Rant, Part Two - April 7, 2025

My frustration level is about to rise off the chart this morning.

In yesterday's post. I told you about tree damage from the weekend storms.  Our backyard is full of giant limbs, and the tree from which they fell needs to be taken down.  The pile seems to grow bigger every time I look at it.  We had a tree cutter look at it yesterday and give us an estimate on the cost.  During the inspection, he noticed that tree roots have grown into a guy wire from the electric pole.  The power company is coming today to have a look.  Of course, the ground is far too wet for any work to happen right now.  

It's been a wet spring.  Our septic tank filled with water two weeks ago, and we had to have it pumped.  More than 12" of rain has fallen here since Wednesday.  Our septic tank is full again and must be pumped again. 

The hiller/hipper/row-maker still hasn't been delivered.  Tracking says that the package was damaged, but I can't get any instructions from either FedEx or the equipment company on how to proceed.

The carburetor for the little red tiller is on backorder.  (Not that I could use it right now, anyway.  The garden is soup.)

The replacement motor for the leaf grinder hasn't shipped yet.  I hope this free replacement offer wasn't a scam.

Next Sunday, I have to make a 4-hour drive (if I take the interstate) BY MYSELF, then go to a class for a day and a half and drive back home BY MYSELF.  The Husband can't go because he, too, has a trip. I dread it.  The interstate scares the crap out of me, so I am hunting a backroads route.  When I travel with The Husband, I can't stand to watch when we're on the interstate, so I read or do needlework to keep from working the passenger brake and sucking air, both of which annoy my driver.  I cannot express the amount of anxiety that this trip is causing me.  For over 30 years, my 20-minute drive to work has involved no more than a couple of stop signs and a red light, at no more than 45 mph.  I encounter maybe 10 other cars until I get to town.  I can't imagine driving 70 mph among big trucks and other drivers (most of whom are driving 80+ mph).  And construction.  And wrecks.  Plus, my car is old, and though it has bluetooth, the map program tells me to make a turn roughly 10 seconds after I pass the turn.  

It may take me 8 hours to get where I'm going.  

And the government is f*cking up my retirement money, every way it can.

So, how's your day?

There's one good thing to report: the quilt is moving along.  I've stitched Row 5 to rows 3 and 4 and am more than half-way through blind-stitching the top seam.  Once that's done, I'll quilt the heart shapes in the block corners, and the whole chunk will be ready to attach to Rows 1 and 2.  

"Rainy," my *ss - April 6, 2025

Yesterday's post heading, "Rainy Saturday," was a bit of an understatement. It was raining when I got up at 5 a.m., and raining when I went to bed at 10 p.m., and at just about every minute in-between.  

Around noon, things began to get serious.  Tornadoes.  Flooding.  Straight-line winds near 90 mph.  It was scary.

As the strongest storm approached, The Husband and I went outside to look at the sky.  We heard a loud crack and then a big THUD, and ran around to the back yard to find this:

A big limb had fallen out of the ash tree.

The Grandkids' swing set is under that pile of limbs.

The Little Rotten Baby is going to be *pissed*.  So are we, when we have to tackle that pile with the chainsaw and the tractor.

I spent most of the day working on the quilt.  Made good progress.  All of the rows are finished.  Four of the rows are stitched together in pairs.  There's still some quilting to do in the corners where the blocks join.  

The hand-sewing would go much faster if I could resolve my thimble situation.  There must be a dozen thimbles in this house, but none of them will stay on my finger because of the arthritis knot on my knuckle.  I spend more time looking for dropped thimbles than I spend wearing them.  I bought two kinds of leather thimbles, and one of them worked fairly well until the needle wore holes in it. If it could only hold out a little while longer!   For the past few days, I've been wrapping my thimble finger with stretchy bandage tape before putting on the leather thimble. It's cumbersome, but better than ramming the blunt end of the needle through my skin.

Rainy Saturday - April 5, 2025

It's raining again this morning.  The ground is like soup.  Off in the distance, I heard a monstrous crash, likely some rain-soaked tree hitting the ground hard.  

I've been up since before 5.  Finished a book with my first cup of coffee, then brought my laptop out to the porch for my morning surfing and puzzling.  At least it's not cold.

I don't have any plan for today except to work on the quilt in my comfy chair.  I made good progress yesterday.  Rows 1 and 2 are joined and finished.  Rows 3 and 4 are joined but the top seam needs stitching.  Row 5 needs its top seam stitched, then all the rows can be joined together.  I dread hand-sewing those long seams.  Then the quilt will lack only binding.  I bought white fabric to make binding, but I may bind it with pink, instead.  Last week, Granddaughter #3 brought me a baby pink plastic button and said it was her favorite color.  The pink embroidery in this quilt leans more toward rose pink.  Maybe I can find something that will work.

From the back porch - April 4, 2025

I need two things:

(1) somebody with some sense to make decisions; and

(2) a talented, eager apprentice with no agenda but mine (an elf, more or less).

There are so many irons in my fire that I'm in kind of a stupor.  

Yesterday was a yucky, stormy day.  I spent a large part of it in my chair, stitching quilt blocks together.  By bedtime, I'd finished Strip 4 and joined the backs of Strip 5. Strip5 is laid out on the sewing room table now, its seam pressed, ready to have its innards joined and its skin sewn neatly shut.  ;)  The plan is to finish Strip 5 today and/or tomorrow.

Innards showing.

My morning routine - coffee, news, email, word puzzle - has distracted me.  One click leads to another, and off we go on a tangent.  

I clicked on a video about painting chickens.  I did not watch it for long because it reminded me that I did some chickens a long time ago - a series of 4 colored pencil drawings portraying scenes in a chicken yard, the last of which needs re-doing because its colors clashed with the other 3 drawings. I think those drawings would make terrific greeting cards.  Off I go, looking for the chicken yard drawings.

I thought I knew right where they were, in the make-shift portfolio under the sewing table, where I keep my better artwork.  I dumped the portfolio contents atop the quilt.  The chickens weren't there.  I did not look for them in the other likely places because I got distracted, admiring my former work.  ;)

Once upon a time, I set a goal of producing greeting cards with these drawings.  The intention was to donate the cards to an animal rescue group fundraiser, and maybe even offer them for sale in a booth or something.  I even bought a card rack to display them. 

(These are not finished cards.)

Most of the drawings have been scanned, and I've created a card template.  I've got enough blank cards and envelopes to fill up that rack.  All I need to do is decide which drawings to use and then print them.  But my printer isn't "all that," and the printed colors are muted.  There's probably a setting, somewhere, that would make the printing better, but I haven't found it.

I should check into how much it would cost to just have the blasted things printed . . . . 

. . . while I work on the quilt.

Rant - April 3, 2025

I feel a rant coming on.

Let me get this out of the way:

Politics.  I am sick of it.  I can't even stand to watch the news anymore.  I recently heard someone describe what is happening as being orchestrated by people acting like drunk monkeys with chainsaws.  Perfect description.  Absolutely perfect.

The worst part is that I feel constrained to even publicly state my disapproval.  

WTF?  This is America.

This is America?

* * * * * * * *

We got a whale of a storm last night.  Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee all took a beating.  The last time a tornado hit our county, FEMA was here immediately to address urgent needs and help us begin the recovery process.  I hope the places that took tornado damage in this storm will have good assistance.

The storm filled our septic tank with water.  The toilets will overflow if we flush them.  We had the tank pumped about a month ago.  If we have it pumped today, we'll have to have it pumped again after the storms predicted for the next couple of days.  Doing our "business" is going to be challenging until the storms pass and we can do something about the problem.

I expect that my garden is drowning.  A squirrel would mar up in that sludge.  If the Anasazi beans don't sprout, it sure won't be for a lack of moisture.  

Our yard is a shaggy jungle, surrounded by trees.  Winter ice broke limbs all around the property.  I've been picking them up for a month, but the storms keep dropping more.  I'll have to clean up yet again before we can mow.

I'm sitting here on the back porch, watching the birds come for breakfast.  Brown-headed cowbirds make a ridiculous "plop-PLOP" call when they're feeding.  I just watched one chasing - on foot - a little brown sparrow who wanted to join the buffet.  The sparrow wasn't giving up and could run faster, so finally the cowbird flew at the sparrow with puffed-out wings, like it meant business.  And still the sparrow didn't give in, and it looked like an all-out brawl was about to happen.  I hollered, "HEY!  Y'all cut that out!"  And everybody flew away.

But the sparrow came back first, with reinforcements.  They managed to snag a few bites before the cowbirds came back en masse and startled them away.

I made pretty good progress on the quilt yesterday.  After trying different methods of stitching the blocks together, I finally came up with a method that seems to work.  I press one seam allowance  under, overlap it with the other seam allowance, and machine baste it in place.  

Basted seam

To stitch the seams together, I pinch both seams up (so I can access them more comfortably) and join them with ladder stitches.  

Pinched seams

Once the hand-stitching is done, I remove the basting stitches.  I'm satisfied with the strength and the invisibility of the ladder stitches.

Stitched seam

(Hopefully, those blue stamped seamline markings will wash out completely!)

This quilt will be 4 blocks wide by five blocks long, a full-size quilt.  So far, I have assembled three strips of four blocks and will finish ladder-stitching the fourth strip tonight.  Strips 1 and 2 have been sewn together.  Strips 3 and 4 will be sewn together, then joined with Strip 5 (which is not yet assembled), and then I'll sew strips 2 and 3 together.  

There's some hand-quilting left to do before I can assemble the strips.  The four corners where the blocks join make a large un-quilted area.  I am quilting four heart shapes, arranged like a clover leaf, in these bare corners.  This quilting needs to be done before the quilt is fully assembled so that I won't have to handle the entire quilt the whole time.  I joined strips 1 and 2 before I quilted their hearts.  It was a pretty good lap-full, so before I assembled strip 3, I quilted the hearts on each block before I sewed the blocks together.  It must have been luck that kept my stitching from encroaching the seam allowances too much to then sew the backing on the sewing machine when it came time to assemble the strip.  (That sentence will probably make sense only if you've tried a quilt-as-you-go method and encountered the problem, yourself.)

I should run my errand before the next storm hits. 

Round 2 - April 2, 2025

Another round of storms is on the way.  It's supposed to arrive here this afternoon. It's already windy and overcast outside.  The Grandson was scheduled to be on his way home today (on a yellow school bus with the other kids), but he said they might wait until tomorrow, depending on the storm.  He's supposed to text me when he has an ETA, but I haven't seen anything from him yet.

Pennies from heaven fell on me yesterday.  A week ago, I emailed the company that manufactured our leaf shredder to see if I could buy a power switch for it. The person who answered the email assumed that the shredder was under warranty and asked for copies of invoices, pictures, and video of the shredder not cranking.  After a few back-and-forth emails, he called. It's a miracle I answered the phone, for I usually block unfamiliar numbers without answering the call.  Thank goodness I did.  The company is replacing the whole motor, switch and all, for FREE.  How about that?  The Husband thinks he might be able to do the mechanic work.  If not, we've got two sons and a brother-in-law who can fix nearly anything, if one of them can find the time to get to it.

I wanted to carve today but can't find my carving glove.  Here's a bear that I carved earlier in the week.  He might be the best thing I've carved so far.  

  

Storm - April 1, 2025

It stormed here Sunday night.  We were under a tornado watch for most of the night.  About 9 p.m., pea-sized hail started falling.  

Yesterday at lunch time, The Husband texted me, "Have you checked the tomato plants?"  

It was odd that he would ask me a question about the garden, for that usually results in my enlisting his help with some chore, so he rarely brings up the subject unprovoked.  I figured that he'd heard a bad report from Nanny.  It turned out that a co-worker had said that the hail had beaten down their squash plants.  I said I'd walk down to the garden to check on our stuff.  

I put on some shoes and stepped out the door.  When I rounded the corner of the house, the cold wind sent me back in the house until later in the day.  Our tomatoes mostly looked okay.  I'd planted them deep, with just their tops sticking out of the ground, so there wasn't much danger of being broken by the hail. A couple of the plants had a leaf stuck to the soil.  When I stepped into the row to un-stick them, my foot sank up to the ankle in mud.  It's a good thing my crocs were "locked and loaded" or I'd have lost one in the mud.  We're supposed to get more storms in the next couple of days, so whatever I might have done for the plants yesterday would probably get un-done tomorrow.

The weather app on my phone is predicting temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s for early next week.  When I planted the tomatoes, I imagined that I would cover them with plastic shopping bags if we were to get a frost.  But the weather man says we may get 8"-10" of rain with the new round of storms, and the garden soil will be like quicksand for days afterward.  I might rather re-plant than try to salvage those that are already in the ground.

It was heartening to see that the onion sets are sprouting.  The broccoli looks happy.  Didn't see a sign of the kohlrabi I planted from seeds. I'm not sure I'll recognize it when/if it comes up.

Yesterday I planted some sweet peas (the ornamental kind).  The planting instructions said to scarify the seeds, then soak them in water overnight.  I scrubbed them on sandpaper and soaked them and planted them in pots.  The blasted things had better sprout; I paid a ridiculous amount for 10 seeds.  

Our hiller/hipper/row-maker is supposed to arrive today.  I hope to catch the delivery truck before the driver unloads it to ask him/her to unload it at Nanny's, where the tractor and garden are.  It'll probably be more than a week before the ground dries up enough to use it.

Granddaughter #3's quilt is progressing slowly.  I work on it every day for a few minutes at a time, until my hand goes numb from pinching the needle.  It's a learn-as-I-go situation.  If I were making this quilt for myself, I'd probably have given up before the embroidery was done.  But, you know . . . grandchildren.

Babysitting - March 30, 2025

We babysat our 17-year-old grandson this weekend.  ;)

He called me Friday afternoon to ask if we had plans for the weekend.  We did not.  I told him to come on over.  Last night, he brought his girlfriend over.  (I liked her!)  He just left our house to go to his school and board a yellow school bus for a trip across the state, a HOSA competition.  It was a joy to have him here.

Friday, I planted 27 tomato plants, a row of Anasazi beans, and four seed display packages of sweet pea seeds that my sister gave me.  I planted the sweet peas between the tomatoes, thinking they might share the fence amiably.  They should put nitrogen in the soil (if the rabbit doesn't eat them), which should suit the tomatoes.  If the peas get too vigorous and start to wrap up the tomato plants, I'll just yank out the peas.  

I did not water the tomatoes since the weatherman predicted rain this weekend.  We got a good, slow, soaking rain yesterday.  Thanks, Mother Nature.  :)  Maybe now the onions and kohlrabi will come up.

Last weekend we ordered a hiller/hipper/row-maker.  It's supposed to be here Tuesday.  Hopefully, by the weekend, we'll have made rows in the rest of the garden and I will have planted purple hull peas and squash.  It might be too early.  I'll replant, if necessary.

Yesterday afternoon, between rain showers, I was sitting on the back porch and caught out of the corner of my eye a little flutter on the stepping-stones outside the porch.  At first I thought it was a wet leaf fluttering against a clump of grass that has grown up between the stones.  When it didn't blow away, I got up for a better look.

It was not a leaf; it was furry and gray - I couldn't tell what it was - and it was trying to burrow between two stepping-stones.  I went in the house and said to The Husband, "I need you to come kill something."  He gave me a strange look, but he came out and grabbed an old rake handle from the corner of the porch.  The gray burrowing thing turned out to be a baby mole.  How/why it was on the stepping-stones is a mystery.

 

Tomatoes, Sweet Peas, and Anasazi Beans - March 28, 2025

All of the above went in the ground this morning.

Come on, rain!

Talking - March 28, 2025

I talked all day yesterday.

My sister texted me before 8 a.m.:  "Are you up?  And talking?"  I replied that I was up and had told The Husband "bye."  She gave it another hour before she called.

She's worried and sad.  Her little dog, Sparky, a Yorkie, had a tumor removed from his neck earlier in the week, and she is worried about what the biopsy will show, dreading the worst.  He's been her companion for maybe 10 years.  She treasures him.

Before you entertain visions of a sweet little ball of fur, be advised that he is a 4-pound ball of FURY.  When my sister rescued him, he was doing his third stint at the shelter, having been labeled as a special needs dog because of his foul temperament.  My sister and her children managed to gain his trust, but he will try to eat anybody else.  If he were a big dog, he'd have killed somebody by now.  Fortunately, his tiny little mouth prevents him from seriously injuring a grown-up.

We talked about Sparky, and gardening, and other stuff.  We made plans to get together next week.

Not long after we hung up, my BFF called.  Her daughter just got engaged, and the two of them have been pondering wedding plans.  My BFF has mobility issues and gets depressed about being unable to do all she wants to do.  And the depression spills over to prevent her from doing a lot of things she CAN do, such as picking up the phone to call someone to do the yard work.  I chastised her for this - "Just pick up the phone!"- then I chastised myself for the same thing.  I've been needing to order replacement parts for some of our lawn equipment but haven't done it because I needed model numbers.  While I was on the phone with my BFF, I went outside and took pictures of the model numbers, and as soon as the conversation ended, I sat down and ordered the parts.

Not long after that, my other BFF called.  We spent our time commiserating about our arthritis and other ailments.  

Three marathon phone calls in one day might be a record for me.  By the time I hung up from BFF #2, it was time to start supper. After we ate, The Husband and I walked down to the garden and attached the wire fencing to the t-posts in what will become the tomato rows.  It got dark on us before we got to the bean fence.  

In a little bit, I'm going back to the garden to plant tomatoes and beans.  If it turns out to be too early for planting, so be it.

  

Zinnias and such - March 27, 2025

Yesterday morning, I went to work on a flower bed beside the driveway.  It was full of leaves and last year's flower stems.  Under all that debris, stuff was coming to life.   I raked it all out, scuffed up the soil, and sprinkled seeds - zinnia, cosmos, and bachelor's buttons.in that bed and in the "stump bed" down the hill.

In the stump bed, a rudbeckia that I planted last year is coming back to life, and it has made babies.  I dug up two of the babies and moved them up to the driveway border. 

The aster I planted last year in that same bed is budding.  

Fire ants have built a nest against the stump.  I guess we've run them out of Nanny's yard and into ours.

I worked on the driveway border until nearly noon.  Shredded leaves for the compost bin. Sprinkled mushroom compost on the pile and mixed it in.  It needs to be wet, but dragging the water hose that far (and rolling the blasted thing back up) took more gumption than I had.  Hopefully, we'll get the rain that's predicted for the weekend.

When The Husband came home from work, we set the t-posts in the garden for fencing - two rows for tomatoes and one for the anasazi beans I'm going to try.  Before we went to the garden, The Husband said, "I wonder if a little girl [meaning the Little Rotten Baby] would like a ride on the tractor.  We went across the road to ask her; of course she wanted to ride the tractor.  She and her next oldest sister (age 10) went to the garden with us.

Riding the tractor while it's setting t-posts is not much fun for a kid.  The Husband drives to the end of the row and backs out of it, 8-10 feet at a time.  Within 5 minutes, the LRB was sitting on her butt in the newly-tilled soil on the far side of the garden, throwing dirt in the air.

The girls came home with us for supper.  After we ate, until it got dark, I pushed the LRB in the swing, then we walked them home.  

After supper tonight, I will try to cajole The Husband into helping me put up the fence wire, and tomorrow I will plant the tomato plants I've been babying for two weeks.  If a late frost comes, we'll just have to tie shopping bags over them.

Lavender--cide - March 26, 2025

This morning, I probably killed one of my two ancient lavender plants.

It started when I decided to rake the leaves out of a flower bed along the driveway, where yarrow, beebalm, and larkspur are beginning to emerge.  That bed had been invaded by English ivy, so once I got most of the leaves out, I started pulling ivy.  Of course, one thing leads to another....

The lavender grows 8 feet to the west of that bed.  I planted it - probably 20 years ago, on a rocky, sunny bank - never expecting it to make it through the first winter.  But it did, and it continues to live.  I have never pruned it, never raked off the leaves, for fear of killing it. It, too, has been invaded by ivy.  Last year, it had only a few stems peeking up through the debris. This morning, I decided that it would probably not survive another year of being choked, so I got out the pruning shears and the rake and attacked it.  In the process, I broke off the only stem that showed signs of life.

This stem had sprawled and grown roots where it touched the ground.  I re-planted the stem. Now that I think about it, I should probably go back out and lop off the foliage so that it can concentrate on re-rooting itself.

Later this morning, I'll need to tackle the piles of leaves.  They'll make a good start on a new round of compost.  Last week, I bought a bag of mushroom compost to use in the vegetable garden.  A few handfuls of that mushroom stuff might jump-start the new batch of compost

This evening when The Husband gets home, we're going to set the t-posts for the vegetable garden fencing.  The tractor makes short work of that terrible job.  

Speaking of the tractor, Son #2 borrowed it this weekend to push up a bunch of brush and pine needles around his property.  The Little Rotten Baby (now age 4) insisted on a ride on the tractor.  Her daddy even let her raise and lower the bucket.  When he prepared to return the tractor, she told him, "I feel like I need to keep this."  

I can see some benefit in having a granddaughter who knows how to drive a tractor, once she's big enough to reach the pedals. :)

Tuesday - March 25, 2025

I'm sitting here on the back porch this morning, watching two big woodpeckers running the table at the bird seed spot.  A dozen little brown birds are waiting on the outskirts, and when the woodpeckers leave, they rush in to eat until the bullies come back for seconds.  The nuthatch and chickadee do "touch and go" maneuvers and get their meals to go.  The bluejay came and ran errrrrbody off.  And now the bird food spot is empty, for there's a hawk circling above the trees. I suppose this would be a good breakfast place for him, too, if he had the airspace to swoop in.

I've got two hours to kill this morning before a scheduled phone call, then I have to go pick up my grocery order.  Middle-of-the-day obligations screw up the whole day.

Have a look at this redbird I whittled yesterday out of a Polonia limb from my yard:

See that ragged spot on his head?  That's a hole.  It goes all the way through the stick.  I intend to whittle a couple more birds - maybe a bluejay (which will essentially be the same bird, only blue) and a chickadee- and string them up, like windchimes, on a stick.  PRE-DRILLED HOLES! 

Broccoli and Lettuce - March 24, 2025

As payment for helping me plant onions this weekend, I went to the greenhouse and got six broccoli plants (he likes broccoli, he says) and set them out on the onion/kohlrabi row.  I also planted six lettuce plants - four in the vegetable garden for Nanny, and two in a backyard flower bed for The Husband and me.  

While it was still cold, I planted butter lettuce seeds in a bag of potting soil in the cold frame I bought last year.  They're up and doing well.  It would probably be a good idea to raise the lid on the cold frame, eh?  At least in the daytime.

I've been hauling a tray of tomato plants on and off the porch since last week.  I kind of wish I hadn't bought them so soon, but these old tried-and-true varieties vanish before it's time to plant.  Last year I was stuck with a bunch of purple grape tomatoes that I started from seeds and some left-overs from the greenhouse.  Our tomato crop was pitiful.  I'd like for this next one to kick butt.

Onions and kohlrabi - March 23, 2025

In the past couple of weeks, we've seen or heard turkeys in the bottom behind our house.  Yesterday morning, we heard a close-by gobble.  I turned on the bird ID app on my phone and logged it.  Early this morning, I heard a couple of gunshots in the distance.  I hope the turkeys are still around.

Speaking of birds, Son #2 and his family have acquired some chickens.  They bought a do-it-yourself chicken house and six full-grown hens.  They did not take anything to contain the chickens when they went to get them.  The seller stuffed all six into a tow-sack.  One of the chickens didn't make it home.  They are missing neck feathers and butt feathers.  I called my friend, a chicken expert, and asked if chickens pull each other's feathers out, or if this is disease.  She said to check for mites.  Granddaughter #1, who wants to be a veterinarian, is home on spring break. These chickens can be her patients until she heads back to school.

The Husband and I spent most of the day in the vegetable garden.  He disked and tilled the soil, then we dumped all of the compost that was in the bin on the soil and disked it again.  I wanted to set the t-posts and fencing, but we didn't get to it.  There's still time; I'm going to wait a couple more weeks before I plant.  I did, however, set out some onions and sprinkle some kohlrabi seeds on the front row.  My 3-year-old great-nephew was in on the chore; he was thrilled to help and is much closer to the ground than I.  ;)  There is still room on the front row.  Tomorrow, I may go to the greenhouse for broccoli plants to fill the space.

Last night, Son #1 texted The Husband a short video of The Grandson's truck actually RUNNING.  (You may recall that it needed a new motor, which #1 has been installing for the past month.)  Either it still needs some tuning-up or they've tricked out the exhaust to make it sound badass. If it's the latter, I see a ticket in The Grandson's future.  He said to me the other day, "I LOVE driving the Wrangler.  It just FITS me."  (He's 6'3".)  I said, "Your truck will fit you, too!"

I did not plan on blogging this morning, but my other plans have been temporarily waylaid.

I intended to start a carving this morning, a chunk of basswood hiding a bunny rabbit, dressed in his finery, standing on his hind legs with his ears upright. I have a video to follow.  The first problem was that the video-carver's chunk of wood is about 1.5" x 1.75" x 4", while mine is 2" x2" x 4".  I had to whittle my block down to size if I wanted to follow his measurements, which I did, and then rest my hands for a bit.

While my hands recovered, I did some kitchen chores and then sat down to place a grocery order.  It's been some time since I've ordered from that vendor, and they wanted me to change my password.  I never would give them my cell number, so I had to wait for an email code.  <fingers drumming>

Back to the bunny for a while.

Once the block was cut (approximately) to size, I went back to the video to get the measurements where all the parts should go.  Of course, he uses metric measurements, and though he often converts them to inches, he converts them to TENTHS of an inch.  And all my rulers measure in EIGHTHS.  So my bunny is approximate from the get-go.  

This particular design is going to require the removal of a LOT of wood to get to the rabbit.  It'll take more endurance than my hands can manage all at once.  So I sit here and whittle a little while I think up the next thing to write.

Two hours ago, while I was thinking about telling you how I got The Husband to promise to plow the garden tomorrow, I remembered that I wanted to broadcast some fertilizer after he makes the first pass so that it will be mixed in well with the soil when he's finished.  Then I remembered that don't have any fertilizer. I put down my knife, showered, dressed, and drove to town to buy some. 

The fertilizer store has garden seeds and chemicals.  I got some kohlrabi seeds (I love that stuff!) and got my "regulars"- okra, squash, etc.  Tomorrow, once the soil is ready, I'm going to plant the kohlrabi and a whole bunch of onions on the first row.

I've already bought the tomato plants - just 24 this year - and am having to baby them like crazy to keep them alive, taking them in and out of the house.  Those that manage to live until it's time to plant them in the ground will be some tough customers.  

The compost pile has enough finished compost to do some good on at least one whole row in the vegetable garden.  I've promised it to the tomatoes.  After the tilling, we'll come up here on the tractor and shovel the compost into its bucket for transport to the garden.  There are enough leaves still on our yard to make a good start toward the next batch.  

I also got some fire ant bait today.  We battle the sh*theads every year but never completely win.  

Spring Equinox - March 20, 2025

Somebody tell Mother Nature that the last day of winter was yesterday.  It is cold today, and windy

It was windy last week when I cleaned off the garden, and the strangest thing happened.  I'd pulled up the fence posts and rolled up the fence wire and had taken up most of last year's landscape fabric, with one more row to do. By that time, I was tired and was considering leaving that last row for another day.  As I stood there deliberating, leaves started whirling in a circle around me, and it went on long enough for me to think about the Bible story of Elijah getting taken up by a whirlwind.  I kind of giggled and said (out loud), "NOT YET!"  And I went ahead and peeled up that last row of landscape fabric. 

It was just a little bizarre, if you want to know the truth.

********

Last night, I finished sewing together the first two rows of #3's quilt.  I took out the basting stitches and pressed the seam. It was nice and straight, but the vertical seams don't quite match. Screw it. I'm forging ahead.  Now that I've discovered that the blind-stitching is much easier if I machine baste it, first, I can make some progress.

Although I quilted the blocks before stitching them together, there is still some quilting to be done in the areas where the blocks join.  I marked off 4 heart shapes in those corners and will do that quilting as I join the rows, rather than handling the whole quilt for that process.

I don't have a plan for today.  Maybe I'll paint.

Encouraged - March 19, 2025

After less than 3 months of retirement, it hurt my feelings that I had to be somewhere at a specific time yesterday morning.  The archive folks were coming at 10:00 to tour our proposed archive space and opine as to its adequacy, and I had to lead the tour.  

To cut to the chase (un-like me, I know), the archive space should be perfectly adequate for our needs.  

I feel much less anxious about the project.

After the archive tour, I visited a friend who lives nearby.  We worked together at my flower shop, years ago, and have kept in touch since then.  We'd talked by phone a few days earlier, and when she'd told me about a home-made arthritis cream that had given her some relief, I asked her to score some for me.  She'd texted me Monday night to tell me she had it. I said I'd drop by after my meeting.

I did not plan on staying for HOURS, but that's what happened.  We had a lot of catching up to do.  The minute we sat down at her table, I smeared some of the home-made cream on my sore index finger. I fear it's not going to be the miracle cure, but I'll try it for a few days.  The problem with topical ointments is that I wash my hands a million times a day, so it's hard to keep it on my skin for very long.

On the way home, I started to think about what to do about supper.  We had ham, potato salad, and baked beans left over from Sunday.  Although The Husband was not home for dinner Monday night, he'd eaten ham for breakfast two days in a row, and I kind of hated to serve it to him for dinner.  But I didn't mind it enough to cook something else.  I ended up chopping the ham into chunks and making a casserole with it. It was meh.

A little while after dinner, all four Granddaughters came busting through the door.  It is such a treat to having them living just across the road. :)

St. Patrick''s Day - March 17, 2025

I always think about my daddy on St. Patrick's Day.

It was 1974.  I was a freshman in high school. My parents and I were sitting at the dinner table when Daddy said, "What happened to your arm?"  

I looked at my arm. On my upper arm, about where you get a shot, there was a big purple knot.  "Oh, Tommy ______________ pinched me in art class."

Daddy made a mad face.  "You tell him I said if he does that again - "

"I pinched him first," I said.  "It's St. Patrick's Day.  I thought he wasn't wearing any green, so I pinched him.  But there was green on the buttons of his jean jacket, so he pinched me back."

"Oh. Well, then you had it coming."

Turnabout is fair play.  :)

I'm sitting on the back porch, watching the birds scrap over the birdseeds I tossed out earlier.  My sister told me about a bird call recognition app; it's running on my phone right now, the list of "birds heard" growing by the second.  I'm so glad she told me about this app.  It has really upped my knowledge of what goes on around here.

On the back porch is a tray of tomato plants that I bought at the greenhouse on Friday.  They sat out in the weather during the storms we had over the weekend, but I was afraid to leave them out last night.  It's a good thing I brought them in, for we had a frost last night.

It was cold and windy over the weekend.  I mostly stayed inside.  Saturday, I tried to carve a little bunny.  Things went well until the knife slipped and it lost its fluffy tail.  A few minutes later, it lost an ear.  I shall finish this rabbit with two ears and a tail if I have to carve him down to the size of a butterbean.

Saturday afternoon, I found in our mailbox another craft kit from my BFF.  This one is a wooden birdhouse, shaped like a camper, held together with nuts and bolts.  It was fairly easy to assemble, though I did need The Husband to turn the bolts while I held the pieces together.  After it was all assembled, it occurred to me that I should have painted it BEFORE we assembled it.  The wood is thin. and one of the doo-dads broke while I was flipping the thing around to paint it.  The first coat of paint is well dried by now.  I may work on it a little more today.

Yesterday, I worked on the quilt.  It lay stretched out on the ironing board, two rows of 4 blocks with its guts showing.  Last week, I'd joined the rows by sewing the backing seams together on the sewing machine and had trimmed away the excess batting and folded the top seam allowances back.  To finish joining the rows, I needed to join the batting and stitch the top seam by hand.

This seam is 72" long, and I dreaded hand sewing it.  In constructing the individual rows, I'd held the top seams together with pins for the hand sewing.  (I have scratches on my arms from encounters with the pins as I wrestled the blocks in my lap.)  These seams were only 18" long, and they'd given me fits trying to keep them neat and even.  I needed a better plan for the 72" seam.

I pinned the top seam allowance and basted it in place on the sewing machine.  Once the seam was secure, I could take out the pins and handle the quilt without too much bloodshed.  The machine basting held the seam neatly in place while I did the blind stitching.  I made it halfway down that long seam before my hands gave out.  I'll finish it tonight.

Tomorrow is the day I meet the state archive folks to give them a tour of our archive space.  I'm going to the office a little early to see if I can score some face time with The Boss.

If I Hurry . . . . March 14, 2025

It's supposed to storm later today.  Supposed to be rough.  I need to get cracking before it gets here.

There is no food in this house - nothing delicious, that is.  For the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to gain some freezer space by cooking stuff from the freezer, so I haven't been to the grocery store.  (Last week I made a chicken pot pie with a 6-year-old chicken.  It was fine.)  I placed a grocery order this morning and must pick it up between 11 and 12.

On the way, I'm going to stop at the locally-owned greenhouse.  I want some onion sets and maybe some other cool weather vegetables.  

Since I cleaned off the garden yesterday, there is room to plant them, but the ground is not tilled.  Yesterday, though it wasn't on my MUST DO list, I'd hoped to till up a row for some cool weather things, but I ran out of energy and then the tiller crank cord broke.  The tiller has an electric starter, though, and I expected to go back to the garden after supper.  But I'd forgotten that Granddaughter #2 had a band concert at 7.  Nix the tilling idea.

After all that garden work, my muscles and joints became a mass of misery.  On the way to the concert, The Daughter-in-Law texted, "The gym is really crowded.  We're way up top."  I thought, Oh, no!  Thankfully, Nanny and I found seats on lower bleachers while The Husband cruised on up the steps.

None of us had eaten dinner, so we picked up some burgers at a drive-thru window.  It was 9:00 by the time we got home.  I ate my burger and went straight to bed . . . for a little while.  During the night, a leg cramp yanked me out of bed more than once, so I'm a little tired, sore, and pissy today.

Maybe the rain will hold off long enough for me to work out a little of this soreness in the garden.

2025 Garden Kickoff - March 14. 2025

Immediately after writing my previous post, I went down to the garden to gear up for this growing season.  There were several things on my to-do list:  (1) Put the tire back on the big black tiller, (2) pull up last year's landscape fabric from between the rows, and (3) take down the fences on which we'd grown tomatoes, butterbeans, and cucumbers. 

Yes, these chores should have been done in the fall, but we had a rather difficult fall.  I was working at a physically hard job and had no juice left in the evenings.  Then I caught covid.  The Husband had surgery. We let some things slide.

With The Nephew's help this morning, I got the tire back on the tiller, then started pulling up the landscape fabric.  I was making pretty good progress.

And then Nanny came out to help.  Nothing I could do or say would convince her not to help.  When I ordered her out of the garden, she just went to the garden shed and started straightening it up.

Shame on me for some of the thoughts I had. At least I did not say them aloud.

All this time, my nose was running like a wet-weather spring, as my parents used to say.  I had both pockets full of tissues, but after a while I might as well have been blowing my nose in my hand.  I said to Nanny, "I can't take this runny nose anymore.  I'm going home to take a Benadryl.  I'll be back when it kicks in."  

I came home and popped the pill, and ate some Vienna Sausages and crackers while I waited for the pill to work.  And, lordy, when it kicked in, I really just wanted a nap.  But when I heard Nanny's car go up the road - she'd said she needed to go to the grocery store - I shook it off and went back to the garden so that I could work uninterrupted for a while.

I rolled up the remaining landscape fabric (it looks like a bunch of mummies in the garden), pulled up the fence posts, and rolled up chicken wire and hog wire.  The Husband will have to haul some of this out of the garden with the tractor bucket.

The last thing I meant to do was put the tiller back in the shed.  I'd rolled it out of the shed down the ramp in the neutral gear but would have to crank it to get it back up the ramp.  But, wouldn't you know it, when I tried to crank it, the 14-year-old pull cord broke.  

Shame on me for some of the things I said.  ;)

Slightly Unretired - March 13, 2025

Regular reader(s) of this blog may recall that back before I retired, I was working at sorting records. The objective was both to help the departments find their records and to prepare permanent records for eventual transfer to the county archive.  The county archive did not yet formally exist.  There were problems finding space.  The space eventually chosen needed fairly extensive repairs.  I had been chosen as the county archivist.  I had promised The Boss that when the space was ready, I would come back to get the archive going.

I'm going to need a lot of help.

I don't know beans about setting up an archive.  The state archives offers an archivist certification program.  I applied for the class last year, but did not get in.  This year, I was accepted (thank goodness) and will have the first class next month.

Meanwhile, folks from the state archive are coming to town next week to have a look at the space and give me pointers on getting this thing off the ground.  I have no idea what progress has been made on repairs since I retired.  The last time I was in the space - the former county jail - it was creepy as hell.  It won't surprise me to find it just like I left it.

I kind of dread this, and kind of not.  

I have not yet "had enough" of retirement.  I want to try to have a better vegetable garden this year, now that I will have more time to work it.  And I haven't done enough "art stuff" and enough research into things that intrigue me.

But

I have pretty much sat on my ass for the past three months.  It's been cold.  My hobbies have been sedentary activities. I've gained 10 pounds since Christmas.  I should probably leave the house occasionally, though I really don't want to.

We'll see how it goes.

Smoked Oysters - March 11, 2025

I was grown and married and had two kids before anybody ever offered me a smoked oyster from a can. I'd grown up watching my father eat sardines from a can, thinking I'd sooner eat a live minnow.  These oysters looked even worse, mashed onto a round cracker and doused with Tabasco.  It smelled awful.  If I hadn't been drinking, I probably wouldn't have taken it. 

But I did take it (and kept it down), and the next time I saw some in a grocery store, I bought them, and crackers and Tabasco.  For a little while, they became a regular thing around our house.  Even our 4-year-old loved them, Tabasco and all.

Until last week, when I was shopping for road trip snacks, it had been years since I'd bought any. On a whim, I got a can, and Sunday evening, just before I started dinner, I peeled it open (cutting my left thumb on the lid in the process) and got out the crackers and Tabasco - possibly the same bottle from years ago. ;)

I'd just eaten the first one and was fixing the second one when The Husband came through the kitchen.  I offered him the one I was building.  "O M G," he said, "I'd forgotten how good those were!"  We polished off the can, standing at the counter.

As good as the oysters were, I'm not sure they were worth the cut on my thumb. Tin can cuts are the WORST.  Now BOTH my hands are gimped up.

I'm powering through it.  This morning, I raked about 25% of the front yard, cleaning up winter debris of sticks and sweetgum balls so we can mow pretty soon.  I'll feel that in the morning.

But I have to get limbered up.  I've been hibernating since Christmas. And it's time to get the garden ready to plant.  A local greenhouse has put out their cool weather vegetables, and we don't have a spot ready for them.  The tire is about to fall off the big black tiller or I'd be down there tilling up a row right now.  Maybe I can talk The Husband into working on the tiller with me, since we'll still have daylight, courtesy of Daylight Savings Time.

I've been whittling for the past couple of days, in little spurts, until my hands get tired.  Yesterday I worked on a goofy bug-eyed chicken.  Its proportions are all wrong; it is way too fat.  Last night, the knife slipped and it lost part of its top knot.   I could cut off its floppy red parts and turn it into a recognizable toad frog. 

  

Lazy Sunday - March 10, 2025

I was scarcely worth a plugged nickel yesterday.  The same goes for The Husband.

Middle of the afternoon, he said, "I'm going to the dollar store to get a kite for the little girls." 

I said I thought we had one in the closet, and we did.  Surprisingly, all the parts were there.

But it wasn't very windy. 

Nevertheless, we put on our shoes and walked across the road and beckoned The Granddaughters outside.

The Little Rotten Baby came running to me. I picked her up and put her on my hip, and we watched from the front porch while Poppy tried to get the kite airborne. He wasn't having much luck.  After a minute, the LRB said, "He needs to run with it, and it'll work."  I 'bout cracked up.  I haven't seen Poppy run since The Sons drove the car into the pond 40 years ago.

I don't know if they ever got the kite to fly, for I was cold and came back home to work on #3's quilt.

I had taken some quilt blocks on our junkin' trip and had sewed two of them together while we were on the road, but I wasn't satisfied with the result and took out the stitching, and I didn't touch a needle again while we were traveling.  Yesterday, I laid out the blocks and did some measuring and pondered taking the blocks apart and re-assembling them.  But this hand-sewing is painful, and I hate to think about re-doing what I've already done.  One row of the quilt is assembled, and the second row is one seam away from being ready to sew to the first row.  I decided to finish row 2 and see how the seams align with row 1.  If they're too far off, I'll take them apart and try again.

Junkin' - March 9, 2025

Friday morning about 10 a.m., The Husband and I hit the road to Little Rock, where we hoped to score a treasure or two at a 3-day "Vintage" flea market at the fairgrounds.  The Sister- and Brother-in-Law were right behind us in their vehicle.  We reached our hotel about 1 p.m., checked in, and went to the fairgrounds.  We grabbed corn dogs and drinks from food trucks and wolfed them down and went inside the first building to explore.

The vendors were selling mostly decorator stuff and jewelry, nothing that interested us. In less than an hour, we were googling "flea market near me."   For the rest of the afternoon, we shopped the local markets.  Come dinner time, we found a Mexican restaurant not far from our hotel.  It was over-priced, and the food was meh.  

Saturday morning, we googled again and spent about half the day scouring flea markets and not finding much that excited us.  At our final stop in Little Rock, The Husband and I scored an autoharp.  I've wanted one for years.

We decided to "junk" in small towns all the way home, so we stayed off the interstate.  Most of the little towns were dried up, as far as flea market were concerned.  We drove all the way from Little Rock to Forest City before we found another place to shop, and this store had nothing but over-stock stuff.  By the time we'd zoomed through that store, it was closing time, so we headed home.

We played with our autoharp right away.  It was seriously out of tune, and one of the strings broke while we were tuning it.  A new set of 36 strings will cost about as much as the autoharp cost.  We'll have some fun with this thing.

It's good to be home.

I need to get moving today.

Sometime today, I'll need to run to the post office.  The latest craft kit that my BFF sent me is too tedious to stand, so I'm mailing it to her.  ;)

I also have to go to the grocery store for road snacks.

We're taking a short trip this weekend, so I need to gather the necessities.  "Necessities" for most of my trips involve paint and/or fabric.  I'll be leaving the paint home this time, but there'll be a bag of quilt blocks in the car, busy-work for the drive.  

Yesterday, I ran into an unexpected complication with the quilt.  The initial 6 blocks came from a flea market and seemed pretty old.  I ordered more blocks so I could make a larger quilt.  They are slightly - maybe 1/4" - bigger than the original 6.  This is a problem.  The seams are not going to match without a whole lot of fudging.  I may have to take apart the blocks I've already sewn together, re-square all 20 blocks, and start the joining process all over again.  Why did I not square the blocks before I started sewing them together?  I used the cutting and sewing lines printed on the fabric, assuming they were consistent.  Lesson learned.

Fun times, indeed.

Our weekend trip will be to a giant flea market.  The Sister- and Brother-in-Law are going, too.  I've been assuming that we would all ride together in our truck, but last night The Husband said we're taking separate vehicles.  It might be because the BIL and I pick on each other.  ;)

Storm's a-comin' - March 4, 2025

It's supposed to storm here this evening.  It's already windy and overcast.  Granddaughter #2 has a spring concert tonight at the high school, just about the time the storm is supposed to hit. We may get soaked going to/from the car. 

It looks like the quilt block I messed up yesterday is going to work okay after all.  There was just enough slack in the fabric to give me a scant 1/4" of seam allowance. I blind-stitched the two blocks together and then turned the work around and stitched the seam again. It looks okay, and the seam feels sturdy enough to hold.  I've already been in the sewing room this morning to prepare another set of blocks to stitch together tonight.  And did not cut off anything critical in the process.  (Go, me!)  It would probably be a good idea to go ahead and prepare the rest of the blocks for hand-stitching, while the process is fresh in my mind.

The hand stitching is hard, though.  Both of my hands go numb after a few minutes of sewing.  My arthritic index finger has calmed down a little - still sore, but not AS sore - but it's stiff from disuse for two months.  For the past few days, when not using my right hand, I've tried to stretch it to get it back into service. 

This morning when I went out to feed the birds, hollering, "Hey, birds...BREAKFAST!" a wren let out a stream of tweets the instant I went back on the porch.  Are they learning?

Monday (Lettuce) - March 3, 2025

Lord, save me from sharp tools.

I did it again.

I cut the seam allowance off another quilt block.  Did it with the shiny new (and sharp!) rotary cutter I got for Christmas while I was attempting to cut the batting ONLY.  Right on the seam line.  Zip! and it was gone.  

My heart sank.  Worst comes to worse, I can embroider another block and quilt the blasted thing again and move on.  But I don't want to do that until I try a little fudging.  It might work.  I will try it tonight in the recliner.  

All of the blocks (except the 4 I'm about to join together) are laid out on the bed in a spare room.  They all need squaring; this - the squaring - is where I've been screwing up.  

Lord, save me from sharp tools.

Over the weekend, I saw a carving video I wanted to try - an adorably goofy googly-eyed chicken. I had basswood - 2"x2" and 1"x1" - but not the 1.something" the carver was using.  The 2" block was hard for me to hold, which made the carving tough.  I put the 2" block in a bowl of water to soften it and tried to carve a practice chicken on a 1"x1" block.  It lost most of its significant parts before I put the knife down.  I'd be ashamed to show it to you.  

Note to self:  I planted lettuce in a sliced-open bag of dirt today.

Weekend - March 3, 2025

Saturday, a local farmers market opened for the first time this season, and I wanted to go check out the goods.  It was sunny and fairly warm, but the wind was blowing like the dickens, making it seem colder than it was. The vendors had trouble keeping their tents and merchandise from blowing away.  Dust was flying.  We pretty much zoomed through the market and came home.

Sunday morning, we went to church with Nanny, where there was a guest speaker doing a presentation about Charles Wesley's hymns.  Nanny invited us to lunch at her house after church.  I went out to the garden to have a look, but looking was all I did.  

If I am going to have a garden, I'll need to get on it soon.  We did not clean off the garden last fall, and there is landscape fabric that must be taken up and fences that must be taken down before The Husband can run the tractor tiller over the soil.  I should do that today, since it's supposed to storm here tomorrow.  But I probably won't. 

Or, who knows, maybe I will.

Caution - February 28, 2025

Last night, I started quilting the 20th and final block of Granddaughter #3's quilt.  I didn't get far because my arthritic right index finger was acting up, and my left hand was sore from having been stabbed in the palm TWICE while whittling earlier in the day.  I probably won't finish the quilting tonight - it is margarita night, you know - but it will likely be done by Sunday night.  The next job will be sewing the blocks together.

Since both of my hands are sore, I decided that today's task would be to do the machine-sewing part of joining the blocks.  I grabbed two blocks off the stack and took them to the machine.  The machine was threaded with a light taupe thread, needle and bobbin.  I changed the bobbin thread to white, but sewed halfway down my seam before I realized that I had not changed the needle thread.  I said a couple of nasty words, ripped out the seam, and IMMEDIATELY DID THE SAME THING AGAIN.  

What the actual f***?!

I left it.

It's on the inside of the quilt, and it's light enough that it won't show through the fabric.  

I pressed the seam open, trimmed off the over-lapping batting, and hand-stitched the batting edges together.  Then I pressed the block tops' seam allowances under and pinned them in place.  I'll blind stitch the seams by hand.

There may be an issue down the road, when I've sewn the quilted blocks into rows, and it's time to sew the rows together.  The seams may not match perfectly, and there probably won't be a heck of a lot I can do about it.  

We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

I still haven't decided how to bind the quilt.  The quilt is mostly white, with blue, green, and rose embroidery.  A pop of color around the edge might be nice.   Once the blocks are all sewn together, I'll put it on the bed, take its picture, and try some "digital" borders on for size with a paint program.

I've thought about doing a scalloped border, but can't decide how to do it.  Do I just make a chain of half-circles, join them together, and attach them using the same techniques as I used to join the blocks?  And how many do I need?  How big should they be?  OMG, I hate doing math . . . . 

That settles it.  Big 18" scallops, same size as the blocks.

Wonder how to do the corners?

Another bridge . . . . 

Anyway, I started all that to say that, considering my lack of mindfulness for the past couple of days, I should be cautious today.  Herman, the household trickster, is showing out.  ;)

  

Birdwatching - February 25, 2025

I'm having my coffee on the back porch this morning, watching the birds congregate where I tossed out a cupful of bird food.  It's the first day that the temperature has been above freezing at this time of day.  There are cardinals, wrens, chickadees, woodpeckers, titmice, sparrows, and blue jays.  The woodpeckers and the jays run the table.  I probably should have fed them somewhere else, as there will likely be a patch of weeds in that spot come spring. 

I have been trying to train the birds to associate my voice with food.  Every morning when I go out to the porch, I yell, "Hey, birds!  It's time for breakfast!" before I pitch out a cup of food.  This morning, just after I made my "call," the wren squawked a few times, and pretty soon the whole wren family came fluttering in.  

The woodpecker drills the fiberglass basketball goal a couple of times before he comes down for a bite.  I wonder if he's doing Morse Code to tell his partner that the buffet is about to start.    

Anyway . . . . 

This warm weather is making me itch to plant.  Or rake the leaves out of the flower beds.  Or something.  But it's a little early for that.  There are probably still some freezing temperatures in our future.  

Plus, I'm lazy.

And yesterday the mailman delivered a bag of 1" x 1" x 4" chunks of basswood.  So, I could whittle instead of doing yardwork.  ;)

Or work on Granddaughter #3's quilt.  If I'd work at it all day, I could finish the quilting.  The next-to-last block is in progress now.  When the quilting is done, the blocks will have to be sewn together.  I've decided to machine-stitch the blocks' backing, remove the over-lapping batting, and blind-stitching the top.  (I've already tried this with a couple of blocks.  It works.)  And then it'll need binding.  

Maybe it'll be done by summer, when #3's birthday rolls around.

The Gang - February 23, 2025

Let me introduce you to my gang of poets, thieves, and such, courtesy of LINKER - YouTube and alec la casse - YouTube and a few others.  They're lined up in birth order.  

Try not to laugh. 

Or laugh yourself silly.  I don't care. :)

Left to right:

Actually, the left-most one is missing.  The Little Rotten Baby painted him purple and took him home with her. Here he is in his pre-purple state:

The oblong thing in the front of the line-up was meant to be a 'possum.  Or a mouse.  Or an armadillo.  Or an alligator.

The one on the right was shaping up to be William Shakespeare.  Or George Washington. Or Henry Winkler.  Or Billy Bob Thornton from Sling Blade.  

If I had written this post yesterday morning, I would have said that nary a one of the figures is finished (some are beyond repair, having lost noses and such).  However, yesterday afternoon I admitted to myself that I am never going to do anything else to them, so, in a sense, they ARE finished, unless I let the granddaughters have at them with paint.

But what to do with them?  It seems wrong to just rake them into the trash can.

So, if I can figure out how to do it, I'm going to put them on strings and hang them so that they knock together when the wind blows.  

Saturday - February 18, 2025

Saturday was our wedding anniversary.   

Forty-five years. Hard to believe.

My anniversary gift to The Husband was concert tickets.  His gift to me was a - I guess you'd call it a "sun catcher" - a heart-shaped plaque featuring a gray-haired couple and our names and wedding date.  It came with a suction cup hanger.  I was standing by the kitchen stove, about to start breakfast, when The Husband presented it to me, along with a card.  Since the stove was not on, I read the card and opened the gift right there on the stove top.  Cute!  After examining everything, I put the sun catcher back in the box and moved it away from the stove so that I could cook.  Later that morning, The Husband decided to hang it up, but could not find the hanger.  

I looked everywhere for the hanger.  Re-traced my steps all over the house.  Meanwhile, The Husband dug around in the junk drawer, found an old suction cup hanger, and stuck the sun catcher to the inside of the storm door.  

All day, I remained vexed by the disappearance of the suction cup.  I HAD NOT MOVED FROM THE STOVE before putting the stuff back in the box.  Where could the suction cup be?  Eventually, I gave up looking for it.  Maybe there hadn't even been a suction cup in the box. Maybe I'd imagined it.

We went out to dinner that night.  Just as we got out of the car to go into the restaurant, the weather app on my phone started screaming a tornado WARNING.  Black clouds swarmed overhead.  We figured we were about as safe in the restaurant as anywhere, short of a storm shelter, so we went inside and had dinner.

The next morning, when I was putting biscuits in the oven . . . . 

See it?  I slid the towel aside to take the picture.

According to the weather report, it's supposed to start snowing this afternoon.  

I have had enough of winter.

Valentine's Day - February 14, 2025

 The Grandson texted me at 7 a.m. yesterday morning.  

"Do you know if you'll be busy after 3 today?"

I said I would be free.

"Well, you used to run a flower shop, right?" 

I said yes, in another life.

"So you'd know how to make a really good bouquet, I'm assuming?" 

I said maybe and told him to come on over after school.

As expected, he arrived empty-handed.  We went to Kroger.

The floral department was a sea of red, pink, and white flowers and balloons. The sight and smell brought back some not-to-pleasant 30-year-old memories and a few funny ones.  My favorite story is about the guy who came in and ordered 11 roses, with the card to read, "If you're wondering why there are only 11 beauties, just look in the mirror and you'll see the 12th."  He thought it was ever so romantic and clever.  The next day, he came back and ordered one more rose, with the message, "Here's the 12th, you butthead."

But I digress.

The Grandson picked out flowers and candy.  We brought them back to my house, arranged the flowers, wrapped them, and tied a pretty bow around the stems. He intends to present his gifts to his young lady after school today.  

(There is a woodpecker drumming on a fiberglass basketball goal in our back yard.  Since he keeps doing it, I guess he must be enjoying the sound.)

This morning, The Husband and I did our usual Valentine's Day routine of exchanging cards and candy.  I got him a chocolate bar shaped like a pickup truck (how redneck is that?).  It's probably terrible chocolate, but it's cute.  :)

Tonight, our margarita place will probably be even more crowded than usual.  How dare these interlopers complicate our margarita night!  ;)

My mojo isn't working today.  Hasn't worked all weekend.  

Saturday morning, while we were still lazing around after breakfast, The Grandson called, wanting to borrow a necktie for an event happening at school later that night.  He showed up mid-afternoon and stayed until time to pick up his date. 

The Husband spent most of the morning attempting to get Nanny some TV service that suits her.  We got her a new smart(er) TV for Christmas, knowing that she was about to discontinue her old cable service in favor of internet TV.  The change hasn't gone well.  We installed apps to get her to most of her favorite programs, but getting to the local channels proved to be a challenge for her and us.  We should've called in one of the grandchildren.  

When not engaged in strictly necessary duties, I spent the weekend quilting and whittling.  I've got 3.5 (out of 20) blocks left to hand quilt before I have to decide how I'm going to set them together.  The quilting goes fairly fast, especially on nights when there's something worth watching on TV, but my sore finger won't let me work at either quilting or whittling for very long stretches.  Saturday, I carved a little raccoon that currently looks more like a long-tailed bear. Hopefully, his species will be more apparent once he's painted.  Last night, I tried carving a little old woman but accidentally cut off so many of her body parts that her gender - and maybe even her species! - is questionable.  

I have not yet tried to paint any of my whittlings.  They need to be oiled first.  This weekend, I bought linseed oil for that purpose.

I should go do it.

Sib Day - February 6, 2025

Yesterday, my siblings and I hung out together for a couple of hours.  We started with lunch at a local (to me) restaurant.  We sat and talked for a long time, then my brother said, "I think I'm going to take a drive.  Who wants to go?"  My sister and I said to count us in.  The sibs followed me to my house to drop off my car, and I climbed in with them.

We drove past our grandfather's farm and the house where we grew up (Son #1 lives there now).  We drove down through the river bottom, reminiscing about the times we'd been there with our father.  We drove to the cemetery where nearly 200 years' worth of our ancestors are buried.  When our route was complete, we came back to my house for coffee.  It was a fun visit.

Later, as I was standing at the stove, cooking supper, my back started itching.  I scratched it through my shirt, but it kept itching, so I reached under my shirt to give it a good scratch.  When my nails went across the itchy spot, I felt something move, as if I'd scratched across a big, floppy skin tag.  I did not remember having a skin tag there, so I went to the bathroom to have a look in the mirror.  The itchy spot was inflamed and red, and there appeared to be a clump of dried blood stuck to it.  I reached around to remove it, and had to YANK it three times before it came off.  IT WAS A TICK!  I nearly went spastic.  

I took off my shirt and got out a hand mirror to examine the spot.  It seemed that there was something hanging out of it.  After a bit of scraping and pinching, I pulled a thread-like thing from the center of the spot.  I guess it was the tick's proboscis, or whatever it's called.  I nearly went spastic again, and when The Husband came home a few minutes later, I made him examine the spot with a magnifying glass to make sure no tick parts remained.

I didn't sleep much last night for scratching and thinking about ticks.

Check yourself!

LRB Day - February 5, 2025

Yesterday, I babysat the Little Rotten Baby for a few hours.  

Her little curly-headed self strutted in about noon, carrying a bag of Cheetos and a travel mug full of sweet tea.  About the first thing she said to me was, "I'm gonna need you to get my horse."  She was talking about the big wooden rocking horse that my father-in-law built for Granddaughter #1's first Christmas, nearly 20 years ago.  Every grandchild in the family has claimed it for a time.  It weighs about 30 pounds and cannot be moved without mashing a toe or bruising a shin.  I wrestled it from the spare bedroom to the living room, and she climbed on and began issuing other directives.  

When she tired of the rocking horse, we worked a jigsaw puzzle, read some books, and drew "talky faces" on our thumbs and index fingers.  Eventually, she ventured into the kitchen and spied the wooden carvings on the table.  She brought one to me and said, "I need to paint this."  

She paints with watercolors every time she comes over, but I hadn't yet let her get into the acrylic paints.  I almost said "no."  All of the little figures lacked fine detail work, and I wanted to finish them before painting them.  

On the other hand, they're all pretty crappy, and what would I do with them, anyway?

So I got out the acrylic paints, stripped the LRB down to her drawers (so she wouldn't get paint on her clothes), and gave her the owl, my first carving, the worst of the lot.  

The paints she picked out were not very owlish - pink, seafoam green, robin's egg blue, and purple.  I did not discourage her color choices, but I did show her pictures of real owls and played some hoots for her.  She started with pink and made her way through the rest of the colors, and so for a while her owl was a rainbow, but he was 100% purple when she took him home.

Saturday doings - February 2, 2025

Yesterday, we had stuff to do.  At 11 a.m., we went to a memorial service for someone The Husband had worked with.  He was one of the best dudes I have ever known.  He was 89 and had only recently stopped volunteering at a local men's mission.  His kind-hearted ways reminded me of my daddy.  

The memorial service was over at noon.  There was a meal in the church fellowship hall after the service, but I did not want to stay for it.  At 2, there was to be a "new vendor presentation" at a local farmer's market, where my BFF and I are considering setting up a booth to sell our handiwork.  Even though it'll probably be next year before we'll be ready to do a booth, I wanted to go to this meeting to see what we'll be facing if/when we decide to go for it.  We were out of there by 3.

The last thing on my list was to return the Bob Ross toaster to Hobby Lobby.  Pictures on my phone indicate that I bought this toaster on January 9.  I made toast with it as soon as I got home from the store and was sorely disappointed at the image on it left on the bread.  Also, it felt flimsy, and the slots were so shallow that the top of the bread didn't toast.  After a few uses, the knobs started to misbehave.  In short, it was a piece of crap, and after using it a few times, I decided to return it.  It was the principle of the thing.  Unfortunately, by then, I'd discarded the box, but I had saved the receipt (a miracle in itself) and our old toaster.

I'd cleared the return with the store manager earlier in the week, after breakfast with The Aunts.  I didn't have the toaster with me at the time, so the manager said to ask for her when I returned the toaster.  So we go into the store, and I asked for the manager by name.  Well, guess what?  She no longer works there.  An associate went looking for the current manager.

When I saw this woman coming, I expected trouble. She was scowling.  I was prepared to go full-on Towanda on her.  She wanted to argue with me, but I quickly raised my voice loud enough for bystanders to hear and said, "It's a piece of crap, and not worth what I paid for it, and I'd like my money back."  Surprisingly, the woman backed down and authorized the return.

Took me a good hour to get my adrenaline level down.

Beaver - February 1, 2025

I've had the heebie-jeebies all week.  Bad news on TV, and frustration over people not getting right back to me when I have questions had me all stirred up.  After writing yesterday's post, I gave myself a good talking-to about this week's lack of productivity.  I tidied up my workspace and sat down to paint watercolor Valentine's Day cards for my grandchildren.  I whipped out three of the five cards in nothing flat, then I decided to scour YouTube for ideas for the other two.

And, wouldn't you know it, YouTube sneaked in suggestions about things totally un-related to Valentine's Day, and I got side-tracked.

Carve a Simple Beaver -Knife Only Tutorial (1x1 series)

I'd watched a few minutes of this carving tutorial earlier in the week and had even marked out some carving lines on a 1" x 1" x 4" chunk of basswood.  The beaver, himself, was supposed to turn out only 2" tall, but I was carving him on a 4" tall stick so I'd have more to hold onto while I worked.  (The plan was to cut off the excess later.)  I put on my gloves, picked up my knife, and got to work.

Having accidentally cut off the noses and ears of everything I'd carved to date, I was expecting the beaver's teeth to give me trouble.  Sure enough, they did.  But by the time The Husband got home from work, I'd managed a somewhat respectable first draft.

Try not to laugh. 

When he came into the kitchen, I asked, "Want to see my beaver?"

His eyebrows went up.

"It's on a pedestal," I added, snickering, as I showed him my handiwork.

He nodded.  "It's been mounted," he said.

Cracked me up.  :)

The beaver is still a little fuzzy, needs some cleaning up.  And its pedestal must come off before I can finish its feet. But I've got other obligations this weekend, so the beaver will have to wait.

From the back porch - January 31, 2025

This has not been a very productive week, as far as output is concerned.  I did not do a single painting, and none of my little carvings turned out well.  

Tomorrow, I am going to attend a "vendor presentation" at a local farmer's market.  I do not intend to be a vendor any time soon, but I'd like to know what's required if I ever do set up a booth.

My BFF and I have been wanting to do something with our various talents.  She makes lovely baskets and jewelry, and she builds birdhouses and such.  Gives it all away.  I make things with needles and thread and give it all away.  We wonder if selling our wares might help justify the amount of time and money we spend on indulging our creative urges.  

I've done booths at two street fairs.  When I did the first one, I was making ladies hats.  Not knitted/crocheted hats, but "real" hats.  However, at that time, few ladies wore "real" hats, and I did not even recoup the cost of the booth.  Hats would probably sell better now, but I became so totally OVER making hats that, during "the great purge," I donated all of my hat-making paraphernalia to a fashion school in Texas.  I didn't do much better at the second street fair.  

If BFF and I decide to try a booth at a craft show or farmer's market or street fair, we probably should not expect to strike it rich or become famous.  ;)  If we do a booth at the local farmer's market (which would be something of a production, since we live 300 miles apart), it can't happen until next year, as neither of us currently has anything left to sell.

And I don't even have a plan.  When I imagine what my side of the booth might contain, it's full of stuff that I'm not yet good at making.  

This is a problem.

Whittlin' - January 29, 2025

Sunday morning, I went outside to find some wood to whittle.  I lopped small branches off live cherry and Polonia trees.  (The Polonia wood is strange. It has a hole in the center of the limb.  Is this characteristic?)  I gathered dry sticks from limbs that had fallen during the snow storm. The new wood proved easier to carve than the dry wood, but it was still tougher to carve than the wood that came in the carving kit.  I managed a rather messy tiny owl using the cherry wood.  

Mid-morning, I left off carving and went to pick up my grocery order.  On the way home, I stopped by the hardware store and got some pine sticks to try.    The pine was pretty tough to carve, too.  

By nightfall, my right index finger was giving me fits.  This is the finger that swelled up for no apparent reason the day after I retired (a few days after Christmas).  It's hard to even hold a pencil.  I suspected that the swelling was from arthritis, but worried that I'd cracked a bone or jammed it or something, so Monday I went to the doctor's office for an x-ray.  Diagnosis: arthritis.  

Lovely.  

Reasoning that using the finger would not damage it further since it wasn't broken, I whittled all afternoon, using the store-bought wood.  I got an ugly, half-finished, little bald pine man for my efforts.  

Yesterday morning, I went out to breakfast with my sister and our two aunts.  We had a lovely time.  Afterwards, I stopped by the hobby store to get some soft wood.  They had basswood and balsa.  I got a little of each and came home and carved a gnome out of the basswood.  I accidentally cut off his nose twice.  He got smaller and smaller and smaller.  Basically, he's a floppy hat, a honkin' big moustache, and some feet.

This may not be my "calling."  :)

I am scared of the knife, and with my sore index finger stuck out like a flag pole, it's hard to make deep, precise cuts in the wood.  

Nevertheless, it's a strangely calming hobby (blood-letting worries aside), and I'm going to keep at it until something else demands my time.  This morning, I sketched out a beaver on a 1" x 1" x 2" piece of basswood.  It will most likely lose its big protruding teeth at least once.  ;)

Funny (unrelated) story:

The LRB got in trouble this weekend.

Her mother noticed she'd gone quiet and went looking for her.  They have four dogs and a cat in the house, and one of them had pooped in the floor, and my D-I-L stepped in it on the way to find the LRB.  She called out to Granddaughter #3 to go see what the baby was doing while she (the D-I-L) cleaned up the poop.  Granddaughter #3 came back giggling.  She's found the LRB in the bathroom.  The LRB had also stepped in the poop and was busy scrubbing it off her shoe . . . with her mother's toothbrush.

The Birds - January 26, 2025

This Bird . . . . 

My last post showed a picture of The Bird in progress.  At that point, the instructions weren't making good sense to me, and I was stalled out.  My bird looked too thick, but I was scared to shave him down in the manner the instructions seemed to indicate.  There was a video to go along with the instruction booklet, but it didn't answer my questions.

So I YouTubed.

As a result, I now have a burning desire to carve little men, and owls, and rabbits . . . . oh, my!

This guy was my favorite.  

Whittle a 2" Man -Simple Beginner Friendly Full "Knife Only " Woodcarving Tutorial (1x1 series) - YouTube

There were also other videos about carving The Bird.  I watched them.  Finally, on Friday, I picked up the knife, wanting to get The Bird off my plate so I can carve little men and owls and rabbits.  I managed an acceptable bird.  It needs sanding and waxing.  I vowed to get that done this weekend.

Yesterday morning, my arthritic finger was pretty sore from Friday's workout, so I piddled around with other things for a while, and later in the afternoon, Granddaughter #3 and the Little Rotten Baby came over.  We painted and sewed and read books, and I did not get any more work done on The Bird.

I'm going to finish it TODAY, after I pick up my grocery order.

The grocery order is supposed to include some 1" wooden dowels.  If they're out of stock, well, there's a hardware store right next door.  ;)