Misc. Stuffs

A few weeks ago we went waterfall hunting up the Olympic Peninsula and found two.  Ludlow Falls was less than impressive (though the walk through old growth forest was indeed very nice on a hot day), but Rocky Brook Falls is a new favorite!  Just enough scrabbling over boulders to keep Squiddle and Jazzy entertained, and their parents stretched.

Next time we'll bring swimsuits and be prepared to at least do wading in that lovely pool at the bottom. And there was a neat branch fence in the parking area:

Meantime, I have been working away at the cross-stitch project, and Santa nutcracker actually looks like a Santa now.

I have only the white to do (cuffs, beard and whiskers, hat bobble), and then the backstitching.  Maybe I'll have him done by next weekend?

The garden is beginning to produce cucumbers.  My raspberries are all done in for the year, but right on time the blackberry bushes are finally ripening.  We've found a new use for the McDonalds Halloween Happy Meal buckets we got last year, as the boys and I went and picked in the bushes in the far corner of the tract last night.  Well, Squiddle and I used our buckets.  Jazzy just conveyed the berries directly into his mouth. ^_^

June Report

 So.  Radio silence for a month and a half.  What have I been up to during that time?

Well.  I bought another treadle sewing machine.  I saw it at the thrift store for $200, but furniture was 25% off that day.  She's a Singer 28 dating to 1905, so a three-quarters size machine.  Three-quarters size treadles are rare!  I'd never even seen one before!  The wood was all in very good condition (including the wooden pitman rod!), with just a tiny bit of veneer loss on the top of the coffin lid.  Everything moved freely.  So after hemming and hawing through the length of the store, I bought her and brought her home.  I placed her where my other treadle (a 1913 Singer 66 back-clamp) had been and moved that machine into the bay window.

As part of my bargain with myself, this meant actually relearning to sew on a treadle.  So I've gotten both machines into full working order and actually been sewing on the 66 treadle (it gets better light in the front window)!  I made twenty 8.5" crumb blocks for my guild's charity quilting, and have since made a wall hanging also.

I also finished up quilting feathers into the rather plain-Jane quilt top I'd gotten from the thrift store, and bound it.  I'd intended it for a picnic quilt, and it's already been used as such - we met a couple of our neighbors at the splash pad over the weekend and spread out in the shade under the trees while the kids played in the water.  I'm thinking I need to make another couple picnic quilts so we can all have something better to sit on than towels.  So while digging through stash this morning to find a backing for the aforementioned wall hanging, I pulled out another couple of thrift store quilt tops, and some backing to go with the first of them.  I'm thinking simpler straight-line quilting this time....

Of this year's three new garden beds, I've only gotten one leveled and in place.  Last week, my dad came over in his truck, helped me build a 6" topper for the bed, and we bought a cubic yard of soil at Wilco to go in it.  It took darned near all of the soil!  But I got it planted rapidfire with the rest of the tomatoes and peppers.  I did another A-frame with a pair of the bamboo trellises I've lashed over the past few years, and put the summer squash and some more squash seeds to go in between them on one side, and a whole packet of Minnesota Midget cantaloupe seeds down the other side.  I had to tie the trellis to the tomato cages and sink a couple of t-stakes on the other side and tie it to those as well, because the hot winds we've had over the past couple days kept blowing it over.  Down the center I did three lines of radishes and carrots, and I plunked in marigolds and violets wherever there was space.  We had three days near or over ninety degrees, so the first radishes are already poking their heads up!

Now to get bed #2 leveled....

The cold, wet spring means that certain crops really aren't bearing this year.  We'll see how things go.  I was hoping for cherries this year, but, alas, I have a grand total of two on the tree.  On the other hand, my strawberries and peas are bearing prolifically at the moment!  And it's very clearly time to harvest and dry the year's supply of oregano again.  Four plants, and it's all I need for both my parents and myself.

Weekend Stuff

Well, Squiddle's ear infection seems to be under control.  He's starting to not want to take the medicine, but I've been very clear to him that if he does not take every single last dose, it won't kill all the germs, the pain will come back and it might never go away.  A bit of a scare tactic, but this is actually important, so I can live with it.  He's also finally asked for an allowance!  So we have agreed that for a starter, he will get $5 a week, and we will see how it goes.

Jazzy and Wonderful Husband are still coughing, so at least the former will probably be out of school again this week.  I'm also coming down with something, but (thus far; knock on wood) it's significantly more mild than what the rest of the household has had.

Friday afternoon I laid out and spray-basted a quilt.  It's a top I got at St. Vincent de Paul last month for $3.  Very plain and utilitarian, but I kind of like it.  It's clear the maker was using every last scrap of the brown in it by how many pieces she used, which is the kind of thing I find charming.  There's lots of room for me to mess around with practicing quilting feathers, and it's definitely not going to be a "best" quilt - it's the kind to be snuggled under and not made a fuss of if it gets thrown up on or used for a picnic.  The green checkered backing also came from St. Vinnie's on some other trip.  Amusing thing - when I laid it out I used up the last of my batting roll.  There was about two feet left over.  So I went and checked and I had a 20% off purchase coupon from Joanns for their online shop, together with free shipping, and the 40-yard rolls of batting I get were already heavily discounted.  So the timing of that worked out well.

Saturday the weather was nice and sunny, so we picked up McDonalds and went to Sehmel Homestead Park.  The boys got to play on the equipment with other children for a couple hours, while Wonderful Husband and I did Pokemon Go things.  We were the only people there wearing masks - but given we're a household of plague, we were not going to go without.  Even the boys kept theirs on without complaint the whole time!  After we got home, I cut up the gallon milk jugs I've been saving and planted out the first eight (tiny) tomato plants, using the jugs as cloches.  It's an experiment - we'll see how it goes.

And today was sunny again, so I worked on cutting up more of the ground-eating bushes on the east fence.  I'm planning to replace them with dwarf lilacs.  There is going to be a lot of rooting out of blackberry vines in that area too, but one thing at a time.  Since this was going to be the last clear day for at least a week, and the grass was actually dry, Wonderful Husband mowed the lawns.  I imagine this caused the chickens, in their mobile run, a great deal of consternation as he went around them for several passes.  We also hung up the codling moth disruption strips in the apple trees.

Thrifting Day

My mother came across the bridge today, bringing a stack of clothes for the boys (dinosaurs and Minecraft featured heavily in the designs) from the kids' clothing sale she attended recently with my sister.  And returning some jars that I'd sent with her full of salsa, and some saved eggshells for me to bake and feed to the chickens.

Squiddle was not feeling 100% - he's had congestion and a hoarse voice on and off all day - so he stayed home while Mom and Jazzy and I went up to Port Orchard.  We went to St. Vincent de Paul, lunched at That One Place, and then went into One Less Orphan before heading home.

In the middle of lunch it started snowing.  And then hailing.  And then snowing more.  And the trend continued even after we got home!  nothing sticking, but still, very late in the year for that kind of thing.  (For a while it was fat dizzying flakes floating down, my favorite type of snowfall.)

She acquired a book, a couple bracelets, a strainer, and a couple bread loaf pans.  I found two shirts for me, one for Jazzy, a couple dinosaur undies also for Jazzy, three small plant pots, a basket, a quilting magazine, some quilting templates, and two embroidery projects - a matched pair of pillowcases, and a hand towel.  I sent Mom home with some parsnips and carrots from the garden, as well as a variegated spider plant.

I also got a horseradish root planted, another pot of basil started, and another couple variegated spider plants rooting in a hanging pot.  I probably should get around to putting more hooks in the ceiling so I can hang some more plants....

Catching Up

No pics for today.  It's quite late as I write this (everyone else is abed).  I've been trying to cudgel story words out of my brain, but they don't seem to want to come.

I've finished a quilt that's been on my sewing machine in various stages for the better part of a year, and got the next one lined up to baste.  It's a homely top I got for $3 at the thrift store, but it spoke to me and there's lots of room for quilting feathers and such.  Homely quilts are nice to snuggle under, and you never really have to worry about staining them or anything.  Jazzy actually took a couple hours' nap with me under my favorite homely quilt today!  Which never happens anymore now that my babies are big boys.

The boys are off school this week, which they're enjoying.  Squiddle, now 8, has tested into the district's Highly Capable program, but it will mean him changing schools next year.  After his eye exam today, he and I drove by the (potential) new school and looked around a little.  I think he's willing to make the switch.  The only downside is, Jazzy was really looking forward to riding the bus with Big Brother next year, so we'll probably request (and it is not guaranteed that we will receive) a transfer for him to go to the same school.  Which I think will work out with his IEP?  But I want to talk with his teachers about that.

The weather has been something of a yo-yo lately.  In the seventies one day, frost on the roof another.  And it's windy!  There's pine/fir pollen all over the driveway, and my A-frame pea trellis has been blown down twice.  I've finally banged four stakes into the garden bed and tied the trellis to them.  I need to get on the ball about building this year's addition of three more garden beds and getting them in place.  I bought starts at the store!  Though I was virtuous and did not get the three or four more chickens I want.  The neighbors are going to borrow the brooder setup later in the month when they get chicks, and if I get more, I'll need to build a bigger coop.  OTOH, if the boys and I have scrambled eggs for breakfast, that's six eggs, and I only have four hens, so it's a case where I'm having to be mindful of consumption versus production.  Sigh.  Next year.  The potted dwarf peach and nectarine trees I bought have all started leafing out, as have the in-ground cherries and blueberries; I need to check the in-ground apricots and persimmons to see if they're going to break dormancy soon.

I guess the last thing for now is, I've decided against attending Costume College this year.  Attendees are required to be vaxxed and masked, but there's also two long plane trips in there, the cost, and the imposition on others around me for child care.  It was immensely more affordable when I lived in SoCal and it was literally day-tripping the con and putting up with horrible miserable no-good traffic on the way home on Friday.  Living 1100 miles away greatly increases the cost - roundtrip airfare plus hotel room plus meals plus either cab fare or car rental.  Yeesh!  Plus the social pressure of rooming with people I don't know because I have difficulty making friends.  (And, yes, I know, not going doesn't help with the making friends in the community thing.  But.)  So, not this year.

Catching Up

Ugh.  First we had a bout of lice.  Which probably came home from preschool with Jazzy.  And I was far, far away the worst infested.  After OTC remedies failed, we found a lice clinic up in Silverdale, and I (with my long hair) got the full treatment: comb-out, heat treatment, oily serum slathered on my hair.  The malefolk opted to go home and shave their heads and do at-home oily serum treatments.  So right now Wonderful Husband, Squiddle, and Jazzy all look like they've just joined the military.

Then Jazzy got sick yesterday.  The fun started at a quarter to seven when he woke up, feverish and with his eye glued shut by nighttime mucus.  Screaming ensued, and panic, until he worked himself up to a pitch where he actually threw up because he was so upset, which I had previously thought to be only an expression, not something that really happened.  The upset wailing of "I can't see!" recurred through the day, though he was able to see well enough to watch Trollhunters for a few hours with me acting as a comfort object.  Eventually he (who hates naps) burrowed into Mummy and Daddy's bed of his own volition and slept away most of the afternoon.  Fortunately today, other than a stuffed up nose, it all seems to be gone.

I did make a bit of gardening hay while he napped, and pruned back and dried my oregano.  Four hours in the oven, varying between a sort of stank and half smelling like an Italian restaurant, just add garlic.  After stripping the stems and tossing them into the chicken coop, I have three pint jars of uncrushed oregano leaves.  I crumbled a tiny bit into my eggs this morning.  Yum!  I also have seeds starting in containers, since a lot of what I planted in the beds hasn't come up.  I got about ten baby dills, maybe, from a whole packet of scattered seed, and no basil, chard, or monarda seedlings at all.  Sigh.

And, finally, I went out to thrift stores and a used book store today, and only got books.  Two living-abroad memoirs, two Michael Pollan books, a quilting book, and the first Hunger Games book.  And something innate in me shuddered, because I'm reading like an adult.  Quick, I need a hit of speculative fiction!  I'm also amused at the price differences for the same book within a 1-mile triangle: $.50 at St.Vincent de Paul, $2 at Goodwill, $7 at Book 'Em.  Ah well, better supporting local business than Amazon.

Catching Up

No pictures, I'm afraid.  But I've finally got the quilt for my inlaws basted!  Now I just need to quilt it.  And, y'know, steam-mop the basting spray off the floor.

Jazzy has started extended-day preschool two days a week - it's an hour to an hour and a half longer, so I'm packing him a lunch now.  But there was an opening for the rest of this school year (a whole month or so) and his teachers thought he might benefit from it.

Squiddle, meanwhile, has finally been shown Episode IV in honor of Star Wars day.  His favorite character (so far, we're paused just after the escape from the Death Star) is Darth Vader, because of the music.  I... cannot argue that?  Though I do have to say, rewatching the film for the first time in several years, I'm discovering anew how much Episodes V, VI, I, II, III, and Rogue-1 influence and reinterpret my understanding of the movie.  (Example: Obi-Wan: "This is your father's lightsaber. He wanted you to have it, when you were old enough."  Me: "Obi-Wan, you lying fuck.")

The veggie garden is finally fully planted, in a very intensive square-foot gardening way.  The raspberry and boysenberry beds have chives and parsnips in with them.  The strawberries will be sharing space with bush beans, peas, and, if I can find some starts or seeds, cucumbers.  Another bed is two kinds of beets, two kinds of carrots, two kinds of scallions, and leeks.  The next bed is 4 tomatoes (each a different variety), basil, dill, two kinds of squash, and thyme.  And the last bed is oregano, parsley, more parsnips, Swiss chard, monarda, borage, luffas, and Minnesota Midget melons.

My fruit trees are almost finished flowering.  I've decided that the ones I planted last year, I'm going to pluck the fruit off while tiny and give them one more year to develop root strength.  (The persimmon trees, hurrah, are finally putting out a few leaves and proving they're not dead sticks.)  Time to turn my attention to the blueberry bushes next, I guess.  That plus working out a decent-sized run for the chickens, who are giving us more eggs than we can eat.

And with that, I'm off to bed!

Spring Things

It's a dreary, drizzly day, so I'm working on tidying, dusting, and revamping my desk/sewing area with an eye toward decluttering and ending up with streamlined, increased functionality.

I've also been working on things out in the garden.  I added three more 4'x8' beds!  And promptly turned two of them and one of last year's into permanent berry beds, so I've not actually gained more space for things like carrots and tomatoes.

Two of the new beds got trellises built in them, as they've been planted with boysenberries and raspberries:

There's trellis wires between the posts now, to weave the vines up and through.  And more soil, both sieved from the grass we dug up, but also purchased.  The fun part of building the beds was that the ground not only slants east-west, but also north-south!  So the northwest corner of each bed is only two or three inches above the ground, but in order to have relatively level beds, the southeast corners had to be shored up like this:

The other major thing I've been working on is making 289 5" blocks:

And turning them into a 50th anniversary gift for Wonderful Husband's parents:

It's not done yet - the quilting and binding still need to be finished.  But I think it came out nicely, I'm proud of the work, and, most importantly, they like it!

The One That Got Away

Word count: 692.

I didn't get much sewing done today, because it ended up being a non-rainy afternoon, so I did some gardening.  I got the tulips my neighbor gave me a couple months ago finally planted in the rhubarb bed, and I took the strawberry runners I've been rooting and planted them, turning last year's tomato bed into next year's strawberry bed.

I did, however, get the label written out and attached for the rainbow mermaid quilt!

So now that's ready for quilting.

But today's story, however, is about what happened a week ago today!  I had gone up to Port Orchard, to find more of the green fabric for the rainbow mermaid quilt at JoAnn Fabrics.  And since I was there and it's very close by, I popped into Goodwill.  Where there was this:

A Singer 27, in a seven-drawer cabinet.  I checked the drawers and they were empty - no sign of the missing front slide plate or bobbin shuttle.  A moderate amount of wear on the table and on the decals.  But both the machine and the treadle moved freely, and more importantly, when I checked its serial number, it dated to 1894.  A 126-year-old sewing machine.

It was $100.  Not out of budget.  But did I have space for it?  Where would it go?  I walked away and debated and agonized on it for three days.  I arranged to meet up and go thrifting with my mother and sister on Tuesday, and told myself if it was still there, I would get it.

They got to the store first, and were going to place a hold on it for me.  But as they walked in, a sales ticket was being written up for the machine.

Beaten by ten minutes.

So, the one that got away. *points up at post title*

I'm a little wistful about it, but not crushed.  If it was meant to be, someone else wouldn't've been ten minutes faster.  (Still, sewing on something that old would have been awesome!)

And I'm thinking about where I could put the treadle I do have, so I could finish converting the Singer 201 in it to treadle-ability, and sew on that.

Apple season!

Woke up a quarter hour early this morning to the sound of pounding rain paired with thunder and lightning.  It all went away by the time, an hour and a half later, that I was walking Jazzy to his bus pick-up.  This afternoon we had intermittent high winds; the lawn (and the roof of the barn, which Wonderful Husband had just cleared) is covered in small pine branches.

I did suffer a brief bout of inspiration this afternoon and dragged out my heating mats and seed starters.  They're set up on the kitchen counter for the next couple weeks, with placemats underneath, planted with leeks, spinach, and Swiss chard.  I also figured out how to fold a parchment paper envelope for the Black Krim tomato seeds I'd saved, so those got tucked away.  And I crushed all the eggshells I've been saving, so they're taking up a lot less room and are ready to be fed to the hens once they start laying.

And since we had high winds, there were even MORE windfall apples on the ground!  I gave the bird-and-or-rabbit-nibbled ones to the chickens, then started in on the rest.  I made Dorset apple cake (thank you for the recipe, Mary!), of which Wonderful Husband had two slices, and a batch of unsweetened applesauce, currently cooling in the fridge.  The boys love turning the apple slicer/peeler/corer.  Good thing, too - I have at least twice again as many apples still sitting on the kitchen counter.

And there is, amusingly, ONE quince on the quince/pear tree this year.  There were bucketloads last year, so I'm guessing it, like one of the apple trees, is alternating.  We're planning to get all three trees professionally pruned when they're dormant in January; we'll see if that helps even things out.

Quick Catch-Up

I've been plodding away at things.  I finished up the flimsy for the quilt I want to give Wonderful Husband for Christmas, and have it waiting in the closet.  Currently the quilts hanging there are:

--for father, flimsy only

--for sister, flimsy + 2 pillowcases + binding

--for husband, flimsy + binding + backing

--for niecelet, flimsy (Goodwill find) + binding, backing in progress

I want to do quilts for Jazzy and Squiddle also, and go through the vintage quilt tops I have and pick one out for my mother.  Whether or not I'll be able to complete all these by Christmas, who knows.  There may have to be some photos and IOUs.

I did also complete the masks I was working on - five for Jazzy, six for Squiddle, and four for Wonderful Husband.

Gardening wise, I pulled the two tomato plants that were done for the year, as well as most of the squashes.  And since the bi-weekly yard waste bin was going out this week, and that was all that was in it, I took the loppers and started whacking back the bushes by the apple trees.  At some points they're twelve feet deep!  So I filled the bin, and hope to again this week.  I'd like to get rid of those bushes and put in some lilacs and hydrangeas where they are.  Also, our neighbor gave me 30 tulip bulbs this morning, so I'm considering where I want those to go.  (And, I need to harvest some apples to give to her and the neighbors across the street....)

We got several inches of rain over the weekend, and I'm amused that the grass where the chicken coop has been is growing back greener and lusher than where it hasn't been.  We shifted them back to starting position this afternoon, and in the process they all escaped!  That was a fun half hour, trying to get all five of them back into the coop.  Eventually we managed, though not before one (Sassafras) took refuge ten feet up in a tree.  No eggs yet, but theoretically they should start laying by next month.  They're in the middle of being transitioned onto layer feed.

Counting... Ah-Ah-Ah!

 As I walk my laps around the block in the morning, I count things.  What lap I'm on (5 laps make 2 miles).  How many bunnies I've seen (least: 5; most: 30).  How many squirrels (record: 3).  How many doves (record: also 3).  Anything unusual (that one time I saw a pair of quail who quickly ducked into the brush).  How many times I've heard that rooster off in the distance crow.

I count houses (25 in the tract).  I count cars.  I count who has a large outbuilding behind their house (5).  I wonder, judgmental as all get out, how in a tract with two and three car garages, there are only three homes including us that don't have (usually multiple) cars left out in their driveways.  It's not quite as bad as it was in Anaheim, where we quite literally had people think we weren't home because our cars were in the garage not the driveway, but still!  I guess most people, even here, use their garages for storage and workshops, not car parking.

Squiddle starts school on Tuesday.  We've got his desk and a side table set up in his bedroom, and we'll see how a more intensive schooling schedule over Zoom will go, compared to this last spring.  We've been working with him on lessons most days over the summer - writing a sentence, doing some math or maps pages in his first grade workbook from Costco, going through a stack of vocabulary flashcards, reading books or pages from the workbook, and we're fairly sure he's ready.  Well, save for maybe the reading comprehension... he's been having a bit of trouble with those workbook pages.

But since he's going to need at least light supervision, I'm going to need to be at home, even after Jazzy starts developmental preschool again (2 days a week) on the 21st.  No more thrift stores for me for quite a while!  So I went on a brief jaunt up to Port Orchard on Friday, as a last huzzah.  I found nothing at St. Vincent de Paul, got only what was on my list at Joann Fabrics, but actually found some things at Goodwill: ten canning jars ($2), which I haven't seen at a thrift store in months, another mirror for my wall of mirrors ($1.40), four quilting stencils ($4), and a quilt top ($2).

Gardening-wise, my tomatoes are finally starting to come ripe!  Yum-yum.  I took half a dozen over to my parents' yesterday, along with a few zucchini and some of the radishes whose growth has been stunted due to living in the shade of the zucchini.  As for the inevitable sneaky monster zucchini, the chickens have realized they're most tasty.  So, win!  And yesterday I also finally finished putting the weed-suppressant circles around the new fruit trees and blueberry plants, and weighting them down with a thick layer of mulch.  Hooray for a slightly tidier garden!

Wildlife Season

It was a good thing we star-gazed when we did, since the weather's turned overcast again, so we really didn't get another chance to try and see Neowise.

One of the chickens got out of the coop the other afternoon.  When Wonderful Husband and I had shifted it the night before, it ended up in a spot where there was a 3" gap between the frame and the ground in one of the corners.  Apparently that was enough space for a teenage chicken to make an escape attempt!  When I noticed, I went out and wedged some scrap wood underneath to block off future escapes, and attempted to herd Joanne back into the coop.  During this attempt, another of the chickens (Sassafras) got out through the open door.  Putting my thinking cap on, I encouraged Jazzy (who had followed me out and was wearing nothing save his diaper) to chase the chickens clockwise around the coop to where I opened the door.  It took a few attempts, but eventually their fear of the toddler overwhelmed all desire for freedom and exploration, and they went back inside.

In less amusing critters news, apparently the deer from the other day came back and munched on my fruit trees!  The apple trees are big enough and old enough not to mind the loss of some leaves, but I'm ticked off on behalf of my plum and cherry saplings!

And on a run up to Port Orchard this week, I saw either a fox or coyote cross the road (it was too far ahead of me for me to be sure which) and, a couple miles farther on, a doe.  Critters everywhere!

In non-critter news, our school district has finally decided to do remote learning this fall, and continue it until certain public health conditions are met.  Which is a decision I applaud.  We had a company come out this week to repair our sprinklers in the front, so now they all work again and are set on a timer.  And I've actually been stitching some quilt blocks together.  Let's see if the trend holds.

Saturday Stuff

Ugh.  I am wiped.  I'm fairly sure I know why: I get up with the cat, which means 7am or before.  Whenever he starts bumping at our bedroom door because he wants his breakfast.  Today being a weekend, I let Wonderful Husband sleep in - he got up 2.5 hours after me.  So I'm going to hit the sack early tonight to make up some of that sleep deficit.

That said, getting up earlier than anyone else in the house isn't all bad.  I worked some more on the third trellis I'm making for the garden  Seventeen lashings done this morning before I ran out of the first roll of twine and decided that made a good stopping point.  Only fourteen more to go; if I'm diligent, I can finish it tomorrow morning and get it in the garden and have one less thing on my to-do list.

We had a couple of deer in the yard today, luckily while my mother was here and while we were Skype'ing with my inlaws, so they all got to see them.  A couple of young bucks, investigating my vegetable beds.  They fled over the back fence and into the wooded area even though we never left the patio.  They were gone before I thought to take pictures, alas.

We're starting Jazzy on toilet training, with mixed success.  Sadly, wetting his big boy undies does not seem to cause him distress.  But we shall persevere!

And, in other also less-fantastic news, Wonderful Husband managed to stab himself in the thumb while cutting up chicken for the boys' plates at dinner.  It's stopped bleeding, but we're both thinking he's rapidly going to find out just how often he uses that digit for typing.

But now, bed for the boys and then for me....

Various Things

I actually set my sewing machine up and did some sewing on it!  Mending, to be sure (two pairs of trousers and one pair of shorts, a garment apiece for the malefolk of the house, the totality of the mending pile ATM), but stitching nonetheless!  I haven't sewn anything in months, which is probably a symptom or cause (perhaps both) of the general depression that Covid-19 has caused for me.

I am terrified of Covid-19.   We're fortunately in an area with not many cases, but I'm even second-guessing Squiddle's playdate with his school friend tomorrow.  He hasn't seen K in months, and K's grandmother says they've been mostly isolating too, but still.  What if.  Both my mother and husband have medical histories that mean they're more likely to have complications.  Is his socialization worth the risk?  Impossible to know what the risk is against an invisible enemy.

I keep trying to step back and remind myself that I can only control so much.  At some point the school district is going to ask us to commit to either online or in-person learning for fall.  For Squiddle, it's still a coin toss.  But for Jazzy, he needs the in-person learning to help with his speech delays....

I need to stop circling.  The chickens have figured out how to get in and out of their coop.  I'm amused that when I peek in while shutting them in at night, all six of them keep squeezing into one nest box.  They are outgrowing the chick-sized feeder and waterer, though, so in the last Lowe's run Wonderful Husband picked up a couple mud pans and some S-hooks for me.  I'm going to drill holes in the pans and use the hooks to secure them to the mesh of the tractor run.  One for food (positioned beneath the coop, for when it rains), and one for water.  Hopefully they'll work.

And I finally hauled straw over and got garden beds #2 and #3 mulched.  I don't know if the beets or leeks are ever going to come up, but we're now hitting hot and dry summer days, so the mulch will help keep the soil moist.

I managed to snag the last basket of salal berries from the co-op this week (pickup on Wednesdays), then researched them and realized that we have a fair amount of salal around the edges of the yard!  (Not ripe yet.)  So here's to hoping that we like the berries, and to knowing another plant that should be spared as we trim things back.

I've also been thinning out the cedar strand by our barn.  It was so densely packed that even Jazzy wouldn't be able to get between the trunks, and half of the trees are thin, spindly, and dead.  I'm taking out the dead stuff first, then planning to thin the plants some more so there's a bit more light, moisture, and nutrients to share around.

Coop Coop Galoop!

Ugh, I've been quiet here for nearly three weeks.  Sorry!  In my (paltry) defense, I've been working on and stressing on a few things.

First, I've written an posted a couple fanfics in the Check, Please! fandom: Cornucopia and Running From the Moon.  And I'm almost done with a second chapter of Cornucopia.

Second, I finally planted the third garden bed.  I could have sworn that I had parsnip seeds!  But apparently I do not.  So I transplanted in four oregano plants, two Italian parsley, two habenero plants, four various summer squashes, and seeded two rows each of carrots-and-radishes and leeks.  I need to make another trellis for the squash, but that can wait a few days.

And, third!  We (mostly) finished the chicken tractor!

The windows on either side still need their shutters and latches installed, and we still need to figure out wheels.  But it is structurally sound and the girls are out of their box and living on grass and sunshine.  (And water and chicken feed.)  Yesterday I had to physically put them through the door to shut them in the coop for the night, and this morning I went back out a couple hours after I'd opened it and they were still inside the coop so I had to shoo them out the door.  But tonight, five of the six of them were already inside when it was time to shut them in, so here's to hoping they can be taught!

In other news, Squiddle has lost his fourth tooth!  No more upper incisors for him.

Trees and Tractors and Scapes

Since today was partly sunny and more importantly, not raining, I set to working on the five-in-one European plum tree I planted earlier this year.  The problem I needed to address was that the branches are all very close together, and mostly heading up at something like a 76-degree angle.  I wanted the branches to spread out a bit more, and preferably to be at a 45- to 60-degree angle, as they'll set significantly more fruit that way.  But how to go about this task without spending a lot of money on branch spreaders?

Why, take inspiration from what I've done with the cherry tree, and use up most of the rest of the clothespins that Jazzy keeps attaching to the kitchen drawers!  I chained them into branch spreaders:

And I took twine and some of those rocks I've dug up from the ground, and used those to make branch weights:

We also worked some more on the chicken tractor today!  (The roof bits got added on when my parents and sister were here for dinner on Friday.  Having a couple more sets of hands to hold everything in place made the angled bits go together much more easily.)

We also learned that the chickens are indeed flight capable at this point when one fluttered up onto the side of their box while I had the mesh off.  Fortunately that was as far as she went!

And, finally, I had ordered garlic scapes from the co-op this last week:

I was expecting them to have a mild garlic taste, like garlic greens do.

They do NOT.

So, since they pretty much taste like raw cloves of garlic, I tossed a few into the blender while I made salsa yesterday. ^_^

A Bit More Gardening

Saturday afternoon/night, I worked on the second trellis for my garden.  It starts out looking like this:

And as I build it, the boys play with stepping in the squares and sometimes try (and mostly fail) to cut the string for me after I finish each lashing:

I learned how to do the lashing from volume 24 of Kitchen Garden magazine.  I have 31 of the 32 issues, and have been referring to them a lot this year. Here's a close-up:

Buying some 6' bamboo stakes and a roll of cotton twine makes this cost a fraction of what buying a finished trellis would cost.  Plus I've learned a new skill!

Here's the garden as it was Sunday morning, before I installed the second trellis and put rabbit netting around the second bed:

Fractured Friday

I forgot to take pictures today, but I got most of the second garden bed set up!  It has my four surviving (tiny) habenero plants and all three of my lemon thyme plants in it, as well as the trellis I made, which will have Minnesota Midget melons climbing up it, god willing, and a row each of golden beets, Chioggia beets, and purple bush beans.  When I get the second trellis done, that will go on the other side and I'll put cucumber seeds in for it.

And, hey, tomorrow's supposed to be raining, so making another trellis seems to be a good indoor project to me!

I also drove Squiddle to school so that he could return his library book in the big purple dropbox outside before the school year ends so that we don't get fined for keeping it.

Beyond that, I experimented with sriracha mayo chicken for dinner.  I thought it was good, but I am outvoted, so I passed the recipe onto my mother and sister, who also enjoy a hint of heat.  And I wrote on a Rise of the Guardians WIP, as well as editing a Check, Please story that I'll be posting tomorrow.  N-chan's beta-reading was invaluable!

Pictures again!

Not much happened today.  I'm grappling with editing those two fanfics I wrote, and I went out to pick up prescriptions, and two orders we'd placed at Lowes.  So now we have most of the materials to make the chicken tractor!  (I forgot to order roofing stuff.  And linoleum tiles to make cleaning the coop interior easier.  But those are a bit down the line yet.)

I have, however, remembered to move some pictures from my phone.  So!  Here are the chooks, temporarily in a basket while I gave them fresh litter:

And here's one of the (now filled) garden beds, with the riddle I made:

Easy directions for making the riddle: screw or nail four 2' 2x4s together in a windmill pattern.  Rip another 2x4 into four even widths.  Sandwich a square of 1/2" hardware cloth in between them, and then screw the thin pieces on, preferably in the empty squares, not on the wire.  Use to sieve soil!