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.