Something to do - July 25, 2025

Today, I've spent a little time working on the lavender quilt.  The 24 hexagon flowers are assembled and ready to apply to the background fabric.  I intended to hand-stitch the flowers to the background with a big blanket stitch using dark violet pearl cotton thread - did three or four that way, then looked over at the ball of thread and realized that there is not enough of it left to do all 24 flowers.  I don't have enough embroidery floss in that color, either.  Yes, I could do some blocks in lavender, but I want the flowers edged with dark violet, dang-it.  So I decided to machine applique the flowers to the background, using the machine's built-in blanket stitch, the biggest one it's got (5mm x 5mm).  Turning the corners with a blanket stitch is a bit tricky, but it looks okay.  About a third of them are done.

I am not in a great hurry to finish this quilt.  It's going on a bed in "the girls' room."  It's a canopy bed that I've had since I was about 10.  The canopy currently has no cover; I'll get around to finding or making one when the quilt is finished.  

It won't be violet.

The room is yellow, with white lace curtains.  No way I'm re-painting that room.   It'll be fine.  The hexagon flower centers are yellow.

Anyway . . . .

I'm itching for something else to do.  Wednesday, I worked on the bead-wrapping craft kit that my friend sent - the one where they shorted the wire.  The kit contained two beads - one flat, rectangular bead, and one round-ish bead the size of a big grape.  The instructions for wrapping the flat bead confused me, but after a bit of trial and error, the stone managed to stay within the wire setting.  After wrapping the square bead, I decided that there is no f*ing way I'm going to try the round bead.  I am not up to unnecessary stress right now!  

I've been watching random videos in hopes of finding something interesting.  I've watched a lot of this lady's quilting videos:

Some BEADS and a necklace for all this not-going-out I’m doing!

Her videos are calming.  Who couldn't use a little calming right now?  The one above was filmed during the early days of covid, during a lockdown.  Back then, while she was stringing beads, I was doing grown-up paint-by-number pictures.  

I have no idea where those paintings are now.  

Ugh - July 24, 2025

Ugh.

I am so sick of the news.  Of the shenanigans.  

So I'll just blog.

It's not my normal time of day to write - my brain is usually toast by this time - but little has been normal about the last two days.

Yesterday, I started the day with a knock on the head.  Seriously.  I was crawling around on the floor near an ironing board on which sat a recently-used iron.  Thank goodness it had cooled off some or I would've sustained burns in addition to a cut (and eventually a knot), for I bumped into the ironing board and knocked the iron off on my head.  It was the start to an altogether pissy day spent unsuccessfully trying to get my Social Security benefits started.  

Today, The Husband is off work - off for the rest of the week and next week, in fact.  We've been in, "I don't know...where do YOU want to go?" mode for the past few days.  I thought we were going to hit the road to Muscle Shoals today, where we'd like to tour some recording studios and listen to music at W.C. Handy week for the next couple of days.  But we had things to do around here.  We took Nanny's van to the shop to have the brakes inspected.  Went to the hardware store.  Forgot half of what we were going for.

One of the things we wanted was something to seal the concrete birdbath.  Water leaks out of it, dripping slowly off the bottom of the rim. I'm convinced the birdbath is soaking up the water until it can't hold any more, then starts dripping.  We want to seal the outside and bottom.  A can of FlexSeal cost almost $20 at the hardware store.   I knew there was a can of it in a cabinet on the porch, so I didn't get it at the store on the chance that what was in the cabinet was still usable.  Nope, it was dried up.  

We forgot to get lawnmower blades, so when I took The Husband back to the repair shop to pick up the van, he went to the hardware store for the blades.  They didn't have them, and he forgot to get the FlexSeal.  So the birds will have to keep using the farm pond until I get this figured out.

Hot! - July 21, 2025

It's just shy of 7 a.m., and it's already nearly 80 degrees.  "Extreme heat" warnings are in effect all over the south, with "feels like" temps well above 100 degrees.  The humidity is like a wet blanket.

Yesterday morning after breakfast, as The Husband and I were on the back porch, watching birds grabbing food from the bird feeder and taking to their young, he said, "I bet the birds would like it if we put the bird bath near the feeder."  I thought it was a great idea.  This concrete bird bath is about 20 years old, and for the past 10 years or so has been stashed near the back wall of the house, under a crape myrtle tree.  It was full of crape myrtle trash and, except when it rained, never had a drop of water in it.  For the past 5 years or so, it has been the repository for the souvenir rocks that The Husband picks up when we travel.   

We cleaned out the bird bath and moved it to a spot a couple of feet away from the bird feeder.  It looks good there, being at the far end of the new flower bed I planted in the sunny spot where the tree fell last spring.  We have not seen any birds availing themselves of the handy water supply.  I guess they need a couple of days to decide whether or not it's okay.

After working up a sweat moving the bird bath, I went to the vegetable garden to check on things.  The squash plants are growing well, but there was only one tiny squash on one vine.  The plants were loaded with blooms - male blooms, most of which should be removed (I intend to get to that later today).  The okra is knee high and doing well.  The cucumbers look pitiful, as do the tomatoes.  Weeds had sprouted along the edges of the rows where there was no mulch.  I spent about an hour pulling weeds and then came home (it was high noon by then, and sweat was pouring off of me), intending to go back later to cut off squash blooms and finish the weeding.

I came back to the house, sat down on the back porch to cool off, and found three ticks crawling on my legs.  One of them had already begun to drill.  Ticks TOTALLY creep me out.  I hurried to the shower, where I could do a full-body tick inspection.  The sweaty, potentially tick-infested clothes went straight to the laundry, along with the rest of the sweaty gardening clothes I'd worn for the past few days.  I did not set foot in the garden again that day.  

Today, my niece and I are going to my sister's house.  She promised to feed us lunch if we would help her decide "what to do with her yard."  This invitation must be a ruse, for her yard is already lovely.  ;)

It's been really hot this week, and humid on top of that.  Yardwork was limited to watering some transplants whose moves were ill timed.

I have not set foot in the vegetable garden all week.  I'll probably have a look at it later today or tomorrow, and it will probably be full of nasty surprises, like tomato worms and squash bugs.  Because I retired in January, this year was supposed to be the year that I raised a fabulously abundant, weed-free vegetable garden.  Unfortunately, excessive rain ruined everything.

The squash, zucchini, and cucumber seeds I planted in a "mini greenhouse" tray a week ago have not sprouted.  They've had plenty moisture and sunshine.  It must just be too stinkin' hot for those plants, and the seeds know it.  Yesterday, I moved them out of direct sun into shade.  If they don't sprout in a few days, I'll plant some new seeds and try again.

Yesterday, I checked on the purple hull peas in the community garden.  They are doing great!  The plants look very healthy and are loaded with peas.  They'll probably need picking toward the end of the week.  

I have not yet planted a second plot in the community garden.  There's probably still time to produce another crop of peas, but the empty plots are seriously grassy and will need cleaning out before I can plant.  I'll need to take little red tiller up there to get the job done.  But the heat . . . .  Maybe we'll get a little bit of a break from it this week.  (Fingers crossed.)

Mauled - July 15, 2025

I wish you could see my arms.  They look as though they've been mauled, and they have, in a way - by dogs, plants, and old age.

It doesn't take much to draw a bruise on my arms.  A lot of this unsightly-ness is simply from things like bumping against a door frame.  My right arm is littered with spots in various shades of red and purple.  Near my right elbow are a couple of 2"-long scratches, courtesy of Roscoe.  The nastiest boo-boo is on the inside of my left forearm, where I SNIPPED INTO A VEIN with pruning shears yesterday while trying to cut hydrangea limbs away from the air-conditioner unit.

It was just a tiny snip, but I "bled like a stuck hog," as Daddy used to say.  

"Go get me a paper towel and a band-aid," I hollered to The Husband, who was on the back porch.  By the time I got there, blood was dripping down my hand at an alarming rate.  I washed the blood off with the water hose while he went for first aid supplies.  It was not a big cut, just a snip in the wrong place.  The pressure of the band-aid stopped the bleeding, but before long a slight - maybe a hematoma? - developed around the wound.  It's not getting any worse, so I guess I'll live.

That mishap just took the wind out of my sails for the rest of the day.  

However, scattered visits from all 5 of my grandchildren cheered me up later in the afternoon.  The Grandson showed up around lunchtime with a friend, a young man who graduated with him.  I was cooking up a gourmet lunch of Manwich Sandwich, and when I offered to feed the boys, The Grandson looked as if he was about to take the offer, but his visitor declined, and so did he.  They weren't here 30 minutes.  A couple of hours later, Granddaughter #3 came in, and a few minutes after that, #'s 2, 4, and 1 arrived.  #1 came to finish her quilt; she took it home with her last night.  (I was so proud of her!)  

#4 (the LRB) was full of herself.  She required Poppy and me to get down on the floor to work jigsaw puzzles and assemble a Thomas train set left over from The Grandson.   (I bet we have a thousand dollars worth of Thomas stuff!)  She promised to help us up when we finished.  ;)  

Zapless - July 13, 2025

Yesterday morning, when The Husband let Roscoe out for a potty break, Roscoe decided to go to his home across the road.  The Husband followed him over there and let Roscoe in the house, and then The Husband began searching for the zapper, the remote control for Roscoe's "training collar."  Son #2 had left it on the kitchen counter.  The Husband and I had both seen it there when we'd kenneled Roscoe the previous night, but it was not on the counter yesterday morning.

I'd been there earlier that morning and had considered bringing the zapper home when I brought Roscoe to our house.  When The Husband called to ask if I'd moved the zapper, I could not remember if I'd picked it up.  I scanned the convenient "drop-off" surfaces at our house but didn't find it.  Thus began a day-long search for the zapper.

I tore our house apart several times, retraced every step I'd made during the day.  I repeated the process at Son #2's house.  The Husband was looking, too.  We could not find it.  It was baffling.

Then I saw the cat, Duffy, sprawled in a chair.  I said to The Husband, "I bet Duffy knows where it is.  He probably knocked it off the counter and batted it until it went under some piece of furniture."  Duffy was not forthcoming with any information.  We moved couches and chairs, and looked under anything with legs tall enough to accommodate the zapper.  

Nothing.

Finally, we resolved ourselves to buying Roscoe another collar and zapper.

Late in the afternoon, The Husband texted Son #2 to confess that we'd lost the zapper but would get another one.  "That's okay.  We seldom use it," #2 said.  Then a few minutes later, we got a text from our daughter-in-law.  Her mother had taken their other two dogs, Sarge and Ollie, to her house while #2's family was gone, and sometime between the time I went to get Roscoe that morning and the time he took himself back home, she'd let herself in #2's house and had taken the zapper to use on Sarge (who would not stop gnawing at a hot spot).

I busted out laughing.  

Roscoe - July 12, 2025

Son #2's family went on a short, necessary road trip this weekend.  They have 3 dogs - small, medium, and extra large - which they've farmed out to the grandparents.  We got Roscoe, a Great Dane.  

A dog that size is simply ridiculous, but whatcha gonna do?  

Roscoe is well trained for a leash, and he goes in his kennel without protest when commanded to do so.  Since he lives just across the street, and since he is used to sleeping in his kennel at night, after a late-night run, poop, and watering, we left him home alone overnight.  I went home and got him about 6:30 this morning, fed him, and brought him to my house.  After he sniffed around all the rooms (tracking his four girls, I imagine), he was content to hang out on the back porch with me, unaware that he could get a running start at a screen and set himself free.  

Anyway . . . .

I wasn't paying much attention to him until I heard something rattle behind me.  I looked around and saw that he was batting a mousetrap around, with a mouse in it.  I'd set that trap on top of a cabinet days ago, after finding mysterious shredded stuff on the cabinet.  I don't know whether Roscoe got it down or whether the impact of the trap threw it to the floor.  In any case, I took it away from him, disposed of the mouse, and put the trap (unset) back on the cabinet.  In the process, I figured out what the shredded stuff was; it was the outer shells of butternut squash seeds, an open package of which I'd left on the cabinet.  I guess the mouse shelled them and ate them right there on the cabinet.  

After breakfast, The Husband took Roscoe outside to pee, and Roscoe went straight home, loped up on the porch, and stared at the door.  The kennel door was open.  Roscoe went straight in and laid down.  

I guess he'd had enough of us.

It's kinda mutual.  ;)

Snake - July 11, 2025

Last night about 9:30, The Husband came out to the porch in an uncharacteristic rush for that time of night.  He grabbed a walking stick and a long-handled ice scraper from the corner.  I said, "What in the world...?"

"There's a snake in Jamie's kitchen!"

Jamie is a cousin and our next-door neighbor, a single woman.  She is scared of snakes.  She'd called her uncle to come deal with the snake, but he was not home, so she'd texted The Husband for help.  Armed with a flashlight and his long-handled weapons, he took out across the yard at a pretty good clip.

Twenty minutes later, I saw two flashlight beams headed in my direction.  Son #2 was holding the second flashlight.  "I called for reinforcement!" The Husband said.  To hear him tell it, the snake was an escape artist.  It had been on the kitchen counter when The Husband arrived, but as he tried to wrangle it, it zoomed up into the window blinds over the sink and wedged itself into the crevices around the window.  He tried to dig it out with a kitchen spatula but was unsuccessful.  That's when he called Son #2 from across the road.  

Son #2 was carrying a hollow plastic tube about 4 feet long with a wire loop extending from one end.  He'd hurriedly engineered a snake lasso.  He was carrying a plastic shopping bag.  

I asked, "Did you get it?"  They had.  It was in the shopping bag.

"Do you want to see it?" Son #2 asked.

"Is it still alive?"

"Yeah."

"NO!  GET IT OUT OF HERE AND OFF IT!"

It was a scarlet king snake, a non-poisonous type.  The menfolk decided not to kill it; they were going to take it down to the creek and turn it loose.  As Son #2 was trying to let it out of the bag, it wrapped itself around the handle.  He had to whack it on a rock to make it turn loose.

The Husband said that this is the SECOND snake found in Jamie's house in the past week.  The cat found the first one under Jamie's bed.  She'd seen another one in her garage.

You could not pay me to sit on her couch right now.  ;)

Long weekend, late seedlings started - July 8, 2025

Cousin Gus hosted his annual barbeque cookout for Independence Day.  For the first time in my memory, the blessing of the food (and the cooks and the country) did not occur at straight-up noon.  When we arrived at 11:45, his wife was striding across the yard to the farm shop, where the grilling had occurred.  As we were unloading our contributions to the meal, Mrs. Gus came back, announcing, "He was in there ASLEEP!"  (He'd been up most of the night.)  He came right behind her with a tray of foil-wrapped meat.  The Husband and I put down our stuff, washed our hands, and helped pull the shoulders. If you have never had pulled pork shoulder hot off the grill, you are missing something.  By the time the shredding job was done, we were about full.

The crowd was thin this year.  New baby in one family, other folks out of town.  Nanny was in the hospital, waiting to be released, having been admitted two days earlier with a touch of pneumonia.  The Husband and his sister left to retrieve her as soon as they'd eaten.  Although we were not hungry at supper time, we still had our margarita night with the Brother- and Sister-in-Law.  No entrees, just cheese dip and margaritas.

Saturday, I cajoled The Husband into helping me carpet the un-planted parts of the garden with landscape fabric.  When we finished, I came home and did some weed-eating.  Sunday, I worked in the yard, picking up sticks and pulling weeds, then I started some seeds - cucumbers, squash, and zucchini - for late summer crops, either in the community garden or in my own garden.  I need to get some broccoli and cabbages started soon.  

Yesterday was errand day.  When I finally got home and put everything away, I fired up the limb grinder and chipped up a load of sticks I'd picked up from the yard earlier in the week and then scrubbed some grubby lawn chairs.  My backyard activities have been regularly documented by the bird feeder camera.  This morning, it caught me in the backyard in my nightgown, wearing The Husband's shoes (they were closest to the door), when I went out to dump something on the compost pile.  I am not sure I like this.  Heaven only knows where those pictures are stored for posterity.  

Today I had lunch with my Old Boss.  Afterward, I dropped by the community garden.  The purple hull peas are beginning to bloom.  I pulled weeds from the walkway surrounding my plot, and eyeballed the empty plots, trying to decide if I really want to take on another job.  If I do, it needs to be something that will produce QUANTITIES of food.  I thought about okra, but I live 15 miles from the community garden, and okra needs to be cut about every other day, once it gets going; I don't want that obligation.  I could plant another round of peas, but one 10' x 10' plot of unshelled peas might feed one family one or two meals, and that's not very productive.  

My afternoon gardening plans just got put on hold by rain.  I'm not all that upset about it.  ;)

Community Garden Check-up - July 3, 2025

It had been over a week since I checked on the purple hull peas in the community garden, so I drove to town to see about them this morning.  They are doing surprisingly well.  The first plants that sprouted look great.  The seedlings from the re-planting are coming up well.

There were unfamiliar weeds in the plot.  This year, I moved cotton gin trash into my plot, having been assured that any chemicals from the cotton field had disappeared.  Maybe so, but I suspect that the "new" weeds in my plot came from weed seeds from the cotton field.  I pulled them all up and trashed them.

The plot next to mine is seriously unkempt.  Bermuda grass is sneaking across the walkway.  I cleared it away and also pulled up some of the nut grass and other weeds from the edge of their plot closest to mine.  In the process, I uncovered cucumbers that are about to get too big.  I sent the garden manager a text about the cucumbers needing to be picked, but I did not pick them.  

I came home, did some weed-eating around the yard, and then mowed it.  I am not happy with the new lawnmower blades.  The Husband and I both thought the deck was a 42" deck, and I bought blades for that size deck.  It turns out that our deck is 46".  We did not think using the shorter blades would make a difference (except a 4" narrower cutting path), but it does.  The mower left a skinny little line of uncut grass between the blades.  

Canned Tomatoes - July 1, 2025

(What?  It's July, already?)

When I came out to the porch yesterday morning, there sat the tomatoes we picked last week.  Most of the under-ripe ones I picked Saturday had turned red.  The ones that Nanny picked earlier in the week had reached perfect ripeness; a few of them were a little too ripe and had to be tossed.  Time to can them.  I ended up with 6 pints.

Late in the day, Granddaughter #1 came over to work on her quilt.  When she began to sew the first two rows together, the sewing machine needle broke.  It scared her; she was afraid she had ruined the machine.  Not to worry.  I have a stash of machine needles.  The problem was sewing over the seams.  This quilt is backed with minky, and the batting is - I don't know what it is - it's thick and squishy and slightly furry.  She's sewing it together so that the seams are exposed, and at the junction of every block, there are TWELVE layers of fabric to sew through.  "Go slowly," I told her.  She ended up hand-cranking the needle through the fabric at the seams.  

My lavender quilt is progressing slowly.  I'm hand-piecing the hexagon flowers at night in my recliner.  I'm turning under and basting the outer edges of the flowers and, if things go as originally planned, I'll blanket-stitch them to the background fabric with purple pearl cotton thread.

The current plan is to make 24 10"x10" hexagon flower blocks and alternate them with 24 blocks of a different design - something like this:

But I don't like that square block in the middle.  Which is sad, because the WHOLE QUILT design was originally built around that little square of fabric.  

I am toying with the idea of nixing the square blocks idea, altogether, and making the whole quilt out of hexagons.  (They call that pattern "Grandma's flower garden," I think.)  Gonna have to ponder that a little more.