The freezer was packed with food. I rounded up a large cooler and a big bucket, and the repairman emptied the freezer. It didn't take him long to fix the problem. As he was about to put the food back in the freezer, I stopped him. "There's probably stuff in there that should've been thrown away 5 years ago." And, sure enough, there was.
After he left, and after I finished re-loading the freezer (far less went in than came out), I decided to fix myself a glass of ice water and retire to the living room to read. When I pressed my glass against the ice dispenser, it groaned but did not drop any ice. I looked in the ice bucket and found that the ice chunks had begun to melt and were stuck together in one giant ice patty. Surely that was the problem. I dumped the ice into the sink, salvaged a glass of cubes, and went about my business. Later that afternoon, after the ice-maker had dumped a few loads, I tried the dispenser again. More groaning, no ice drops. I called the store and told them about the problem. The repairman had gone home for the day, but he's supposed to call me back this morning. Meanwhile, I'll have to reach into the ice bucket to get ice. Such inconvenience. ;)
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I called the quilt store to reserve one of their long-arm quilting machines so I can finish the quilt I pieced several years ago. It's probably going to take two days to do the quilting, for I had drawn a fairly complicated quilting design on the top. The quilt store said that the machine is not available for two consecutive days until next Tuesday and Wednesday. I told them to sign me up.
When I drew the quilting design onto the top several years ago, I did it with a Frixion pen. The ink in Frixion pens is designed to disappear with heat or water. As I was writing the above paragraph, it occurred to me that the design might have faded/disappeared after all this time. The quilt top has been in a plastic bag ever since I sewed through my pinkie, and for part of that time, the bag was in the trunk of my car, "just in case" an unexpected quilting opportunity arose. Could our summer heat have erased the design? I just went to look; the markings are still there. Now I'm worried that they won't come out when the quilt is done.
It's always something, ain't it?
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We have not set foot in the garden since last week's maintenance marathon. It's been too hot, and unless a sudden plague of bugs or blight has arrived, there's not anything to do. I will probably go check on things late this evening. I ordered a bottle of microbial inoculant from a company called Teraganix. It arrived yesterday, so I might fix up a batch in the sprayer and use it this evening.
We have fought blight - early blight, late blight, you-name-it - every year of our gardening lives. It seems to get worse as the years pass. I'm pretty sure the spores live in our soil - and maybe even in the air? - all year long. We have tried all sorts of treatments, but the blight has always won. Last year, I tried spraying the plants with diluted hydrogen peroxide to kill the fungus, followed a day later by an oil/soap/water mixture to prevent the fungus from attaching to the leaves. Even though I just about stood in the garden with a sprayer at my side 24/7, we still had blight, especially on the Roma tomatoes.
The weather-people are predicting a chance of rain this weekend. The garden needs it.
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