Bit By Bit

I dug up half of another garden bed today which, when complete, will give me a total of 96 square feet of vegetable garden space.  Well, I guess I have the rhubarb along the back deck, and I need to put the asparagus starts in with them if Wonderful Husband's second application of spray has managed to kill the wasps, but... that's still not a lot of space.  Sigh.  A bit at a time, I guess.  I did find out in the process that there's a woodpecker interested in our weeping willow tree.  Now that I know what to look for... it seems he/she's been interested in that tree for a while.

The garden riddle did not get finished today, but I did start reading through the table saw manual, and the first two pages are horror movie fuel.  To quote Han Solo, "I can imagine rather a lot."

I did find out that three of the grafts I did to the apple trees have taken: two Huntsman's Favorite, and one Pendragon.  Given I know there was a learning curve, I'm pleased to have gotten that many!  But, sadly, all of my chard starts in the bed around the house seem to have been eaten.  Well, that's why I'm building raised garden beds with rabbit fencing....

And I discussed chickens with Wonderful Husband and he helped me troubleshoot the problem of brooding them, since they need warmth, light, and interaction, as well as a cat-free environment, and one that will not give him asthmatic fits.

We also discussed finances and raised our extra principal payment by $250 a month.  That on top of the extra we were already paying brings our 30-year mortgage almost to a 20-year mortgage!  We talked about calling our lender and seeing if it would be worth refinancing to a 15-year mortgage, especially given that interest rates are lower now than when we purchased, but the quick numbers we crunched made us leery of committing to an even higher monthly payment.  It's an emergency contingency; if worse goes to worst, we could simply stop paying the extra and free up some breathing room.  But we agreed that if rates continue to drop, we'll revisit the idea of a 15-year mortgage.