Birthday doings - April 29, 2020

The Husband had a reasonably well-acknowledged birthday, I suppose.

His co-workers decorated his office with balloons and gave him a basket full of his favorite snacks and a walker.  Yes, a walker.  LOL!  I told him I would make him a pouch that he can velcro onto his walker so he can carry his ukulele with him wherever he goes.  ;)

I made The Husband's favorite birthday cake - German chocolate cake with coconut-pecan frosting - and fed him a steak for dinner.  He received lots of calls and texts and messages wishing him a happy birthday.  It seems like he had a pretty good birthday.

I spent most of the afternoon working on The Granddaughter's quilt.  It will take 30 log cabin blocks, 20 striped square blocks, and a bunch of half-square blocks to finish out the edges.  The log cabin blocks are almost complete - just have one more round of strips to sew around the blocks.  Only 8 of the striped square blocks are done, and those are such a pain.

The Grandson spent the night here last night.  He just rolled out of bed and asked what's for breakfast.  He wants pancakes.  Time to cook.

Dried butterbeans - April 28, 2020

I cooked dried baby lima beans for dinner last night.  This was a first for me.  Oh, I've cooked plenty dried beans in my lifetime, but I've learned that not all dried beans cook the same.  I soaked them for the recommended time and cooked them for the recommended time (plus 2 more hours!), but about 50% of the beans WOULD NOT GET DONE.  The rest went to mush.  Is this common for dried lima beans?

Today is The Husband's birthday.  We can't have a party, not even for the relatives on the hill - we're all practicing social distancing.  But I am going to make him a birthday cake.  And I'm going to grill him a steak instead of making him eat leftover meatloaf and rattle-y lima beans.  Thankfully, one of his  presents arrived yesterday, so it won't be a total non-birthday kind of day.  We'll just think of it as being spread out over however long it takes for his presents to arrive. 

Yesterday I worked on The Granddaughter's quilt.  It's coming along.  The log cabin blocks are fast and easy to assemble.  The striped squares, not so easy.  I created a world of trouble for myself when I decided to try this:

I  may have said this in another post, but I took The Granddaughter to the fabric store and asked her to pick out one piece of fabric that she loved.  The plan was to use that fabric as the basis for the whole design.  Here's what she picked:

You can't tell it from the picture, but that stripe is printed DIAGONALLY on the fabric.  It will almost cross your eyes to look at it.  It kind of "radiates" when I look at it.  The fabric automatically said, "quilt border."  But it seemed necessary to incorporate that stripe into the main part of the quilt top, too.  I wanted to use it in big sections, to better show the fabric design, since it was the basis for the whole quilt.  It took a long time to figure out what to do with it.  I decided to play up the eye-crossing aspect, a trompe l'oeil, so to speak.  The log cabin blocks are meant to look 3-D (it is more apparent in pictures than in person), and the striped blocks are meant to "radiate."  I wanted it to cross your eyes AND make you dizzy.  ;)  This striped fabric tricks the eye in another way.  Those radiating colors seem as though they are neon shades.  They are NOT neon.   They are pastels.  At a distance, pastel-colored coordinating fabrics seem to clash.  Up close, neon colors seem to clash.  I picked out one of the blue tones and one of the green tones and ran with it. 

This is what I came up with:

That's about 1/4 of the quilt.  Those blocks will finish 10" square. 

Running the stripes vertically or horizontally instead of diagonally requires cutting the block pieces on the bias.  A bias edge stretches, thus when I cut the triangles to make the striped squares, ALL THREE SIDES of the triangles were stretchy.  Getting those stripes to match is a b*tch.  (A walking foot helps with the stretching problem.)  7 down, a million to go. 

Cowbird - Monday, April 27, 2020

Tomorrow is The Husband's birthday.  He'll be 60.

When he was about to turn 50, I planned a big blow-out birthday party for him.  The night before the party, it rained.  I'm not talking about a spring shower.  It was literally a FLOOD.  Our county executive called it a "thousand-year flood."  We had to cancel the party because our guests could not get here because of flooded streets.

It would be nice to throw him a 60th birthday party, but . . . well, you know . . . the virus.  Ordinarily, I'd go ahead and invite the relatives on the hill to come over for hamburgers and birthday cake, but one of the relatives is a nurse, and though she does not currently have the virus, she is keeping her distance from us and from my mother-in-law, who is in her late 70s.  We can't chance making Nanny sick with all the other problems she has.

Poor Husband may not even get the birthday presents I ordered for him two weeks ago.  Some things have not even been shipped, and it appears that the rest are coming by turtle.

Damn it.

We were going to host a reunion for cousins in my mother's side of the family on May 23, but it looks like that might not happen, either.

On a lighter note, the wren eggs in the window nest have hatched.  They chirp like crazy when a parent lands on the perch.  I can't see anything but their beaks, but I'm halfway wondering if one of the birds is a different breed.  For a couple of weeks, we heard strange noises around the yard that sounded like water dripping.  Two drops - bloop BLOOP -  then silence.  Two more drops, then silence.  With all the rain, I first thought it was water dripping.  But the regularity of the noise, and the fact that the noise was usually repeated from somewhere else in the yard, made me think it was an animal, not water, making the noise.  A frog?  A bug?  I googled, and the most similar noise I found was the call of a Brown Headed Cowbird.  And I actually saw one land nearby, so I know they're around.  The article I read said that these birds do not build their own nests; they squat in other birds' nests and let other birds hatch their eggs.  What a shyster, huh? 

We had noticed the wrens acting strangely while all this bloop-BLOOPing was going on.  First, their birdhouse, which is suction-cupped to the living room window, became un-suctioned on one corner.  We had thought that the female was already sitting on the nest, but we began to see both the male and the female adding more material to the nest.  They were frantic about it, and worked hard at it for several days.  Then, suddenly, the female was nesting again, and it seemed like no time had passed before I heard the first baby chirp.  And it seemed like a couple more days passed before I heard more chirping voices from the nest.  Was that first chirp a Brown Headed Cowbird baby that had hatched earlier than the wrens?  We won't know until they all come out of the nest.

I hope they do it while I''m here to see it.

From the back porch - April 24, 2020

I am going to the office for a little while this morning.  I'm a little irked about it.  This was to have been my first day alone in the house all day, and I was planning to work on my book without distractions.  Sure, it won't take long to do what needs to be done at the office, but my mojo may be gone by the time I'm done.

Yesterday, I took Nanny to the doctor for a blood test.  Bless her heart, she hates it that she needs help, and she kept apologizing.  We both wore our face masks in the car.  I dropped her off at the door and stayed in the car while she had her test.  Truth is, it was kind of nice.  I took my sketch pad and tried to come up with an idea for The Granddaughter's quilt.

On the way to the doctor's office, I asked Nanny if she had my cell phone number so that she could call me to pick her up at the door when she was finished.  She pulled out her little flip phone and began scrolling through the numbers.  Bloop-bloop-bloop.  The number she had for me was my home number, so she began trying to add my cell number.  Bloop-bloop-bloop...P-Q-R-S...bloop-bloop...T-U....  I wanted to pull over, grab the phone, and put the number in, myself.  Instead, after about 30 minutes, I said, "Maybe you could just write my number down."  Bless her heart. 

When we headed out, I was worried that we would not be back in time for me to pick up my grocery order, which was scheduled for pickup between 2 and 3 p.m.  As it turned out, there was plenty of time for me to take her home and go back to the store for my groceries.  These days, picking up an online grocery order is a little bit like Christmas morning.  "What did I get?  What did I get?"  I ordered a jar of alfredo sauce and two jars of cheese sauce.  Instead, I got three jars of alfredo.  I ordered a large can of red enchilada sauce and a large can of green enchilada sauce.  I got two medium red sauces, and three medium green ones.  But I got the chicken I ordered, which has not happened in a couple of weeks.

While Nanny and I were out and about, we passed a fried chicken restaurant, and it gave me a craving that would not go away.  After I picked up my groceries, I stopped at a local place and picked up a WHOLE BUCKET of extra-crispy chicken (with fixin's).  Land sakes, it was good to eat someone else's cooking.  Cruel, selfish thing that I am, I ate all of the delicious, crunchy crumbs from the bottom of the bucket before anyone else got home.

Time to get going.  Tune in tomorrow for another exciting story.  ;)

Bread - April 23, 2020

I bet you've been waiting with bated breath to hear what I did yesterday.

Well, I'll tell you.

I took a morning stroll around the yard.  I'd found a cool weed (I guess it is a weed) the day before and went out to take a picture to show you, but the blooms were closed up and it looked mostly like grass.  I took a picture, anyway, thinking I'd take another picture when the blooms opened, but it rained later in the day, and when I went back out to take picture #2, they were closed up again. 

When The Grandson got out of bed, he wanted to try making bread again, so we gave it another whirl.  We followed the recipe to the letter.  The bread rose.  We punched it down, let it rest 10 minutes, then put it in the loaf pans to rise again.  It rose.  A few minutes after we put it in the oven (heated to the specified baking temperature), it collapsed.

I have no clue.

While the bread was rising, I washed and dried and put away five loads of clothes.

Today, I'm going to drive Nanny to the doctor.

Tomorrow, I may start a new quilt, or at least decide on a pattern for a new quilt.  I have a goal of making a quilt for each of my five grandchildren.  Three down, two to go.  The first grandchild quilt that I made was for my oldest granddaughter.  She was 6 years old at the time.  When I asked her what she wanted on her quilt, she said, "Princesses!"  She has out-grown the princess phase, and I believe the quilt is in storage, somewhere.  This has taught me a lesson.  When I asked granddaughter #2 what she wanted on her quilt, she said, "Marvel comic characters!" 

She is not getting a Marvel comics quilt.

Garden Plans - April 22, 2020

When it comes to productivity, I was nearly as worthless as teats on a boar hog yesterday.

Did some research for my book.  Watched the wrens add material to their nest.  That was about it for the morning, except for a bunch of pondering.

After lunch, I went to the local garden center to buy seeds and garden plants.  I am a little worried that this country is about to face something of a food shortage.  This has been apparent since the first coronavirus restrictions.  The grocery stores do not look like they used to look.  Shelves are empty in some places.  I've never seen this. 

In the 20+ years that I have tried to raise a vegetable garden, I have often thought that we would have starved if we'd had to depend on what I grew to sustain us.  Last year, I didn't even try to have a garden.  For a few years before that, the plants lived, but did not produce much.  Maybe it's because I've grown older, and less energetic, and less willing to expend the energy necessary for successful gardening, but for the past few years, I have wasted my time trying to grow vegetables.  I'm going to have to do better. 

So. 

I bought seeds for green beans, purple hull peas, okra, cucumbers, yellow squash, and zucchini.  These are things that have (occasionally) grown well here in the past.  I also got 12 tomato plants, 6 cayenne peppers, and 6 pimiento peppers. 

I asked The Son to drag the tiller out of the shed and see if he can get it to crank.  I'm not sure if he did it, but I will ride his *ss until he does.  ;)  It's too wet to plow right now, but I want to be ready when the ground is right.  I hope I can keep these greenhouse plants alive until then.

I made a pass through the little locally-owned grocery store up the road from the greenhouse.  They had some nice-looking hamburger patties, and I picked up some to grill for dinner. 

My mother-in-law kept The Grandson mostly occupied yesterday by talking him into helping her in her yard.  He came home around 5 o'clock and said he was in the mood to go fishing on the pond.  We couldn't find a usable fishing pole in the shed, so I took him to the old store up the road that sells everything from bologna sandwiches (made to order, not wrapped up in foil under a heat lamp) to crickets.  They had fishing poles.  We bought two of them and came home and dug worms from the yard, and tromped through the leaves and poison ivy and mud to get to the pond.   He went to one side of the pond, I went to the other.  After about 5 minutes, I caught a bass, just a bit bigger than my hand.  He came around to my side, fished for another 2 minutes or so, and said, "Grandmama, I might not have the patience for fishing."  We twisted our line around our poles and came to the house.

The Husband was home by then, and he saw that I'd taken the cover off the grill and placed the charcoal nearby.  He fired up the grill, and we had hamburgers and french fries for dinner. 

So, what am I going to do today?  I'll let you know tomorrow.  ;)

From the back porch - Tuesday, April 20, 2020

Yesterday was an all-around bust.

We had to have the septic tank pumped AGAIN - third time in a month - because of all the rain we had over the weekend.  The pumper guy is feeling sorry for us, charging us less and less each time, bless his heart.

I went to work for a little while yesterday morning.  Didn't stay long, as there was nothing much to do, and I'd left The Grandson home alone.  I stopped at a grocery store on the way home to pick up some cream of chicken soup for a casserole I intended to make for dinner, and while wandering the baking aisle, I spied some yeast packets on the shelf.  The Grandson had asked about making bread, and I thought this would be a good way to occupy our time, so I picked up a packet.

We started the bread not long after I got home.  To my utter shock, it rose (I've never had much luck with yeast bread).   We punched it down, put it in loaf pans, and let it rise again.  When I moved the pans to put them in the oven to bake, the bread collapsed.  I re-checked the recipe.  We'd left out the salt, which I subsequently learned helps to keep the bread from collapsing.  We ate it anyway.

While the bread was baking, I started the casserole.  I'd planned to put the cream of chicken soup in it, but made the mistake of googling recipes and chose one I'd never made.  It did not call for cream of chicken soup, but it looked good.  And the final casserole did look good.  But it tasted . . . blah.  We ate it anyway.

I scorched the green beans that I'd intended to serve as a side-dish.   We ate them anyway.

After dinner, I stirred up a chess pie.  Hadn't made one in years.  It came out of the oven about 10 o'clock last night, and I left it on the counter to cool.  This morning, I cut into it.  The top had a nice crust on it, just as I'd remembered, but when I stuck the knife in it,  it gushed liquid.  It's in the oven again.  It has already cooked an extra 20 minutes and is still liquid.  I've set the timer for 20 minutes more.

Between the kitchen duties, I spent time on the porch, watching the birds.  The wrens that have nested in the birdhouse beside the porch have been acting strangely.  Last week, I believed the female wren to be sitting on eggs, for the male wren was bringing her bugs and worms.  Over the weekend, we saw both birds adding material to the nest.  There'd been a cold snap over the weekend, and we thought perhaps the birds were adding insulation.  But that did not seem right, if the female had already laid eggs.  Then yesterday, I saw what I believe was a brown-headed cowbird.  We have been hearing a strange "bloop-BLOOP" noise that sounds like water dripping into a puddle.  I had just googled "animals that make sounds like water dropping" when a large bird that I had never seen came flapping around the porch.  It landed on the statue that sits below the birdhouse, and I got a good look at him.  Big old dark thing, with a dark brown head.  It acted like it wanted to go into the wren house, but there was a wren in it, working on the nest.  After a minute, it flew away, and I continued googling the "bloop-BLOOP" sound.  I do believe that the big bird that landed on the statue was a brown-headed cowbird.  It apparently has a habit of laying eggs in other birds' nests for other birds to hatch.  I wonder if it has been in the wrens' nest?

I just took the chess pie out of the oven.  It has baked for an additional 40 minutes and is STILL liquid.  Maybe it'll set up as it cools.  If not,  we'll eat it, anyway.  I'll just serve it with a straws instead of forks.

But for the pandemic, we would have gone to a Willie Nelson concert last night.  How cool would that have been - a Willie Nelson concert on 4/20?