Ugh...cold - February 29, 2024

Happy Leap Day, and happy birthday to my Aunt Bonnie, who turns about 20 today.  :)

Yesterday was Office Day.  It went by unusually fast, for I had exciting work to do.  For the first half of the day, I scanned and emailed a 2-foot tall stack of documents.  Wooohoooo!  Great fun!  But it gave me something to do.  After lunch, I worked on my new project.

My new project is to figure out how to start a county document archive.  My love of history and genealogy makes this work kind of exciting.  I'm researching the law, talking to archivists, making lists.  The non-fun part is being powerless to make decisions and get 'er done.  Bureaucracy, you know.  The hard part will be figuring out how much space is needed (somebody else will have to figure out how to pay for it).  Our county offices are bursting at the seams with paper that must be kept, and their records are stored all over the place.  I've got to get a handle on what's out there, and where it is, before I can figure out how much space an archive will need.  Today, I'm having lunch with a couple of clerks to find out where their documents are.  In a few weeks, I'll be going to an archivist training class.  It surprises me that The New Boss is sending me to that class, for I probably will have retired before this thing gets off the ground.  Maybe he anticipates that I will volunteer at the archive.  He might be right.  ;)

Warm...for now - February 27, 2024

The delightful warm weather we've had for the past few days is about to be gone.  It was windy yesterday, and even windier today.  Already this morning, I've heard limbs crashing in the woods behind the house.  

Don't wear a dress today!  :)

As I was having my first cup of coffee in my recliner by the living room window, I heard an unusual noise that sounded much like leaves being blown across the yard.  It wasn't the wind, it was a big flock of birds flying over.  I'd seen these big flocks from a distance but had never HEARD them.  It was kind of awesome.  A little while later, I came out to the porch and heard a chorus of chirping; the flock had landed in the trees on the far side of the pond.  That was kind of awesome, too.  Later, as The Husband was leaving for work, the flock had moved on, but we startled a big blue heron that had landed by the pond and watched him try to fly away in this wind.  It's a miracle he didn't get slammed against a tree.

The forsythia decided to bloom today.

I am going to painting class in a couple of hours.  Still working on the tractor picture.  My paint palette has been in the freezer since the last class. At this rate, the canvas will decompose before the painting is finished. 

* * * * * * * * 

I remain mildly fixated on pop-up cards.  Yesterday, a YouTube video suckered me into buying the SVG files to make a paper house.  I downloaded the files and began cutting the pieces last night.  There are a gazillion pieces to this thing.  The likelihood of it actually getting built - satisfactorily built - is slim.  I got handed a new project at work.  Plus, beginning in early March, I'm going to fill in at the office for a lady who is having knee surgery.  So my idle time is about to shrink.  

 

Monday - February 26 ,2024

We could not have asked for a better February weekend than the one we just had.  It was warm and sunny - a little windy, but tolerable - both days.  Daffodils are blooming around the porch, in the front beds, and along the driveway.  

The daffodil bed is lovely (from a distance) once a year.  The foliage conceals a tangle of dewberry vines that I have given up trying to eliminate.  The vines, themselves, are not all that unsightly, and they do make berries (though the critters get them), but they make it tough to weed out other weeds and saplings. 

Tulip foliage is sprouting, but they are old bulbs that have been in the ground for years, and they probably won't bloom.  (Although I did replant some that I dug up when I was planting something else; they might give it a try.)  

I think the milkweed seeds are sprouting.  I planted them in the phlox bed, and these sprouts don't look like phlox or any of the many weeds that inhabit that bed.  Keeping my fingers crossed.  

I was excited to find a few larkspur sprouts in the zinnia bed.  I planted the seeds last June, if you can call throwing them on the ground "planting."  A local gardener gave me the seeds when I commented on her lovely larkspur crop.  She just reached over, stripped the seeds from a dried stem, and put them in my hand.  I scattered them in the zinnia bed when I got home, and when I raked the leaves from that bed last week, there were a few larkspur under them.  I so hope that one of the plants survives to make more babies for next year.  The leaves are still lying next to the bed.  If we get another bad cold snap, I will put them back.

Zinnias aren't up, yet.  

Hellebores are going to town.  I love them.  Later today, I'm going on a hunt for hellebore babies.  

Friday was such a nice day, sunny and warm.  I had a 9 a.m. meeting to attend.  After the meeting, I went to the election office to vote early in the upcoming primary, did some food shopping, and came home and planted some cabbage and broccoli seeds.

Having seen it done in pictures on the internet, I planted these seeds in clear plastic stacking storage drawers.  I'm not sure I did it properly - I put a 4"-deep layer of dirt in the drawers, wet the dirt, and poked the seeds into it.  Maybe I should have planted the seeds in seed-starting cells so that their roots would be less disturbed when the plants go in the garden.  We'll see what happens.  

I am ready for The Husband to get his *ss on the tractor and get the garden soil ready for planting.   At the end of the growing season last year, he ran the tiller over the garden and I planted mustard greens for a cover crop.  The greens did not do very well, and a soil test revealed the cause: there is no nitrogen in the soil, probably because we tilled about 12 tons of un-composted dry leaves into the garden plot.  We need to spread the nitrogen fertilizer I bought a couple of weeks ago, but we keep getting little rains that make the soil too wet to work.  Yesterday I had a look at the garden.  It is not standing in water, but it is pretty mushy.  I was happy to see that the tiller is hooked to the tractor, so when the soil finally gets workable, we can get right on it. 

My sister and her daughter came here for lunch yesterday.  They are both into landscape gardening and had been working in my niece's yard.  After lunch, we dug up some sedum from my flower bed for my niece to transplant to her yard.  Last week, she brought me a box full of "surprise lily" bulbs, the little reddish ones that come up in late summer.  (She lives on her ancestors' home place, where somebody, a hundred years or more ago, planted daffodils and surprise lilies, and the property is covered with them.)  There must be 200 bulbs in the box.  If I had any gumption, I could plant lilies all over this yard.  I planted a few of them yesterday after my company left, but I hope to give most of them away.

I also planted - or, rather, PREPARED to plant - a pack of lavender seeds that I bought Friday.  The package instructions amounted to "put them in dirt and give them light and water."  I have tried this method in the past, several times, without success.  So I went to the internet, which said the seeds need to be "stratified," which means they need to be exposed to cold.  The internet had several methods of doing this.  I ended up sprinkling the seeds onto a moist paper towel, putting the towel in a plastic bag, and putting it in the refrigerator.  I told my telephone to set an alarm for 10 a.m., one month from now, at which time I will put the seeds in dirt and put them under the grow lamp.  

Yesterday, The Husband and Son #1 worked on the "new" truck he bought last weekend.  They replaced the water pump and the thermostat.  They took it "around the block," which is about 5 miles, and it did not over-heat, so it appears they fixed the problem.  It's a fairly sweet ride, considering how old it is.  Son #1 may claim ownership, if he can afford to keep gas in it.

At Home - February 22, 2023

After umpteen days (it seems) of being away from the house, I was expecting today to be an "at home" day.  My plan was to make one more pop-up card, then make a plan to move some other projects along.  

All of my projects seem to be eternally in the planning stage, don't they?

It's because I keep getting interrupted by other plans.

And because I am not quite skilled enough to pull off some of the sh*t I want to do.

Anyway . . . . 

This morning at 6:30, Granddaughter #1 sent me a picture of two t-shirts (for sorority big/little sisters) and asked if I could get them to her by next Friday.  Of course, I said yes.  They have to be mailed all the way across the state.

I was not planning on doing that kind of craft today.  My work table was littered with cardstock and cutting/marking/gluing supplies, with some paint supplies shoved off to one corner.  

Admittedly, it was getting out of control, but I needed to do one more card before I put all the card-making stuff away.  But The Granddaughter comes first.  I cleaned up the work table, pitched all the card stuff in one box, all the paint stuff in another.

I did not have any t-shirts.  But the Dollar General up the road had some thin ones.  They'll do.  Brought them home and washed them.  They're drying now.

Meanwhile, I have cut the vinyl lettering (holy moly, it actually worked).  Gonna fire up that heat press soon, and if my luck holds out, I can make it to the post office in time to get it in today's mail.

So far, so good, unless these cheap shirts come out of the dryer two sizes smaller than they went in the washer.

The time I've spent jacking around with pop-up cards has not been wasted, for I have learned to use the software and the cutting machine without too many foul-ups.  Now it's time to bone up on the heat press.  My machine is cheap and kind of janky, and most of the time I can't figure out how to make it count out the seconds and beep when it's done.  ("One, mississippi, two mississippi....")  Cross your fingers that these cheap shirts don't melt.

Addendum:

The t-shirts are in the mail, along with a few surprises.  Expecting the worst, I bought two of each shirt.  Good thing.  I kinda screwed up the first shirt with tape adhesive.  (It will probably wash out, but I made a duplicate just in case it doesn't.)  The overall design included some large and small polka dots that wanted to peel off with the carrier sheet.  This required a little engineering.  They may come off in the wash, too!

Presidents' Day - February 20, 2024

Yesterday was Presidents' Day.  The Husband and I were both off from work.  We spent the first half of the morning at the doctor's office, having some tests run on The Husband.  

On our way home, we stopped to eat lunch.  As we were finishing up our meal, another couple came into the restaurant.  The man looked familiar, but I could not summon his name from my memory.  Eventually, I said to The Husband, "There's an old guy in here that I think we went to school with."  The old guy was probably saying the same thing to his wife about us.

Yesterday was also Son #1's birthday.  We took him and his family out to dinner, gave him a gift certificate to a music store for his birthday gift.

We tried to give him the truck that The Husband bought from his uncle over the weekend.  He came over Sunday after church, and he and The Husband took it out for a long test drive.  It over-heated.  They think it needs a water pump and a thermostat.  Son #1 is something of a shade-tree mechanic and can make simple repairs, so yesterday after lunch, The Husband bought the parts.  I guess they'll work on the truck this weekend.  

When we came home from our errands, I puttered around in the yard.  Raked leaves out of some of the flower beds.  Pruned some dead clematis from the arch.  Checked to see what survived the January deep freeze.  

In the few hours I had at home between the doctor visit and the birthday dinner, I played with making pop-up cards.  The Valentine's Day card project spawned a fixation. I must know how these things operate.  

My kitchen table and the floors all over the house are littered with paper bits.  They're not hurting anything.  ;)

Today is painting class day.  And lunch with The Old Boss.  And Granddaughter pick-up after school.  It's a good thing we have that spare car that The Husband bought a month ago, because my daily car has a nail in a tire, and my Wrangler hasn't been cranked for months and probably has a dead battery.  

I hope the spare car has gas in it.  :-\

Truck - February 18, 2024

The Husband has an 80-something-year-old uncle who decided to sell his 2003 Chevy Silverado pickup truck.  King cab.  125K miles.  We went to look at it yesterday.  He drove it home yesterday afternoon.

Our driveway is not going to hold very many more vehicles.

But it's a great truck. 

And we have a grandson who will need some wheels pretty soon.

* * * * * * * * 

After dropping The Husband off at the uncle's house, I went shopping.

I know!  Can you believe it?

All I bought, other than groceries and two giant bags of dirt, was a package of cardstock.  

In about two weeks, I am going to fill this thing - 

- with trays of tomato seeds.