Memorial Day - May 30, 2022

We won't be doing anything special for Memorial Day this year.  We're just too lazy to host a big cookout.  The Husband has some "tractoring" to do.  I'm not sure how I will spend this day.  Right now, a day of reading in my recliner sounds like a fine idea.

Friday was The Grandson's birthday.  We could not get together with him on his birthday, but yesterday we took him to a movie then out to dinner.  We invited him to spend the night with us, but he'd already made plans to hang out with a friend for a couple of days now that school is out.  Can you believe a 15-year-old would rather hang out with his friends than with his grandparents? ;)  

Saturday, we set a live trap in the back yard, hoping to catch the groundhog that we've sighted a couple of times over the past week or two.  We baited it with a banana.  Mid-afternoon, we checked the trap; the banana was gone, but the trap was not sprung.  Squirrel, most likely.  

Yesterday as I was working on the back porch, I saw an armadillo trundling around in the side yard.  He eventually made his way around the porch, headed toward the shed.  As he passed by the live trap, I held my breath, hoping he'd smell where the banana had been and go in to investigate, but he only sniffed the air outside the trap then disappeared under the shed.  The Husband was in the house, playing his ukulele at the time.  When he came out, I told him about the armadillo.  He said, "You should've told me.  I would've offed it."  I gave him a disbelieving look.  How many times have I run inside at night to alert him that an armadillo was in the yard, only to have him shrug it off.  He read my mind when I shot him the look.  "I don't like shooting at night," he said, "but I would've blasted him in daylight."  I'll keep that in mind.

Later in the day, I put another banana in the live trap.  The trap was empty (of animals) when we came home from dinner with The Grandson.  As I began to write the above paragraph, I got up to check the trap.  

There's a raccoon in it.

Luncheon - May 27, 2022

Since The Boss will be retiring in a couple of months, she wanted to do something nice to show her appreciation for all of the court clerks in her jurisdiction.  She decided to invite them all to her house for a luncheon - about 24 folks, altogether.  

That luncheon happened today.

There were nice linens, fine china and silver, crystal glasses and place cards.  There were fresh flowers on the tables, and delicious food.  The Boss, herself, made two cheesecakes and a bodacious 4-layer chocolate cake.  And there were nicely-wrapped gifts - bracelets for the ladies, engraved pocket knives for the gentlemen.  

It was a very nice luncheon.  :)

  

The Swamp - May 26, 2022

 No, I'm not referring to Washington, DC (though . . . ); I'm talking about my garden.

Went down to check on it for the first time in a week.  The north end is a swamp.  Fortunately, except for the purple hull pea rows, I limited my planting to the south half of the garden.  

Tomatoes and peppers are a little yellow (from too much water, I expect), but they're all standing upright and don't appear to be near collapse.

Squash and cucumbers aren't up, yet.  Seems like they should be sprouted by now.  

Now, about those purple hull pea rows . . . . 

The Husband planted the peas.  I'd bought twice as many peas as I thought I'd need to plant 6 rows, but The Husband ran out of seeds on the third row.  He used a bicycle-on-a-stick-type planter, and must've had the dial set for butterbeans.  They are beginning to sprout, thick as cathair, even in the swamp rows.

First planting - May 21, 2022

Yesterday, the weather forecasters were predicting rain for our area, expecting it to arrive mid-afternoon.  Our garden had been tilled, but we'd not had a chance to build up any rows.  

We got busy fairly early yesterday morning to get ahead of the rain.  Uncle Jack loaned us his "hiller" attachment for the tractor.  We ran the tiller over the garden again, then used the hiller to build up the rows.

My main goal was to get the garden center plants - tomatoes and peppers - in the ground.  They'd been living in our front yard for more than a week.  We planted the tomatoes and peppers, then I decided we might as well go ahead and plant the purple hull pea seeds.  While The Husband was planting those, I planted the squash and cucumbers.  He ran out of pea seeds before he got all of the pea rows planted.  For some reason, we did not plant the okra and zucchini seeds.  I guess we just ran out of energy.

The rain held off until about 8 p.m., and boy did it ever rain.  We'll probably need to re-cover the seeds once the ground dries up enough for us to move around in the garden.  And I'll need to go back to the garden center for more purple hull pea seeds.

We still have a couple of rows left over for some other vegetables.  I think we'll try butter peas this year, which we've had some success with in the past.

He's Ba-aaaaack - May 19, 2022

Yesterday was a breezy day.  As I was chilling on the back porch, there were a lot of wind-induced noises:  whirly-gig squeaking, windchime tinkling, leaves rustling, screen door softly rattling in its frame.  About 6:30, I heard a new, vaguely familiar clacking noise.  I turned in the direction of the sound to find a big, fat groundhog sitting two feet outside the porch, clacking its teeth.

Was it one of our former "guests" come back?  Was it challenging me over having been "relocated?"

I shot to my feet in search of my phone, intending to take a picture to send to The Husband.  I mean, it was right there, clacking, and staring through the screen!  When the groundhog saw me move, it scampered across the yard and disappeared under the shed.  I texted The Husband, anyway, to tell him about it.

He replied, "Set the trap!"

I said, "Not until you get home!"  (He'll be home tomorrow.)  There's no way I'm dealing with another groundhog by myself.

But come Saturday . . . a vegetable feast will await him inside the trap.

Evening Edition - May 17, 2022

You won't usually catch me blogging - or doing anything else that takes much thought - this time of day.  But I'm a little out of sorts tonight.  The Husband is on a business trip, so my routines are off-kilter.  I forgot about Granddaughter #2's band concert until it was too late to go, and feel kinda crappy about that.  And I let one of my digitizing customers spin me up, and I've been sitting around all afternoon stewing about how to word a polite "kiss my ass" message. 

Perhaps the situation doesn't require profanity.  But my temper does.

I have a repeat customer who expects me to digitize her ideas without providing me with any artwork or pictures to guide me.  Just words. "I want a car on a hill with some trees.  And a dog.  Make the trees skinny."  There are about a million possibilities in that.  So I ask some questions and eventually come up with a design that I think fits the criteria.  And it's not the "look she wanted," and she can't show me the "look."  I revise the design as best as I can, based on her indecisive comments.  We do this over and over.  Partly because she's spot-reading her email.  I have to ask the same questions over and over.  And I haven't charged her nearly enough, for this job or past ones.  

This is my fault for not nipping it in the bud a long time ago.

So we're in the middle of this project now.  We have come up with an acceptable shape for the vehicle, and I have drafted some trees, which she doesn't like, of course.  She has requested I edit the trees and - "oh, and swap out the dog for a cat.  I'm not liking the dog."  And complained when I threatened to charge her for each new edit.

I am bailing on this project.  

* * * * * * * * * * * 

We got the garden all nice and tilled last Thursday, but it rained before we could hill up the rows.  The tomato and pepper plants are currently living right beside our front door, so I can remember to water them.  Maybe we can get them in the ground this weekend.

Garden 2022 - May 13, 2022

Let the gardening begin.

We've had no rain for the past week or so, and the garden plot is finally dry enough to work the soil.  Rain chances are pretty high for this weekend, though, and I wanted to prepare the soil before the rain sets us back another week.  

On my way home from work yesterday, I stopped by the garden center to buy plants and seeds, hoping to get them planted this weekend.  The "Hossinator" tomato seeds, planted on April 20, are just now starting to sprout their first real leaves, so I got a dozen greenhouse tomato plants to get the party started.

We'd planned to spend last evening attending our granddaughter's high school band concert, but mid-afternoon she texted us with the news that the concert would be mostly about recognizing the band's 37 graduating seniors (she is not one of the seniors) and would probably last a long time.  Two hours in a hot, stuffy gymnasium?  I think not.  In response to that text, I said that we would skip this concert so we could get started on the garden.

About an hour before The Husband was due home from work, I went down to the garden and pulled up the posts, fencing, and landscape fabric from last year's tomato rows so that The Husband could get busy tractoring when he came home.  He'd been part of The Granddaughter's group text, so he knew what was in store for him.  He showed up, dressed for gardening, a little after 6 p.m.  The Nephew showed up a few minutes later and helped with attaching the plow, the disc, and the tiller.  He even did some of the driving.

In the garden shed, there was a 50# bag of pulverized lime, bought last year.  There was also a bag of pelletized fertilizer in the shed.  After the first round with the tiller, we applied both the lime and the fertilizer, then we tilled again to work them in.  By this time, it was dark enough that we had to turn on the tractor's headlights to see what we were doing.

We got home about 8:30, hungry, exhausted, dripping with sweat, and covered in dirt and lime.  I'd worn Crocs in the garden, and they were full of dirt.  I dumped the dirt in a flower bed on the way in the house, then headed straight for the shower, shoes and all.  For dinner, we rolled up string cheese in a slice of bologna.  Dinner of champions.

All that's left is to hill up the rows and get the stuff in the ground.  We don't own a hiller.  I've been looking for one all morning, but none are available locally.  Maybe Uncle Jack will let us borrow his hiller for a couple of hours tomorrow. 

* * * * * 

P.S. - Looks like we won't be gardening this weekend, after all.  It rained a gully-washer this afternoon.  On the bright side, maybe it'll melt the lime and fertilizer we put down yesterday.

Aggravation - May 12, 2022

 I haven't been out of bed 20 minutes and have already had two aggravations.

Wait, make that three.

First, I'm out of half & half for my coffee.  I usually drink just one cup before I leave the house, but I want that one cup to be good:  no sugar, just cream.  I used the last of the half & half yesterday and forgot to get more.  There's a bottle of liquid "creamer" in the refrigerator that has been there since Christmas.  It smells okay (does that stuff ever go bad?), but it's sweet.

Second aggravation:  I can't find my blue loafers.  Looked in every place where I might have kicked them off.  They are not to be found.  Did I leave them in a hotel room on our last trip?  

Third aggravation:  I saw a big old wolf spider in my sewing room this morning.  Being a smart person, I did not want to stomp it for fear that it was loaded with hundreds of babies that would scatter all over the sewing room, so I grabbed a can of bug spray off the porch and aimed it at the spider . . . and missed.  It ran under the sewing cabinet, which is loaded with so many spools of thread and other things that I'm reluctant to move it to hunt for the spider.  The big monster is still in the sewing room, somewhere, and will probably crawl up my leg the next time I'm in there.  

Mothers Day Weekend - May 9, 2022

It's a little nippy on the back porch this morning, but that's not keeping the squirrels from frolicking around in the yard.  There are two out there now.  They should be thankful that all of the boy-children have grown up and moved away; otherwise, they'd be toast.  With gravy, and a side of potatoes.

I was hoping to plant the vegetable garden this weekend, but it's been raining, and we haven't been able to work the soil.  Local weather reports say it's supposed to rain several days this week, so we may not be able to plant next weekend, either.  

We had a nice Mother's Day.  Son #1 invited us to lunch at his house, and my sister-in-law agreed to cook Mother's Day supper for Nanny on Sunday night.   Sister said she would bring spaghetti and garlic bread; our job was to make a salad and a dessert.  So I went to the grocery store Saturday morning and got ingredients for salad and coconut pies, and thinking we might be feeding extra kids and grandkids who might stop by, I also got a ham and some butterbeans.  Came straight home and started cooking.  

I guess Nanny and I were both afraid that we wouldn't have enough food for everyone, for she cooked a pot roast, "just in case."  We had plenty without the extra meats.

We're still being invaded by stinkbugs.  Our vacuum cleaner has lived on the porch for well over a week.  As soon as it warms up, the bugs appear on the inside of the porch.  I vacuum them up, and 20 minutes later I look up and there are more.  Surely some stink bug must've laid eggs inside this porch, for I can't imagine that this many are working their way inside from outdoors so fast.  

Sunday night, as I was surfing the web on the back porch, I heard some scratching/scampering in the cabinet behind my chair.  A mouse, most likely; based on experience, a snake in the cabinet would make more of a thumping/bumping noise.  The next morning, I baited a mouse trap with peanut butter and slid it in place beside the cabinet.  

We are still being pestered with stinkbugs.  The population seems to be decreasing, but we are vacuuming a few dozen off the porch screens each day.  The vacuum cleaner stays on the porch, plugged in, ready for action.

Last night on the porch, stinkbugs kept swarming my laptop screen, buzzing me, landing in my hair.  The vacuum cleaner was handy, so every few minutes I'd grab the wand and dispatch the offenders.  While I was wrangling with the stinkbugs, the mouse trap, which was about two feet away, snapped and rattled.  Scared the bejeezus out of me.  I grabbed the flashlight and shined it at the trap.   The mouse was not actually in the trap but was staggering around near my feet, squirming and twitching, needing to be finished off.  I was hollering, "Oh!  Oh!  OH!" and trying to figure out how to keep it from getting away.  I could've clubbed it with the flashlight but didn't want to do it.  

I jumped up to go get The Husband, who was watching TV in the living room.  By the time I got to the back door, he had come to see what the commotion was about.  

The mouse, by then, had seemingly given up his ghost, but The Husband was reluctant to touch it for fear that it was just stunned and would come to life in his hand.  There was a pair of grill tongs in a basket on the cabinet, and he used them to pick up the mouse and take it away.

No, they are NOT the tongs we use for grilling.  ;)

I have about had it with critters invading my space.  And, out of the corner of my eye, I just saw something move - a big lizard.  Maybe he'll eat the stinkbugs.

I hit the ground running at 5:30 yesterday morning.  There was still a lot to do to get ready for the birthday cookout.  

I'd spent most of Friday working in the yard.  Two or three weeks ago, I'd spent a whole weekend raking sweet gum balls and picking up sticks, but had not made it all the way around the yard.  So before I could mow on Friday, I had to pick up sticks and limbs - three wagon loads full, plus several big limbs that would not fit in the wagon.  The yard was pretty much an all-day job.

The first thing on yesterday's agenda was to make the custard for the ice cream so that it would have time to cool before starting the freezer.  The recipe called for six egg yolks, some milk, and some sugar, cooked in a double-boiler until thick.  I must've had the double-boiler too hot, for the eggs scrambled, and I had to throw out the mixture and start over.  (Good thing I had all those extra eggs, huh?)  I made the next batch in a skillet, the way I make custard for pies.  These eggs scrambled a little bit, too, but a few whizzes in the blender took care of that problem.

The next problem was that the recipe did not make enough to fill up the ice cream freezer.  I added extra cream and sugar but didn't have any more strawberries.  The ice cream was good, but it could've used more strawberries.  

It was a good party, though, and worth every minute of the work it took to pull it off.  All of my children and grandchildren were here, except for one grandson.  It was so good to have them all together.  Nanny came, and some other relatives from the hill were here.  We had a few unexpected guests, but they just added to the fun.  Our two sons brought their guitars, and after the meal we had a jam session on the back porch.