files.  This took the better part of three days.  By Friday afternoon, I'd finished inventorying only one of the three rooms.  Hopefully, the next two won't take as long.

Each day, I came home TIRED.  After a long winter of sitting on my rear end, I am out of shape, and the work - lifting heavy boxes and ledgers - made me ache.  I would come home, shower off the mold and dust, and collapse until bedtime.  We ate Easter dinner leftovers and frozen pizzas for supper every night because I was too tired to cook.

I should truly be finished with the courthouse basement by the end of the coming week.  After that, I am not sure what to tackle next.  Some of the county departments have their acts together with regard to records management, but others have been somewhat haphazard. One of them generates mountains of paper that have been stored in every available nook and cranny in the county.  I don't know how I will make sense of this disaster.  One box at a time, I reckon.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Grandson came over Friday night and will be here through Tuesday night.  He is a good kid.  He had a bumpy road after his parents divorced, but he has turned himself around, is making good grades and has a sensible plan for his future education.  I am proud of him.  

* * * * * * * * * * 

Yesterday, the family on the hill convened to renovate Nanny's back porch.  The ceiling and the rafters suffered water damage and had to be replaced.  The Husband went to the lumber store yesterday morning to get the materials.  Construction started just after lunch time and was almost finished by dinner time.

I did not participate in the construction.  While The Husband went to get the lumber, I went to the grocery store - we were OUT of food in this house.  When I got home, I put red beans & rice in the slow cooker and went down to Nanny's to help, but the menfolk had it under control.  I ended up mowing Nanny's yard until supper time. I came home to get the beans & rice, and when I got back to Nanny's with the food, everyone was exhausted and preparing to leave.  The four of us who stayed barely put a dent in the pot.  The Husband and I may be eating beans & rice for the rest of the week.

Tuesday - April 2, 2024

I was just about to leave for work this morning when a storm hit, dumping buckets of rain.  I've swapped my crocs for rubber boots, but I am going to wait for the next round to pass by before heading out the door.  

Yesterday I worked in the courthouse basement, continuing the inventory I started last week.  The room is nasty and moldy and full of spiders and old building dust.  In the left-hand corner, just inside the door, there is a life-sized plywood cut-out of the mayor, complete with a suit, tie, shoes, and a picture of his face glued on top; he scared me Monday morning when I turned on the light, even though I'd known he was there.  Later, as I was trying to set up a table to work on, he fell over on me while I had my back turned to him - scared the tee-total PISS out of me, and I had to fight to get his dusty, spidery self off me. (I intend to take him to the archive if/when we get one.  Gonna set him right up front to welcome visitors.)  I wrote up inventory sheets by hand until about 2:00 - finished the north wall - then I came home to transfer the handwritten information to a spreadsheet.  

* * * * * * * * 

Twenty minutes after I started this post, it quit raining, and I went to my basement room.  (The Mayor did not startle me today.)  I attacked the creepy metal shelf on the east wall.  There were spider webs (still bearing spiders that must have died of old age) between me and the books/boxes on the shelf.  In another creepy room beyond my work room, I found a stir-stick in a dried-up paint can and used it to knock the webs away.  I was scared to reach in and grab anything, but I did it, and finished the east wall and most of the south wall.  Hopefully, I will finish the room tomorrow.  Only three more rooms (in that basement) to do after that.  

Bob and Potatoes - March 31, 2024

We had tickets to see Bob Dylan Friday night.  Between the time we bought the tickets and the date of the concert, The Husband scheduled some medical tests for the day of the concert.  The concert was to start at 8 p.m.  As the day wore on, I began to worry that we weren't going to be able to make the concert, but we finished with a little time to spare.

We parked the car a block away from the venue.  It was one of those garages that takes payment via a phone app.  There must've been a thousand people using the service at that time, because it took FOREVER for the payment to go through.  At the door, people were stacked up, several rows deep.  A woman was going around, writing down our seat numbers on little cards, which she instructed us to give to the attendants at the door.  She also told us to turn off our cell phones.  Inside the door, attendants gave us little pouches that locked our phones inside.   There would be no picture-taking, no camera flashes, no recording, no telephones ringing and chirping.  I was totally OK with that. 

Just as we got to the door leading to our seats, an attendant closed the door and would not let us in until the first song was finished.  I was OK with that, too.  Common courtesy.

We had good seats, center stage, first row of the mezzanine, which is my favorite spot in that theater.  The band had already launched into the second song as we took our seats.

There were two guitar players on the left, a drummer in the center playing black/white drums, two other musicians on the right, and a guy at a grand piano that was situated in front of the drums.  The lighting was warm, and it was behind the musicians, so it was hard to see their faces.  My distance eyesight is not all that great, and the glasses I'd brought to read the program were ZERO help in seeing the stage.  

To be honest, I didn't even notice there was anyone at the piano for quite some time; his head blurred right into the drum set from my perspective.  One of the guys on the right had his hands on a keyboard, so I assumed the piano sounds were coming from him.  I thought the guitar player on the left was Bob Dylan. 

On the third song, the guy who had been at the keyboard moved to a slide guitar, but there was still piano music.  I looked over at the piano - still couldn't discern a head - and there were white shoes showing beneath it.  Had to be a body attached to them, because they were moving.  Oh, that must be Bob.

I understood about every 12th word he sang.  

My eyesight is sh*t, but there's nothing wrong with my hearing.

For a few minutes, I was a bit unsettled.  Couldn't see.  Couldn't process the lyrics.  

So I just listened to the music.

It was really good.  :)

* * * * * * * 

In our yard, there's a hole where I once attempted to make a decorative fish pond.  It never had a fish in it because it wouldn't hold water.  Over the years, I've dumped potting soil into it, and it has grown smaller, but not enough to level it with the surrounding ground.  For six months, I've been raking leaves into it.  Yesterday, I raked out all the leaves and planted potatoes in it.

These grocery-store red potatoes had sprouted in a bag in my kitchen, and I would not cook them.  I cut them to chunks, placed the sprouted chunks in the hole, covered them up with leaves, and watered the pile well.  I did not do any of the things I've been told to do with growing potatoes.  I've done all of those things in the past and never got any results.  We'll see what happens. 

My guess is that a critter will uncover them and eat them right away.

Cold Snap - March 28, 2024

It's cold on the back porch this morning.  I'm sitting here in my fuzzy housecoat, deliberating about what I'm going to do today.

Yesterday I met with some of the clerks and gleaned a little more information about how much they would send to an archive if/when we do one.  I am a bit overwhelmed.  

Overwhelmed.  

Understatement.

Having at least laid eyes on all of the dark hidey-holes where records are stored, I figured that my next step ought to be to inventory what will likely go to the archive.  I spent most of Tuesday in a storage room full - and I mean FULL - of 4-drawer file cabinets and bankers' boxes.  I meticulously documented everything that I could get to.  (Some stuff was over my head.  Even if there had been room to set up a ladder (there wasn't - some of that stuff must have been stored before the room filled up), my ass is too old and clumsy to be climbing ladders.)  The next day, I learned that most everything I inventoried needs to go to the garbage.  I suppose the inventory may still be useful to someone at some point, and the experience was useful, for it helped me realize that I can't physically do this alone.  

  

Bumfuzzled - March 26, 2024

I am sitting here, basically paralyzed with indecision and confusion.

Yesterday I visited what I hope were the remaining sites where county documents are stored.  To do this, I climbed ladders, stepped over conduit, moved furniture, and crawled over boxes.  Then I picked a spot and started listing what I saw.  

This is a mess.  I inventoried 80% of the contents of a small room yesterday.  There were heavy boxes on top of file cabinets that I couldn't get to, and file cabinets on top of file cabinets that I could not open.  

This morning, I began a spreadsheet listing what I've catalogued, so far.  It's just a drop in the bucket.

I may be going about this in the wrong way.  

I may need some muscle.

On a happer note,

I planted the Community Garden plot yesterday morning.  Three rows of sugar snap peas, with lettuce around the sides.  As hard as the wind was blowing when I planted the seeds, the tiny lettuce seeds may sprout in the county south of us.  It rained yesterday afternoon, so maybe the stuff will shoot up out of the ground like crazy.  

I had to meet The Husband at 4:30 at a body shop to drop off my car for repairs on my bumper where I plowed into the handicap sign in the middle school parking lot a couple of weeks ago.  (I'm STILL not over that phantom sign appearing out of nowhere like it did.)  I left off my inventorying at 3:30 with an hour to spare.  On my way to the body shop, I stopped at a nursery to get another hydrangea for the stump garden, and then I went to visit my granddaughters to hear about their spring break trip.  

It was drizzling, and there was a traffic light out on the highway a mile or two from the body shop.  Rush hour, traffic for miles.  Firetrucks racing through intersections.  Fate was with me, and I was able to make a left-hand turn into the body shop parking lot, only 5 minutes late.  While The Husband did the business, I transferred all my crap from my car to his truck, and we started home.  He knew that my cooking supper was off the list.  I had not eaten lunch (or finished my breakfast, come to think about it) and was STARVING, and tired, and grubby, but I didn't want anything from any of the drive-thru windows; I just wanted to get home, shower, eat some toast, and go to bed.  So that's what I did.

I was up, reading archive how-to manuals, at 4 this morning.  

And now I'm about to hit the road to town to do more inventorying.

A home-cooked supper ain't lookin' too probable today, either.

Monday - March 25, 2024

Saturday was cold and blustery.  The sun was shining, but every time I'd step outside to do something, the wind would run me back in the house.  We had a birthday party to go to at 4, and a concert (ZZ Top and Lynard Skynard) at 7, so we didn't get much done in the yard Saturday.

Sunday was a different story.  The wind had died down, the sun was shining, and The Husband and I did little jobs around the yard.  I divided some hosta plants and planted them around the stump garden.  We trimmed the yew that had eaten up a good 2 feet of the driveway.  I raked out a ditch near the stump garden.  

The Community Garden manager texted me yesterday to let me know that the garden is now ready to plant.  I will try to do that today, if I have time.

I'm scheduled to meet with the county maintenance manager this morning to tour our old jail, where some of the county's old records are reportedly stored.  I've already toured that building twice and believed I'd found all of the "stash," but rumor has it that there is more that is hiding elsewhere.  After the tour, I've got a couple of other places to inspect, and I am going to try to get some face time with the county mayor.  I need some direction.

If I haven't said so outright, yet, my new project is to start a county archive.  Right now, I'm trying to get a handle on how much space we will need.  The next task will be to inventory the records that will go to the archive.  As you might imagine, this is going to be a little difficult since the records are scattered all over the place. One storage room I visited was packed to the max with rows of 5-drawer file cabinets, atop which were bankers' boxes, stacked to the ceiling.  I'm going there today to start the inventory, as I believe everything in that room will need to go to the archive.

With this new project, my life is about to change again.  I've worked at home 4 days a week for a little over a year, but this archive work is not something I can do from home.  I'm both ready for it, and dreading it., for it's a job that's "right up my alley," but I do love working from home.  Keeping up with household chores is so much easier.  I can walk to the next room, put a load of clothes in the wash, and get back to work.  I can grocery shop on my lunch break and have enough time to bring them home and put them away before my hour is up.  When my eyes need a break from the computer screen, I can go outside and spend 10 minutes pulling weeds out of a flower bed.  I can stay in my housecoat all day, if I want to.  (I have done that only a handful of times when it was really, really cold.)  

It remains to be seen how much the "right up my alley" aspect of the assignment will make up for being blasted out of my den.  I've been pushing for this archive and think I will relish the job of fooling with the old files and books.  What genealogy buff wouldn't?  But there'll be a lot of work before that stage is reached.  Nasty work.  Dust.  Bugs.  Mice.  Creepy dark places.  I can deal with that work.  What can't deal with is frustration, and I'm expecting a lot of that.

So, anyway, I've got to get my butt in gear today.  I've told the county maintenance guy that I could meet him at 8 a.m.  He may not get to me that early, but I have to be ready in case he does.  After that, I'm going to the afore-mentioned storage room to start an inventory.  Hopefully, I can see the mayor at some point.  

I'll let you know how it goes.  ;)

Saturday - March 23, 2024

Thursday morning, I contacted the Community Garden manager to confirm that our plot was, indeed, ready to plant.  It was, yet it wasn't.

The digital agronomy students at our local technical school have been practicing their skills on this plot since last year.  They tested the soil, applied soil amendments, and plowed and tilled it.  They installed a drip irrigation system that will automatically water the garden three times a week.  They have mulched the paths between the plots.  The instructor said he wants them to till the soil one more time.  He said they hoped to do it that day, but for sure by Friday afternoon, and that he would call me, first thing, when it was done. He said I could go ahead and plant my peas if I wanted to, and they would work around it.  I did not want him to have to work around my plot (they're tilling with a tractor), so I said I'd wait until they were finished.   He has not called.  

It rained yesterday afternoon.  If he hasn't tilled, it will be another few days before he can do it; if he has tilled it, it will be another few days before it's dry enough to work.  And time's a-wasting for sweet peas, which prefer cooler temperatures.  I'm a little frustrated.  

My niece came by yesterday morning to dig some plants from my yard.  She has been an avid gardener for the past couple of years.  We dug up phlox, wild geraniums, and narcissus.  I don't envy her the job of re-planting everything.  She took two clumps of narcissus that probably contained 50 bulbs each.  I believe she intends to scatter them throughout an existing patch of naturalized daffodils rather than planting the whole clumps.  I did not offer to help with that.  ;)

As for my own garden, Nanny sent word that The Nephew has tilled it.  I will probably plant a few sweet peas and maybe some lettuce once the ground can be worked.

I say "probably" because it looks like my work duties may be about to pick up, and I won't be working from home as much.  I won't be able to work in the garden when I need a break from the computer screen and may have to scale back my plans.  

But I am kind of excited about this new project.  

We'll see.

Community Garden - March 21, 2024

Spring has finally arrived.  Mid-South gardeners know that there may still be some nasty surprises ahead.  (Back when I ran a flower shop, one year we delivered Easter lilies in the snow.)  April 15th is my "safe" date; still, I rarely get the garden seeds in the ground until some time in May.  I'd hoped to start earlier this year, but that may not happen.  We've got a busy April ahead, and the tomatoes might not be ready to plant by April 15th.

Speaking of the tomatoes, I'm worried.  I've been watching them like a hawk.  Seven of the little purple grape tomato seeds have sprouted.  They are in 4" pots.  They endured last week's two nights of freezing temperatures just fine in the cold frame.  (Whew!)  New ones have sprouted since the freeze.  The other tomato seeds that I planted last week in 6-pack trays and sour cream tubs might have said to one another, "Hold up, it's not time yet," but they should be up soon.  

Tending to these plants is like having a pet.  

We're going out of town for two weeks in April.  

These plants will probably die unless I can find someone to water them (and maybe adjust the lid on the cold frame) while I'm gone.

Nanny would do it.  But she would agonize about it, especially if some critter got in there and dug everything up.  Hmm.

I am also worried about the community garden plot that was assigned to me.  If my plan doesn't go awry, I'm going to plant sugar snap peas in my plot today.  They'll be up and going by mid-April and will need to be staked.  They'll need tending.  I'll have to nominate someone for that duty, but it's a work-related thing, and some other flunky can take over the job while I'm gone.  ;)

Cold Snap - March 19, 2024

 I lied yesterday.  It was cold, and the wind was blowing hard, and I said I wasn't going to work in the yard, but mid-afternoon I went out and dug up a chunk of the fern behind the shed and moved it to the stump bed.

Knowing that the temperature was predicted to fall into the low '30s last night, I did not know whether to water the transplanted fern immediately or wait until today to water it.  Would the water freeze the roots?  In the end, I watered it.  I hope it lives.  I dug it up with a hand trowel - went right through the middle of the plant and levered half of it out of the ground.  It had couple of coiled leaves coming out.  I got those with the transplant chunk.  

I considered moving all the stuff in the cold frame into the house, but I didn't.  What is the point of having a cold frame if I'm going to have to move what's in it at every cold snap?

NOON UPDATE - Stump Garden:  

The sweet potato vine in the stump garden probably ain't gonna make it, judging by how limp it is right now.  The leopard plant looks bad, but I think it will recover.  The other stuff from the nursery is fine. The fern looks like it did before I moved it. We'll see what happens to those new leaf curls in a day or two.

I found a cheesy little gnome (with his house, and a walkway, and a "Welcome" sign) for $5 at Dollar General.  He's in the stump garden now, though his location might be temporary.  

I scattered a $1 package of dollar store alyssum seeds in the store-bought dirt we put in the hole where the tree fell.  I have never had luck getting alyssum to sprout.  We'll see.

Sunday - March 18, 2024

The last thing I said to you yesterday morning was that I was not at all tempted to work in the garden again.  

That changed about noon, when The Husband came home from the dollar store with the bag of dirt I'd asked for.  I used it to fill up the holes in the tree stump, where I planted the stuff I bought to go in them.

I didn't buy enough plants.  Even when these things mature, they won't fill the space.  But I hate to spend a fortune on greenhouse plants when I don't exactly know how this spot is going to work.  Is it going to dry out three times a day and drive me crazy watering it?  

So I started transplanting things from around the yard.  I put some ox-eye daisies around the back side of the stumps (the part that's visible from the road) and some oxalis in the front.  Some time later, after I'd already washed up and put my tools away, I had the idea that a fern would look good in the mix,  There used to be a nice fern growing behind the shed, where no one but me ever sees it.  After supper, I ventured back there to see if I could find it, and sure 'nuff, there it was, flat as a pancake against the creeping myrtle that also grows back there.  It was a strange red color - frost-bit, I imagine. When it warms up later today, I'm going to dig it up and replant it amongst the stumps.  

I still want some hydrangeas.  In my mind, I can see multiple hydrangeas in that wooded space between the stumps and the pond.  Or azaleas.  But I've never had good luck with azaleas.  

Now that I think about it, my luck with hydrangeas hasn't been so great, either.  People have given me rooted cuttings, and I have tried to root cuttings, myself.  This place would be surrounded with hydrangeas if all of them had lived.  More than a few have probably fallen victim to the lawnmower.  In late summer 2022, I stuck a hydrangea cutting in the ground in the phlox bed, and kept it watered, and it lived, but it is scrawny and pitiful - probably doesn't get enough sun under the phlox.  I leave the original stick there just so I can find it.  

* * * * * * * * 

[5 Hours Later.]

It is too cold to dig up a fern today.  I tried, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn't going to be fast or easy.  The wind is whipping.  Ain't happening today.

Yard Work - March 17, 2024

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you.

I'll be spending this day recovering from yesterday's yard work.

I don't know what piddly chore started it, but I spent the entire day digging, pulling, and dragging, and I'm a mite "stove up" (as the old folks used to say).

Some time around mid-morning, I looked at this area and decided it was time to do something about it. 

It's hard to see in the photograph, but this is the area where last year's tornado took out a huge sweet gum tree.  It was growing in a thicket with 4 other sweet gums; we had them all cut down.  What used to be in dense shade now gets mid-day sun.  (I'm hoping that the daylilies growing at the edge of the thicket - that green swath above the stumps- will now get enough sunlight to bloom.) All of the trees were hollow; all of the stumps have holes where stuff could be planted, and there's a big hole directly in the center of the stumps where the roots of the fallen tree came out of the ground.  

I stood at the top of the hill pondering what I should do in this area, and eventually decided that it needed a couple of hydrangeas.  I test-dug a couple of holes (wasn't sure I could get through all the tree roots!) and went to the nursery.  This is a pop-up nursery that opens from March through October, trucking in plants from their main greenhouse 20 miles away.  They had their "soft opening" Friday, and if they had a big variety of hydrangeas when they opened, they'd sold them by Saturday, when I was there.  They only had two hydrangeas of a lace-top cultivar that I already have; I wanted mop-heads.  

The plan changed as I shopped the remaining plants.  I came home with a "Leopard Plant" and a French Pink Pussy Willow.  The willow went into the sunnier area to the left of the stumps.   The Leopard Plant is to the right.  They are both planted at the mouths of little ditches that run down to the pond.  In the hole in front of the stumps, I planted a "Storm Cloud" amsonia.   For the holes in the stumps, I got creeping sedum, a sweet potato vine, and some purple-leaf vine whose name I can't recall at the moment.  I will fill in with other stuff as it becomes available.  The English daisies sprouting in the cold frame should do well there.

The Husband was busy around the yard, too, picking up sticks and limbs and hauling them to the gully.  Then, to my utter disbelief, he started hacking on the Snuffaluffagus that lives in our back yard.  

In other posts, I've written about the English ivy that has taken over the trees at the edge of the gully.  Last fall, in rapid succession, several trees fell.  This is what we're looking at now.  It was even thicker yesterday, before we started hacking on it.  Beneath all that ivy are tree trunks a foot in diameter.  It's going to take more than one day to tame this mess.

When we gave up on Snuffy, we tackled the fire ant hills that have reappeared along Nanny's driveway and in her yard.  I sprinkled the "mound destroyer," and The Husband came behind me with the watering can.  We doctored about a dozen mounds, including two in the vegetable garden plot.  I don't like to use poison, but I also don't like to be eaten up by fire ants while I'm trying to pick cucumbers.

We finished with the ant hills and came home.  I sat down in my recliner for a few minutes, and every joint in my body locked up.  A hot shower, a little dinner, and I was in the sack by 9:00.

It's cool and overcast today, and I am not at all tempted to work in the yard again.

Takes the Cake - March 15, 2024

A storm rolled through here last night.  While I haven't done a walk-about in the yard, from the back porch it looks like nothing was damaged.  All of the seedling containers are still intact.

After yesterday's post, I planted another package of tomato seeds - "Bodacious" - from a seed rack at the hardware store.  If all of these seedlings survive, we will have too many tomato plants.  Every year, I tell The Husband, "Don't let me plant so many tomatoes next year."  But I always plant too many.  (In this neighborhood, tomato plants require a lot of babying, for this is the fungus capital of the world (or so it seems.  Our tomatoes usually catch every kind of blight there is.)  This year, the extra plants will go to the community garden instead of our garden.  

Mid-afternoon, I went to the post office to mail a tax return and a "get well soon" card I painted for the co-worker who just had knee replacement.  The tax return was in a pre-stamped envelope that I'd bought from the post office the previous day.  I had not stamped the greeting card, thinking it might require more than one stamp.  At the post office, I asked the clerk to weigh the envelopes to make sure they had enough postage.  He weighed the card and said one stamp would do it.  I asked about the other envelope.  He said, "It's already stamped."  I said, "Yes, but is it enough?"  

He picked up the envelope, shook it a couple of times, and said, "Probably," and acted like we were done.

Probably?

PROB-AB-LY?

As my mother was fond of saying, "That just takes the cake."

I had to MAKE him weigh it and, sure enough, it needed more postage.  

And people wonder what is wrong with our postal system.  <shaking my head sadly>

Fertilizer, Tomatoes - March 14, 2024

I went to painting class Tuesday.  Accomplished absolutely nothing.  My phone alarmed about 30 minutes before class was scheduled to end, reminding me of a lunch appointment with The Old Boss.  I packed up my stuff and skedaddled.  Had just enough time to get there.  

On the way home, I decided to go down to Nanny's and unload the fertilizer and lime bags from my car and measure the garden plot so I could calculate how much of the fertilizer and lime to apply, according to the soil test done last fall.  While I was measuring, The Nephew came home.  I asked him to get on the tractor and till up the soil if he needed something to do.  He said that there was something wrong with the tiller.  When The Husband came home, he said that a clamp just needed tightening.  After dinner, I walked down to the garden and started broadcasting the fertilizer (when I re-checked the soil test, it turned out that I didn't need the lime, after all).  A little while later, The Husband came down and tightened the clamp.  The tractor and tiller are ready to roll.  We told The Nephew that he could run the tiller over the garden the next day.  The Husband said he would do it when he got home from work the next day, if The Nephew didn't do it.

Yesterday was office day.  I went to the office for a little while, then drove to the next county to meet with a lady who is running their archive.  We talked for a couple of hours.  I would've loved to have stayed all afternoon, but she was preparing for an open house that's happening today, and I did not want to take up all of her time.  When I left the archive, I picked up a hot dog at a convenience store and ate it on the way back to the office.

About 30 minutes after I settled in at the office, my stomach started cramping.  I don't know if it was the hot dog or if the stomach bug finally got me, but after several trips to the bathroom (don't you just HATE having to "go" at work?), I gave up and came home.  The situation seemed so dire that, instead of taking the shortest route home, I took the route with places I could stop, if I had to.  I made it home without mishap.  Barely.  I felt crappy (hah!) and didn't even think about the garden-tilling.  Neither did The Husband - or, if he did think about it, he kept quiet.

But this morning the weatherman was talking rain tonight and tomorrow.  I don't know if the garden has been tilled, and I don't know if The Husband will get home from work this evening in enough time to do it.  The Nephew said that it would be better to leave the fertilizer on top of the ground, rather than till it in.  Whether or not this is true, I do not know, but I am not going to get in a tizzy about the garden getting tilled before the rain comes.

I went outside this morning and slid the broccoli and cucumber bins back into their frame and stashed it on the ground behind some other stuff where the wind won't hit it so hard if it storms tonight.  

One purple tomato has sprouted in the cold frame.  The lupine seeds have been trying to straighten their necks for a couple of days; they might make it today.  The English daisies are still too tiny to fool with.

I planted more tomato seeds today - big ones, this time.  Goliath, Brandywine, and Defiant.  

Tuesday - March 12, 2024

It's painting class day.  Shall I go, or not?  This is the question.  Last week, expecting that I would be in the office every day for a while, I told the ladies that I would not be able to come to class this month, so they'll not be wondering.  I may shoot hooky today.  Or not. 

Yesterday, I had to go to town to buy tags for Granddaughter #1's car.  We bought the car for her, and it is registered to our address, so the renewal notice comes here.  It renews in December.  Last year, we either did not get a renewal notice, or it got lost in the mail (it's just a postcard), and we did not renew her tags.  When she was on her way home for spring break, she got a ticket for expired tags.  This is my fault.  I should have remembered the renewal was due in December, even if we didn't get a notice.  She could probably get the ticket dismissed if she could go to court, but she will have gone back to school by the court date.  If it had happened in this county, I could probably sweet talk someone into dismissing it, but it happened elsewhere.  So I bought the tags and paid the ticket.  TWO HUNDRED TWENTY-NINE DOLLARS for the ticket.  Good grief! 

After I dropped off the tags, I went to the big chain grocery store to look for "something different."  I buy the same stuff, week after week, at the locally-owned store where I usually shop.  The Husband and I are both sick of everything.

("What do you want for supper?"

"I don't know.  What do you want?"

"I don't know."

Since I'm the one that usually does the cooking, I'm apt to suggest something like a fried bologna sandwich. ;)

But bologna sandwiches are generally off our diets.  And we're back to square one.)

The big chain store did not have anything exciting - nothing we should eat, anyway.  I ended up with the same stuff I usually get.  

It's meatloaf tonight, and meatloaf sandwiches tomorrow night.  Oh.  Boy.  

Tomorrow is office day.  It won't be so bad since I will be leaving mid-morning to visit an archive in an adjacent county.  Kind of excited about that.

Meanwhile, I have about 10 minutes to decide about painting class.  My materials are stacked up and ready to go.  Shall I go?

Tune in tomorrow to find out.  :)

New Week - March 11, 2024

Well, it's a new week.  I don't have much of a plan for it, since I was expecting to be working in the office for a while, filling in for a co-worker who had knee surgery last week.  The folks at the office did a little re-shuffling of duties and think they can manage without me.  I'm more or less "on call" to come in if they need help answering the phone.

They'll have to give me lessons, first.  It makes me feel old to admit that this new-fangled stuff perplexes me, but it's the truth.  Our phone system is a nightmare to use; the terminology doesn't even make sense.  

Maybe they won't need me at all.  <fingers crossed>

This weekend was kind of strange.

Saturday morning, Son #1 called, all in a dither.  He could not find his phone.  He remembered last having it Friday night at Nanny's shop, where he was working on his step-son's girlfriend's car.  But when he went to the shop to look for it Saturday morning, it was not there.  His fear was that he'd left it on the bumper of the car, and it had fallen off somewhere on the road.  He did not have his "location" on, so the "find my phone" trick wouldn't work.  By the time he called me, his dander was up.  He'd called his step-son to bring him his work phone, but he had not yet shown up.  The boy (my boy) is like his mama in that expects people to do what he says, when he says it, and people's dilly-dallying in executing orders stokes the temper.  He came up to our house hoping that we could do something to help him locate the phone, since it's still on our account.  We tried a few things that didn't work, but eventually got a message that the phone had been found.   Son #1 paced the house, waiting for a call.  Meanwhile, I did some googling and got to a web site that showed us where the phone was; it was in his driveway.  His mood improved considerably until later that afternoon, when he was working on his truck and discovered he'd been sold the wrong part.  

I had to go to a meeting in town Saturday afternoon at the new community garden.  This will be the garden's first year in operation, and everyone who had reserved a plot was required at the meeting.  My office reserved a plot and nominated me to tend it.  Thanks, guys.  <eye roll>

Sunday afternoon, I had to go to the funeral of the husband of a former co-worker.  By the time I got to the church, the line of people paying their respects was all the way out of the church and wrapped halfway around the building.  As I made my way toward the end of the line, I saw and spoke to several other people whom I knew from working with my friend, and one of them sneaked me into the line with her.  (I felt kind of bad about it, but not bad enough to refuse.)  As soon as I hugged my friend, I skedaddled and came home, not staying for the service.  I can't bear funerals anymore.  I do not plan to attend my own.

About 4:00, Son #1 showed up again with his family in tow.  The daughter-in-law needed to use the t-shirt press.  Evidently, S#1 and The Husband had been strategizing, for #1 showed up with his guitar, and they played music together.  It's about to get warm enough to crank up some Sunday afternoon back porch pickin', and they are trying to learn a song that The Husband's uncle has requested. 

While they picked, I puttered.  Son #1 has two step-daughters, about 10 and 12, and they wanted to paint.  I set them up with supplies and started supper - Reuben sandwiches.  The only corned beef I could find in this county was the canned stuff, which I'd never used.  It kind of resembled cat food, and those little girls weren't ABOUT to eat it.  Neither was their mother, and so they were planning on picking up tacos at a drive-through.  Son #1 took a Reuben to go.  

A little while later, Granddaughter #1, home from college for spring break, showed up at our door.  She spent a long time with us.  It was wonderful.  I'm so proud of her.  She is kind, and responsible, and mature.  She's supposed to get her braces off today.

* * * * * * * * 

The broccoli and cabbage seedlings are doing well in the plastic bin.  I transplanted a few of them into 6-pack trays.  Some of them will go to the community garden as soon as they are big enough.  I left the bin drawers on the patio table last night instead of sliding them back into the frame, thinking that they could handle a little cold - it got down to the mid-30's last night.  They look fine this morning.

The English daisies and lupines have sprouted.  The daisy seeds were tiny, and I put way too many in the 4" pots in the cold frame.  The seedlings are almost microscopic at this point.  They'll need to be separated soon.

The purple tomato seeds have not sprouted.  Might be a little chilly for them, yet.  

Some time last week, I planted a few zebrina mallow seeds left over from last year. They're under the grow lamp in the studio.  This morning, one tiny little sprout has poked its head above the dirt.  

I'm getting antsy about preparing the vegetable garden for planting.  For a month, I've been driving around with giant bags of fertilizer and lime in the back of my car.  The stuff needs to be spread, and worked into the soil, but it's been too wet to work.  There's not any rain in the forecast for the next few days, so maybe we can get to the garden this weekend.  

Concert - March 8, 2024

Yesterday was a right productive day, work-wise, until just after 1:00.  That's when Son #2 texted me to ask if I would pick up Granddaughter #3 when school let out at 2:45.  (Both he and my daughter-in-law were battling a stomach virus, and neither of them believed they could make the trip without soiling the car seats.)  I was happy to do it.  

#3 likes to get out of there ASAP.  To accomplish this, her driver must take a place in the traffic line early.  At 2:15, I packed up my Kindle (I'm reading "Perceval") and headed to school, which is 10 minutes away.  By the time I got there, cars were lined up, 3 rows deep, halfway to the street.  At 2:45, the kids started filing out.  I did not have an official hang tag with #3's name on it, but I dug a greeting card out of my purse, wrote her name on the back, and propped it on the dashboard.  We were out of there by 3, and I took her home.

The Little Rotten Baby was standing at the door when we got there, watching for us. She, too, had the stomach virus and had been throwing up all night.  Bless her heart, she was as pale as a sheet, and her curly hair was wild, and her sweet face was all puffy.  I just waved at her little toxic self from the doorstep, blew her a kiss, and went back home.

Granddaughter #2 had a band concert at 6:30.  I half expected that I would need to get her from home to school.  Her daddy managed to get her there, but could not stay for the concert, so we took her home when the concert was over.

She wore the dress we bought last weekend.  The neckline looked a little lower than I remembered when she modeled the dress for me at the store; it wasn't obscene, but I could see a little bit of cleavage when she filed in with the rest of the band.  I thought, "Umm-hmmmm...." 

I was once a teenage girl, myself.  ;)

The concert was good.  #2's 8th grade band played with the high school concert band.  There was also a woodwind ensemble and two jazz bands.  The music program at this school is awesome.  

Today I am going to the courthouse to size up the records situation for the archives.  It will be good to see my old courthouse buddies. 

Antsy - March 7, 2004

This has not been such a fabulous week.

Tuesday, I picked up Granddaughter #2 from track practice and ran into a parking lot "Handicapped Parking" sign.  Just plowed right into it.  Busted my front left blinker and dented my bumper.  I DID NOT EVEN SEE THAT SIGN.  That's the scary part.  I guess it was in my blind spot.  

But, damn . . . . 

A stomach virus is raging through Son #2's family, for the second or third time in a month.  When I took #2 home from practice, #'s 3 and 4 came running.  As I was sweeping #4 up to kiss her, my daughter-in-law said, "She just threw up!"  (The LRB said, "Yeah, I frew up on the pwaygwound steps.")  My son said he thought she got choked on her spit and threw up because of it, but he called yesterday and said the baby had puked all night long.  Today, both parental units have the trots (the "thin dirties" as their great-great- grandmother used to say).  #1 is supposed to come home for spring break this weekend.  I hope she doesn't catch it!

#2 is ok, so far, and she has her last 8th grade band performance tonight.  And both parents with the sh*ts.  You know what that means, right?  Grandparent participation is required to get her to and from the concert.  Both the middle school band and the high school band are performing.  The gym will be packed, probably with a thousand other cases of impending stomach viruses.  

Lovely.

Cross your fingers that those of us who are still standing can manage not to poop our pants at the concert.

In work news, my new project is to investigate how to start a county archive. This project is like a giant spider (it probably will involve real giant spiders) - multiple legs, and a sticky web of politics and finances.  Nothing moves fast in government because no one person can decide anything.  So, here I am, chomping at the bit to archive some documents, and can't do a blasted thing.

I was semi-excited at the prospect of getting to attend an archival class at the State Archives next month.  It's a competitive class, meaning not everyone who applies gets in.  I say "semi-excited" because (1) I need the class but (2) it was going to be a bit of a pain to get there.  We are scheduled to be in Gatlinburg that week.  I was willing to drive from Gatlinburg to Nashville (not much different than driving from home), but it was going to take some shenanigans to get The Husband to Nashville when his seminar is over.  Thus, I was not too disappointed this morning to learn that I did not make the class.  I'll try again next time they offer it.  Maybe by then I can actually put what I learn into practice.

Tomatoes, Lupines, and Daisies and Such - March 4, 2023

 

Yesterday's sunrise sure was pretty, if you can overlook the crooked polonia tree and the riot of English ivy that is eating up everything that will be still.  When we moved to this property 40 years ago, I planted the ivy expecting that it would stabilize the gully in our back yard.  Little did I know that ivy, if given the chance, prefers to grow up instead of out.  It has infested all of the trees growing along the edge of the gully.  It's plumb creepy.

Since the weather was so nice yesterday, I spent a little time in the yard, picking up sticks, raking leaves, turning the compost pile.  We need another leaf shredder.  Our fall shredding operation was interrupted by rain - days and days of it - after we'd raked only the back yard.  Leaf shredders do not like wet leaves at all.  (Don't even try it.)  I finally mowed the leaves in the front yard.   And, of course, more leaves fell after the mowing.  There are still tons of them around the edges of the yard and all over the "way back," a part of the yard that we mow but do not really use.  Yesterday I raked more leaves from around the part that we do use and piled them in the big hole I dug 30 years ago intending to make a small fish pond.  (Don't try that, either.)  The fish pond is now full.  No telling what will take up residence in it.

This morning, I raked out the flower bed on the north side of the porch.  It was good to find the cardinal flower alive and well.  There's no sign of any hosta. I don't know if it's just late, or if a vole has eaten it.  Though the ground in that area is black and presumably rich, hardly anything wants to grow there, except creeping vinca and a scrawny hellebore.  

While web surfing a few weeks ago, I saw where someone was using a 3-drawer plastic bin for sprouting seeds.  We had one that I could empty, so I tried it - planted the bottom two bins with broccoli and cabbage.  They are up, and some of them have stretched out some leaves.  This morning I took off the "roof" over the broccoli and pulled the cabbage drawer out in the sun.  I'll have to pay attention; the dirt will dry out fast and the sun might be too much all at once.  I am likely to be working in the office every day for a few weeks, starting later this week, and won't have the time at home to check on them, so I'll have to come up with a more permanent solution by the weekend.

I finally planted something in the "sacred vessel" (the cold frame) in the back yard.  I planted seeds (in 4" pots) for purple tomatoes (those new ones), lupines, and English daisies - just a couple of experimental pots for the flowers.  If they sprout and live long enough, I'm going to try them both in that persnickety spot on the north side of the porch.

Evening Edition - March 3, 2024

I shouldn't write this tonight, for, being so late in the day, I won't have anything to write about in the morning.  

Nevertheless, it's warm tonight - 68 degrees - and I'm on the back porch enjoying the chirps and croaks and hoots.  

It's been a good weekend.

Granddaughter #2 needed to be taken shopping for a black dress to wear to her band concert next week. I expected that Granddaughter #3 would go with us.   Saturday morning before I went to get them, I discovered that #3 had a stomach virus - AGAIN.  Poor child, this is the second round in three weeks.  I was daresome to go in the house!  And daresome to let #2 in my car, as she was likely incubating.

#2 and I shopped every store in our little town and came up with an acceptable dress (and some jeans, and a shirt, and . . .).  We picked up some things for the two sisters at home, too.

While I was shopping with #2, The Husband took The Grandson shopping in the big city. The Grandson is supposed to give a speech at a competition next month and needed a suit.  They came home with a suit, shirt & tie, and dress shoes.  The pants had to be hemmed.  The store had marked the hemline for me, and like an idiot, I cut the legs off AT the hemline, not leaving any fabric to turn under for the hem.  I had no choice but to put a narrow hem on the pants.  They turned out OK.  He put on the suit with his shoes, and it was fine. The Husband showed him how to tie a necktie, and he was good to go.  He spent the night here last night and had breakfast and lunch with us.

He is in love with the old truck The Husband bought.  He does not have his license, not even his permit, so he can't have the truck, yet.  But he got to road test it (with The Husband in the passenger seat), and he hunted through our cassette and CD collection (the truck has both kinds of players) for some old school music to play in it.  ;)  And The Husband let him drive when it was time to take him home.

I am missing Granddaughter #1 tonight, the only grandchild I didn't see this weekend.  She'll be home for spring break soon.  

    

March 1, 2024

March roared in like a lion yesterday - I guess it hadn't heard about Leap Day - but it's quiet this morning.  

Sasquatch -whatever he is - has arrived.  I heard him/her this morning for the first time this year.  Its call sounds like two hollow sticks - maybe big, dry bamboo sections, like bamboo windchimes - banging together.  But it's not bamboo windchimes.  Might be a turkey.  Whatever it is, I wish it would come to the yard so I can see it.

Ugh...cold - February 29, 2024

Happy Leap Day, and happy birthday to my Aunt Bonnie, who turns about 20 today.  :)

Yesterday was Office Day.  It went by unusually fast, for I had exciting work to do.  For the first half of the day, I scanned and emailed a 2-foot tall stack of documents.  Wooohoooo!  Great fun!  But it gave me something to do.  After lunch, I worked on my new project.

My new project is to figure out how to start a county document archive.  My love of history and genealogy makes this work kind of exciting.  I'm researching the law, talking to archivists, making lists.  The non-fun part is being powerless to make decisions and get 'er done.  Bureaucracy, you know.  The hard part will be figuring out how much space is needed (somebody else will have to figure out how to pay for it).  Our county offices are bursting at the seams with paper that must be kept, and their records are stored all over the place.  I've got to get a handle on what's out there, and where it is, before I can figure out how much space an archive will need.  Today, I'm having lunch with a couple of clerks to find out where their documents are.  In a few weeks, I'll be going to an archivist training class.  It surprises me that The New Boss is sending me to that class, for I probably will have retired before this thing gets off the ground.  Maybe he anticipates that I will volunteer at the archive.  He might be right.  ;)

Warm...for now - February 27, 2024

The delightful warm weather we've had for the past few days is about to be gone.  It was windy yesterday, and even windier today.  Already this morning, I've heard limbs crashing in the woods behind the house.  

Don't wear a dress today!  :)

As I was having my first cup of coffee in my recliner by the living room window, I heard an unusual noise that sounded much like leaves being blown across the yard.  It wasn't the wind, it was a big flock of birds flying over.  I'd seen these big flocks from a distance but had never HEARD them.  It was kind of awesome.  A little while later, I came out to the porch and heard a chorus of chirping; the flock had landed in the trees on the far side of the pond.  That was kind of awesome, too.  Later, as The Husband was leaving for work, the flock had moved on, but we startled a big blue heron that had landed by the pond and watched him try to fly away in this wind.  It's a miracle he didn't get slammed against a tree.

The forsythia decided to bloom today.

I am going to painting class in a couple of hours.  Still working on the tractor picture.  My paint palette has been in the freezer since the last class. At this rate, the canvas will decompose before the painting is finished. 

* * * * * * * * 

I remain mildly fixated on pop-up cards.  Yesterday, a YouTube video suckered me into buying the SVG files to make a paper house.  I downloaded the files and began cutting the pieces last night.  There are a gazillion pieces to this thing.  The likelihood of it actually getting built - satisfactorily built - is slim.  I got handed a new project at work.  Plus, beginning in early March, I'm going to fill in at the office for a lady who is having knee surgery.  So my idle time is about to shrink.  

 

Monday - February 26 ,2024

We could not have asked for a better February weekend than the one we just had.  It was warm and sunny - a little windy, but tolerable - both days.  Daffodils are blooming around the porch, in the front beds, and along the driveway.  

The daffodil bed is lovely (from a distance) once a year.  The foliage conceals a tangle of dewberry vines that I have given up trying to eliminate.  The vines, themselves, are not all that unsightly, and they do make berries (though the critters get them), but they make it tough to weed out other weeds and saplings. 

Tulip foliage is sprouting, but they are old bulbs that have been in the ground for years, and they probably won't bloom.  (Although I did replant some that I dug up when I was planting something else; they might give it a try.)  

I think the milkweed seeds are sprouting.  I planted them in the phlox bed, and these sprouts don't look like phlox or any of the many weeds that inhabit that bed.  Keeping my fingers crossed.  

I was excited to find a few larkspur sprouts in the zinnia bed.  I planted the seeds last June, if you can call throwing them on the ground "planting."  A local gardener gave me the seeds when I commented on her lovely larkspur crop.  She just reached over, stripped the seeds from a dried stem, and put them in my hand.  I scattered them in the zinnia bed when I got home, and when I raked the leaves from that bed last week, there were a few larkspur under them.  I so hope that one of the plants survives to make more babies for next year.  The leaves are still lying next to the bed.  If we get another bad cold snap, I will put them back.

Zinnias aren't up, yet.  

Hellebores are going to town.  I love them.  Later today, I'm going on a hunt for hellebore babies.  

Friday was such a nice day, sunny and warm.  I had a 9 a.m. meeting to attend.  After the meeting, I went to the election office to vote early in the upcoming primary, did some food shopping, and came home and planted some cabbage and broccoli seeds.

Having seen it done in pictures on the internet, I planted these seeds in clear plastic stacking storage drawers.  I'm not sure I did it properly - I put a 4"-deep layer of dirt in the drawers, wet the dirt, and poked the seeds into it.  Maybe I should have planted the seeds in seed-starting cells so that their roots would be less disturbed when the plants go in the garden.  We'll see what happens.  

I am ready for The Husband to get his *ss on the tractor and get the garden soil ready for planting.   At the end of the growing season last year, he ran the tiller over the garden and I planted mustard greens for a cover crop.  The greens did not do very well, and a soil test revealed the cause: there is no nitrogen in the soil, probably because we tilled about 12 tons of un-composted dry leaves into the garden plot.  We need to spread the nitrogen fertilizer I bought a couple of weeks ago, but we keep getting little rains that make the soil too wet to work.  Yesterday I had a look at the garden.  It is not standing in water, but it is pretty mushy.  I was happy to see that the tiller is hooked to the tractor, so when the soil finally gets workable, we can get right on it. 

My sister and her daughter came here for lunch yesterday.  They are both into landscape gardening and had been working in my niece's yard.  After lunch, we dug up some sedum from my flower bed for my niece to transplant to her yard.  Last week, she brought me a box full of "surprise lily" bulbs, the little reddish ones that come up in late summer.  (She lives on her ancestors' home place, where somebody, a hundred years or more ago, planted daffodils and surprise lilies, and the property is covered with them.)  There must be 200 bulbs in the box.  If I had any gumption, I could plant lilies all over this yard.  I planted a few of them yesterday after my company left, but I hope to give most of them away.

I also planted - or, rather, PREPARED to plant - a pack of lavender seeds that I bought Friday.  The package instructions amounted to "put them in dirt and give them light and water."  I have tried this method in the past, several times, without success.  So I went to the internet, which said the seeds need to be "stratified," which means they need to be exposed to cold.  The internet had several methods of doing this.  I ended up sprinkling the seeds onto a moist paper towel, putting the towel in a plastic bag, and putting it in the refrigerator.  I told my telephone to set an alarm for 10 a.m., one month from now, at which time I will put the seeds in dirt and put them under the grow lamp.  

Yesterday, The Husband and Son #1 worked on the "new" truck he bought last weekend.  They replaced the water pump and the thermostat.  They took it "around the block," which is about 5 miles, and it did not over-heat, so it appears they fixed the problem.  It's a fairly sweet ride, considering how old it is.  Son #1 may claim ownership, if he can afford to keep gas in it.

At Home - February 22, 2023

After umpteen days (it seems) of being away from the house, I was expecting today to be an "at home" day.  My plan was to make one more pop-up card, then make a plan to move some other projects along.  

All of my projects seem to be eternally in the planning stage, don't they?

It's because I keep getting interrupted by other plans.

And because I am not quite skilled enough to pull off some of the sh*t I want to do.

Anyway . . . . 

This morning at 6:30, Granddaughter #1 sent me a picture of two t-shirts (for sorority big/little sisters) and asked if I could get them to her by next Friday.  Of course, I said yes.  They have to be mailed all the way across the state.

I was not planning on doing that kind of craft today.  My work table was littered with cardstock and cutting/marking/gluing supplies, with some paint supplies shoved off to one corner.  

Admittedly, it was getting out of control, but I needed to do one more card before I put all the card-making stuff away.  But The Granddaughter comes first.  I cleaned up the work table, pitched all the card stuff in one box, all the paint stuff in another.

I did not have any t-shirts.  But the Dollar General up the road had some thin ones.  They'll do.  Brought them home and washed them.  They're drying now.

Meanwhile, I have cut the vinyl lettering (holy moly, it actually worked).  Gonna fire up that heat press soon, and if my luck holds out, I can make it to the post office in time to get it in today's mail.

So far, so good, unless these cheap shirts come out of the dryer two sizes smaller than they went in the washer.

The time I've spent jacking around with pop-up cards has not been wasted, for I have learned to use the software and the cutting machine without too many foul-ups.  Now it's time to bone up on the heat press.  My machine is cheap and kind of janky, and most of the time I can't figure out how to make it count out the seconds and beep when it's done.  ("One, mississippi, two mississippi....")  Cross your fingers that these cheap shirts don't melt.

Addendum:

The t-shirts are in the mail, along with a few surprises.  Expecting the worst, I bought two of each shirt.  Good thing.  I kinda screwed up the first shirt with tape adhesive.  (It will probably wash out, but I made a duplicate just in case it doesn't.)  The overall design included some large and small polka dots that wanted to peel off with the carrier sheet.  This required a little engineering.  They may come off in the wash, too!

Presidents' Day - February 20, 2024

Yesterday was Presidents' Day.  The Husband and I were both off from work.  We spent the first half of the morning at the doctor's office, having some tests run on The Husband.  

On our way home, we stopped to eat lunch.  As we were finishing up our meal, another couple came into the restaurant.  The man looked familiar, but I could not summon his name from my memory.  Eventually, I said to The Husband, "There's an old guy in here that I think we went to school with."  The old guy was probably saying the same thing to his wife about us.

Yesterday was also Son #1's birthday.  We took him and his family out to dinner, gave him a gift certificate to a music store for his birthday gift.

We tried to give him the truck that The Husband bought from his uncle over the weekend.  He came over Sunday after church, and he and The Husband took it out for a long test drive.  It over-heated.  They think it needs a water pump and a thermostat.  Son #1 is something of a shade-tree mechanic and can make simple repairs, so yesterday after lunch, The Husband bought the parts.  I guess they'll work on the truck this weekend.  

When we came home from our errands, I puttered around in the yard.  Raked leaves out of some of the flower beds.  Pruned some dead clematis from the arch.  Checked to see what survived the January deep freeze.  

In the few hours I had at home between the doctor visit and the birthday dinner, I played with making pop-up cards.  The Valentine's Day card project spawned a fixation. I must know how these things operate.  

My kitchen table and the floors all over the house are littered with paper bits.  They're not hurting anything.  ;)

Today is painting class day.  And lunch with The Old Boss.  And Granddaughter pick-up after school.  It's a good thing we have that spare car that The Husband bought a month ago, because my daily car has a nail in a tire, and my Wrangler hasn't been cranked for months and probably has a dead battery.  

I hope the spare car has gas in it.  :-\

Truck - February 18, 2024

The Husband has an 80-something-year-old uncle who decided to sell his 2003 Chevy Silverado pickup truck.  King cab.  125K miles.  We went to look at it yesterday.  He drove it home yesterday afternoon.

Our driveway is not going to hold very many more vehicles.

But it's a great truck. 

And we have a grandson who will need some wheels pretty soon.

* * * * * * * * 

After dropping The Husband off at the uncle's house, I went shopping.

I know!  Can you believe it?

All I bought, other than groceries and two giant bags of dirt, was a package of cardstock.  

In about two weeks, I am going to fill this thing - 

- with trays of tomato seeds.

Friday - February 16, 2024

We had our 44th Anniversary Dinner last night at an Italian restaurant.  

On our first anniversary, I was four days over-due with Son #1 (and four days away from his birth).  We went to Memphis with the frozen top of our wedding cake, planning on dinner at a steak restaurant we liked, but it was Sunday, and the restaurant was closed.  We chose another steakhouse.  Our cake had crumbled all to heck when dessert time rolled around.  When the waiter saw it, he gave us a free dessert - cheesecake, I think.  

Before we started on the long drive home, I went to the ladies' room.  There were only two stalls, and one of them was occupied.  The remaining stall was against a wall, and on that wall, less than 2 feet from the stall, was a radiator that prevented the stall door from opening all the way.  I managed to squeeze in but squeezing out (without giving the baby a concussion) was tricky.  By the time I got back to our table, The Husband was about ready to send for help.

Last night's dinner was less stressful.  The restaurant had a Valentine's Day menu that was still running, and on that menu was a Chocolate-Covered Cherry martini.  Now, I love me some chocolate-covered cherries.  The martini was . . . okay.  It was pink and frothy and had chocolate syrup dripping down the inside of the glass.  If we'd been at home, I'd have put my whole face in the glass to get at that chocolate, but The Husband frowns on that sort of thing in public.  *snicker*

It had a kick, though.  By the time we got home at 7:30, I was longing for the bed . . . for SLEEPING.  I'd gotten up at 4:30 a.m. and would've been useless even without the martini.  I managed to stay upright until 9:00, when I gave up and went to bed.

Up at 4:30 again this morning.  It was still dark when I came out to the porch with my laptop and coffee.  The barred owls were awake and hooting at one another.  One of them has a call that sounds like something from a Tarzan movie.  

* * * * * * * 

Yesterday, I saw the first crocus bloom of the year.  The daffodils are up, 6" tall or better, and budding.  It appears that last year's new hydrangeas made it through the cold snap, but barely, even though they were covered.  Another bad freeze might do them in.  

I don't have a plan for today.  I went outside and cut back a couple of my rosebushes, but didn't venture very far from the house.  The yard is squishy, made even squishier by mole tunnels EVERYWHERE.  I need to find the mole trap and set it.  I need to start some tomato seeds, or at least gather up the supplies.  Earlier in the week I bought the fertilizer and lime recommended by the garden soil test.  It's too wet to apply them right now.  

Yesterday, I worked on the tractor painting and made it worse instead of better.  Ended the exercise by painting over a whole section of the tractor's "innards" (on purpose); will re-do it when the paint dries, if I don't paint the whole thing white and start over with a subject that is not a #*@*! old tractor.