The LRB - May 5, 2024

Granddaughter #4 (aka "the Little Rotten Baby") spent the day with us yesterday while her mom took her older sisters shopping.  I had quite forgotten how busy a 3-year-old can be.

We swung.  We swid on the swide.  We rode the tricycle (after a dose of WD-40 to loosen up its 18-year-old wheels).  We played musical instruments, sang songs, read books.  We poured water on the sidewalk just because.  We played doctor with a stethoscope and a fwashwight.  We ate everything in sight, all day long (prompting The Husband to wonder if she has a tapeworm).  

Her vocabulary is amazing.  Should a 3-year-old use words like "ac-tu-al-ly" and "forehead?"

When her mom came to get her and asked us if she was good, we said, "She was an angel.  We did everything she wanted."  :)

Rain - May 3, 2024

Early yesterday morning, I transplanted a few tomato seedlings from their small "cells" into 2" pots.  Since they've had a small dose of fertilizer and week outdoors in the sun, they are looking better.  I need to transplant more, but I'm out of dirt. 

I spent the rest of the morning making phone calls and writing a report.

Around noon, when I needed a stretch break, I decided to walk down to the garden and plant the okra and squash seeds.  I went inside to gather supplies and put on some shoes, and at the very minute I stuck my feet in my crocs, it started raining.  <sigh>  I put everything away and went back to work.

Nanny called mid-afternoon and said she had a pork loin that needed to be cooked and invited us to eat supper with her.  I said I'd make a side dish to go with it.  In our refrigerator were a bowl of cooked, naked spaghetti and a partially de-boned roasted chicken, which I turned into a version of macaroni and cheese.  I baked a couple of big sweet potatoes, and when The Husband got home, we took it all to Nanny's.

After we'd cleaned up the supper dishes, Nanny and The Husband sat back down at the kitchen table, and I went out to the garden to see if the purple hull peas had sprouted.  (They had not.)  On the way, I was thrilled to discover that the mole trap I'd set in her yard had been sprung!  I pulled it up and, sure 'nuff, there was a mole in it!  I took the trap to the back porch and tapped on the storm door.  When The Husband looked around, I showed him the trap and said, "Present for YOU-oooooooo!"  He had not dealt with the last mole we'd caught, the one that was still alive when we pulled the trap out of the ground, the one that was a stinky bag of guts by the time I wanted to set the trap again.  It was his turn.  At least this one wasn't alive and squirming.

We re-set the trap in the front yard.

I need to remember to tell The Brother-in-Law where it is so that he doesn't run over it with his lawnmower, if he gets to Nanny's yard before I do.

It's raining again this morning and is supposed to rain, off and on, all weekend.

I might plant some stuff, anyway.   

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.