Monday - May 13, 2024

I may have to switch to all-PM Editions if this records-organizing project keeps up.  I'm going in too early to spend time regurgitating the events of the prior day, and coming home bone tired.  May even have to switch to a weekly edition.  ;)

We had an enjoyable Mother's Day dinner with the family, even though I spent most of the day pissed off for one reason or another.  Mostly it was because I wanted to put the tomato stakes in the ground and couldn't get The Husband to cooperate.  

Anyway . . . . 

The kids, big and small, roamed the field in front of Nanny's house that Son #1 bush-hogged Saturday.  One of them caught a baby garter snake and brought it to the yard.  I tried to get them to kill it with a hoe, but they wouldn't do it.  I don't know where it went.  

After dinner, I doctored three fire ant hills for Nanny, one of which was waaaay the hell down the driveway; she doesn't need to be carrying the necessary gallon of water that far.  One of the big kids said that there are ant mounds all over the field they'd just explored.  We may be fighting a losing battle.  

I stopped by the community garden this morning to check on the sugar snap peas, and they needed picking!  Surprise!  My gardening hat was in the car, and I filled it up with peas and buttercrunch lettuce.  Before going to my work site, I dropped the harvest by the office, rinsed it, and put it in the refrigerator.  I hope someone took it home.

The guy who oversees the community garden encourages gardeners to post pictures of their plots in a group text throughout the season.  I sent a picture of my hat-full of peas and lettuce.  He soon called and asked if I'd weighed and logged the harvest.  I hadn't known to weigh/log it.  He's trying to keep track of how much food we're growing, and how much we're donating to a local food bank.  Good idea.  If the gardening goes well, keeping this record will be useful in justifying future grants.

 The peas will need picking again before the week is over.  I need to get some tomatoes in the ground amongst the peas, and I need to fertilize them, I think.  Maybe I'll do that Thursday or Friday, weather permitting.

 

Yards and Yards - May 12, 2024

The phone woke me up at 9:30 yesterday morning.  I hadn't slept that late in - I don't know when.  The air smelled like bacon.  The Husband and Granddaughter #3 had cooked.  

Granddaughter #2 was still asleep at 10:30 when her dad called and asked us to have the girls home by noon.  They were on their way home with Granddaughter #1 (and two sugar gliders) and would be home around 2.  Granddaughter #3 had taken over #1's room and was given instructions to evacuate by the time #1 arrived.  

I loaded up all their stuff and took them home.  While the girls worked on their rooms, I cleaned up the kitchen and high-tailed it out of there so as not to intrude on the homecoming.  On my way home, I discovered two bags in the back seat that had not made it into the house. Turned around, went back, dropped off the stuff, headed home.  

There was a lot to do at home.  We'd invited everyone for Mother's Day dinner Sunday night.  The yard needed mowing (so did Nanny's).  The house needed picking up.  Vegetable seeds needed planting in the garden while the weather was nice.

The Husband was mowing our yard when I got here, and Son #1 had brought his mower over and was mowing Nanny's yard.  I put on my gardening duds and did the weed-eating.  The Husband headed for Nanny's yard when he finished.  After a little rest on the back porch, I decided to go to the garden and plant the okra, squash, and cucumber seeds. I put on my gardening apron and went to Nanny's.  

The plan was also to get The Husband to help me set the tomato stakes with the tractor, but Son #1 was on the tractor, bush-hogging Nanny's front field.  I figured The Son would do it when he finished mowing, so I went to the shed to get the tiller, intending to till up rows for my seeds.  Gassed it up, cranked it up, and started down the first row.  And the tire started to come off before I'd gone five feet.  SHIT!  I had forgotten about the tire.  The bolt that holds it on had come off last year.  

By this time, ALLLL of the menfolk on the hill were involved in other chores.  The Son was still on the tractor.  The Husband and The Brother-in-Law were working on the Cherokee (The Husband intends for us to driving it to Florida soon).  I dug around in the big shop and found a screw and a nut that would fit the hole on the tire and managed to tilt the tiller over by myself and put the tire on and get screw in it.  The screw lasted for 2.5 rows, during which time I decided that ground was a tad too wet in the middle for tilling.  As I headed up the last row, the head broke off of the screw.  I limped the tiller to the shop and went to the hardware store to get a sturdy bolt and nut.  By the time I got back, The Husband was around to help me get the tire on.  I finished off the 1/2 row, put the tiller back in the shed, and waited for The Son to finish with the tractor so that we could set tomato stakes.  But after he mowed, he pushed up a pile of brush that had accumulated in the field and set it on fire, which meant he and the tractor had to stay with the fire.  

While waiting around, I saw a big pile of brush in Nanny's yard that needed to be on the fire. The Son came up with the tractor and pushed it to the field.  The dry sticks left a trail of debris in the yard.  I went to the shed and brought rakes for everyone who wasn't busy.  We raked the sticks and added them to the fire.  

When I took the rakes back to the shed, I tackled a pile of what I thought was wet dogfood in one corner of the shed.  I'd been pissed at The Nephew all spring for leaving it there.  It turned out to be alfalfa pellets.  I'm pretty sure The Nephew didn't put the alfalfa pellets there.  I must have done it years ago, thinking I'd sow a cover crop, or something.  It was wet and stinky, and there was an open bag of cow manure under it.  I raked and shoved it all out the door, onto an unfolded cardboard box, which The Husband dragged away.

It was too late to set the tomato stakes by the time Son #1 came back with the tractor.

We were all too pooped to work anymore, anyway.

What a week! - May 11, 2024

It feels like I met myself in the road this week.

Monday brought the start of a new project, organizing the Sheriff's Department's old records.  What a job!  It might take the rest of my life to finish it.  

Son #2, his wife, and the LRB went to east Tennessee to bring Granddaughter #1 home from college for the summer.  Granddaughters #2 and #3 stayed with their other grandparents for the first half of the week.  The Husband transported one of them to school every morning, as it was almost on his way to work.  Come Thursday, the girls moved to our house.  Girls need a phenomenal amount of STUFF to make it through a day.  This morning, we packed it all up and took it and the girls home, as their parents are due home any minute.

Last night about 9:00, Granddaughter #2 came running into the living room to show us a picture of the Northern Lights that one of her friends had sent to her telephone.  We all went outside and oooohd and ahhhhd over the sight.  For some reason, the colors showed up far better on our phones than they did with the naked eye.

Today we are working in the yard.  The folks on the hill are coming to dinner tomorrow night for Mother's Day dinner.  

I put myself in charge of getting my own Mother's Day gift this year.  At Christmas, I lost a peridot earring among all the wrapping paper at Son #2's house.  We never found it.  I loved those earrings, had asked for them especially to leave to Granddaughter #2, whose birthstone is peridot.  So one day this week I went to a local jeweler and asked him to make me another one.  Crossing my fingers that he can find a matching stone.

P.M. Edition - They're heeeerre . . . . - May 6, 2024

Today has been a blah day.  I didn't want to do anything I did but didn't have any better ideas.  I wound up being busy all day doing stuff that needed doing, like emails and phone calls.  Yuck.

Anyway . . . . 

I repotted most of my baby tomato plants, hoping to give them room to beef their scrawny asses up.  This is ridiculous.  They took for-EVER to sprout, and then they just sat there.  They were beginning to grow a little when we went on our trip and they spent a week on Nanny's dining room table, where they didn't get enough light.  I brought them home and set them on the patio table, which gets mid-day sun and is probably too hot for them.  They'd be better off on the ground but the freakin' animals would probably dig them up, and that would piss me off something fierce.

After dinner, we walked down to Nanny's to empty the mole trap and check on the purple hull peas.  If there's a bagging limit on moles, we may be close to reaching it.  I've trapped 3 in this yard, and 3 in Nanny's.  It takes two people (or one dexterous person) to get a mole out of the scissor trap.  Just getting the scissors to open is a chore, then you gotta rake the mole off the blades.  It's disgusting.  We've been throwing them out in the field when we get them un-stuck.  The hawks, owls, and buzzards probably love us.

Speaking of critters, I'm hearing cicadas for the first  time.   At least I think I am. The frogs are croaking, and the usual night bugs are humming, but there's a high-pitched hum that's not usually part of the mix.  I'm told that snakes enjoy cicadas.  Hopefully, they will enjoy them in the woods, where I can't see them.

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.