Stove Up - June 3, 2025

OMG...I can barely move today.

I was in the community garden by about 8:30 yesterday morning.  The 10' x 10' plot had been tilled fairly well in the middle, but the edges were hard and full of grass and weeds.  I spent about an hour digging out the grass and hauling it away.  Then I filled a wheelbarrow with compost, trucked it to my plot, and spread it.  While I worked, some students and their instructor from the agriculture class at the Voc-Tech school showed up to work on their plot.  They took turns on a tractor, tilling up another plot.  The tractor had a bucket on it, and while the youngsters were driving it, I eased over to the instructor and said, "If you want to teach them how to use the bucket, I could use a couple of scoops of that compost."  My plot is in a corner, where space too tight for the tractor, so instead of bringing the compost to my plot, the instructor dumped it inside the gate, and I had to shovel it into the wheelbarrow and truck it to the plot.  It took about 6 loads to cover the plot with about 3-4 inches of compost.  I planted nothing but purple hull peas.

On the way home, I stopped by the hardware store for a bag of wild bird food.  The caked bird food that we smashed with a hammer and put in the fancy-schmancy bird feeder is evidently not to the birds' liking, for they rarely visit it.  I came home with the intention of dumping the old bird food out and re-filling the feeder with the new, loose stuff.  The caked stuff had re-caked inside the feeder and would not come out.  And it was 5 or 6 feet off the ground, where I had trouble reaching it.  I had to take the feeder off the pole to get the old stuff out, had to hack it with a knife and jet it out with the water hose.  And then I could not get the feeder back on the pole.  The bolts wouldn't grip - it was like there weren't any threads in the bolt holes - and they just fell out instead of "catching."  

I gave up on trying to re-attach the feeder until The Husband came home.  As it turned out, I didn't need to take out the bolts to remove the feeder from its bracket, I just needed to lift it straight up.  But in all the jostling in un-screwing the feeder (I dropped it a couple of times), I'd lost some little nuts that had been underneath the feeder.  That's why the bolts weren't catching.  I searched for the nuts all over the yard but couldn't find them.  Fortunately, we have a collection of stray nuts, bolts, screws, nails, etc., and we were able to find four bolts and four nuts that fit reasonably well into the bolt holes.  The feeder is back on the pole, with non-sticky bird seed in it.

Granddaughter #3 wants a "cake with fondant" for her birthday.  I've never worked with fondant.  This morning, I have been watching videos.  I think I can do it.  I'll be out hunting for supplies today.  #3 is into gymnastics, so that's the theme I'll use for the cake.