The Rock Whisperer

Letter From Ilene, 2/25-29/12

2012-02-29T16:20:00.003-06:00

It's been hard to find time to write on the blog for the last several days. Everything takes so much longer to do, and there is so much to do. None of it is very exciting or worth writing about, really.

We've been getting eggs every day. We still have the hold-out chicken laying her egg outside on the ramp, but the rest have settled into the chicken house for egg-laying. Some in the nest boxes, some not. For several days we got three, and then one day we got six, with only one the day after. We've yet to reach our max of seven. Diane said, with Auracaunas, the color of their legs is a good indication of what color eggs they will lay. Green legs mean green or blue eggs. Brown or yellow legs mean brown eggs. Now, how cool is that? I didn't notice if the different colors were already present when they were chicks, but if they are, you could pick them out according to leg color when you buy them. Thanks, Diane! We only have two chickens with yellow legs. The eggs are weighing between 1.3 and 1.6 ounces. I weighed a grocery store XL egg and it was 2.3. Here's a visual comparison.

And so we are coming along. They've discovered they DO like worms, after all, and potato and carrot peelings, which they have previously ignored. It's so funny, every time something new is introduced, they just all back off from it in a bunch, and stare at it, as if horrified. Somebody will take a run through it and if that doesn't cause any reaction, one chicken will cautiously go peck at it. If it's tasty, she'll take off running with it and then the chase is on. It doesn't matter that there are seventy million pieces of it left in the pile. They all try to get that one piece away from the first chicken to grab it. Hubs set some buckets on their sides and put them under the nest boxes, hoping the ones that like to lay eggs on the floor would go in there. But instead they dug out the nest material and left it on the floor. One day, somebody even kicked June's plastic egg out on the floor from the egg boxes above!

Hubs is color blind. Some shades of yellow, green and red all look the same to him. He has to bring the eggs to me to find out for sure what color they are. Every now and then I'm tempted to tell him they're red. Heh.

I meant to mention on the last post that I had been on the blog of a woman who wrote about lip-ties and tongue-ties, and how ties that are too tight run in families. She wrote about the reasons why she always had them clipped when her babies were born with them. The lip-ties cause nursing problems for the mommy and the infant, and as the child grows, they cause the roof of the mouth to grow tall rather than wide, leaving not enough room in the mouth for the teeth, causing them to overlap, and also interfering with proper sinus cavity development.  The tongue-ties can cause -- you guessed it -- speech defects. Don't that beat all! This was a really informative post and I wish I could find it again. If I ever do, I'll come back here and link it. But I think this is wonderful that they have figured this out and it is so easily fixed. Apparently it is a quick-healing thing during infancy but something more difficult later on. I hope by now this is a standard thing doctors look at when a baby is born but it sounds to me like it's something the parents have to know about and request. Why is that, I wonder? Think of all the money it would save in orthodontia, speech therapy and sinus-related treatments. Oh....... I think I answered my own question.......

I read somewhere that babies that don't get to nurse enough search for oral satisfaction in other ways from then on -- sucking their fingers or thumbs, biting their fingernails, and I wonder if there is really any correlation or if that's just another one of those half-baked studies, and if it's true, whether that has anything to do with overeating. Wouldn't this be a simple fix if that was all it was? I doubt it, though. I think obesity is a really complex thing, and different for one person than another. Nonetheless, how does one tackle a complex thing? One piece at a time.

The peas are now planted. I had saved seed from last year's growth, and so I put them between two wet paper towels in a pan and set it on the heat mat to pre-germinate, but a lot of them turned mushy, stinky, and flat. Guess THOSE won't be any good. With help, I got the remaining ones all set out. Mr. Big, Tall Telephone, some seed saved from an unknown variety of climbing pea that somebody was handing out at a farmer's market in the summer of 2009, and Oregon Sugar Pod were planted inside the yard along the fence. Not my preferred place to plant them, but it's nice soil there, easy for me to get to, and I have grown things successfully there before. My little wire squares were laid down on top to keep the cat from digging there.  A new package of Cascadia Bush pea was planted out in the garden in the plot where Hubs and I had tilled and furrowed before I had surgery. I hope they all do well, because I didn't hold back any seed for in case they didn't. While I was out there, I looked under the row cover at the cabbages and bok choy I planted before surgery. The ones that are still alive don't look like they will be for much longer. I started them too early, and then the wind blew the cart over, and at the time I just felt they had a better chance out there than the other options.

I've been sowing seed in little peat pellets for the last several days. Mostly tomato seed, but also some different kinds of basil. I started out with some of the oldest tomato seed that I had. The first batch, I forgot to soak first. It took about a week, but some of the Watermelon Beefsteak tomatoes are finally up from that batch. Also a couple of Marglobes and some from the little packet of seed I got as bonus in a trade somewhere along the way. It doesn't say what variety it is, just shows a picture of a round red tomato on the packet. I'm guessing it's pretty darned old.  I had three Jet Star commercial seed left from last year. They are coated, so I imagine the coating is making them later in coming up. I don't think those seed are very old.

This picture is Queen of Siam basil. Basils don't need to soak, they are quick to come up without it. Other basils I started are Sacred Purple, Anise, Minette, Lettuce Leaf, and Cinnamon. They will be companion planted with my tomatoes.

After that, I remembered to soak the tomato seed and I have to say, putting the little containers of water on the heat mat is a really efficient way to start tomato seed. Within 24 hours, they are already beginning to germinate. I started the next older batch of seed, a couple of Roma hybrids, Rutger's Select, Mule Team, Martino's Roma, Speckled Roman, Big Red, Bonny Best, Druzba, Kellogg's Breakfast (my favorite), Striped Germon (another favorite), Thessaloniki, Early Girl hybrid, Livingston's Paragon, and grape.

My intention was to sow more than I needed, since the seed was old. This packet of Bonny Best was packed for 2004, and I think I've got almost 100% germination. Looks like there'll be plants to sell at the spring garage sale, providing I can find enough places to keep them once they've outgrown their peat pellet.

This is nice because it's all stuff I can do while seated in my office. My office chair wheels around with me in it, although somewhat awkwardly, so for many things I don't even have to jump up. I'm getting around without the scooter, which will go back to it's home on Friday, and for the most part, with just the help of my 3-footed cane. I've tried using the walker, and it is awkward as well, doesn't fit into a lot of places, and if I go outside with it, it tries to catch on uneven spots or on clumps of grass. Plus, I'm afraid those skids that are on the front legs are gonna scratch up my new flooring. There is so much that is made to help the handicapped that is awkward. Truly, one does get around some better WITH them, but it's obvious those who make them have not had to be dependent on them for any length of time.   I've tried going without the boot and just wearing my brand new New Balance 801 slip-ons, but it doesn't take long to tell me it's too early for that. But at least I'm able to get around better and to get outside some. I can see and feel progress. Patience is not one of my in-born qualities. It's something I have to force myself to practice.

When I go anywhere in my boot, there are always people who want to know what happened to me, and then they tell me either they or someone they know is struggling with plantar faciitis. Plantar faciitis is inflammation of the plantar facia, and is caused by the heel spur. Why is this such a common thing now, I wonder? Is it the shoes we wear now? Our lifestyles? I wonder why so many people who have insurance are just living with the pain and inflammation a heel spur can cause without considering surgery? Are we so busy with our lives that we can't do the down-time?  Dr. Webb said to me that he would do everything he could to help me avoid surgery, and was surprised when I told him, "To hell with that, just schedule my surgery! I've turned 65 and I have Medicare and a Medigap policy now!" For sure I needed to get this done before those politicians in Washington take it all away from me. I've had those Cortisone shots and I can't get any improvement from them. I've spent a fortune on shoes.  Enough is enough!

We are having really warm weather now. The trees are all budding out. It's much too early for this. Our last frost date is normally around the middle of April. Normally, we'll have a week or two of really warm weather in March, which lulls everyone into a false sense of security and they go out and plant stuff they shouldn't plant till later. Then we get a couple weeks of bitter cold and Mother Nature, who is a Mean Old Broad, just laughs while we're out there trying to cover stuff up. All the new, tender growth on perennials, trees and bushes gets nipped back and everything looks like hell for awhile. I'm trying to remember all that and restrain myself.

Last fall, when I cleared out the remains of the Datura and the Verbena bonariensis, just outside my office back door, I found a little tree. I'm used to finding volunteer trees in unfortunate places, usually they are mulberry or hackberry. Now and then a maple or a cottonwood. This one didn't look like any of those. It was late into the fall after most of the other trees had dropped their leaves, but it still had these red/green pointy leaves on it.

I looked around for a tree that still had some leaves, and then compared the colors of the leaves. I thought the paw-paw tree out by the back gate was about as close a match as I could find. I didn't take a picture of it then, but here's what it looks like now:

I decided to leave it where it was until spring, and see if it made it through the winter.

Both trees have now already broken dormancy. I tried to get a good picture of the transplanted tree, but the leaves are still so small yet, that this was all I could do:

JC and I dug it up on Monday and planted it near the other one.  Maybe I'm wrong in my identification, but when I wondered about how a paw-paw tree would get right there next to the house like that, I remembered that little incident that happened after our big snow thawed out during February of 2011.   If memory serves, I think I kicked off my Crocs and my jeans as soon as I got enough inside the back door where no one could see me, (not that, after watching the whole incident, they wouldn't be rolling in the floor and unable to see for the tears in their eyes by then) and maybe I threw them there where the volunteer tree later appeared. Maybe one of the seeds was in the mud that was in my Croc. And then again, maybe it's a coincidence. June's friend, Lucille, says she has paw-paw trees all over her land, and that the birds plant them. After I thought about that for awhile, I wondered what kind of bird would drop a paw-paw tree seed? The seeds are too big for most birds. If it was a bigger bird, wouldn't it just eat the paw-paw and leave the seeds behind?   At any rate, if it IS a paw-paw tree, and if it survives the transplant, then it will cross-polinate with the only one that DID come up where I had planted them. And that would be what is called "dumb luck".

I guess this about covers what I've been doing since last post. We did a little more digging out where the Chickasaw Plum bushes are trying to grow, and took out quite a bit more rock on the most recent section. But then we ran into a slab and Hubs just wasn't in the mood to get the jackhammer out, so we left it like that. And then it rained so it'll be a few days before we can take up where we left off. We were on the tail end of all the bad storms they had in Kansas and Missouri and we had a LOT of wind in the night. Some of my row cover came loose out in the garden. One of my kitty litter buckets went to visit our neighbor, and the wooden deer were blown over. Hubs' lawn mower trailer was blown against the pear tree but there was no damage.

There's been so much freaky weather, and so many awful things happening in the news. A 15-month-old girl was found dead at her home in Dewey. Police have yet to charge anyone with her death, though it's obvious she was abused for several days before she died, because there are ten adults living in that house where she lived. A student in Ohio took a gun to school and shot some of his classmates.  The boy turned himself in and told law enforcement that the kids he shot were those who had bullied him since grade school.  The last time I heard, three of those kids that were shot had died. The lyrics of a song from the 1960's keep echoing in my head, "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn." Parents need to get their heads out of the sand (or somewhere else, if you get my drift), and make sure their kid isn't bullying someone. I don't know how many times I've heard parents deny that there is a bullying problem at school when their kid is one of the bullies. I don't know how many times I've seen teachers and bus drivers ignore incidents. And no, the kid doesn't have to be gay to get bullied. All they have to be is just a tiny bit different in one way or another. Bullying should not be a joke. It should not be shown in movies and TV as something that is a minor problem and just an annoyance to its victim.

And we mustn't forget national and world headlines, which is also depressing and something no one seems to be able to do anything about, anyway.

It really is true that ignorance is bliss. And I am finally at that place where I realize it's better not to mention stuff like this on the blog. So I'm going to try harder not to rant.

I made an omelette for our supper last night. It sure was good, made with little brown and green eggs, home-grown onion and green/red/yellow sweet peppers from the freezer. I had to buy the cheese and mushrooms, though.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that I bought one of those Whiz-Bang Wheel Hoe kits from HERE, it arrived and Hubs put it together. Now, back in the day, Hubs could've made one of these from scratch because he used to be a welder. But he doesn't have the equipment or access to the materials now. And we don't have a welding shop where they make things for people that just walk in, like they did where Hubs used to work. The kit comes without the wheel, you have to order that from someplace else, and without the handles. Rather than spend the money buying hardwood to make the handles out of, Hubs found an old fertilizer spreader out in the shed, that he bought at a garage sale for a dollar. The handles from it fit on the wheel hoe with just the drilling of a new hole on the handles.

I'm pretty proud of Hubs and my new piece of garden equipment! It's going to make weeding a lot easier.

Well, that's about it. I need to go soak my foot and do my foot exercises. Hubs is buying pizza tonight. A fitting end to February. More to come, in March.... XOXOXOXO

Letter From Ilene, 2/24/12

2012-02-24T16:38:00.003-06:00

Carol gave me permission to post her instructions for a heated chicken waterer. This is what she what she wrote:

"Al took a five gallon plastic bucket with a lid and built my chicken waterer. The only thing he did to the bucket part, was cut 3 fairly large holes on the sides of the bucket for them to stick their heads in to drink. All the other work went into the lid. He drilled a hole in the top of the bucket and mounted a plain old plastic fixture that holds a bare bulb. Because the bucket is deep, the bulb is a long way above the water line, and is high enough in the bucket that the chickens don't hit it. He also drilled a hole through the lid near the side and put in a piece of PVC pipe that sticks up above the lid and goes down into the water, but not to the bottom of the bucket. It has a little PVC cap that we pull off when we fill the bucket. We just pour a gallon pitcher of water through the PVC pipe to keep the bucket filled up to the bottom of the holes on the side of the bucket.

"We bought a small thermostat at Lowes for about $13 dollars that is used for dog houses. It is yellow plastic and you can run an extension cord to it and plug an appliance into it. It comes on when the temp drops to 38 and brings it up to 50 before it shuts off. Where my chickens roost is very small so I also have a heat lamp plugged into it and it brings it up to 50 really quickly except on the very coldest nights. If your hen house is large, you might need to put your water in some type of plywood box or something so it would only heat that area then go off, but even if it stayed on all night, it is just a light bulb. I guess you could make a box that would come down over the bucket, but leave the lower front open so they could get their head in to drink."

And I got a funny e-mail from Sandy, I particularly like the first one. She won't mind if I share it here:

The Philosophy of Ambiguity

1. DON'T SWEAT THE PETTY THINGS AND DON'T PET THE SWEATY THINGS.
2. ONE TEQUILA, TWO TEQUILA, THREE TEQUILA, FLOOR.
3. ATHEISM IS A NON-PROPHET ORGANIZATION.
4. IF MAN EVOLVED FROM MONKEYS AND APES, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE MONKEYS AND APES?
5. THE MAIN REASON THAT SANTA IS SO JOLLY IS BECAUSE HE KNOWS WHERE ALL THE BAD GIRLS LIVE.
6. I WENT TO A BOOKSTORE AND ASKED THE SALESWOMAN, "WHERE'S THE SELF- HELP SECTION?" SHE SAID IF SHE TOLD ME, IT WOULD DEFEAT THE PURPOSE.
7. WHAT IF THERE WERE NO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS?
8. IF A DEAF CHILD SIGNS SWEAR WORDS, DOES HIS MOTHER WASH HIS HANDS WITH SOAP?
9. IF SOMEONE WITH MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES THREATENS TO KILL HIMSELF, IS IT CONSIDERED A HOSTAGE SITUATION?
10. IS THERE ANOTHER WORD FOR SYNONYM?
11. WHERE DO FOREST RANGERS GO TO "GET AWAY FROM IT ALL?"
12. WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU SEE AN ENDANGERED ANIMAL EATING AN ENDANGERED PLANT?
13. IF A PARSLEY FARMER IS SUED, CAN THEY GARNISH HIS WAGES?
14. WOULD A FLY WITHOUT WINGS BE CALLED A WALK?
15. WHY DO THEY LOCK PETROL STATION BATHROOMS? ARE THEY AFRAID SOMEONE WILL CLEAN THEM?
16. IF A TURTLE DOESN'T HAVE A SHELL, IS HE HOMELESS OR NAKED?
17. CAN VEGETARIANS EAT ANIMAL CRACKERS?
18. IF THE POLICE ARREST A MIME, DO THEY TELL HIM HE HAS THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT?
19. WHY DO THEY PUT BRAILLE ON THE DRIVE-THROUGH BANK MACHINES?
20. HOW DO THEY GET DEER TO CROSS THE ROAD ONLY AT THOSE YELLOW ROAD SIGNS?
21. WHAT WAS THE BEST THING BEFORE SLICED BREAD?
22. ONE NICE THING ABOUT EGOTISTS: THEY DON'T TALK ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE.
23. DOES THE LITTLE MERMAID WEAR AN ALGAEBRA?
24. DO INFANTS ENJOY INFANCY AS MUCH AS ADULTS ENJOY ADULTERY?
25. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A CIVIL WAR?
26. IF ONE SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMER DROWNS, DO THE REST DROWN TOO? 27. IF YOU ATE BOTH PASTA AND ANTIPASTO, WOULD YOU STILL BE HUNGRY?
28. IF YOU TRY TO FAIL, AND SUCCEED, WHICH HAVE YOU DONE?
29. WHOSE CRUEL IDEA WAS IT FOR THE WORD 'LISP' TO HAVE 'S' IN IT?
30. WHY ARE HEMORRHOIDS CALLED "HEMORRHOIDS" INSTEAD OF "ASSTEROIDS"?
31. WHY IS IT CALLED TOURIST SEASON IF WE CAN'T SHOOT AT THEM?
32. WHY IS THERE AN EXPIRATION DATE ON SOUR CREAM?
33. IF YOU SPIN AN ORIENTAL PERSON IN A CIRCLE THREE TIMES, DO THEY BECOME DISORIENTED?
34. CAN AN ATHEIST GET INSURANCE AGAINST ACTS OF GOD?

Heh. I've gotten stuff like this before. I remember one that said, "Why is it when you transport things by land, it's called "shipping", but the stuff that's transported by ship is called "cargo"?

Here are Monday's eggs.

No, we only got three. Two green ones and that pinkish one. I put the shells from the day before in the bowl to compare the colors. So am I correct that an Auracana chicken lays the same color every time? For sure, two green eggs on the same day mean two chickens laying green eggs. The pinkish one suggests yet another chicken in the club, with the two that lay the brown eggs (I've had two brown eggs in the same day before) slacking off. That comes to five chickens in the club in all, unless one chicken can lay several colors. They are all the same age so eventually I should be getting 7 eggs a day. Another bit of good news is that both the green ones were in the nestbox with June's fake egg. The pink one was in the chicken house, but on the floor near the feeder. June called yesterday to say that she knew there had to be some reason why she kept running onto that fake egg, so that she knew right where it was when I called. It's been years since her husband Jack, deceased now for many years, used it for their chickens. It makes me smile. It's almost like Jack had a hand in it. Thanks, June. Thanks, Jack. Oh, and thanks, Carol, for that advice.

Here are today's eggs so far. It's about 11:00. Hubs thinks there might be more in an hour or so. Two of the green eggs were in the nest box at the far east end, and one was still warm. The other green egg was in the nest box at the far west end, with June's fake egg.

I found some information online that said that a chicken that lays green eggs might lay lighter or darker colors, but will never lay brown eggs. And vicey-versey, as Aunt Viv would say. I don't guess we'll know for sure how many are actually laying until we have everybody laying in one day. For sure, we've three green egg layers and at least two brown.

I went out front with the walker and JC came with me. We dug out part of the strip where the Chickasaw Plum bushes were planted. Most of them died and I thought it was because I didn't dig down far enough. JC did the digging and prying, I sat at the edge of the hole and took out what rock I could by hand. He pried out some pretty good sized pieces, with me directing where the best place to put the pry-bar was. We took out a lot of rock and replaced it with chunks of wood, but it looked like, at least on the east end, there was enough space for Chickasaw plum roots to find their way. Might be a different story on the other end. We put in a good five hours on it and that was enough for me. This fall, I'll take cuttings of the few plants that remain and try to propagate them under jars till the spring, like with the rose bush and the Nanking cherry bushes.

Well, that's about all for today. I promised broccoli-cheese-potato soup and it's time to start it, so I'll climb upstairs and get on the scooter for that. The chickens really pounced on those potato peelings from last night's supper so they'll get more of those tonight. Plus JC and I dug up a few little treats for them. It's funny that there were sooooo many grubworms in the zinnia bed but everywhere else we dig, we hardly find anything. Even today, we only found three Junebugs that had hatched out from the grubworms but not awakened yet, one or two grubworms and a few little red worms, which the chickens usually won't eat. Who knows, from day to day, what they'll do...... XOXOXOXOXOXO

Letter From Ilene, 2/23/12

2012-02-22T15:38:00.000-06:00

This morning, Hubs brought down the laundry so I could wash colors, made sure I was satisfactorily settled in my office and went off to his workout. He needs that workout and the other people he visits with there to restore his sanity. I've been crabby.

It's not that I'm in pain. Because I'm not. It's not that I don't know I have a lot to be grateful for. Because I do. It's just that, when I ask him to do something, he forgets part of it and then either doesn't do it or asks me if I want him to do that, too, as if it's been his idea. When I try to tell him how to do something, he never does it like I tell him to. He always acts surprised when I ask him if he remembers what I said, and sometimes even tells me I did NOT say that. Some of that, I can put up with. But it's getting old. My patience is thinning. Yesterday was the first day I started using the walker, and I was actually able to get up and down the three steps between my office and our living quarters with the use of my 3-footed cane. I stayed mostly in my office. And he hid out in the garage some. At one point he even explained to me that he understood why I was crabby, because it's nice out and I can't do anything. BUT IT'S NOT THAT. Well, maybe a little. MEN! They oversimplify everything. JC will be home for awhile, seeing as how his gas tank is empty. Today I've put him to work. But I have to watch him so closely because he is worse than Hubs. Between the two of them, I'm having a bit of a time holding onto MY sanity. I'm used to doing for myself, or at least being right in the middle of it.

Yesterday I sowed some tomato seed into some peat pellets. These are used pellets. The seedlings that were in them were the ones that died after the cart they were on blew over in the wind. Just to make sure I wouldn't encourage disease, I watered the pellets with some Chamomile tea that I had in a jar in the refrigerator. This is the year when I'm going to try to simplify things by using up stuff, so I planted some of the older seed, the ones I don't have very many of. I had one "complimentary" packet of seed that just said "Tomato" on it, and a picture of a round, red tomato. No information about what variety or how old the seed was. I think I got it as a bonus in a seed trade a couple of years ago. Then I had a few Marglobe seed, gotten in a trade at some point; the last of my hybrid Jet Star from last year's seed trade, and a few Watermelon Beefsteak, purchased in 2006 from Heirloom Seeds. I thought about just pre-germinating in a paper towel, but things have a way of getting out of hand here, and I decided since I was using my little heat mat, I'd just skip the step. They should germinate pretty quickly in their little warm environment, if they're going to at all, and they'll hold in the pellet for awhile. Those pellets that don't have anything in them after three or four days can be re-used for something else. These are using up all the space I have on my one little heat mat so I will not sow more seed till these emerge or till the seed mats that I ordered have arrived, whichever happens first.

I also went out the back door with my walker yesterday and looked at the dishpan where I had sown some Fresca strawberry seed and set it, covered with a clear plastic shoebox lid, on the sidewalk near the flower bed. They are seed that I bought last winter from Swallowtail, and they need winter stratification. I wish I had wintersown them in situ, and so yesterday my plan was to dump that dishpan out on a bare spot in the flower bed by the back door and spread it out some, which might allow the seed to germinate in the ground. But there's something with tiny leaves coming up already in the dishpan. I'll just have to watch it to see if it turns out to be strawberries or if it's just Henbit. That stuff is everywhere, and I don't mind because the chickens love it so and I don't have any other green stuff to feed them right now. Hubs goes out most days and picks them some. I hope he's giving them plenty.

After publishing my post about how weird my chickens are, Carol e-mailed me with a really good tip about putting a ping-pong or tennis ball in the nest boxes and keeping them up for the day. I called June, who seems to always have just what I need, and she had a plastic egg. So Hubs went and got it and put it in the nest box. He said a couple of the chickens got up in the nest box and pecked at it, and then when he went out at the end of the day, he said they had buried it under the nest material. It's going to be warm today so Hubs went ahead and let them out before he left. Around 8am I heard some loud cackling, and then again at 8:45. I looked out then, and several were gathered out there in the southwest corner of the chicken yard, where the second egg was found day before yesterday. When Hubs got home, I told him about that and he went out and came back with these:

Looks like we might have a third girl in the club, because that's a green egg you see there, AND IT WAS IN THE NEST BOX WITH THE PLASTIC EGG!!! The other, however, was on the ramp. Nothing else that Hubs could find.

Yesterday, Hubs only found one egg, out where he found the second egg the day before, so the ramp-layer and the corner-yard layer must be taking turns having a day off. I wonder if that's what normally happens.

But this is a good sign, maybe the layer of the green egg will teach the layers of the brown eggs. And I'm glad to know that brown chickens don't necessarily lay brown eggs.

Most of you probably saw Glenda's Comment with suggestions and they sound like good ones to me, too. Yes, I agree, my chickens are just weird. I'll have Hubs lay some buckets on their sides on the floor under the nesting boxes. They seem to like buckets. If we leave one out there in the chicken yard, they'll knock it over trying to perch on the edge. And then they're poking their snoopy little noses -- er -- beaks -- in it. Before I moved them to the chicken house, while they were still little, I'd put them all in a bucket when I needed to clean their box.

Carol also told me about her home-made heated waterer. My e-mail has been down all morning, but when I find out from her if it's ok to share what she said, I will post it. When I tried to print off her e-mail to show Hubs, I found out my printer didn't work. After I reinstalled the driver and cleaned the print head, I discovered I had two pieces of paper jammed in the printer. Sheesh. Then when I couldn't get into my mail through att.net, I thought maybe I was crashing. The funny thing about it was that about a month ago I got an e-mail that looked like one of those phishing things. It was supposed to be from AT&T and it said that I had not responded to their previous e-mails and therefore my e-mail address was going to be cancelled out and all my stored messages and my address book were going to be deleted. It looked so fake, and I hadn't heard from them before so I figured it was spam and deleted it. I did print off my address book, just in case. But, oh, what a headache to have to change my e-mail address! I'd have to change my preferences on so many sites, change my blog account and others that use my e-mail address as the prime bit of information. So I went up for lunch and came back down ready to start the process, tried one last time to get into my mailbox, and had success. It must've been a problem on their end.

Leroy, the man who saves his leaves for us, is in the process of moving. I've talked about him and his wife before. They bought a two-bedroom duplex and have their bigger home up for sale. They've been in the process of cleaning up the duplex and selling stuff out of there, and today Leroy sold Hubs the bench that they had out in their front yard under a tree, which I admire every time I see it.

I don't know where I'll put it or what I'll do with it yet.
I heard on the news last night that they have a new study out that concludes that the drinking of diet sodas correlates to strokes and heart attacks. They did say that they hadn't eliminated some of the other factors and I thought, DUHHHHHHH. It's really hard for me to believe people actually get paid for this sort of thing, or why it even bears mentioning anywhere. I don't know why Hubs watches two morning and three evening news programs when they all run the same stories, and most of the time they're all a big waste of time. Maybe someday someone will conclude THEY lead to strokes and heart attacks. I like our Tulsa newscasters but frankly I don't give a rat's a$$ about whether LeAnn or The Boys wins the latest challenge. There must be a real cost-cutting thing going on, so little actual news to report that they make things up to do that they think will be entertaining, or they show us weird You-Tube stuff we could find on our own, if we were that interested. I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't necessarily entertained by You-Tube of the old woman who "danced" in tribute to Whitney Houston. Good grief. Let an old person do something totally lame and does that make it any less lame? Our local paper is almost as bad. Today they had a piece about how they arrested a guy that set a mouse on fire. Neighbors called police and said they saw something running down the street that was on fire. When police got there they found a burned-up dead mouse. They guy said he'd bought it to feed to his snake but the snake was shedding its skin and so didn't want it. He didn't want to set it loose for fear it'd get in someone's house. So he doused it in lighter fluid, lit it up, and set it free. Truly, no thinkin' going on in THAT house. Yeah, I think that's across the line. But then, I think those sticky traps a well-known exterminating company sets out for mice is, too. I worked someplace once that was overrun with mice and I found one of those sticky traps with just the side of a mouse on it. The rest of the mouse probably ran off and bled to death. Nobody thought anything about that. And how about lab rats? It's not easy to see where the line is on this issue, I guess.

I went outside for a little while today. Oh, it was lovely. I'm thinking I need to plant my peas......

That's about it for this time. XOXOXOXO.

Letter From Ilene, 2/21/2012

2012-02-21T10:12:00.001-06:00

SOMEBODY LAID AN EGG!!! TWO somebodies, actually.

Hubs found one on the wooden ramp just outside the chicken house door, about 11:30. The egg felt cold, so it had been there a little while, but only since they'd been turned out around 7.

And then he went out again, about 3, and found another, this time in the southwest corner of the chicken yard. It's kind of a mess. They are both really small, but I expected that. I was kind of hoping for some green and blue eggs. I hope this doesn't mean that the colored eggs are only laid by the chickens that are not brown, because since losing Marilyn, who would've been my only white chicken, and since Aldine, who was my only gray chicken, turned out to be a rooster, all I have are "Little Brown Hens".

I don't know why they don't use the nest boxes. But then they are not very normal. They don't sleep on the roost. They dig little wells in the bedding on the floor. They don't like worms but they go ape over grubs. They are friendly but they won't let me pick them up and they run and squawk when I try to touch them. And now they're laying eggs where they can be easily stepped on. Poor things, with no mama to teach them what to do, is it any wonder? If I ever buy chickens again, I think I'll try to find some that have known their mama. Hubs put fresh bedding in the nest boxes yesterday so maybe they'll figure it out

Hubs went out at 8:45 today and found another egg in the same place as the second egg yesterday.

We ate them for breakfast. My first taste of a fresh egg. I wondered if they'd have a bitter twang since the chickens have only been getting Henbit for their greens lately. But they didn't. .

Joe came over yesterday and did our electrical stuff in the kitchen. It's no wonder that he's so busy. He is really efficient, and I haven't seen anything that he doesn't do well. I just think he's the best. Hubs and I slowed him down talking to him, I'm afraid. There were some compromises to be made because of how things were inside the walls and ceilings, but I was prepared for that.

He put up the stained glass lights.

We have ceiling fans in every room. Each one has a separate toggle for the fan and for the light. So we had Joe use the toggle and the wiring that went to the fan part of the ceiling fan in the "dining nook" for these little lights and then wire the fan so that when we trip the toggle, we can use the light and/or the fan by using the pull-cords that are on the fan. That's how most ceiling fans are wired, anyway.

Then he disconnected the long electrical wire protruding from the wall where Hubs removed that upward-facing plug-in receptacle that had been on the pony wall (see the hole about halfway up on the unpainted white area),

removed that exposed phone line and put everything inside the wall (there's patching for me to do but that's something easily done),

swapped out the low-hanging lighted fan with a Hunter Ceiling Hugger,

and installed the fluorescent light over the work area. I just can't tell you what a big difference this light makes when it's on.

We had the obvious materials but we didn't think about needing electrical boxes for the lights, or the electrical line, or the phone line. So Joe had to run into town for the electrical boxes and phone stuff. I hated that we hadn't been better prepared. When he was finished, his bill was only for his materials. But I had budgeted in more than that so we twisted his arm to take it. I told him we didn't want to take advantage of him but I think we probably did anyway, because if we hired some other electrician to do these things, surely it would've cost a lot more. Maybe we can help Joe and Cathy with some things later on.

We always enjoy visiting with Joe and Cathy. They are the neighbors that live just across the road from us. We don't get to see them often because their lives are so busy, but they are good neighbors and it's good just knowing that they're there.

The foot is coming along. Monday marked two weeks post-op. I'm supposed to be ready to walk in the boot after the third week, so I've started gradually working towards that goal by using the walker that Hubs was outfitted with when he had his knees done. The scooter has to be returned by March 2 and I will be more than willing to tell it good-bye. Have you ever heard the song that goes, "Give me 40 acres and I'll turn this thing around,"? It's about a trucker in an 18-wheeler. Or me on that scooter. I have felt really blessed that my other foot, knees, shoulders and back have held up so far through all this because getting up and down with a minimum of all the things one does during the day without thinking about it has been extra strain on everything. I can tell Hubs is starting to feel the strain of having to take care of the individual who usually takes care of him.

I'm dying to get outside and see what's still alive and what isn't. I have to be content with letting Hubs be my "eyes", but when he comes back and tells me everything is looking good, I have no idea if that's a fact. Hubs is color blind and sometimes something that's yellow looks green. He reports that there's no sign of the Comfrey yet. I guess I could start my tomato seeds today. Maybe that will be enough to satisfy me till

I got my Mother Earth News magazine in the mail last week. They have a nice website called "What To Plant Now". It's HERE. Choose your region and month. It took a long time to load for me, but it might just be my computer. They also have a free one-month trial of a garden planner.

I have a small plant-starting heat mat I bought a couple of years ago and I think I must've paid $25 or $30 for it. Today I found THIS in several sizes, shipping paid, and the price is the best that I've seen anywhere. Some people say they use heat tape and styrofoam insulation and that's fine if it's something you already have. But if you have to buy it, the heat tape is expensive, too. I even saw a You-Tube of a man who built a seed-starting table out of wood, and he enclosed a second tier below it with little doors on the sides. Inside each little door, he had mounted a light socket for a regular light bulb. I don't know about that one, I'd think it'd be a fire hazard, but he said that's what he always used.

I saw a couple of reviews on the heat mat that made me smile. One woman used it to put her feet on as she sat at her computer in winter. Another person puts one on the corner of their desk with a towel on top of it, and the cat sleeps there. Heh.

We're having problems keeping the chickens' water from freezing. We bought one of THESE at Atwood's. If this isn't the biggest piece of CRAP I've ever seen...... I have to turn it upside-down to fill it through a hole in the bottom and sometimes I don't get the plug seated right and it leaks. Or I can fill the top part while it's upside down and then twist the base on it, which works OK. But either way, I have to carry it to the chicken house UPSIDE DOWN, and when it's full of water, it's heavy. Then I get my feet wet when I flip it over, and sometimes I get EVERYTHING wet because the white part comes loose easily from the red. And now the heating thing has quit working. We have one of THESE that we found at the Recycling Center. I like it a lot. It works great as long as you make sure the top lid is screwed down tight. Otherwise it won't make a vacuum and the water will overflow the pan till it's gone. But once you figure out how it works, you make sure the lid is down tight before you take the little lid off the spigot. The only down side is that this one doesn't come with a heated pan. Winter's about over and we've been able to limp along with what we have. But before next winter we'll have to have something better in place. I read where some people bring the waterer inside at night and take it out when they go to open the chicken house. This might be OK when it's just the night that's below freezing. But what about freezing weather during the day?? Do you just keep carrying out new water? Seems kind of labor intensive to me.

These next few warm days are going to be hard on me, what with not being able to get out in it. I have some things in mind I'm going to try to get done, with Hubs' help. And maybe I can get JC to do a couple of things. We had some high winds and a hard rain yesterday right after Hubs got the chickens put up, but it didn't last very long. Hubs has been bragging about how easily those chickens go inside for him but yesterday there were a couple he couldn't get to go in and then the wind blew the gate open. When I looked out the window, Aldine and about five chickens were in the yard, with Hubs out there looking perplexed. I went to the door and told him to put up the chickens that were still inside their yard before he started trying to get the ones that had gotten out into OUR yard in. So he did that and asked me to call JC down to help him. Together they managed to guide the errant chickens back in. If JC hadn't been home it would've been a much longer process and maybe one worth filming.

Those Osaka Flowering Cabbage seed never did germinate in the damp paper towel. I'm thinking enough time has passed that I can trash them. Oh, well, nothing much ventured.....

Well, that's all I have unless you want a chronicle of foot soaking and if you did, I'd worry about you. So till next time.... XOXOXOXO

The Perils of Ilene, Good News

2012-02-17T16:49:00.001-06:00

I just could not wait to share this good news with you.

When Dr. Webb looked at my incision, he said, "Wow, you healed up LIKE AN 18-YEAR-OLD!" and he removed my stitches. He replaced the thick wrapping with a piece of gauze and two bandaids. Now I can get my sock on. Ahhhhhhhh.

Then we talked. I said I was ready to walk and he said, "No, you're not, and you'll be sorry if you try." He cautioned me not to get my plantar all fired up because if I did it would set me back in my recovery. Well, I knew that, and I wasn't REALLY intending to do any walking just yet but then he had no way of knowing that.

He did say that if I was standing, for instance, brushing my teeth or something, I could stand on both feet as long as it didn't cause pain and I had my boot on. He told me to exercise my foot making big X's and O's with my toes. He said I had a lot of bruising on the plantar area and that I needed to roll around a water bottle or a tennis ball to break it up, because it might cause scar tissue if I don't. He gave me a prescription form that had instructions for putting my foot in hot water for two minutes and then in cold for one, do this five times and then elevate my foot for five minutes. He wants this done three times a day. When I saw this, I said, "Does this mean I can have a BATH??"

He said, "Tomorrow morning." Oh, happy days are here again.

I said, "What kind of bandage do you want me to put back on?"

He said, "You can leave it off."

"What about the boot?" I asked. How much longer do I have to sleep in it?

He said, "You can sleep without it. You might want to wear the padded liner to bed for a few nights, though."

OK, I can do that.

My next appointment is three weeks out. Dr. Webb said by then he expected I would be walking in the boot. The Scooter has two more weeks of rental time on it and I figure that'll be about right. After that I can use Hubs' walker and/or my cane. Dr. Webb also said when he saw me next time he wanted to see that I had bought better shoes than the one I had on. He likes the New Balance.

We stopped by the recycling center and Hubs found me three bottles the right size for breaking up the bruise in my Plantar. I figure since Dr. Webb didn't clear me for a bath till tomorrow, I probably shouldn't start the hot/cold water treatments till then, either. But I've already been "Xing and Oing" and I made up my water bottles and have already been rolling one around. The other two are in the freezer.

I can hardly wait for bedtime! I'm going to feel soooo much more comfortable at night without that dang boot! And when bedtime comes, can morning be far behind?? Heh. I told Hubs, if he wakes at 4am and hears water running, don't worry.

(Note: this picture was taken Saturday morning, after my bath. There on the side of my heel is the incision. My foot's still orange from the Betadyne. That bruise is already better than it was when Dr. Webb saw it. I'm curious as to why I have a bruise there. I hope I wasn't kicking while he was trying to do the surgery.)

This has actually been a good day all around. I spent the morning doing our taxes. This is the first year in awhile that I have felt capable of tackling this task again. We got an inheritance that was, because of Hubs' sister's shifty ways, split up over two years. Then we bought a rental property and then sold it, and took an IRA distribution for two years straight. But in 2011, all we did was take a distribution and so things got simple enough that I could do it again. Nonetheless, I had been putting it off and dreading it till this morning when I decided I'd just get it over with. We signed the forms and mailed them on the way to Dr. Webb's. It's good to have that off my mind.

Hubs is making hamburgers tonight and I hear him banging around in the kitchen so I'll crawl up the three steps to the main floor, get on my scooter and see if I can help. X's and O's to all....

Things To Do Different This Year

2012-02-16T17:08:00.000-06:00

Knowing what to do, when, is kind of hard when it comes to the garden. Especially in Oklahoma.

Plan for drought, and it rains every day for a week, the sowbugs collect under the damp mulch and secretly kill your plants by chewing on them at the soil line. Your tomato plants develop fungal diseases and die.

Plan for a wet year and the hot wind dehydrates the plants before they get a chance to make anything at all. The heat and speed at which things dry out slows growth and stops things from blooming, and as if that's not enough, hoards of insects come in for the kill, lay their eggs in the soil, and you end up fighting them for the next several years.

You never know, and none of the "experts" do, either, apparently. Our weatherman said La Nina is breaking up. I sure hope he's right.

Last year Hubs and I worked our butts off just trying to keep the new trees and perennials alive, and for the most part, we had success there. But the vegetable garden was a dismal failure.  Two steps forward, one back.  It's all a dance and Mother Nature likes to lead. The thing we've had to hang on to is that ANY progress is better than none, and that, at least, gives us something we can build on this year. We look forward to the time when we can actually look out across our land from a distance and see OUR trees, with our neighbors' trees in the background. I don't know how many times I've taken a picture something on our land for the blog and all the reader can really see are things that are on our neighbors' property.

You don't garden very long in Oklahoma before you learn that when a plant's exposure requirements say "full sun", that probably does not mean "full sun in Oklahoma". About the ONLY thing I've seen that is undaunted (most of the time) by the heat and the dry so far was a Castor Bean tree that I managed to grow last summer. After the first killing frost, I learned why, when I tried to tear out the roots and could not. Oh, well, just cut them level to the ground and that's instant Hugelkulture.

And so we learn that plants that are advertised as "drought tolerant" are only so because they have long roots that seek out moisture deep in the ground. That tolerance goes away rapidly if the ground is rocky and the plant can't get it's roots deep enough. The summer of 2011 I even had trouble keeping zinnias alive. At the Ponca House, they grew thickly and bloomed profusely with hardly any attention from me other than dead-heading. But that soil was improved black gumbo clay, and not rocky. And we had rain there that we didn't get here. Some plants don't necessarily have very long roots but they have thick leaves or other ways of storing moisture. Sedums, for instance, can survive most anything, but I have had them die back to the ground if they are getting full sun and very little water. If you water them late in the day while their leaves are hot from the sun, any water that splashes on them produces a big white sunscald spot. On the other hand, I once dug some up to sell at a fall garage sale. A bag that didn't sell got thrown on the ground on the south side of the house where hardly anyone went and was discovered the following spring, dry as a bone, with roots trying to make their way out of the bag. Go figure.

It's the same for "native" plants -- plants that can be found normally out in the middle of fields where they compete with the native grasses and take whatever Mother Nature dishes out, and still live, grow and produce with no human intervention. For Oklahoma, it's maypop (passion vine), moon flower (datura / loco weed), purple cone flower (echinacea), blackberries, sandplums, mulberry, wild roses, elderberries, wild grape, pokeweed, milkweed, wild onions and garlic, sumac, and so on.  Some of these seeds are brought in from other places by the birds. They light on the fence rail and before they take off again, they poop. Since birds don't digest seed, often there is seed encapsulated in it. This is pretty cool, actually. The seed gets stratified inside the bird, and by the time it lands on the ground it's already covered in fertilizer. It lays there and stays moist until it rains, and then the fertilizer gets washed off and mixes with the soil and the seed gets imbedded in the wet ground. Sometimes the rain doesn't come at the right time and that pretty much kills the whole thing, but birds are all around, with all kinds of things in their tummies and so the Law of Averages takes over. The only bad thing about this is that then the plant grows in the fence line, which is not the perfect place, and if it's in MY fence line, that means Hubs is likely to come along with the Weed Wacker. *Sigh*. Hubs is getting better about that, though. Other ways that you get volunteer plants is when the mother plant makes "seed with wings" that catches the wind and travels for miles. Dandelions are good examples. Milk weed. Certain trees. Bois d'Arc (Bodark, Osage Orange, Hedge Apple) proliferates when squirrels bury pieces of the fruits. Squirrels are bad about hiding stuff in the earth "for later" and then forgetting to come back and get it. At the Ponca House, I had to dig out quite a few volunteer black walnut trees from my raised beds every summer, and once in awhile a pecan tree. But, trust me, even a native plant will not always live where it is planted. If it ends up 8" above a huge rock, it's roots will spread out across the top of the rock, looking for the edges. From there, it depends on whether it can get water and nutrients to live long enough to find the edges of the rock and whether there is a big enough fissure at that edge. I dug up a struggling elderberry bush that was about to lose this battle. It's now flourishing in a better spot. I also dug up a small volunteer maple tree that had wrapped its roots around a rock. It didn't survive the transplant because I broke too much of the root trying to get the rock out. It had unfortunately chosen a place to grow that was right up against the driveway, or I would've left it alone.

You also learn that plants that are termed "invasive", while undesirable for gardeners with less hostile conditions, may be the only thing that will survive in certain other areas. And even they may struggle.

AND THENNNNNNNN..........
About the time you decide that NOTHING that your friends grow will grow and thrive in YOUR conditions, throw in the trowel and plant all things that grow in the desert......

Winter comes. And delivers you a record-breaking MINUS 28 degree (f.) night. This, of course, is too much cold for most plants that are able to withstand 100º and hotter in the summer. And/or, the following spring, it rains. And rains. And rains. Then xeric plants begin to rot.

Sheesh.

You can't really plan. All you can do is hope. And remember you are only beaten when you stop trying. Remember that, because it's true in almost everything in life. Also remember that success is where preparation meets opportunity. I don't know who first said that, but it is true in everything, as well.

It's really tough when you have to start with a property that is pretty much a blank slate. No one has lived here that has really loved this place enough to try to make it look nice on the outside for a long time. I've found evidence that someone did, long ago. Our neighbors still talk about the man who had the property covered in junk cars. What an eyesore it must've been. All the while, the neighbors were busily improving their land and planting trees and perennials. Jay told me that when they planted their trees, he used a pick-axe. I bought one, and it just didn't work for us. As I've said before, that electric jack-hammer we bought was one of the best investments we've made since we moved here. George, our neighbor around the corner, told me he bought a lot of trees from the Forestry Service, and that for the first couple of years, his water bill was $100 every month during the summer, while he tried to keep those trees alive long enough for their roots to find their way. Now he has a beautiful wooded area on his property. If you want trees out here, you have to pay your price. If you don't have trees, you can't grow much of anything else, either, because the hot sun bearing down full-on just bakes everything and radiates.   Your soil bakes and turns to powder that blows away when the winds come. When I visited with the agent from the Forestry Service, I was told that normally, you buy more trees than you expect to grow, plant them all, and expect 80% of them to die. There have been a few times that we have planted a tree without digging out rock. We look over the land during a semi-dry period for areas that are green amidst the brown. Keeping in mind, of course, where the septic laterals are. Where the water and electric lines are.

Sometimes you can get lucky and buy a home in the country where there are already thriving trees.  However, a property that has nice trees, fertile garden areas, a good house and a good location sells for quite a bit more than we could've afforded. We can dig out our rocks and improve our soil. But it's a little harder to conjure up a quiet, safe neighborhood, extra land, and good neighbors.

Here comes a new garden year, with all it's promises yet to be broken. It's a siren's song. The seed catalogs arrive daily. I steel myself and sometimes I don't even allow myself to look beyond the cover. This, I tell myself, will be my reorganization year. It occurs to me that I have ignored one of the primary rules in gardening and in life. And that is that nothing is going to come easy and you have to do the best you can with what you have to work with. You have to "Accentuate the Positive".

So I've been paying attention to what other people are doing and thinking about how I can adapt them to work for me.

I found Rosalind Creasy's website HERE, where she has posted picture after picture of edible landscaping. Pure Inspiration.

I recently stumbled onto an excellent post on Natural Pest Control on a blog called Common Sense Homesteading, HERE, which has what sounds like some excellent advice. The writer of that blogpost directed me to THIS blogpost on improving your soil.

I have had some marginal success with some things. The end of this winter, when I'm allowed to get out and survey what has survived, I can build on that. Where I find dead trees, at least I will have a spot for a new tree without having to dig a new hole first.

What follows are some changes I plan to make for the growing year of 2012. I make no promises because I can't anticipate what Mother Nature will do, and I might be getting a late start because of my foot.

Trees:
It was a wise decision to start planting trees right away. I wish we could've afforded to start with bigger trees but we just weren't able to do that. Some of our neighbors think it was foolhardy of us to plant hedge apple trees. But hey. They're native. They'll grow fast. And if I get so I don't like them, I can twist them into each other and make a fence. HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE are some examples that I found when trying to find the one that actually inspired me. I never did find the one I was looking for, but I discovered that the method I had seen earlier was called "hedgelaying" using a technique called "pleaching". An example of that is HERE. You could even just grow your own fence posts out of Hedge Apple trees and cut them off six feet from the ground when the tree trunk got to be fence post size. At any rate, shade begets shade and at this point I don't care where it comes from. Mulberry is another tree that some people call a "trash tree". But I don't look at it that way. The Mulberry trees were here before us, testament to the fact that they will give it a good try no matter where they are. We transplanted one from the fence line and to the field last summer, and another just last month from the fence line and up against the chicken yard. In both cases, the mulberries that follow will be consumed by birds or chickens, and the trees will provide some shade. Not too shabby for a trash tree. I still have some Hedge Apple seed. If I can get out there in time, I will plant them this spring. If not, then next fall. I guess that I could always propagate mulberry trees, too. Or those Forsythia that ArborDay keeps sending me. And the rugosa roses that I bought are said to make a pretty decent living fence because they spread by suckering and are bushes, not trailing plants, so they will keep themselves upright. Oh, so many possibilities.

One thing that did not occur to me until it was laid out for me by someone else's garden techniques was that when we go to the trouble to dig a nice, deep, rock-free hole for a tree, and then put out the effort to water said tree, we are missing a huge opportunity to grow something else in the hole with the tree. We might as well. If we don't plant something worthwhile there, then we grow a nice crop of Bermuda grass, which turns out to have roots that give off growth-inhibiting hormones, or Henbit or Chickweed, which grows thickly during winter and spring, and then all but disappears in summer and fall, allowing other unattractive weeds to move in.  Lots of things, from perennials (which might need to be moved to a better location when mature) to annuals to herbs would work there.  Some of the trees will grow faster than others. Some will provide a little shade while still being young and some will not. But one thing that you can count on is that these areas will receive regular water, and we know the roots can go deep there if they need to. Some trees, such as the Redbuds, might benefit from a strong-scented herbal companion, making them less attractive to deer.

Most of the trees we've planted have some kind of barrier around them. This might be simply a circle of rock areound the edges of the hole that was dug for it. But in most cases, it's that AND either a regular-sized tomato cage or it's one of those PVC-pipe cages. Several reasons for this. Since I always mulch the ground around the new tree with hay, all of these weight down the hay enough that the wind doesn't blow it away. They protect the sapling from getting walked on by people or their dogs or mown down. They MAY (but don't quote me on this) discourage deer-nibbling. And if the tree dies, they mark the center of a hole that can receive a replacement tree. This spring, as soon as I'm able, in preparation for the planting of herbs or flowers, I think I will replace those barriers with the larger, taller, tomato cages we made last year out of wire fencing.  I can bury the bottom of the cage in the soil about 4" to keep the wind from blowing it away. This will give the trees a little more space in which to grow and when I plant seeds on the ground under the tree it will protect the seedlings from being stepped on, pooped on, dug up, and, if I can figure out how to rig up a "bunny barrier" around the lower part of the cage, eaten. These cages are nearly invisible from a distance, yet are big enough to be readily seen from enough distance to keep anyone from running over them or getting tangled up in them.

Habitat For Insect Eaters:
I really enjoyed the Goldfinches that came to the volunteer sunflowers at the cellar last summer. After all the sunflowers were gone, I missed hearing their sweet chirpings and the occasional little guy that flew up to the window, attached his feet to the screen wire and gave me a really good view of his pretty little yellow belly. He must've been able to see into the room because as soon as I'd reach for the camera to snap a picture, he'd leave. I could still hear them in the trees in the early mornings, long after there was nothing left here for them to eat. I tried scattering sunflower seeds, but they seem to prefer things they could pick themselves. When we lived at the Ponca house, we saw some Goldfinches eating the seed on the Verbena bonariensis "Verbena On A Stick", but these birds only got interested in the ones that are growing here after the sunflower seeds were gone. I really like Verbena bonariensis. They are self-seeding perennials and I was glad to see some coming up last summer in strange places, the seed having hitch-hiked in with the raised bed soil we moved out here. If this had been a normal year, I would have had more of those than I needed, and I'd also be able to count on the sunflower-like blooms on the Jerusalem Artichoke coming on after the sunflowers were done. They make bitty seed that the sparrows at The Ponca House just went nuts over. I bet the Goldfinches would like that, too.

This year I plan to plant every sunflower seed that I have, because I have learned that the Cucumber Beetle that so decimated my garden last year just LOOOOOOVE sunflowers, and that I may be able to reduce their numbers by going out in the cool of every morning and shaking them out of the sunflowers into a jar of water with a little dish soap in it. I do so wish I didn't need the soap to help them drown, as I'd love to be able to give these bugs to my chickens.  And that makes me wonder if I had enough sunflowers that were attracting the Goldfinches, would the Goldfinches also eat the Cucumber Beetles?? Wouldn't that simplify things!

Last summer, I saw one of those brown lizards, I believe they're called skinks, scurrying around out in the tomato bed. I didn't think much of it at the time, as I know they live somewhere around the patio. But it was brought to my attention how many insects they, and the toads like the one I fished out of the cistern last year, can eat. What is it they say.... "If you build it, they will come....."? And so I think I will incorporate some turned-over broken flower pots for toad houses and try to find a way to bring a source of water out to the vegetable garden.  I wonder if I could take that big oval galvanized tub and put some kind of false bottom in it and use the bottom for the water storage and rig up something that circulates the water. Maybe I should just buy a small pond kit. There is a good website on habitat HERE, and on skinks HERE. Turns out I did good by building that curved flower bed there between the north side of the patio and the back door that leads to my office. I've seen skinks in that area and on the patio. I mulched that flower bed with chopped leaves and, guess what, that's perfect habitat for skinks. Plus there's the old dishpan under the water hydrant that almost always has some water in it because I wash the dirt off my hands there before going into the house. All I really need, they say, is a stick or something in it that the skinks can use to climb in and out of the dishpan on. I know there are tree toads in the neighborhood, just not many on my place -- NO TREES --. I hear their humming from Jay's lake, or Charlie's or George's ponds.  We had one stuck on the outside of our sliding glass patio doors once last summer. They aren't the pretty green and orange ones. They are just brown. But I'm sure they eat the same number of insects.

I would love to be able to turn my chickens out into the garden before I get too much planted out there. But they won't let me pick them up so moving them would be a challenge. And then if they came under attack by any of the neighbors' dogs, I wouldn't be able to do anything but watch and cry.

We were blessed with a period of warm weather in January during which we dug rock out of the zinnia bed.  We replaced the rock with chunks of tree branches, leaves and soil. And so, with any luck at all, the zinnia bed will be grossly different this summer than what it was last year. I look forward to scattering the last of the zinnia seed I gathered from the ones that grew so thickly at The Ponca House, mingled with the seed of those few that managed to make it through last summer far enough to make seed, and a few fresh seed that Paula sent. There are so many things that I love about zinnias. Having them nodding in a wide band along the front driveway will be a most welcome sight. I love their colors, sometimes several within one flower. I love how, after they get to be a certain size, they shade out the grass and weeds in their bed. I love the butterflies and hummingbirds that visit them. How often have I walked along the edges of my zinnia bed, with butterflies fluttering all around me. It's ethereal. I read that butterflies like to sun themselves on flat rocks, and so once again it turns out I accidentally did good by laying some of the biggest flat stones, that came out of the zinnia bed, on the ground between it and the driveway.

Companion planting:
I have that book about Companion Planting. Here again I have to remind us all of my experience at the "class" given by the Master Gardener. You know, I've always had Marigolds in my tomato beds without being aware of one single problem.  The Master Gardener said not to do that because it brings spider mites to your tomato plants. Have any of you experienced this? I have had years when my tomato garden didn't do very well at all. In fact, more years than not, come to think about it.  Maybe I had spider mites and didn't know it.

I'm told I'll have less trouble with insects on my summer squash if I interplant gourd seeds. And I may even cover them with Reemay and hand-polinate. Seems like I get nothing but male flowers for about the first month, anyway. I hear that dill is good to plant amongst cabbages. I think when I start my tomato seeds, I'll start some basil seed, too, and grow basil among my tomatoes. I was successful in getting some Tansy established last summer. They have stayed green all winter. I will be transplanting these to grow amongst the blackberries. A couple of volunteer poke plants began growing in the fence line last summer, and I left them alone. I have no problem allowing poke to grow. I'm trying to think of something to plant under the grape arbor that will shade out the grass there. The arbor faces west so it will be partial sun underneath even when the grape vines grow enough to provide shade. I need to get the book down and do some more reading.

Frugality Vs. Common Sense:
The last two summers, I have struggled with never having enough water for the garden. The first reason was that there were so many rocks in the soil that drainage was super, super fast. I slowed this down some last summer by mulching but my long-term goal will be to remove rock from the beds and replace them with chunks of wood and other plant material. This spring, when Hubs tilled the bed where I grew tomatoes last year, I was pleased with the look, feel and smell of the soil there. The leaves that we turned into that bed have decomposed and the mulching seems to have done a lot of good. I think I might have good results from this bed, expecially after I clean out the chicken house this spring and dig some of that into it. Since rotation is recommended to discourage diseases, this year I will plant cabbages in that bed. And maybe beans and southern peas.

Our cistern waterproofing project worked, and we have seen the cistern become filled almost to the top. Not sure what would happen if it overflowed, so we disconnected the input pipe till after we had used some.  And we brought the level down to about halfway, watering things during a freaky-warm-and-dry December and January. So we know the cistern isn't always going to be adequate, even when it isn't leaking. But, oh, it is going to go so much further being full than it does when there is just a foot of water in the bottom. Somewhere along the way, I told myself I would not use metered water for the garden, and yes, that would be a nice goal. But it just isn't very practical to spend all that money buying seeds and plants, and all that time growing them and transplanting them, if I'm just going to stand there and watch them die. I didn't increase my water bill but I paid The Piper anyway because I got nothing to speak of from the garden and lost a lot of plants that I bought. So I think this year, if I have to water with metered water, I will.

For the past two summers I have bought plants on clearance in various places and I'm going to try not to do that any more. Most of them were already stressed when I bought them and didn't live. I had good results with the plants I bought through the Oklahoma Food Co-Op because this particular vendor's plants were only those that would do well in Oklahoma. I bought a scented geranium from another vendor that quickly died, and then this winter both my Rober's Lemon Rose geranium and my citrus-scented geranium died after I brought them in. I've had these for years and I was kind of bummed out about it. But as I thought about it I realized that I just don't care as much for plants that have to come inside for the winter. Especially if they have no medicinal or culinary properties, or if I can grow something that has similar properties that will winter over outside or that is an annual. So, as the decorative plants die, I will not replace them. I'll miss my Rober's Lemon Rose geranium. But I will have my rugosa roses to take comfort in.

I admit that I have bought seed and plants already for this year's garden when my original intent was to stand pat with the seed I have. It seems like every time I read about how someone had such wonderful success with a particular plant, I get all excited and run right out and buy some of that seed. By planting time, I have read so many rave reviews of so many different things that some of the seed goes unplanted. Or I'll get into a seed swap and my eyes will be bigger than my garden plot. So I did less swaps this year. And the things that I bought were things I really wanted: Rugosa roses. Pot marigold. Squash to replace the ones I lost last year. Amaranth. Stuff like that.

Experimental Issues:
Years ago, I had a sister-in-law who swore she could stick a piece of a rosebush in the soil, cover it with a quart mayonnaise jar, and have it make roots and grow. To tell the truth, I never believed that. And then Paula announced to me that she can do the same thing. One thing I know, and that is that Paula doesn't lie. When she came up to help me paint, she sweet-talked this little old lady out of a start of her rose bush at one of the garage sales we went to. She divided it in half and planted one at my house, then took the other piece and planted it at her house. Every now and then I would look at mine and I would be able to see green on it through the jar. So when I pruned the Nanking Cherry Bushes, I took several pieces of the prunings and did the same thing to them. Not too much later, Paula told me her little rose baby had some new leaves on it and so I went out and tipped over the jar to find that the green I was seeing through the glass was, indeed, new leaves and it also looked all red and growey on the tip. Paula said not to leave the jar off for awhile yet and good thing, too, because we've had some pretty cold weather the last few days. But yesterday Hubs came in from the patio and told me that those little Nanking Cherry bush sticks I'd put under jars have leaves on them. I've been watching some You-Tube gardening tutorials on propagation and they say lots of things will propagate well that way. This opens up lots of opportunities, and come next fall, you might see me putting jars over sticks of all kinds. For starters, I'm thinking about trying to propagate the chickasaw plum bushes and the blueberries. If my Rugosas do well, I'll do some of them, too, to put in other places. And you can bet I'll be keeping my eyes open at garage sales from now on and offering to buy starts from folks. Paula is always telling me how much she learns from me and she forgets about all the gems she teaches me. Heh.

This winter I tried "in situ wintersowing". I won't know till March if it was successful. I cut the bottoms out of the milk jugs that I normally use, planted my seeds directly in the ground, and fastened the milk jug down over the top with a piece of wire coathanger.

If I have any luck at all with this method, I think I will refine it next winter by using round translucent gallon-sized ice cream tubs, turned upside down, instead of the milk jugs. I have had some trouble keeping these in place well enough so that they don't let leaves blow in on top of the seed bed. When plants seed themselves, it's all so easy. They drop their seed upon the ground, they lay there and the rain comes and imbeds them a little into the soil. And then they wait till the temperature and light is right and they germinate. What could be simpler? The first time I tried to grow Datura, I babied those seed and did everything I could to get them to come up. After several trials I did get about eight plants. They bloomed and made seed pods and I have never had to intentionally plant them again. It makes me laugh to think how hard I worked when I could've just taken that seed, tossed it on the ground somewhere, kicked up the dirt around it and just waited for spring. I was told once by an old, experienced gardener, that most seed will winter over and come up in the spring, as long as it doesn't rot or get eaten by birds first.

When it comes to wintersowing, I've had my problems. Most of it has to do with the soil needed to start the seeds. I've tried mixing my own and have had a terrible time getting the peat moss to incorporate into the other ingredients. Once in the jug, when it dries out it's too hard to wet down again. And sometimes it migrates to the top and forms a hard crust that looks dark, so it looks wet when it isn't. I've bought some stuff already mixed and found it too expensive. I've bought other kinds of soil and found them full of bark, or little rocks, or lumps of clay. I tried using my own well-composted garden bed soil, baking it first to kill insect eggs and larvae. Everybody said what a bad idea this was, but I have to say I had the best luck with this one. Even so, this seems like an awful lot of work. One year, I had a muscle spasm attack in my back which knocked me flat for a week and then made every movement painful for several more. But I had baby plants in my milk jugs and I knew if I didn't plant them they'd outgrow the jug and die. So I was out there, on my knees.

I'm having success with pre-germinating seeds. I got information on this from several sources. Paula and SeedMama germinate their seeds in coffee filters but they don't transplant till the plant has roots and first leaves, I think. Then I saw on one of the blogs I visit regularly (I'm sorry, I don't remember which now), where the writer was pre-germinating peas, but only to the point where the seed coat starts to open and there is just a tiny fingertip sticking out. At this point she plants them directly in the ground. Her reason for doing it this way is because peas need warmth to germinate, but they can tolerate a lot of cold as plants. This tells me that God made peas for fall growing. I'm kind of a klutz when it comes to working with delicate stuff, so I killed most of the plants I grew in a coffee filter and allowed to make roots and first leaves. The "just barely germinated" method worked a lot better for me, and I had a really nice supply of cabbages and broccoli till the wind blew my cart over. I don't know if any of the ones I planted under Reemay before surgery have survived the cold, and won't know till I can get out there to look. I have Osaka flowering cabbage seed in a paper towel now. The seed is old, so if it doesn't start to germinate, I won't waste a thing but a paper towel. Seed does tend to germinate really fast this way. I really do like being able to grow my plants from seed. It's 'waaaaaay more economical than buying plants. Plus you are not limited in the varieties you can grow. And, in the case of pepper plants, you never know whether the seller of the plants has let them get too cold, in which case their production is affected for the entire life of the plant.

I went through my seed stash this year and found I have quite a few different kinds of Roma tomatoes. Roma tomatoes are, for the most part, determinate plants (they grow only so big and then they stop), and they do the bulk of their harvest early on. You can keep the plants going and they'll make a tomato or two here and there, but I don't know that they're really worth keeping after the first flush. So this year, I'm going to plant as many of those as I do of all the other kinds of tomatoes all added up together. When I set out, I will set them out closely, with every-other plant being a Roma. My thinking is that by the time the other tomato plants are starting to need more room, the Roma's will be done and can be pulled. Roma tomatoes are best used for sauce and that's what I will do with what I get off those plants. I have had to buy tomato sauce for too long. Paula says she saves eggshells and puts some in the bottom of the hole when she plants her tomatoes, for added calcium. That makes sense to me, since blossom end rot is caused by a lack of calcium. I have some calcium tablets that I could break in half and drop into the hole, instead. I got them at WalGreen's "Buy One Get One Free" sale and they were quite reasonable. Darrel Merrill, who was The Tomato Man, always recommended a tablespoon of Epsom Salt in the hole. I tried it, wasn't impressed. I've heard it's great for the green part but not so good for the fruit. Probably better to use that with things that you grow FOR the green part and not for the flower. Like onions, lettuces, cabbages.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about how it would've been a lot easier to keep my tomato plants alive last summer had I done a little bit of extra preparation when I planted them. You may remember that at planting time, the wind was blowing so hard that I had to cut the bottoms and tops out of milk jugs and wedge them inside the bottom part of a tomato cage, to keep them in place, for wind protection. This worked well for that purpose but I realized that I could improve on this and end up with something that wouldn't have to be removed until after the plant died, wouldn't deteriorate so badly in the sun, and that, when I get to the point where I have to start watering, would help to direct the water to the tomato plant rather than running off.

What came to mind was those tomato watering rings that I saw in a rather expensive garden products catalog. I noticed that they were shaped like the bottom of a plastic bleach jug. I'm thinking I might end up with an even better product with a bleach jug because it would have higher sides. All I'd have to do would be to cut a hole, maybe 3" across, in the center of the bottom of the jug, and cut the top of the jug off where it begins to bulge out into the thicker part where the lid and the handle are. This makes for a tall collar with a hole in the bottom. (Clorox jugs are fatter but not as tall as off-brand jugs, though the label says they hold the same amount.) Plant the tomato plant and pull a little dirt away from the area around it, about as big around as the bleach bottle is. Guide the plant through the hole in the bottom until the "collar" is sitting in the depression. Put more dirt inside the "collar", just enough to stabilize it so that the wind won't blow it around and cause it to damage the plant. You could put a rock or two inside it, or put a tomato cage down on top of it, whatever you choose. Here you have protection from the wind and maybe rabbits.

Time wears on and the weather gets hot. You have to water. Instead of running the hose on the plant, pour a couple of quarts of water directly into the bleach jug. This directs the water to the roots of the plant. IF you're having a wet year, where water rushes across your garden and the whole thing is a muddy mess, I'm thinking the jug might force the water to run around the plant and drain off. I know that some people bury clay flowerpots in the soil next to the tomato plant. And others use upside-down 2-litre pop bottles with the bottoms cut off. I don't know how they keep them from falling over, though....

Another thing that came to mind was how to do a homemade version of Wall'o'Water, those plastic pleated things that you put water in and set them over your tomato plant to keep it warm.... I'm sure you've all seen them. They're pretty expensive but Paula got a good deal on some by joining in on a group purchase through the bunch on the GardenWeb Oklahoma Gardening forum. I started thinking about that. I use those clear plastic Kitty Litter jugs for hauling water around in, and I have quite a few of them. Why couldn't I fill four with water and set them around each tomato plant? Might need something over the open space in the center if there's a freeze. Hmmmmmmm. Maybe one of those bottomless milk jugs?

2011 was my first year to plant late cabbage and I have some started for this year. But I don't know if I will do it again when this seed is gone. They have to sit out there all summer, and the longer something takes to grow, the more exposed it is to insect and heat damage. The flavor seems to be stronger, too. My Copenhagen Market spring cabbages all died last year after giving me only enough to make two quarts of sauerkraut. I had wonderful, huge cabbages the first time I grew them, a couple of years ago. I wish I had made more kraut and frozen less cabbage. And no, you can't can cabbage unless you turn it into kraut first. The length of cooking necessary for canning makes cabbage 'way too strong and turns it pink. I tried to start some last fall, but they died, as well. So without those late ones I would've had no cabbage at all.

When we tore out carpet during the kitchen remodel, Paula offered to take it off our hands because she had heard it was good to put on the ground between your raised beds. The carpet was already spoken for but I told Paula she'd be unhappy with it used that way, anyway. It gets filthy dirty and mold forms to make it a real eyesore. If you get a lot of rain, the water in them spoils and stinks. Bermuda grass will come up right through it and "sew" itself into the carpet. And if you leave it there long enough, the carpet will fall apart and you will never be able to get all those strings out of the ground between your beds because they are synthetic. Use cardboard instead. Please. Now that I have discovered furniture store boxes, I will never mess around collecting small boxes again. Appliance and recliner chair boxes make great pathway covers. They can be slippery after a rain, though. HOWEVER, I've been thinking that the carpet TILE we removed might make some pretty nifty grass inhibitor. It has a black, solid rubber backing and it's already a dark color. Might be great to spread some around under trees. I haven't been able to think of any other uses for these, other than putting them in the garage sale. Any ideas, anyone?

I think I mentioned the Reemay row cover that I bought last fall. I am still experimenting with it. I found THIS article on Mother Earth News. What I thought really interesting was that the article mentioned that you could use nylon netting -- from the fabric department, like they used to make crinoline "can-can" petticoats out of -- (and yes, I was about in third grade when this was all the rage in this area, and I did have one.) to keep certain moths from laying eggs that become borer worms, and it said that it works better as bird netting THAN bird netting because it doesn't trap birds and it doesn't tangle as much. I must visit WMT and Hobby Lobby to see if they have nylon net, and what the price is. Fabric.com sells some through Amazon for 78 cents a yard (70" wide - that's almost six feet) and they have a promotional thing right now where shipping is free if your fabric purchase comes to $35 or more HERE. Ish. You'd have to buy 45 yards of it to meet that. But then, they do have quilt fabric..... I had bird netting that I used on the blueberry bushes this year and I did have that trouble with tangling, catching on every little tiny branch, blueberries growing on the OUTSIDE of the netting, and falling off onto the ground while I tried to get to them, not being able to find the edge of it so that I could get in there and pick the blueberries that grew on the inside. I didn't have trouble with trapping birds. I would've been pretty upset about it if I had. I looked around for some other uses for bird netting and except for one suggestion to cut it to fit your flower beds to keep cats from digging there, I didn't find anything. I'd think a cat could get tangled up in that stuff. And if you know cats like I do, that can only end badly. After we got the chickens, though, I found the perfect use for it in fastening it across the top of the chicken yard to deter predators from swooping down. It's a lot lighter in weight than the chicken wire we used after we ran out of bird netting.

I also found it interesting that the article said it's better to elevate the row cover so that the plants beneath don't touch it because grasshoppers will eat right through the fabric if the leaves are touching it. That was contrary to what the Master Gardener who spoke at the fall gardening seminar told us last year. She was the one who said buying interfacing was cheaper (*snicker*). I buy curtain sheers whenever I can find them at garage sales. They're handy for all kinds of things, including providing some shade for stressed plants in the summer. I put one over the Clary Sage that Glenda sent me last year because where I planted it was just too hot for it and it was struggling. I later transplanted it and it recuperated well. But if I hadn't shaded it with the curtain sheers till conditions got so I could transplant, I fully believe that I would've lost it entirely. There are times, though, when you want something lighter in weight that will protect from bugs and animals but let the sunlight in. In which case, the nylon net might just do the trick. I just found a wonderful tutorial using PVC pipe, row cover, and a lot of ingenuity. Have a look HERE. This guy, by the way, is a genius. Take a look at his Whizbang Wheel Hoe HERE. I'm ordering the parts for one of these. He has a blog called The Deliberate Agrarian HERE.

Increasing Shade:
I've said before, there is NO shade here. That's not exactly correct. We did start out with a couple of struggling maples, both terribly abused by someone's weedwacker. No, not Hubs, before we moved here. Some Hackberry and Mulberry trees, all damaged by being in the fence line. Last summer I started watching the shade patterns in the yard and around the house. It occurred to me to enlarge the flower bed on the north side of the patio. It gets full sun in the morning. By the time it's overhead, the patio cover shades part of it, and then as the hours pass, the highest part of the tri-level shades the entire area. If I planted a tree to the east of that area, near the clothesline pole that is furthest out, it would be shaded by the tree in the morning. Voila, I have a shade garden.

The front of our house faces west. I have struggled to get things to grow there because it's so hot and dry. I had some good luck with Roselle that first year, but the plants were already large when I transplanted them and so were their roots. And we had a really big rain right after I transplanted them. Last summer the little Roselle plants I set out in the same spot stalled out and nearly died. This set them back so far that after transplanting them to a better spot they didn't get big enough to make a harvest. And that was that. I transplanted a Crape Myrtle there and it struggled. I won't know if it's alive for awhile yet. One of the problems is that the soil is really clay-ey and construction-ey. You know, dirt that's as close to being rock without actually being rock? And since we had gutters installed on the roof, there is about a foot of ground that usually doesn't even get wet when it rains. I've decided that a quick fix will be to plant some castor beans about four or five feet out from there.... maybe running even with the sidewalk where the Monkey Grass I bought from The Garden Club plant sale has toughed it out and taken hold. (see the yellow spot in the picture below. It's a picture taken before the Crape Myrtle was transplanted there in front of the wagon wheel. That maple tree is a litle further out than it looks like it is, and is west of where the Castor Bean trees will be. The Monkey Grass (Liriope) runs along the sidewalk starting at the left of the yellow mark, turns the corner and runs along the driveway to the end of the concrete. The flower bed between JC's red truck and the front steps seems to have either a concrete or a rock bottom, only about 8' down. Hardly anything will grow there. No, I don't think it would be good for the house to use the jackhammer there.) Last month, Paula sent me all the castor beans I will need for this summer. They will be in better soil that gets more moisture, and they will shade that area and create a temporary screen. I can build up the soil between the Castor Bean plants and the house at my leisure, and whether the Crape Myrtle is still alive, or will have to be replaced with another, this will give it shade for an entire summer in which to get fully established.

Even the Deer Garden, where I determined I would plant only those plants that are drought tolerant, and where I have dug out rock in more than just a few areas, most of the plants and seeds I have put there have not lived. I did have some poppies in the spring, and a few Bachelor's Buttons, and something yellow that looked like a Sweet Pea. They were short-lived but I gathered the seed. Most of the hollyhock transplants, though they died back, were surviving when I looked at them in January. Our neighbor, Bob, who mows people's lawns in his spare time, dropped off his grass cuttings around the bed for me all during the summer, and every now and then, after they'd had time to cook a little bit, I'd go out there and spread them into the bed. Sometimes there was enough to use in other places as well. Grass clippings don't take very long to break down This area could really benefit from the shade of a couple of Castor Bean trees. I bet, before my wheels are finished turning, I can think of lots of places to use those Castor Beans for temporary shade. Yes, I know the chickens need to be kept away from them.

Other Challenges:

Oh, where do I begin? There are more rocks to dig out. There's a good stand of Yellow Dock that came over in the first load of dirt. OK, they're medicinal. And when they make seed, it's edible. But do I really need that many? I read somewhere that you can dig down to the root and cut off as much of the root as you can, and that the part of the root that's left will go ahead and die. I dunno.... sounds kind of unbelievable to me, but it's worth a try anyway. There's the most recent load of "sandy loam" that I bought on my neighbor Charles' good reviews and either I have higher standards than he or he got something different than I did. Because this stuff is just sand. Are there nutrients in it? I just don't know. All I know is, I won't be asking for "sandy loam" again. The whole north end of the house is an eyesore, what with the water storage tank, the HVAC compressor and the cellar. I have in mind a little picket fence made of wooden pallets and painted white, attached to the house at the garage, then a gate, and the rest of the fence running out in a half-circle around the cellar. But I know this is not the time to bring it up to Hubs, who, by the way, is responsible for the junk that seems to collect along that side of the house even though I have hibiscus planted there..

There are a couple of deer that seem to be edging closer and closer to our property. And I worry about that. Joe told me there is some kind of tape that you can string around your property, and I think I found what he's talking about. It's impregnated with a bitter substance that repels them and all accounts say it works pretty well. But I'm concerned about what the chemicals are in it, and I think it might end up to be too expensive to be practical. Other people say hanging something that flaps in the wind will spook the deer and maybe my curtain sheers would work for that. Rather than spending money on temporary barriers I think we'd be better off erecting some kind of a fence. I know they can jump it but so far they don't try to jump the fence around our back yard. Then of course there are still those dogs that, though they don't eat stuff, they dig, and poop on stuff. I'm not quite sure what I will do yet, but it's clear I need to do something.

Well, is everybody still with me? Because I have good news. I'm done.

Friday is my P2 appointment with Dr. Webb. I hope he takes my stitches out. I hope he says, "My goodness! You've healed fast!" I hope he tells me I can bathe now. I hope he tells me I can put some weight on my foot now. I know I'll have to wear the boot, but I hope he'll say I can sleep without it. So full of hope am I. More later, when I'll probably be disappointed and disgruntled. Been there before, I'll get over it. I did get to take the scooter outside today for a little while. Oh, it was nice today. It felt so good to be out on the patio in the sun. Hugs to all.... XOXOXO

Blog Hopping On A Snowy Day

2012-02-13T15:08:00.000-06:00

This is the view out my window this morning. Not too shabby, and better than the view inside. It's hard to spend the day blog-hopping with a Herman Munster orthopedic boot on one foot, and a cranky Velcro-like cat in your lap. But I will do what I can.

Most of the time, I don't go in for artsy-craftsy stuff. By that I mean things that involve paper, pipe cleaners and glue. Of course you know I'm a quilter and that my house is decorated in Early Rummage Sale. I like flowers and seems like I'm a sucker for a good-looking basket. So some artsy-craftsy stuff DOES catch my eye. And in that vein, HERE is a wonderful post about making paper roses. Roses are not just for Valentine's day. Did you ever see anything so inexpensive and easy but yet so stunning?? Follow the link she provides (for how to make leaves) over to Jones Design to see more examples, plus how to make leaves and stems.

I'd also like to share with you how I save things like this for my personal use. How many times have you gone to a website and found something really cool, bookmarked it, and then at some later time, found it was not up anymore? I suppose this bends copyright laws a little, but if it's simply to preserve it for one's own use only, I hardly see a problem. Here's what I do:

Highlight the area that you want to copy. Then right-click and choose "Copy". Open your word processing software. Word works. So does Open Office.
Place your cursor at the top of the body of the document, do a right click, and choose "Paste". You may have to wait a few minutes for all the pictures to come up. If stuff comes over that you want to delete, you can do so at this point. Sometimes they come over in Table format, so change your document so that it shows you line markers and such. I think it's the paragraph symbol on your task bar -- a backwards "P". Then you can see where you can delete things. Remember you can always use your Undo button if something doesn't work right. In most cases, the pictures will be linked to what you copied, so if the author deletes the original source of the pictures, you will have nothing in your document but a little box with a red X in it. You can protect your document from that happening by printing it and saving the paper copy. Or you can convert your word-processing document to a PDF document, which imbeds the images into the document.

Don't have a PDF document converter? You can download one for free from Download.com. I have used PDFRedirect for years. After you install it, to convert your Word document to a PDF document, you just act like you're going to print it. In the box where you choose your printer, look for a choice that says PDFRedirect. Choose that one and a new window will pop up which will begin the conversion and show you a preview when its done. You can name it and save it after that.

I think everyone's got one of those Acrobat readers by now, they're free, too. But free software that turns a document you've created into a .PDF document is useful in lots of ways. Say you want to share something but you don't want it pirated. Or changed and then attributed to you. I share a lot of my family history documents this way. I don't mind sharing documents but I won't share my file where they can just save it and call it theirs. I input all my information, and much of it was my own research. If they want to share it as their information (and some have), the least they can do is retype it. I know a man who teaches computer classes and he makes PDF handouts for the same reason. He can e-mail them to his students without worrying that they won't be able to open it, or that they'll start teaching classes themselves and use his handouts as their own. There are lots of applications for this handy little tool.

HERE is a blogpost on making some cute book page markers. I thought of Glenda and then I remembered she has a Kindle now.

Yesterday I saw a post about mounting a tree branch to a wall and hanging old family pictures from hooks mounted on the wall amongst the branches. I can't find my way back there but I thought it was pretty neat.

I'm working on a blog about the things I plan to do differently this year, gardening-wise, but I'm having lots of trouble getting organized. So many ideas are swirling around in my head. We've been so fortunate to have some regular moisture since surgery, it's one less burden for Hubs to not have to water the trees, and I'm grateful for that. He's doing OK with the chickens.

Today marks one week since surgery. I'm able now to putter around in the kitchen a little bit, with the scooter under my right knee. I have begun to have a love/hate relationship with this scooter. Things could be worse, though. My back has started to adapt to the weight of the boot and I seem to be able to tolerate all this crawling up and down the stairs that I have to do in order to go to go to the bathroom or go to bed. I am not having any pain and I feel like I could put some weight on my foot as long as I had the boot on, but doctor's orders do not allow it so I will obey. I'm really hoping that when I see him on Friday he will tell me I can start putting some weight on this foot. That will allow me to navigate the stairs and to go from sitting to standing position with less effort. I hope my wound will be healed enough that I can have a bath. He did say if I could hang my leg out of the tub, I could have a tub bath at any time. What does he think I am, at the age of 65, a double-jointed trapeze artist?? I can see it all now. "WOMAN DROWNS IN TUB AFTER FOOT SURGERY". When Hubs had his knee surgery, they waterproofed his bandages and he was allowed to shower right away. I am not being allowed to shower, at all. *Sigh*. At the end of the day, a nice hot bath relaxes me and helps me to sleep better. Oh, how I miss it. Plus, these washcloth baths just don't make me feel clean.

Tomorrow Hubs will hook up the dryer so we can use it and I'll do some wash, with his help. It;ll be easier on him if he doesn't have to hang the wash out.

Well, that's about all for now. Hope everyone's doing OK. Hugs to all. XOXOXOXO

The Perils of Ilene, Part Two

2012-02-10T18:19:00.002-06:00

I mentioned on the last post how I watched one of Joyce Meyer's sermons on TV and if you are not familiar with Joyce and her messages, there is a good example HERE. There are some people who do not have very nice things to say about Joyce and her evangelical ministry in Missouri, but ever since I accidentally discovered her show and got a sermon on betrayal during just about the lowest point in my life, she has spoken to me in a way that no one else has been able to. She is Pentacostal and I am one of those Methodists who doesn't even holler out, "AMEN!" during the church service. But whatever works, I say. Not having been exposed to Christianity in my formative years, there is still a lot that I don't understand. Much of it seems contradictory and I'm often confused. I've been chewed out by atheists who say I'm trying to foist Christianity on them.  The first chew-out I ever got was when I was on a weight-loss webring and someone complained that they were having terrible cravings. I mentioned prayer as one of the things to try, and right away another woman jumped all over me, and the rest of the webring fell silent. Waiting. I replied that I did believe in free speech and this was just my brand of it but that I would not respond to this woman in a negative way and asked that no one else make any comments in either direction, so as not to plunge the webring into a controversy. I stayed on long enough to see a post from my attacker only a week or so later where she recounted how she had hydroplaned and gone off the road in her car, landed amazingly right-side-up in a gully without a scratch to her physically or much damage to her car. Since the first thing I wanted to say to her, amid all the other congratulatory comments made by the other members of the ring, was, "Praise God!", I realized I was hanging out in the wrong crowd. About the only thing I learned while in that webring was how hateful overweight people can be when they're hungry.

So if you're ever offended by my particular brand of what they call "testimony", I won't make apologies for it except to say that it isn't aimed AT anyone, it's just part of the story of who I am.  I'm just talking about something that has unfolded for me, is all. But my feelings wouldn't be at all hurt if recounting my experiences helped someone else. I do know what it's like to not believe in God because I was raised that way. My mother went to her grave that way. The last time that I saw her, she said something particularly hateful to me and then said, "Now. You go home and pray about THAT, why don't you!" And then she looked me right in the eyes as if I was a naughty child just seconds away from a good spanking. All because I had become a Christian. God was with me that day. That day, it seemed like everything she said to me just rolled off my back without going to my heart. So when she looked into my eyes, I looked right back into hers. I saw her misery. I saw her helplessness. I saw all the hatred by which she lived her life. And I said, "By golly, I believe I will."  A lot of bad things happened to my mother during her life. She let them make her who she was. I saw myself in her eyes and who I could've become, and I praise God every day for Joyce Meyer and her message that opened the door for me. No, I'm not perfect and I probably never will be. I can't quote scripture and tell you where it is to be found. I still have spurts of un-Christianlike behavior.  This blog reflects me and who I am. And I do know God loves me. Warts and all.

Enough of that.

Hubs, at my insistence, went to his workout this morning. We are expecting some colder weather and maybe some snow this weekend and he wanted to run a few errands on the way home. Of course he could have waited to do the errands till we went to my follow-up appointment later on in the day and I would have just waited in the Silverado, but he probably thought I'd be too bored to be in the back seat for that long. Except for the fact that THAT ship already sailed, several days ago.  I'm sure he needed to get out amongst his workout friends and away from me just to preserve his sanity.

I have tried very hard to be an easy patient, truly I have. I have taken care of Hubs after surgeries of several kinds over the years and I know being the caregiver is not easy and can be exhausting.

I have not needed anything for pain all day today. I took one Aleve last night before I went to bed but only as a precautionary measure. I haven't taken any Oxycodone since that first night, and haven't needed to use the cell stimulator for almost two days now. The time for applying ice and keeping the foot elevated is now over. I'm not to put any weight on my foot for three weeks and that has been the biggest inconvenience. The boot I have to wear runs a close second, being heavy and cumbersome. It keeps me from being able to sleep through the night. But these are a small price to pay for elimination of the pain that has dogged me for so long. Already, I have less pain than I had before surgery.

Thanks to some internet herbal education I received prior to surgery, I discovered a tea mixture that is said to speed up healing. It's equal parts of Alfalfa, Yarrow, and Nettle, with enough Peppermint and honey to make it pleasant enough to drink. I had to buy the Alfalfa and Nettle at the health food store and each box of tea bags cost $5.50. That is testimony enough for growing your own herbs. I had Yarrow growing and thankfully it has stayed green, so I picked some before surgery and dried it. I had dried peppermint in a jar from what I had grown at The Ponca House. The Chocolate Peppermint that I planted here last spring died out. So much for being invasive. I brew enough to make four cups of tea, steeped for 20 minutes, and drink at least two cups, sometimes more, per day. What is left is kept in the refrigerator for the next day. The composition of many herbs change when the tea starts to spoil, so care needs to be taken with that.  The fact that I so far have been healing pretty easily may be attributable to the tea or not, but it doesn't hurt anything and helps to keep me hydrated if nothing else. I had what they call my "P1" today, which is the first examination after surgery. Doc's gone skiing, so one of his techs changed my bandages and we got a look at the surgical site. Hardly any bleeding, only about a quarter-sized spot in the bandage closest to the wound. Some bruising immediately around the site, only about a couple of inches across. No swelling to speak of and in fact I have noticed no swelling whatsoever since surgery, and not in the other calf and ankle, either, which is kind of unusual for me. The new bandage is thinner and more comfortable while my foot is in the boot. Now that I'm able to be up and around a little more, I'm having less back pain and the cramping of the muscle down the inside of my right leg has decreased dramatically. I just hope and pray everything continues to go as well from here on.  I asked the tech how long I'd be in the boot, which was silly of me because they're probably not allowed to say. She told me probably four to six weeks, and that sometimes the doctor says more than that. The P2 (second exam after surgery) is one week from today and Dr. Webb will be back for that, so I'll get all my questions answered then.   I'm guessing one of their major concerns has to do with how much the patient bleeds, because one of the first questions Dr. Webb asked when he called me after surgery was whether very much blood soaked through the wrappings.  I didn't have any to soak through to the outer layer.

Of course I've been watching a lot of TV and that doesn't always help my mood. I just don't understand what's going on with Dr. Oz. His television show is looking more and more like those infomercials that are on some channels where the audience is paid to ooooh and ahhhh and clap in all the right places, and all kinds of outlandish claims are made. Every day it's some new exotic product that's supposed to perform miracles. I wonder how Oprah likes him now.

And Dr. Phil is getting more and more like Jerry Springer every day.  So we've been watching old reruns of evening "family entertainment" and sometimes we find a good movie. I've been trying to read. Hubs watches several news shows and I'm confused about that because they all run the same stories over and over again. Hard to believe there isn't something ELSE happening in Oklahoma, in the US, or in the world they could run stories on, just for variety. I hate to see those stories about people being killed by their own government and I don't understand how it is that the world's leading nations pick out who they help and who they don't. And I don't understand how it is that all the networks pick out what they show and what they don't, AND IT IS THE SAME THING. I don't claim to have any answers and even if I did, no one who could do anything about it would listen to me. There is so much going on in the rest of the world that we never hear about, at all, and I don't know that I would watch the news at all if I had to see the full account of it.  It just seems strange to me to air a newsclip about one thing several times and ignore all the rest as if all is right with the rest of the world.

On a less serious note, now we have this woman saying she had an affair with Jack Kennedy back in the 1960's when she was a young intern, and she's gone and written a book. *Sigh*. This is something that I would much rather never hear about, at all. I am probably one of the few women in my age bracket who DIDN'T have sex with JFK. Maybe I should write a book. I credit Jackie with being a real class act through all of that. She had to know what was going on. Yet she held her head up and was a lady through it all. I wonder, though, why this girl and Jack chose Jackie's bedroom to do their thing in. It's not like it was the only place they could go. Was Jack TRYING to get caught? Was it just a way to make the thing even more of a slap in the face to Jackie than it already was? Everyone knew what a womanizer Jack was and it was overlooked as a part of his private life. BUT, I'm going to say it right now, keep the girl THE HELL OUT OF THE WIFE'S BED. That's not funny, right there, no matter who you are.

Well, I have been in my office chair long enough for today. I'm beginning to babble and I probably should go up and join Hubs so I can watch more stuff to gripe about tomorrow.

Cold weather coming for the next two days. We've had several rains.

Till next time, y'all have a good weekend. XOXOXOXOXO

The Perils of Ilene

2012-02-09T11:26:00.001-06:00

Paula actually chose the title of this post.....

I went into this surgery not knowing what to expect from anyone else who has had it done. This meant I was alternately sure it was going to be "a piece of cake", and worried that it might turn out to be something that I would question forever why I had it done.

To be honest, so far it has been neither.

I checked in at 11:30 on Monday morning, signed the consent papers, and was whisked off to a surgical prep area. Everyone at the Surgery Center was so nice. They followed safety precautions similar to those I was familiar with from the ophthalmology practice where I worked several years ago. The facility looked spotlessly clean. Dr. Webb was late and announced he'd been chewed on several times already for it. I didn't add to his burden, I was so relieved to see him and to know that now the show would get on the road. The anestheseologist announced to me that he was giving me something that would make me a little foggy and that when Dr. Webb gave the word, would give me the powerful stuff. I don't remember a thing after that conversation until I became conscious that there were about six or eight people hovering around me. I heard someone say, "That spur is completely gone." I assumed it was Dr. Webb, though I didn't recognize his voice at the time. I said, "....... .......... are we done?" And someone assured me we were. I was relieved to feel no nausea, as this is usually one of my responses. I was given a cup of coffee and one of the nurses helped me to get dressed. Then I was placed into a wheelchair and taken to the side door, where Hubs waited in the Silverado. I had practiced already climbing in. The front seat was impossible and I was supposed to have my foot elevated all the way home, so I had already prepared the back seat, and I was able to easily climb on my knees and get positioned. Dr. Webb had written a prescription for those vials of nausea medicine that are applied to the wrists and I used one of those immediately, just in case. Hubs loves his Silverado. It would break his heart if I threw up in it. Not to mention how much I hate to throw up. Then home, back out of the truck the same way. Hubs had my scooter in the garage and I took it through the door into the lower-level entrance, then climbed up the three steps into the middle level of the house on my knees and made it to the Hide-A-Bed which I had opened out and made up ahead of time.

We were instructed to ice for 30 minutes on, 30 off for the first 48 hours, except while sleeping, and to wear the boot as much as possible. We were given this little "stimulator" which was supposed to help with the pain. I told Dr. Webb I wasn't going to take the Oxycodone because I've had it before and didn't like the "constipatory side-effects". He told me that was OK if I really didn't need it but if I did, just eat a couple of prunes every time I took some.

It wasn't long till I found I needed the stimulator. AND the Oxycodone. And two Aleve, which I was allowed to have. The whole bottom of my foot felt like it was on fire and I was pretty uncomfortable for awhile.

But by bedtime I was feeling pretty groggy and went off to sleep easily, and had a good night, waking up with much less pain.

The following night was different. I had been on the Hide-A-Bed for so long that it had started killing my back. The boot felt like concrete and was pulling on the inside of my leg, where I have had Sciatica before. My elbows were beginning to get sore from the friction of using my arms to reposition myself. The cat had become joined to me at the hip and she made it pretty clear to me that she didn't like me disturbing her. At some point in the middle of the night, all the blankets had repositioned themselves into a heap on top of me. I wasn't in dire distress. And I didn't want to wake up Hubs because I had made him go upstairs to bed and I knew, as my caretaker, he needed his rest probably more than I needed mine.

I was more grateful than usual that Hubs is, like me, an early riser. We decided I needed to relocate to our big oversized couch and things got better after that. That morning I started crawling down to the lower level for the bathroom without Hubs protectively following after. I had a bath, of sorts, out of the bathroom sink and changed clothes after the boot was removed for the first icing process. That night I decided to crawl up the ten steps to my bedroom upstairs. Hubs brought the scooter. I washed my hair kneeling over the edge of the bathtub. Then had another one of those things June calls a "Methodist Bath" (Down as far as possible, up as far as possible, then possible) Managed to get dressed by myself. Then, Ahhhhhhh..... It was so nice to be in my own bed. I slept till 5:30 the next morning, which is late for me. I might've slept even longer had the cat not been licking my forehead.

So I felt well enought to sit up a bit and write this, but I'm beginning to feel a bit crampy in my GOOD leg and I don't want to overdo and relapse. So will press Publish here and crawl back up the three steps to the main floor, and back onto the couch for more TV watching with Hubs. It's nearly lunchtime, anyway.

Thanks to Paula and June for calling to check on me. Thanks for everyone who sent e-mails. More later, as I can.

Oh, and I watched Joyce Meyer and she kind of got after me for not finding enough things about Hubs to enjoy. Just so ya know.

Hugs to all..... XOXOXOXOXO

Goodbye January, Hello February, 2012

2012-02-05T07:30:00.000-06:00

This is started on Sunday, January 29. I think I mentioned on the last blog that my surgery was further out a week than I thought. I have to wait for the Surgery Center to call me to find out what time.

Saturday turned out to be a lot warmer day than was predicted. We could've dug another tree hole. But we were all sick it, so it was just as well. JC cleaned his room and goofed off. Mostly goofed off. Hubs vacuumed and spent the rest of the day in his LaZBoy. I cleaned the bathrooms and did three loads of wash, which Hubs folded when I brought them in off the line at the end of the day. I put up the chickens for the night and once back at the patio, looked back and saw one chicken running around the chicken house in a panic. Went back to put her in, but she wouldn't go in and another came out in the process. Had to have Hubs come out and help me get them in. In the process, Aldine bit one of the hens on the back of its neck and caused quite a ruckus. He might just be too rough on my girls to be allowed to stay on. He better learn to dance pretty soon if he knows what's good for him.

Hubs says I baby those chickens too much.  But we can't say HE's guilty of that. He put them up the night before and didn't check their feed. He let them out the next morning and didn't check their feed. When I put them up, they were COMPLETELY out and I don't know for how long. Plus it looked like Hubs hadn't given them the bucket of Henbit I'd pulled for them. I asked him about it and he said they had feed when he looked (which was probably sometime last week) and that he'd given them SOME of their greens but not all. Looked like it was all still there to me, just a little lower in the bucket because it was all wilted. Hubs does this sometimes, he just instantly lies to me without thinking about it. Then it's too embarrassing for him to back up and correct himself, so it's like, "That's my story and I'm stickin' to it." I can catch him red-handed and instead of just admitting it and salvaging what pride he can, he gets mad and says, "You never believe me anyway!!" Geeeeeezzze. I. WONDER. WHY. It's like living with a dang teenager. I know there are quite a few other men who do this too, and I wonder a lot about that. I've heard men that have been divorced complaining about the first wife and how she has no respect for him and no trust in him as if that's her fault and I just roooooooollllllll my eyes. Because I know he did it all himself. Got himself caught in too many little lies, then when something big came up and he reeeeallllly needed her to believe him, she already couldn't trust a thing that fell out of his mouth. Duhhhhhh. And I don't know about anybody else, but it hacks me off in a big way to be lied to. The little things, I think, "What's the dang point?" It's not like I've ever beaten him up or anything. And Lord knows, if I was an abusive person he would have mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago. I guess he thinks it's peace at any cost. I know men don't think like women do. I know men don't think AS MUCH as women do. And sometimes I wonder if men think, AT ALL. If you want to lose someone's respect and trust, just lie to them enough and Botta Bing, you get your wish! How easy is that? And that dang witch of a woman, it's all her fault! Hubs and I have been together since 1967 and most of the time, I don't ask him any questions any more. And if he tells me something, I always take it "with a grain of salt", as my Grammy always used to say. But I wish it didn't have to be this way.

Don't get me wrong, Hubs has his good side. He is a wonderful carpenter and he will work on most any project I ask him to, as long as I ask him the right way and appreciate what he does. And I do. I know that lots of the things that just drive me crazy are part of the mind-set of being a man. Or of being a man in the time-frame that Hubs grew up in. He pretty much puts up with me the way I am and sometimes that's a tall order. And yes, I know he gripes about me to people that he knows won't tell me about it, so I don't feel bad griping about HIM on my blog. I once came upon a carpenter working in an office where I worked. He had done some work on our house, but mostly Hubs knew him because he came in where Hubs worked pretty often. I stopped and said hello to him and then went on. I dropped something outside the door and as I was picking it up I heard one of the carpenter's workers say, "That's a pretty woman...." and the carpenter replied, "Yeah, but she's hell for hard to live with..." Now, how do you suppose he knew that? I guess there must be SOME benefits, for Hubs to willingly live in hell since 1967..... But the real kicker was when we had some guys building a carport on The Ponca House. I was working then, and I normally came home for lunch, and this one particular day I came in through the alley and into the house through the back door so I wouldn't have to come through the mess that was out front. Hubs was outside talking to the men. About me. I stood at the front door and listened. He was telling them how I was mad because they hadn't gotten finished in one day. That was just not true. When they quoted the job, they said they could be finished in one day and I told Hubs, privately, that I didn't think they could make that deadline. Then when the first day passed, I mentioned to Hubs that I guessed they didn't make their deadline. But mad? When I'm hacked off, it's not something anyone can mistake for anything else. And frankly, I really didn't care how long they took to build that carport, as long as they did a good job. But he was out there making a big deal out of it, making me sound like some kind of shrew, and they were making remarks about me too, and he was waving his arms around and finished off with some remark that sounded like I was his cross to bear. Not only was I mortified that he was assassinating my character right before my eyes, it hurt my feelings. I felt embarrassment for him. And I admit, it hacked me off. I was still standing there when he saw me and his mouth fell open. He came right in. He tried to tell me I hadn't heard what I thought I'd heard, but saw it was no use, so he just stood there, a deer in the headlights. I asked him then if that was the way he really felt about me, why was he still with me? And I told him if he wanted his freedom all he had to do was say. And then I turned and went back to work without eating lunch or realizing that I hadn't. I don't care if Hubs complains about me, all husbands complain about their wives. But at least be fair and don't embellish! And if you have any resentment in your heart for your spouse, get it resolved or get out of the relationship. Later on, I told Hubs that this incident had hurt my feelings and that I was surprised to find out that he was so miserably unhappy. I told him that now I knew why several members of his family and people he made friends with had a disliking for me before they even met me, and how unfair I thought that was, especially considering everything I had been through with HIM.  And then, because I was still hacked off, I went for the jugular. I told him that I wondered if he thought the only way he was able to make friends was to make them feel sorry for him. We got through all that but it was really a sad time for me, and that was one of the (several) things that changed my feelings about our marriage forever. Every woman wants to feel cherished in her marriage, and I did feel that way for a little while, early on. It was nice while it lasted.

Other things, serious things, have happened in our marriage that I won't share on the blog because a blog is such a public thing. Some people will think I've shared too much, already. Suffice it to say that, over these 40+ years, we have split up twice.  And both times, you'd think if I was the kind of person he told everyone I was, he might've counted himself lucky to be free, run in the other direction like hell, and started a new life with someone he could say nice things about. But instead, both times, he ended up telling me he wanted to try to work things out.

Go figure.

And this is the thing, when you have a long marriage. You know each other better than anyone else, and that's not always a good thing. Sometimes I think this is part of the reason why a man leaves his wife of twenty years and starts over with someone else, who doesn't carry around baggage that HE packed. But really, if you get out and start all over again, you still end up with their baggage and you find out it's worse than what you had before. If you hang in there with what you have, at least you know where certain things are coming from, but what you end up with is more like companionship. It's comfortable. You can be who you are. You don't have to pay attention to stuff like make-up and hairdo's, stylish clothing and 5" heels. He doesn't have to wear cologne, tell you those jeans don't make your butt look big, watch his language or go to another room to fart or belch.

Over the years I've learned a lot about men and women and I know now that men and women are so different in the ways that they think, and in what's a big deal and what isn't, that they're practically two different species. The sit-coms are full of it, so I know these scripts must have come out of other people's experiences. I'm pretty sure this struggle is as old as time. We get into trouble when we expect things from our partners they can't deliver. We women have our periscopes up all the time. We know immediately when something's different.  A man doesn't do that. He doesn't know his marriage is in trouble till his belongings are all strewn out in the front yard. How many times have men had to ask their woman if she's mad at him, and then, getting an affirmative answer, have asked why? And how many times has the woman said to the man, "If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you!" You know what? Men don't ever know. Women are thinking all the time. I know my wheels are turning constantly. I don't think I have ever been able to "not think". Yet it has come to my attention that a man can sit there looking blank because he is! That is a marvel to me. In order to get along with a woman, men have this secret code amongst themselves that says it's OK to lie and to keep secrets about what they do. What she doesn't know won't hurt her. I've heard that men have this saying that, when confronted about an affair, you should "Deny, deny, deny." Oh, HELL no. That's insult added to injury in a woman's eyes. So if you think your man is having an affair, save time, don't even go there. Ask the other woman. This is why, when Bill Clinton said to us all, "I did not have sex with that woman", I just laughed. I don't know why so many men got so all up in arms about that. It's not like most of them wouldn't have done the same thing, if they hadn't already. But, yeah, it was politics. If only he would have just said, "You know what? I'm the President of the United States! This is my personal business and none of yours!" Afterall, it's been an unspoken attitude in all the years before. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, to name a few.

Let's just say things were a lot easier for a man "back in the day", when women "knew their place". A woman went right from her parent's home to her husband's. It was an insult to a man to have a wife who had a "career" other than running his home and raising his children. And without birth control, she was pregnant or nursing until menopause, anyway.  Women didn't own property or have their own money unless they were widowed and some other man didn't come along and "rescue" them. So back then, a man was free to be what he was. Lying was not necessary then, because what a man did was, in his eyes and that of society, nobody's business but his own.  Women bottled up their feelings and taught their daughters to do the same. Had I lived during that time in history, I might've exploded trying to hold all that in. Or been unable to shut my yap and gotten beaten to death. Or maybe I would've run off to Missouri with a smooth-talkin' travelling salesman.

Even in the 50's, if a man was a womanizer it was whispered he "wasn't getting what he needed at home".

But anyway. Enough of that. Hope I haven't offended any male readers. There are some men who don't fit the stereotype and bless your heart if you're one of them.

This is now Friday. In the days since the last blogpost, we have been trying to get one tree planted every day. As the days wore on, JC became less and less of a help in this area, coming to get us for help earlier with each hole, feigning an injury that I took seriously at first and then saw him do some stuff when he didn't know I was watching that proved he didn't have an injury at all, and then adopting an attitude that got to be pretty annoying. On the first of the month he got his gas money, which I dole out to him from his savings, and he is supposed to be using it to go and look for work, so he has either been gone or spending the day in his room filling out applications since then. Since he doesn't leave the house till about noon and stays gone until the wee hours of the morning I can only assume most of his time is being spent with the girlfriend. But SOME progress is better than none, I suppose, on all fronts.

So on Wednesday, Hubs and I went out and finished the hole JC gave up on. Then on Thursday, I dug two holes. The first had a chunk of limestone under it so thick Hubs could not break through. It was down deep enough to support a shallow-rooted tree, so I just planted a Redbud there. Maybe the tree can survive in the hole and send its roots out through the more porous sides rather than trying to go downwards. I wanted to get a pine tree planted, and so I started another hole, and it was even worse, the limestone being even closer to the surface than the previous one. Hubs tried to break through it but without success and we just ended up abandoning that hole. Considering that we have never had that happen before, it was pretty discouraging. At this point, we have planted only three of the ten pine trees and six of the ten flowering trees. Of course there is no way we are going to be able to get all this done before surgery. I'm not terribly worried about the flowering trees because their roots aren't very long and they should do OK in their temporary flowerpots that are sunk down into the ground out in the raised bed. But I wonder if the pine trees, which have humongously long roots, will even live in their flowerpots, once they come out of dormancy. We should've planted all those before any of the flowering trees. I don't know WHAT I was thinking. Probably, that we would have colder weather until further into the spring. Who plants trees in NE Oklahoma in late January, early February? I'm considering digging a shallow hole out on the property somewhere and letting the pine trees send their roots out to try to find their own way, or die, whichever comes first.

Lots of things are budding out and that worries me.

The Bok Choy, Mammoth Red Cabbage and Copenhagen Market Cabbage seedlings that have already been through hell were planted, some on Wednesday and some on Thursday. There are still the Dutch Premium Late Cabbage and the Barbados Broccoli to set out.

I covered them with row cover to protect them from heavy rains, whatever those are, egg-laying moths, winter weather, deer, rabbits and dogs. I bought this row cover on Amazon HERE. Not crazy about it. Too thin. But maybe if I force myself to use it for awhile I will decide it's worth the effort. This area was where I planted tomatoes last year. Hubs did the tilling and furrowing with his big Troy-Bilt, making four "hills" and three "valleys". I came along behind him with the rake. This was where the old pine tree fell and there were lots of pieces of bark and small sticks that we just left there to till in. I was pleased to see that there weren't a lot of rocks here. I had pulled out quite a few last year, as I planted the tomato plants. Those white things you see in the front of the picture are tomato cages made out of PVC pipe. Not crazy about those either. They were expensive to make. They stay together pretty well but they tip over too easily when the tomato plant gets big. And you have to be super-vigilant or the plant will spill out through the many openings and be growing outside of the cage so tall that you'll break the branch trying to get it back in. However, if you take the corners out on opposite sides, you have two nice triangular pieces that support the row cover pretty well. They are on the bed on the right side. And the corners you take out can be used that way, too. They are on the bed on the left side.

I saw a You-Tube about a guy making tomato cages out of concrete reinforcement wire, which is cheaper and sturdier by the roll than most wire fencing material I've seen. Looks like he's using rewire that comes in sheets, though. I've never priced that. It's HERE. He cuts it in three pieces and hooks them together so that, open, they form a triangle and stay upright pretty well. When he's finished with them, they fold down flat. Botta Bing. I like that. I had a lot of trouble with my circle wire cages we made last spring. The gauge of the wire is too light. They fall over. The wind blows them away. I haven't had trouble storing them bcause I just laid them on their sides and wedged them inside the borders of one of the raised beds. But if I needed the room, storage would be a problem.

I received my first call from the Surgery Center on Thursday. This call was just to verify their information. She did tell me that Dr. Webb doesn't even start surgery till noon. Yipe, and we can't have anything to eat after midnight the day before? We're all going to be high as a kite. Then at about 11:00 this morning I got a call scheduling my time to check in. It's at 11:30 so I must be first. I hear they say that's not a good thing to be first.....

Hubs went by on the way home from his work-out and rented my scooter for a month.

Dr. Webb said that's about as long as I will need it. You put your knee on that little seat there. If I had a tricycle, I could have the same benefit, probably. It has hand brakes, and they have locks on them for when you need the thing not to roll. I can actually push off there where you see it in the picture and go all the way through the dining room and around the doorway to the kitchen sink without another push. Wheeeeeee! Wheeeeeeee! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee! Pure. Adrenalin. Heh.

This is the view out my office window.

The rain that was forecast for our area was, of course, most welcome. It just looks like there isn't going to be enough of it. At first, Mesonet said one to two inches was possible. Then it changed to 0.25" to an inch. The weatherman says they dewpoint is the problem. Dammit. But I'm grateful for anything more that 0.00". Thank you. More please? It started about 7:30 and has been on and off since then. It's about noon now. There's a 70% chance of more rain tonight. The chickens really wanted to come out today but of course there's that drowning thing they do in the rain. And since I'm hoping for a downpour, I don't want to be out there in it, chasing Aldine around the chicken house. So I opened up the back window (it has a wire screen on it) and I wedged a small wire screen onto their small door in the front. They were really disappointed to find out they couldn't come out. Several of them pressed up against it for a long time. I hope nobody suffocated in the crowd. I can hear Aldine crowing in there. Er-Er-Er-Errr! Aldine doesn't do the "cockadoodledo" thing I was expecting. Aldine only knows one note. He started out with only two "Er's", so maybe he will crow differently later on.

This is now Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012.
We didn't get any of that 70% chance of rain they predicted for last night. But Hubs said they were saying we'd gotten about 1.5" accumulation from yesterday's rain, and that the water tank at the front of the house had overflowed. My rule of thumb is that when it's all the way full, that means an inch of rain. It was wonderful to get that much and I don't think I've seen that much water standing in the yard since that first week after we moved here, when the water was actually up over the highway near our turn-off.

Hubs and I got around early and went to the Benefit Breakfast. I let the chickens out before we left and Aldine was still up to his brutish behavior, first rattle out of the box.

This time the breakfast Benefactee was the FFA. They had so many kids from different area FFA's, there was really too much help. Each kid that approached us, I asked where they were from. Some were Dewey, some Caney Valley. I didn't see any from Bartlesville. One boy announced he was from Copan and I told him I'd gone to school there. He told me his parents' names, which I didn't recognize, and then I told him what year I graduated. He said, "Oh, my parents weren't even born then...." {{Snort! Just skip the coffee, kid, and bring me a bottle of Geritol. Heh.}}

We didn't see anyone we knew this time. A man in overalls came and sat at our table and we talked a little bit. I don't remember how we got on the subject, but he said he eats beans three times a week and that he had a little trouble with one hip and the doctor found a minor problem that was easily fixed, then told him he had such good bones he would never need hip surgery. He said he was 80-some years old. I could easily eat beans three times a week, but Hubs isn't that fond of them. He's a meat-and-potatoes man. Lots of people say they can't tolerate the gas they get from beans but sometimes I think that's because they don't eat enough of what they used to call "roughage". They could probably tolerate it better if they started out eating little bits of it on a more frequent basis.

Then we went to the recycling center and found about eight yellow kitty litter buckets. I was really glad to get them as some of our buckets are now starting to break down from all the hard use we give them.

Food Pyramid had a few things on sale that we needed, and we needed some stuff from WMT, so we went shopping. I went ahead and bought my coconut oil at WMT. The best price I can get thru Amazon breaks down to .25 an ounce. It was a five-gallon bucket and that price included $40 in shipping costs. LuAnna coconut oil at WMT is .18 an ounce. So guess that's still the cheapest source. I didn't see anything on the label about it being hydrogenated, but they had the same glass jar of organic coconut oil next to the LuAnna that I priced at Food Pyramid a weekend or so ago. I just don't believe things that SAY they are organic actually ARE, and I won't pay that big price for them. I think almost anything you don't grow yourself is questionable. But if we only consumed that which I grew, we'd be starved to death by now. And though all of you know how much I just hate to go to WMT, I will say this one thing in their defense: They at least will stock the lower-priced bottles of coconut and olive oil, when all you find on the shelves at most of the supermarkets are all the high-end stuff in the fancy bottles.

While we were shopping, we kept noticing how much prices have increased on just about everything. We got a little raise on our Social Security checks this year but it was not comparable to the REAL increase in the cost of living. I worry about how a lot of elderly people, who were just squeaking by before, are going to get along now. They'll have to buy less nutritious stuff, and their health will suffer for it.

It has been a gray and cloudy day. I fastened the big chicken-house door open and the chickens have opted to retire inside. I can see them sitting on their roost, looking out. And here I thought they'd be out in the yard a-scratchin' and a-diggin' all over the place. Seems like it's more important to them to be able to SEE outside rather than to BE outside.

This is now Sunday and I will finish up today. Didn't do much yesterday. It was really too cold to get out and do stuff outside. I don't like cold weather but it's necessary, and I'm glad to have it before all the fruit trees start blooming. The weather other places is still just out-right freaky, and bless those people in Europe with all that record-breaking cold, I sure hope everybody is staying inside and warm. I talked to June again on the phone, she is better after a sciatica attack. I've had those and they are killer. Practiced getting into the truck on one foot, I've got the trip home all worked out. Monday's the day. Drinking lots of water today to hydrate my tiny little blood veins. I have the ingredients out for a pot of chicken soup, I'll put that together today. I think I'll be wanting some when I get home and the anesthesia has worn off. I didn't cook up a lot of stuff, Hubs knows his way around the kitchen and the pantry and freezers are well-stocked. Doctor Webb said I wouldn't feel like doing much for two or three days but after that I can start getting around some. I have books to read when the TV's too depressing, and Hubs will take good care of me. We are good care-takers of each other.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Letter From Ilene, Fourth Week of January, 2012

2012-01-28T08:42:00.002-06:00

This is started on Monday, January 23. I'm enjoying a piece of "Ann and Bill's Apple Oatmeal Bread With Raisins" toast. This recipe is on page 96 of Bread Machine Magic by Linda Rehberg and Lois Conway. This is one of my favorite cookbooks, which I found at a garage sale. There are 180 pages in the book and for the most part, there is one recipe on each page. Every recipe I've tried from this book has turned out well. They give each recipe in two versions, one for a 1-pound bread pan and another for a 1-1/2 pound. My bread machines are 2-pound pans so I just double the 1-pound recipe. I didn't follow the recipe exactly, I substituted part of the bread flour for my home-milled whole wheat, added half a cup of wheat germ because I found it in the freezer and am trying to use it up, and then I put in a tablespoon of Dough Enhancer because of the addition of wheat flour and wheat germ. The bread turned out very soft and I think I could've left out the Dough Enhancer entirely, probably because of the presence of the applesauce. But here is the recipe for anyone who wants it:

Ann and Bill's Apple Oatmeal Bread With Raisins
This is the one-pound loaf recipe, as presented in the book, so double it if you want a loaf that fits well in a conventional loaf pan.
1/3 C old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 C water
1/3 C unsweetened applesauce
1 and 3/4 C bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp butter (I used olive oil)
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp nonfat dry milk powder
1/4 C raisins
1 tsp cinnamon
1 and 1/2 tsp yeast
Of course this is a bread machine recipe so just put it all in the bread pan, select light crust setting and let'er rip. When I load my bread machine, I always put the yeast and the liquids in the bottom, flour on top of that, other ingredients on top of that, and the salt on the very top. I don't like salt next to my yeast. I prefer to bake my bread in loaf pans in the oven, so I set the machine on the "dough" setting. I think this loaf would be prettier with cinnamon and sugar rolled into it at shaping time, so that it's in a swirl in every slice, and I really didn't think the bread was quite sweet enough, so I think next time I'll reserve the cinnamon, add maybe same amount of brown sugar as is in the recipe, flatten my dough, sprinkle it on, then roll it up and put it in the pan for the second rise. However, the applesauce I used was made from the last apples from The Ponca House and they had to be picked when they were still somewhat green because we were moving, so my applesauce is not as sweet as what you would have.

I just love bread machine recipes. There are people who find the kneading process relaxing, but I don't really get anything out of it. Although I always snicker a little bit whenever I see actresses kneading bread on movies and programs on TV where they're supposed to do it as part of their "character". Those directors need to bring in someone who actually makes bread to teach them how to knead. And they are supposed to be feeding a big family and several farm hands and they've just got this little wad of dough that would probably only make one small loaf! LOL But anyway, I just prefer to dump all the ingredients into the breadpan(s), set the machine(s) and then walk off to do something else until time to put them in their loaf pans for the second rising.

Oh, and by the way, I never use "instant" yeast. I just use the regular that I buy in bulk and keep in the freezer. Lots of times I don't proof my yeast but just put it into the recipe with all the other ingredients. I don't have problems with the bread not rising any more than I used to when I proofed the yeast every time. While I had the oven going I used my Easy Peach Cobbler recipe (see Recipe Index to find out where the recipe is) but substituted a quart jar of Santa Rosa plums for the peaches. It turned out just OK. The plums were cooked enough to remove the pits and skins before they went into the jars at canning time. No water or sugar was added. If I use these canned plums for this recipe again, I need to remember to add some sugar and maybe drain off a little of the juice. It was really tangy and didn't firm up as well as it does when using fruit that is not as soft.

That's the thing about Santa Rosa plums. It's hard to find ways to use them when you have a tree full of them. And they are hard to get to that perfect point of ripeness where they are not so tart, so that you can eat them fresh. The skins are red and tart, the flesh is yellow and sweet. Used together, they make wonderful jam, but how many jars of jam can a person eat?. Those plums came ripe about the same time that we were busy moving and it really bothered me that so many ended up on the ground, rotting and making a mess. There just was not time to do anything with them but to bring a bowl of them home every trip or so, to stick in the refrigerator for snacking on. The ones I do have canned are the those that came ripe before the moving started. I have a recipe now for fruit syrup that calls for 1 cup sugar to 1 and 1/2 cup of fruit juice and I think I'll try making some of that from another quart jar. It might be good on pancakes. The plum trees I have planted out here are Damson and Burbank, so I hope they'll lend themselves better to the canning process. Or maybe I'll dehydrate them. At any rate, these canned plums need to be used up somehow, as this coming July they will be two years old. And canned goods do not improve with age like wine does. If anyone has a recipe for something good that calls for tart canned plums, let me know...

I cleaned up my $3 garage-sale wooden rolling shelving unit. OMG, it was sure filthy. I have had a bottle of Jubilee "kitchen wax" for years and years. The label says it is good for removing grease, soot, food stains and yellow cooking film. So I used almost the whole bottle scrubbing down those shelves with steel wool. Hubs took the casters off and I threw them in the rinse bucket to soak. They were worse than awful. But I really should've worn gloves as it really tore up my hands.

This is now Tuesday, January 24.

I was supposed to have an appointment with the dermatologist today but they called and rescheduled. I don't know if I will be able to get there two weeks after surgery and I told the girl that but she was just silent on the other end of the line and wouldn't even make an effort to squeeze me in anywhere else. So I let her go ahead and set it up the way she intended to do in the first place. If I can't do it I'll call and reschedule and then she'll add another month to my wait time, which is how long I would've waited for this appointment, had it not been rescheduled. You know, that hacks me off when they're like that. It reminds me that they don't really care anything about their patients, and I'd like to think otherwise. I don't like being reminded that I'm just a number to them.

I was just on a website that I got to from a link on Comfrey Cottages HERE. Click on the yellow-highlighted link that says "Click Here to view the webinar". It was very interesting. Well, at first I found it really boring because it was too much information. But I stuck with it and it picked up. I found out a lot about yarrow, chocolate and alfalfa that I didn't know before.

I gave JC the task of digging a tree hole and he did pretty well with it. He has helped me dig before and knows how to use the pry-bar and how to feel around for the rock edges. I've about got him broken of trying to get the shovel into the ground by jumping on it with both feet. He needed help a couple of times but mostly he worked alone. Luckily where he was digging had mostly thin rocks that broke when pried, but he did get a few big ones out. I went out and helped him finish up, Then we threw some broken branches from the pine tree in the hole, and then some leaves, and then the dirt that came out of the hole. I planted one of the Golden Rain Trees that I got free from ArborDay. JC did the running to get the branches that were already in buckets, a bag of leaves, water that was already in jugs to water it in, hay from one of the raised beds to mulch it with, a tomato cage to protect it from getting walked on or mowed down. We weighed the hay down with some of the rocks that were laying around.

I don't know if you can see the little sapling or not, so I drew a box around it on the picture. It's tiny but supposed to grow fast. While JC put the tools away I finished putting rocks in buckets. Hubs in in charge of the "building" of the rock wall so I left the buckets out there for when he is ready to work on it.

I put a couple of coats of "Z-Sealer", which I think is actually shellac, on the garage sale rolling shelves. I'm trying to use up things I have and this was a can I found in the garage that we bought when I put "Z-Bricks" on a wall in the kitchen of The Osage House, I hate to tell you how many years ago that was, but it was easily 20. The label said that it could be used on wood or masonry, that one coat was enough for interior, two coats for exterior. So.... two coats were applied. I also finished cleaning the casters.

Hubs finished cutting up the pine tree. We'll use it for Hugelculture.

He left enough of the stump to make a table out of but I don't know how that will work out. I think the stump is full of termites. The bark literally fell off the tree and there were roach-looking things under the bark that scurried off as soon as they were exposed.

We've already stacked a lot of the wood in another spot. The small pieces of branches we're thinking about just tilling into the soil right there where they are. I have no clue how long that tree stood there after it died, but it was already deader than a doornail when we moved in. The branches are very brittle and will break in your hands or when you step on them, at least the ones that are an inch in diameter and less.

Hubs also went out to look at some wood that John had called us about the night before. It was a willow tree in pieces too big to load up so I don't think Hubs is interested, although he said he thought it would be good enough to burn in the fireplace. Last time we went to the benefit breakfast, we joined John, Marvin and Don, whom we knew from when we went to church in Dewey, and John was talking about how he needed to cut down some trees on some land that he has (it was his parents' home place that he inherited). I mentioned that I was burying wood out here as a way to improve growing conditions, and that if he didn't have a way to dispose of it I might be able to use it as long as it wasn't cedar or black walnut. Hubs said John mentioned that he might get his tractor out there and pull the trunk of the tree off the smaller branches so they could be gotten to easier but even so it may be a bigger task than Hubs wants to take on right now and I can't be of much help. It might be a better idea to ask Charlie if I can have wood out of his brush pile. In fact, you can see his big white truck parked at his brushpile in the picture below, off in the distance.

While Hubs was cutting up our pine tree, I started filling up these tires. They are on top of several layers of cardboard. Then I put in some twigs and chopped leaves. Then dirt on top.

What's nice about tires is that there's that natural "reservoir" around the edges. I kinda wish now I'd painted them first, though. These will just be for flowers because I don't know if planting herbs there would be safe considering the materials in the tires. I read somewhere that there's cadmium in tires and probably a lot of other bad stuff. My Aunt Viv had a bunch of those flower pots made out of tires cut and turned wrong side out and then painted, and she grew all kinds of things in them. And my mom grew potatoes in tires one year. When the plant got tall enough, she'd add another tire and more dirt. But that was back when we didn't worry about things like carcinogens. Go HERE to see lots of ways people are using old tires. I especially like the tire "planters" hanging on the walls and there are plenty of pictures of Aunt Viv's version of tire planters. Plus there's a "tiered tire planter" that was kinda what I thought I might end up with here, if I end up with any more tires. Spike says he has a few more he can bring over. And wow, what a cool retaining wall made out of stacked old tires! Now THERE is cheap fencing that will be there till the end of time. Plus I don't think a deer would jump it. If you scroll down a bit, you'll find lots of interesting uses for old tires. And oh, you just HAVE to go to Felder Rushing's site HERE. This guy is a genius. Look over his entire site if you want to go crazy. So many ideas, so little time, so few tires.....

This is now Wednesday, January 25.

I got up early enough that I witnessed actual rain falling. The parts of Oklahoma that weren't having drought conditons so bad are the parts of the state that got the most rain. We got only 0.15". There was a 60% chance of more rain this morning, according to Mesonet, but none materialized.

I have been carrying my seedlings outside for two days now. Normally the hardening-off process is a tedious task. Outside for one hour the first day. Two the next. And so on. I don't do it that way. I set them on the ground, grouped together, then put a couple of crates on each end and put an old clear shower door across it. On the first day I will drape a large clear plastic bag (these can be found in dumpsters behind furniture stores) on each side. The air gets into the space through the crates on the end and the shower door helps to concentrate the warmth from the sun and keep the wind from being too dehydrating for the plants. This way, I can leave the plants out for several hours on the first day. Then several hours more on the second. Then on the third, I can start removing some of the protection. I saw a GardenWeb post where someone recommended putting seedlings out under a laundry basket. I think that would work really well later on in the year when the sun beats down too hot and the seedlings really need some shade. But in pre-spring conditions, they need something over them that is clear enough to let the sun through. The extra light and warmth really gives the plants a boost, and they won't burn up as long as there is a little cool air running through it..

Today, though, since the shellac on my roll-around shelf was dry, it was time to load up the shelves and roll it out on the driveway. I'm not ready to abandon them to Mother Nature without a little protection, so I used my bags on the sides. The sides are facing north and south, the ends are east and west, for best exposure. If I had a rolling shelf made especially for this purpose, I'd have the shelves all the same distance apart for better light exposure. But by the time I go in for surgery, they should be hardened off enough that the plastic can be removed and Hubs can just roll them out of the garage every morning, and back in at night. No point in tempting the neighborhood dogs.

I use and re-use my little foam coffee cups. I've written so many names of plants on the cups, over time, that it would be confusing if it wasn't for the fact that I know I've only planted Barbados Broccoli, Premium Late Dutch Cabbage, Copenhagen Market Cabbage, Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage, and Bok Choy.

Aldine crows a lot now. This morning he was trying to stand on the back of one of the hens. And yes, I know he wasn't just trying to get a piggy-back ride. She squawked loudly, having none of it, and ran, knocking him off. He really should dance first. That's females for you, Aldine, they don't like brutish behavior. We thought he was ugly when we thought he was a pullet. But he is really kind of a handsome rooster.

He has iridescent turquoise and green streaks in his tail feathers and wings. They are beautiful when they catch the sun. So far he and I have been getting along just fine. He is crowing in the bottom picture.

Today I gave JC the task of digging up a mulberry tree and transplanting it to a spot where it will shade the chicken house from the afternoon sun. The tree was growing in the back fence, where the birds had planted it, and I already had it partially dug up. There is a baby Rose of Sharon near it that I brought over from the house next door to The Ponca House, and it has survived two summers here but hasn't grown a lot since the mulberry tree always shaded it. I set JC to work on the outside of the fence while I worked on the inside, being careful not to disturb the Rose of Sharon, and we had it and all the root we needed out of the ground in no time. The bad part was in digging the new hole. It was nothing but limestone and we had to call in Hubs and his jackhammer for that one. Seemed like we three worked FOREVER on that, but actually it was no more than an hour or so. When we hit clay I thanked Hubs and let him go back to what he was doing before, then JC and I filled the hole with sticks, and then leaves, and then the soil he had dug out, and then some sandy soil from the pile out near the raised beds. We always shovel the soil into buckets when we dig. It is SOOOOO much easier to throw back into the hole when we're done. The chickens, who had been quietly cooing at JC and me up until then, about had a cow when Hubs started up the jackhammer but they eventually got used to the noise and settled down like they were watching a show. After JC and I got the tree planted and walked off to take our break, they all crowded up against their fence as close to the tree as they could get, and just stared at it for quite awhile.

Wait till they find out what mulberries taste like! If none of it dies back from the transplanting, maybe it will even make a few this summer.

Hubs was in the house doing the re-facing of the bottom step that goes up, which he broke when he took it off to lay the floor, and the top step that goes down, which had been tiled and was ugly after the tile was removed. After JC had a break, he took the carpet off the stairs going up, and removed the tack strips and a million staples.

All three of us had a busy and productive day.

This is now Thursday.

My pre-op appointment at the podiatrist's was today. It was in the middle of the day and thus cut the day in half and reduced productivity. Couldn't be helped. We left JC with his day's workload instructions and he did seem to have continued to work while we were gone. It turns out my surgery is a week further out than I thought. It gives me a week more to get things done, but puts me a week further out with being able to get out into the garden. I do most of my gardening work on my knees anyway.

I was sent home with prescriptions for pain and anti-nausea meds for after surgery, and a Star Wars boot that I will wear to protect my foot. Some doctors won't give you the prescriptions till AFTER surgery and that is so thoughtless. Here you're in the car after having had surgery and you're waiting outside the pharmacy while your family member is inside waiting endlessly for it to be filled.

I am to rent a "runaround" which is a scooter that has a place for you to put your knee. I will be needing to not put any weight on my foot for three weeks. But at least I will be able to get around, though Dr. Webb says I won't feel like it for probably the first two or three days. The incision will be on the inside of my heel, close to the arch where the spur is. He said it may take me from six months to a year to heal completely. Yipe. Of course they always have to tell you worse-case scenario. I read the list of complications and one was that I might lose my big toe or my entire foot. That alarmed me considerably but he said those were not complications of this particular surgery and marked them out. Whew! Of course, Dr. Webb has NO IDEA what a leap of faith I am taking in letting myself be cut on AT ALL. It's just that I am in such pain almost all the time now, it's taking my mobility away from me and I want my life back.

When we got home, JC was on the job, but instead of concentrating on one thing he had done a little bit on each one. So I had to go out there and get him focused. Without direction, he digs a little small hole, sees rock, thinks he has limestone, and abandons it. We spent the rest of the afternoon concentrating on the first hole, which had all rocks that he was able to pry out. He used the shovel and the prybar. I kneeled at the edge of the hole showing him where to dig, when to use his shovel to get the dirt out of the hole, and where to try his prybar. With my leather-gloved hands, I took the rocks out of the hole and put them in buckets. Hubs had not gotten around to taking care of the rocks we have dug up during the last two days and we ran out of buckets, so he got out the riding lawn mower and trailer and did that while JC and I worked. We got the hole finished and a Washington Hawthorn tree planted in the hole, with JC doing the running for buckets of sticks or small logs, extra dirt, mulch materials, etc. He had one hole that he had found a rock almost right at the surface so I went over there and messed around with that till I found the edges, I was able to pry some up with my little garden trowel, then JC pried up a couple of pretty good-sized rocks with the prybar. So he has a good place to start for his next day of work.

When I went out to roll my plants back into the garage, I was horrified to find that the wind had blown it over on it's side. Hubs came out and helped me scoop things up and I spent the evening trying to salvage what I could.

This is now Friday.

I put my seedlings back on the rack and TIED IT TO THE CARPORT. I could not resist a day that was supposed to get up to 63º. I don't know how many will survive. Some didn't look too bad, considering what they went through.

By the way, if you want to type a degree symbol, and you have Windows XP (maybe others but I don't know), hold down ALT and key in 0186.

Went in for my opthalmic appointment today. Hubs went along because he had a couple errands he wanted to do while in town. It was like old home week, as I was their transcriptionist for four years. Then I left to go to work for EmployAbility and after being there for a couple of years, I retired.  Some of the girls I worked with are still there. Techs Kelly and Linda. In the business office, Janice and Debbie, Mandy and Denise, who do the pre-op stuff, Jeannie at the front desk, Renna still in my old job, and Lena who was following Dr. Jeff today. Teresa, the surgical nurse, is still there but she doesn't work on Fridays so I missed getting to see her. There were things about that job that I really hated.  And there were a few girls there who were kinda hateful. If I did something wrong, Dr. Jeff would get Jeannie AND our clinic administrator to chew me out. And then Dr. Richard would come around and chew me out. When I first started working there, the path to my door was pretty well travelled. I'd hate to think how it might've been for someone who hadn't scored so high on the administrator's intelligence test. But the girls I got to see today were special to me, each in her own way, and they all welcomed me with hugs. The retinal degeneration in my right eye is not worse than the last time they saw me, and isn't bad enough to have to be referred to the retinal specialist. I have a little developing in my left eye, but my left eye is more "zippy" than the right eye, as Dr. Jeff put it. I went there mostly for a refraction but I hadn't had an exam for five years so I figured it was time.   After we were done there we went to the optical shop where I picked out somr new frames and left my prescription with them. It'll take ten days but they said Hubs could come and pick them up if I wasn't able and then I could come in for the adjustments later on.

When we got home JC had, indeed, reached limestone and Hubs and I spent the greater part of the rest of the day with him jack-hammering and JC and I taking out the rock. Same song, 50th verse (or something like that). I've now cooked catfish, broccoli and baked potatoes for supper, put the chickens to bed, and a nice hot tub is calling....

Now it's Saturday and I will post this morning. We are all tired and sore from a long week. It will be too cold today to comfortably work outside. Plus Saturdays are normally room-cleaning day for JC and I have stuff inside I need to do, too. I will probably do laundry and see if Hubs will run the vacuum. The bathrooms need to be cleaned and that is always my job. I'll dig out the Swiffer and use that on the new floor, as I noticed someone dribbled something sticky in the kitchen. I really like my Swiffer, but I don't buy those expensive cloths. I use the nubby side of old sweatshirt material, cut to fit. It's very absorbent and the nubby stuff holds on to the grime. When one needs changing, I have lots of extras. Throw 'em all in a bucket as I go. When finished, put a little water in the bucket to rinse them out, throw the dirty water out on the flower bed (earth to earth....), and then they go into the wash.

I got my new soap molds in the mail and also a surprise package with seeds, homemade bon-bons that are TO DIE FOR, and a book to read. Boy, am I getting spoiled rotten or what?

I'll probably try to make another batch of soap so I can try out my new molds. I checked the soap from my "maiden voyage" last night and they are hardening up nicely. It really IS possible to make something wonderful from stuff you might ordinarily throw out. Soap-making appeals to me on so many levels.

And on that topic, I was in my Billie's Health Food store yesterday and there was a big sign that says, "Canola oil damages retinal capillaries, coconut oil repairs them." I went online and read up on it. You should too. Apparently canola oil is made from GMO Rapeseed. Guess I'll be making soap out of that half a jug of Canola that I have. I have been using peanut oil to deep fry in, and coconut oil to pop corn in and for making soap. I can get a gallon of cold-pressed organic coconut oil from Amazon for $38 plus $12 for shipping. Billie's sells it for $15.95 a pound or two pounds for $22.02. Of course I can get it at WMT in a size that's a little under a quart (31.5 oz).  I don't remember what I paid for it, but I don't think it was as much as $20. Food Pyramid only has it in a fancy 12-oz jar and it's $11. Also another idea I saw on one of the soap websites is that oil sold for popcorn making is coconut oil with carotene added.  But be sure to read the label if you buy popcorn oil for internal use.  Some producers list "Flavacol" as the butter-flavor ingredient in their oil and salt. I tried to find out what's in Flavacol, and found that it's a "metabolic product of aspergillus flavus". Then I looked THAT up, and it's a crop disease. A fungus that forms on corn and peanuts. WHAAAAAATTTTTTT?  It produces "aflatoxin", which has toxic and carcinogenic properties.

Oh, hell, people! The harder we try to buy products that will make us healthier, the sicker we get, all the while being told that it's "safe", that no harmful effects "have been reported". So now I'm starting to get afraid that eventually, after we've consumed it for years, they'll find "new", scarey information on Coconut Oil.  Wasn't Canola oil being touted as THE healthiest oil on the market, not so long ago? I remember when we were all supposed to be afraid of Saturated Animal Fats and Tropical Oils.  And they pushed Hydrogenated Fats. Then we found out about Trans Fats and that reversed everything. Do you ever look in the mirror and see a guinea pig?  Olive oil has been used for centuries with no ill effects; however, here again, we have to consider the method of processing and whether they've changed that and not told us, the method of growing the olives and whether they've changed that and not told us; we must constantly, constantly be aware of the practice of chemical additives in all our processed food "added for freshness". Frankly, I'm beginning to think all this is just an exercise in futility. Bad stuff is in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and all the other materials that surround us daily. If we die, we die. *sigh*

Well, I guess you didn't expect a rant at the end of this. I don't know if I'm ranting or just expressing my concerns. The line between them is too fine for me.

So with all of that, if you've actually not gotten bored out of your mind and stayed with me to this point, I will press "Publish" and end your misery. Heh. I guess I'll go get dressed now and start cleaning the bathrooms. Which is probably bad for my health too. Heh. Y'all have a good weekend. XOXOXO

A Little Bit Here, A Little Bit There

2012-01-26T10:43:00.004-06:00

I got a comment from Mandy a few posts ago that got me thinking about how we all tend to look at the big picture and we get overwhelmed, so we put off doing stuff till we "have more time", and before we know it, we have lived our lives without doing so many of the things we could have, simply because we thought they were too big to tackle.

If you were ever a college student, and you cleaned out closets instead of studying for an exam, you know what I mean.

I'm often reminded of the old Ma and Pa Kettle movies of the 1950's. They lived in an old farm house and every time it rained, they ran around setting bowls and pots around to catch the leaks. Someone asked Pa why he'd never fixed the roof. "Waaaaal," he replied, "Can't get up there while it's rainin'. When it ain't, don't NEED to...."

Sometimes putting things off works out and sometimes it doesn't. Maybe it's something that's better left to someone else to do that has more muscle, more tools, more expertise. And all we have to be is the person with the checkbook. Those things often HAVE to be put off because if you're anything like us, things that require money chase you around like hungry jackals and the best you can do is turn around once in awhile and pick out the hungriest one to feed. Or maybe waiting will allow you time to find your materials on close-out somewhere, or better yet, free. My Aunt Viv called this "Striking While The Iron Is Hot".

Before you do anything, you have to plan. Make sure you like the plan and that it is doable. Consider all your options and get opinions from others. Hubs is notorious for saying "it won't work..." Sometimes he's right and sometimes he isn't. I get a little tired of this attitude but it has made me less "spontaneous", which can sometimes get a person into a jam. Even with lots of thought involved, be prepared for unplanned things to happen that will make you have to stop and figure out how to modify your plan.

Once you decide on what you want to do, if it's a big job, break it into a series of projects. Each project doesn't have to be completed in a day. It doesn't have to consume your life or wear you out. If you only have an hour or two a day to work on it, do that. But put the blinders on, ignore everything else that needs to be done during that period and work just on that project. You'll get enough detours naturally. When you get a detour, take your project as far as you can get it up to the detour (without doing something you're going to have to un-do), switch over to working on the detour, and then when that's done, go back and pick up where you left off. Don't start another project while you have one going unless not doing it makes it impossible for you to go any further on the current project, or unless, for some reason, you run into something on the current project that requires a wait. Sometimes till you get a new tool. Sometimes while you think.

This is not to say you shouldn't allow yourself an occasional do-nothing day. Just don't get addicted to those. Sometimes it takes a will of iron to get yourself back on track. Sometimes Hubs is really hard to get started. What works for me is that I will say, "Tomorrow, do you think we can knock out the last of that project?" If I can just get him to agree, then the next morning we put on our work clothes and get to it. It's like making an appointment. Often we'll make a pact that we will not give up till the project's done and then we have a little celebration of some sort. Go out to eat, or buy something we've been needing for awhile, something like that. Hubs loves to go out to eat. For me, it's not as much of an incentive as the completed project is. If I sense in Hubs a lot of resistance to getting back on track, I'll say, "What kind of steak are you going to order this time?" and that's usually enough to put a little sparkle back in his eyes and get him going. One or two hours a day doing something toward a goal will eventually get you there, so keep your eye upon the prize. Plus, if you have carved it out of time you had to spare, you can still get your daily things done around it. A do-nothing day that stretches out into another, and then another, and another, will eventually get on your nerves because meanwhile you are living with a half-finished project. And, mark my words, when you least expect it, you'll find yourself faced with company coming. Or you'll have several half-finished projects and then you or your spouse will get transferred and you'll have to put the house on the market. Then you have to work your heinie off finishing all those projects at once when you really need to be using that time to do other things.

We really started the kitchen project at the wrong time. It was fall. We should've been out digging rock. But we bought our flooring on sale and it happened to be during a time when Paula was available to come and help paint. So, accidentally, our timing had its merits. Our project got as far as it could go and at that time we started digging rock. Then we got the tool that Hubs used to remove the Thin-Set from the entry hall floor and so we went back to work on that, and then had to spend a couple days after that cleaning up all the dust it made. Ideally, we should've then gone ahead and put the floor down in the entry before we went out to dig more rock. But we had so many pretty days, and my surgery's coming up. We finally finished the zinnia bed a week ago Monday (or was it Tuesday?) Anyway, it was the last warm day we had before it turned colder than a well-digger's big toe. Glenda has even talked me into interplanting some peppers amongst the zinnias this summer. I just do not know how that maple tree has survived as long as it has. Hubs jack-hammered out a huge chunk of limestone from the west side of where the tree is growing (This picture is taken from the east). We got a lot closer to the tree than we expected to because of that.

That red post is where the previous owners had a basketball hoop with a broken back-board. We took the hoop and back-board down and probably if we had been thinking, we could've dug that thing out of the ground while we were digging right next to it. Duh. I just commented about it to Hubs and he laughed and shook his head like I was out of my mind (he does that a lot and there are times when this attitude just flies all over me), and said that post is a lot deeper than we dug, and it's concreted in. I said, "How do you know it's any deeper than where we dug?" He said, "Cause that's how it's supposed to be done." And then it was MY turn to laugh. I said, "What makes you think they did it how it was supposed to be done?" Duuuuuuh. They planted a tree only 8" above a slab of limestone, didn't they?

Then on Tuesday we went back to working on the hall entry floor.

There were the mopboards to take off, and then there was stuff to clean out under them. Hubs had to take the facing board off the bottom step going upstairs. And I had to do the clean up and put down the moisture barrier.

There was the track to lay for the threshold for where the flooring changes directions.

We really should've thought ahead and gone only to the middle of the doorway with the flooring in the dining room. Now the threshold is going to stick out a little past the doorway and we discovered it made it difficult to fit the hallway floor around it without leaving a gap. Hubs didn't want to have to try to change it because it would be quite a bit of work, so we are doing quite a bit of work anyway trying to do the "work-around". The devil gets his due one way or another. That put Hubs in a bad mood and he yelled at me a couple of times while we were trying to lay the floor, and then I quit being understanding and got hacked off. I told him if he yelled at me again I was quitting and then he told me it was my floor and then I reminded him it was his too and he wanted to have this mess finished off as bad as I did. He went out to smoke, but it didn't help much so we just decided to call it a day with the flooring only halfway across the floor.

And that worked out OK, because along about that time, Spike showed up. We hadn't seen him since before Christmas. He asked how we finally got our Thinset up and we told him we had to buy another tool. That perked him up and I said, "No, you can't borrow it because you never remember to bring things back!" It's become a joke but sometimes I don't feel it's a very funny one. It really annoys me to start a project and not be able to find a tool and then we remember Spike has it. If we get Alzheimer's, we are not going to have any tools. But I guess by then we won't be able to remember how to use them or what we were going to use them for, or even who Chris is, so, Oh Well. We had a nice visit otherwise. As annoyed as I do get with my children / grandchildren, I haven't been able to figure out how to not love them. And sometimes that can really be a bummer.

Then today, Wednesday, after Hubs got back from his workout and had his breakfast, we started work fresh.

I bought enough flooring so that we could take the carpet off the stairs and put the flooring on the treads. It's not made for that but I think we can nail it down and trim it out and it will look nice and be safe. Might have to drill pilot holes first, Hubs will have to test out whether he can get a nail through the material without cracking it. I would then paint the riser boards in the same off-white that the walls are. With JC coming in the front door with his shoes still on and going upstairs to his room, and also, though he is not supposed to, taking food and drink up to his room and spilling on the way, the carpeting on the stairs is really looking ugly. It's one of those nappy ones that shows your shoe imprint when you walk across it, so it just seems like the only time it really looks decent is immediatly after we've run the vacuum. I'm not a big fan of carpeting anyway. It costs more to put down than a hard floor does, it's not normally something homeowners can do themselves (at least not US), and then you've got all that maintenance. I've removed enough carpeting in my life to know that there is no such thing as a vacuum cleaner or a carpet cleaner that gets the dirt that goes deep. And yes, we have a Dyson. Plus there is no such thing as cleaning up things like pet accidents, they just go down under the pad and you live with them. Ish. By next winter, we'll probably have the living room recarpeted unless some other expense comes along and gobbles up the money. And no, I will not be having another plush. I'm kind of being tempted right now with some of those textured Stainmaster samples in Lowe's. But the textures that I like don't come in any color that I like.

Doing the stairs is a separate project and I'm not going to push to get that started. Our stairs groan on just about every step. At least they don't say, "One at a time, please...." Hubs says it's because the stairtreads are fastened with nails instead of screws, and that before we put flooring down, he will remedy that situation. The good news is that each step is separately carpeted, and the steps are not wider than the flooring planks are long.

This is much later and I will try to finish off now that the hallway is finished. It was a real booger. Hubs worked too long on it and in the process got too tired and nervous and ended up wasting our materials. So I made him quit and then he went back to doing a little each day.

There is this push to get done. But sometimes you just can't force it.

I've said that the stairs is a separate project, but Hubs had JC take the carpeting off so he could tighten up the treads before we did anything else. Turns out the treads are made of plywood, and they squeak just as bad whether they have nails OR screws in them. Yet another roadblock. He told me today that stair treads can be bought at Lowe's. The pine ones, for ten treads, are $120. Oak ones are twice that. I'm leaning towards the oak ones anyway, but not right away.

Hubs and I don't normally push ourselves to work all day on something. Oh, there are times, like when we were redoing the cabinets in the kitchen, that we worked longer than just an hour or two a day. And I'm telling you, we really got sick of the project during those times. But when things came together the way they did, it was pure adrenalin. Hubs smokes, and so he needs a break every now and then. And we found it a good thing to set a series of small goals and take a break at each one. You make less mistakes that way. Particularly if you smoke. (Ahem.)

We've been in this house a little more than 18 months now. Here are the things we've accomplished since we've been here, some of which was by writing a check to someone else, and some of which we took on ourselves:

Painted over orange paint in dining room.
Painted over dark chocolate (almost black) paint in living room and entry hall.
Put up the grape arbor.
Had a carport installed over the patio for shade.
Had gutters and downspouts installed, and put the cistern back into service for garden water collection.
Cut down the willow tree (it turned out to be hollow), chipped the branches for mulch and cut up the wood for firewood.
Had the septic tank and laterals replaced. (Turned out our "laterals" was just a clay pipe that ended up under where the willow tree was.)
Had a cellar installed.
Had a 30-year roof put on, including better roof vents.
Had one single and two double old drafty metal windows replaced.
Replaced the circulating kitchen range hood with one that vents through the roof.
Put up shelves in office.
Put up picture rails in living room.
Built a headboard for Hubs' bed, and put up his family pictures on the wall. Refurbished a garage-sale display cabinet for his wall, to place some of his shaving mug collection in. His walls were not painted over by the previous owners, so they were the original off-white and Hubs liked that, so this was one room we didn't have to paint.
Installed shelves in the pantry.
Insulated under the attic stairs and put a gasket on the attic door, which eliminated the "howling" when the wind blew.
Removed a small cabinet from the upstairs bathroom, widened the doorway between lavatory area and bathtub area, and eliminated the wooden doorframe.
Took up carpet and put down vinyl strip flooring in both upstairs bathrooms.
Had lavatory and shower in master bathroom replaced (currently being used by JC, who was given the master bedroom, thereby containing his mess in one area.)
Replaced one-line clothesline pole with my favorites from The Ponca House, providing three additional lines.
Planted these trees in 2010 (only the ones still surviving will be listed): Two quince, three dwarf fruit trees that started out being "Two in One", but on which the grafts died for the second variety (one plum, one apple, one pear). Three blackberry bushes. Four blueberry bushes. Two grapevines. An azalea. Two American cranberry bushes, two arrowwood viburnum bushes. These were all brought from The Ponca House. Then later on, transplanted one mulberry out of the fenceline, purchased and planted two more grapevines, two lilac bushes, two crape myrtle bushes, two pear, two apple, two plum, one peach, one apricot, two thornless honey locust, one sassafras, one red maple, two redbud, two crabapple, one persimmon, eight hedge-apple, one Washington hawthorn, five elderberry bushes, two forsythia bushes. Six wild plum bushes. Maybe a couple of hazlenut are still alive, not sure. Six Nanking cherry bushes, one paw-paw tree, three thornless blackberry bushes, five gooseberry. Two spirea bushes. Planted large clumps of iris in two different areas. Several red cannas planted in a large round bed in the front yard. Alabama Crimson honeysuckle against the back of the house. Salvias, lemon balm, cone flower, mints, several colors of sedum, hollyhocks.
Had chimney cap replaced and roof repair solving water leak problem in the fireplace.
Set up four large wooden raised beds and two small ones in herb garden. Asparagus in one, Jerusalem Artichoke in another. Two designated for root crops (carrots, turnips, etc.). Set up wading pool planter for sweet potatoes. Lasagna bed for walking onions.
Set up raised beds edged in concrete block in garden area. One 7'x60', one 20'x20', one 10'x30' and one 7'x30'. Also amended a 30'x30' spot for melons and pumpkins. Built a flowerbed around the cellar.
Built the "Deer Garden".
Started a rock walk between the house and the cellar.
Set up two 8'x10' metal storage sheds.
Repaired and painted existing wooden shed, outfitted for chickens, built chickenyard fence and moved in nine (now eight) chickens. Or maybe seven chickens and a rooster.
Cleaned and waterproofed the leaking cistern. Modified front downspout to deliver additional water to the cistern.
Had a carport installed in front of the garage.
Had the non-brick parts of the house painted with "lifetime" "ceramic coat".
Built a storm door at the front door.
Modified our styrofoam insulated box to draft-proof the ceiling access to the top attic (we have two attics. This one is over our bedrooms, with access being by drop-down "ladder stairs". The other is a walk-in, off a hall upstairs, has an insulated door that just looks like a door, and goes out over the second level of the tri-level, above living room, dining room and kitchen).
Replaced ugly mirror and medicine cabinet and light in the downstairs half-bath.
Applied spray-in insulation into spaces between walls and floors and behind electrical plug-ins.
Had a fireplace insert installed and draft-proofed the fireplace.
Set up a flowerbed beside the back patio.
Replaced shelves in hall closet.
Planted these trees and plants in 2011 (not known how many will survive the winter but still showing signs of life either now or before going dormant): Three catalpa, one red maple, ten arbor vitae, ten pine, two "Italian Pine Christmas trees (which turned out to be pinyon pine)", one northern pine, two redbud, two Washington hawthorn, two dogwood, two rain trees, two crabapple and two more forsythia bushes. A volunteer cottonwood. Three rugosa roses. Another crape myrtle. Monkey grass. Mexican heather. Wallflower. Columbine. Other varieties of coneflower. Salvias, valerian, yarrow, tansy, lemon verbena, verbena bonariensis, Walker's catmint, rosemary, lavender. Lamb's ear. Transplanted jonquil bulbs. So many other things that died in the drought. But we forge ahead.
Rebuilt and painted the kitchen cabinets, including the making of a "coffee/breakfast bar".
Painted over John Deere green paint on kitchen walls, and painted Hoosier cabinet.
Removed carpet in kitchen, dining area and tile in entry hall and installed laminate flooring.
Removed room divider between dining room and end of kitchen.
Insulated the water heater.
Cut down the dead pine tree just outside the northwestern part of the back fence. (Just this week) We will use the branches, limbs and pieces of the trunk for Hugelculture.
Dug rock out of the zinnia bed.
Transplanted a mulberry tree (just yesterday).

That's all I can think of. ...Not bad for two old geezers just doing a little something every day, eh? And with just occasional help.

So if you have projects you need to do, and if you have an hour or two a day, pick one out and let's get started! If you need materials, and are not able to afford them all right now, maybe you can work on something that doesn't cost very much to do, and start buying just a few things a month till you have enough of the materials you need to get started on the others. Or maybe you can start scouting around, comparing prices, watching for sales, or looking for used materials. Ohio Kris, on Melissa Majora, finds a lot of cool stuff at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I've been to the one they have here in Bartlesville but it's only open occasionally and run kind of like a garage sale. I hardly ever find something I can use. The one in Tulsa is open regularly but their prices are, in my opinion, unrealistically high.

If you need to pay someone to do the work, you might be able to negotiate a lower price when work is scarce, barter something, or ask if there are parts of the project you can do that will bring costs down. Just make sure you hire someone that has a good reputation who won't take your hard-earned money and make a bigger mess than you started out with. Hubs watches "Holmes on Homes" and IT IS UNREAL, some of those messes that guy has to fix. Most contractors do not like to do what they call "tear-out". Sometimes they even hire someone to do it for them, and that increases the cost of the job. I've done so much "tear-out" during my life that I am The Demolition Diva. I will do any part of the project I am able to do so that Hubs (and if he can't do it, someone we've hired) only has to do the stuff I (or Hubs) can't. And even then, I'm helping everywhere I can. I don't like to tape and mud sheetrock, and I hate to paint, but Hubs doesn't like it any better and when he DOES have to do some of it, I think he intentionally tries to do the crappiest job at it that he can, so that he won't have to do it again. Husbands can be like that sometimes. He does such a great job in other areas, though, that I just keep my yap shut about it and force myself to git'er done.

I don't do ceilings, though. I do the crappiest job I can on ceilings.

Wives can be like that sometimes, too. Heh.

Hugs to all, keep on keepin' on. XOXOXO

Letter From Ilene, January 20-22, 2012

2012-01-22T08:36:00.002-06:00

I start this on Friday, January 20.

I took the soap out of their molds today. The soap is about the consistency of Play-Doh. The round bars aren't very pretty and Hubs says they're too thick. The cupcake molds went wrong-side-out with very little pressure and released really well but I had air bubbles in there because the soap was too thick when I poured it in.

I've learned some things, which was the point of this first try, really. I should've quit before I got trace, so it would pour better. I saw where Glenda said try not to get to trace but I thought that might be a typo, and should've said TRY to get to trace, but apparently NOT was exactly what she meant. Duh. And I think next time I'll pour the soap into my pyrex 2-quart measuring bowl that has a pouring lip when it's finished so I can pour it into the molds easier. The cupcake molds don't really need to be filled all the way up to make nice soap but I really had no choice this time. And I reckon I should not skip that warm oven step. I think I used a little too much essential oil (30 grams). Instructions I have say one ounce to 16 oz fats but that looked like so much (70 grams), is why I did 30. I probably could've gone even down to 20 grams. The house reeks of lavender and I'm getting so I'm not enjoying that so much.
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Just on a whim, I decided to see what kind of pretty silicone cupcake pans Amazon had and I found that on certain ones, not only was the shipping paid, but they were offering a "buy four, get the fourth one free" deal. So I picked out these:

These are cupcake molds but when I looked at the soap molds they were made of stuff that didn't look like they'd go in an oven. And I wanted the kind that would. I probably won't pour right up to the rim as that makes kind of a tall piece of soap. These were expensive (I thought), even with all the special deals, but they can be used over and over. Then if I ever want to sell any of the soap I make, the pretty shapes will make them easier to sell. Call it an investment. Heh.

Anyhoo, that was fun and I'll make another batch if the molds get here before my surgery happens.

I was talking to Quentin's business partner, David, about why there aren't people building solar panels for residences around here. Quentin and David started out with a pest control business and then branched out into house construction. The construction business is doing so good that I wouldn't be surprised if the only reason they're keeping the pest control business going is so they can turn it over to their kids. David said his dad bought a solar system about ten years ago and it cost him $10,000 to have it built and put into operation. He said just recently he took it all apart for his dad and completely reworked it, but that, considering the outlay of money, he didn't think ten years of service justified the cost and the effort. Then David said he'd even looked into putting up a windmill on his property but apparently those things are quite expensive also and have to be replaced in about ten years. I don't know why this stuff has to be so dang expensive and then be short-lived, too. I live in the Midwest and I've seen the old-style farm windmills still standing in lots of places. I thought a windmill was something that would be there for a lifetime, barring regular maintenance and/or damage from violent weather. *Sigh*. I guess that's how it's done. If you don't want people going to alternative sources of energy, just make the set-up costs and repair costs too expensive. Maybe I just ought to start looking for one of those old windmills. I love how they look. Have no clue how they work, though.
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Last night I got so mad at those dang chickens. I could NOT get them to go in the chicken house. I even spread some cracked corn on the floor, which usually brings them all in immediately. They will even take bites of corn right from the jug before I get it poured, normally. I finally gave up and told Hubs they could just stay outside all night, I wasn't going out there and chasing them around the chicken house one more time. After it got dark, he went out there with the flashlight, and they were still outside in the cold. He had a little trouble getting them in, too. I just wonder if something got in there, like a rat, and scared them. I did notice yesterday morning when I opened the chicken house door, which was maybe an hour after daylight, that the air was full of dust like they'd been doing a lot of flapping around in there. This morning the corn was still in there on the floor, and Hubs said if a rat had been in there, the corn would be gone. I just went out and checked it again a little while ago, and it was still there. I fastened the big door open and Hubs said he saw Aldine and a couple of the others go inside, but didn't stay long. Hmmmmmmm...... Was it the night before last that I went out there in the dark and closed that window? If it was maybe they didn't know it was me and got scared. I can't think what else it could be. But who knows why these chickens do anything.
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This is now Sunday morning. I left the big chicken house door open all day Saturday, and everything I gave to the chickens, I put inside the chicken house. They were very wary for awhile but the Henbit weed and some clover that I picked and threw in there was just too much of a draw. So finally they got more comfortable with it and by time to shut them up, we just had one hold-out that wouldn't go in. Aldine has been crowing a two-note crow several times a day for a couple days now. I had initially thought of calling her/him "Albert Dean", instead, and then I toyed with "Ol' Dean", but maybe I'll just leave it at Aldine. Some guys have names that sound like women's names. And it's just a chicken, after all.

Saturday we went and picked up our Bountiful Baskets order. The website didn't say exactly WHERE at Tri-County Tech, so we drove around the parking lot for awhile. Turned out it was on the west side, outside under the overhang there. The cost was $3 one-time charge for joining, $1.50 for a processing fee and $15 for "one basket" which is actually in two baskets. Here's what we got:

Cauliflower, one head, 34 ounces
Tomatoes, five, 34.7 ounces
Romaine lettuce, one, 16.2 ounces
Broccoli, 21.8 ounces
Brussels Sprouts, 18.1 ounces
Corn, 2 small and 3 medium ears
Bananas, 5, 55.9 ounces
Pomegranates, 3
Bosc Pears, 4
Fuji Apples, 3# bag
Kiwi, 5
Seedless Oranges, 6

I don't know if I got a bargain or not, considering that certain things, like the pomegranates, I don't usually buy. I had to go to You Tube to find out how to eat one. The one I followed was THIS one. The juice was good but Hubs and I both agreed it wasn't something we'd ever intentionally buy. We ate the corn with meatloaf and left-over potato salad for supper. The chickens went crazy over the spent pomegranate seeds and they dragged those corn husks all over the chicken yard.

The bread that some people got looked good and might be a good choice for people who don't bake their own. The 20# of oranges/tomatoes looked like the ones we got in our basket. I wasn't crazy about how the tomatoes looked. They were nice size but obviously were ripened by being gassed and so they are a kind of a sick pink color. Of course that's how all the tomatoes in the grocery stores look now. Once you eat a real vine-ripened tomato you are spoiled forever. The only fault that I could see otherwise was that one of my pears had a bad spot on it about the size of a dime. I cut that out and ate the rest of the pear and it was crisp and sweet.

So, what do you think? Did I get a bargain or just my money's worth?

Today is supposed to be warm but windy. It's already windy. We have had several pretty cold days and nights. We need rain really badly and Mesonet has a chance in the forecast for Tuesday but the percentage is not very high. I went around and looked at our newly-planted trees and some of the arbor vitae have yellow at the tips of their "leaves". So we absolutely HAVE to water today. There is no longer any sign at all of the Comfrey plants along the rock wall and I hope that is only winterkill. We'll water there, too. We fill kitty litter jugs with the cistern water and Hubs loads them in the riding lawnmower trailer and takes them out to the ones that are out on the edges of our property. While he's watering those, I'm filling more jugs with more water, and I take care of the trees, bushes and new rose bushes in the yard and the new trees that I planted in pots sunk down in one of the raised beds, and the blackberry bushes. Today we'll also hook up the hose so I can give a drink to the flowerbeds, the one around the cellar, the one to the north of the northern-most shed in the back yard, the ones on the north and south of the patio, and the areas along the north, west and south of the house. Hubs usually gets the things in the front as well, the trees and bushes along the driveway, the Sassafras out in the southwest corner, the arbor vitae along the south border. All that will be enough to wear us out for awhile.

Atwood's had a 40% off sale on all their Ferry-Morse seed. I got a few perennials, some oregano and parsley seed, zucchini and yellow squash. Then I got a wonderful package in the mail from a seed trade and I think I've probably gotten the better part of the deal, but this trader is someone that I've traded with so much we've lost track of who's ahead. Postage is getting so high that it's really making an impact on seed and plant trades.

Hubs is still working on the hallway floor. He has the flooring all done and fitted up properly and is working on getting the trim back on. It looks nice but I'm really not crazy about where the threshold is between the hall and the dining room. Can't be helped, though. Hubs needs to buy some lumber to replace the front of the first step going upstairs that he tore up while he was removing it. And then I'll have some filling and painting to do, but I'll put that off till after we get the carpet off all the stairs and till Joe gets done with the electrical and the narrow wall between the dining room and kitchen "nook" can be finished. There will be some mudding, taping and painting to be done on that wall. Might as well do it all at the same time. I don't know if I mentioned that Joe did come over and we showed him the things we wanted to do. It's all something he says he can do quite easily but he has so much work right now that he is working late evenings and weekends. He didn't even have time to get a deer this year. We don't mind waiting and we told him that. But I will be happy when it's done, especially my new lights in the kitchen.

January will be over soon. Can spring be far behind?

These are cole crops. Broccoli, Cabbage, Bok Choy. I'll be starting the hardening off process soon, because I want to be getting them in the ground in early March. I bought a roll-around shelf at a garage sale several weeks ago for $3, so I hope to have these plants on those shelves by the time I have had surgery.

I guess it's supposed to be an entertainment center. It needs cleaning up and I just brought it in from under the carport this morning because stuff like this, I'm afraid to bring into the house right away. I'll get it cleaned up today. The shelf can be kept in the garage and rolled in and out one of the big garage doors, and maybe Hubs will do that for me till I can be up and around. I won't start my tomato and pepper seed till late February.

This is lettuce, planted in a dishpan. I sowed quite a few seeds into two dishpans. Heat mat underneath. Light above. I don't know..... I guess I'm lettuce challenged.

That's about it for this time. Breakfast calls...... Hugs to all.

Letter From Ilene, Third Week of January, 2012

2012-01-19T11:34:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted in awhile, and I know some of you are probably going into blather withdrawal, so here goes.

The zinnia bed is finished. There'll be a picture on the next post, which I thought I'd be posting instead of this one because I had hoped to be able to show finished pictures of the entry hall flooring. But it has been a real Bear! We probably started on the wrong side and yesterday I think Hubs ruined an entire box (six planks). Yesterday was just NOT a good day. I don't know if he'll work on it today or not. I know I'm not much in the mood for it.

The foot has been hurting quite a lot lately. I've gotten my 3-footed cane out of the closet. I'll be so glad to have my surgery the end of this month, and yet, I dread it too. I have been reading some of the paperwork and I will have to have my foot elevated for most of the time during at least the first several days after surgery and maybe longer. So if the blog is particularly quiet in early February, don't worry. He actually drew a picture of what my bone spur looks like.

Next week I have an appointment with the skin doctor to see if she can burn off a couple of spots on my nose. And there's my pre-op appointment with the podiatrist. And there's a visit to the ophthalmologists for an overdue eye exam and refraction. I've broken my prescription eyeglasses and I use those cheap little "readers" that are sold at Walgreen's and WMT and other places, which works fine for the computer and reading. But now my distance vision is getting a little fuzzy too, and I can't read the names on the street signs till we're right up on them now. I'm not much help when we go garagin' if I'm unable to do that.

I think I mentioned about how Carol, a woman I met on GardenWeb back before I started this blog, sent me an e-mail about Bountiful Baskets. It's a food co-op in the true sense of the word -- they shop around to get the best price and buy in quantity to get it even cheaper, and then divide it up amongst their members. Their website is HERE. I specifically linked the page where you can enter your state and see if you have any that distribute near you. If there are, you can read up on the instructions. Basically, you pay a one-time startup fee of $3 which pays for the laundry baskets they use to put your stuff in. One fruit/veg basket (which is actually a basket of fruit and a basket of veggies) costs $15. You can order up to three, but they don't charge you for more laundry baskets so I'm wondering how full the laundry baskets are going to be if I only order "one fruit/veg basket". Then they have some other things -- something in bulk, this time it was 20 pounds of round tomatoes and/or 20 pounds of oranges for an additional $11 each, a basket of Asian vegetables for, I think, $8, and they always sell breads and sometimes granola. And what do they sort all that into? You can go to the website at any time but the only times they show what's available is from noon Monday through Tuesday evening. They have only so many basket orders that they can fill so when those are used up, you can't participate. It's best to make your choices early. You have to pay by credit card and so far it's only MC and Visa. I only had a Discover so I had to activate my Visa debit card and use that. I think, in my area, we can participate twice a month. The food for the Bartlesville area is distributed from Tri-County Tech on Saturday afternoon and there is a tiny little window of time in which you can pick your stuff up. If you don't show, they donate it. So I have placed my order for "one fruit/veg basket" and have paid my initial $3 fee for the laundry baskets, making the total $18. I was really tempted to get the tomatoes and can them up, but I just didn't think I could handle that right now. There will be other opportunities, I'm sure. I'll let you know, after I see what all is in the baskets, whether I think it's worth the money or not.

On Simple Green and Frugal, (see my sidebar) the post called "If Bacteria Won't Eat it", is a really good one by Linda from The Witches Kitchen. It might be a couple of posts back by the time I get this posted. She talks about cosmetic ingredients and natural alternatives, and one that I particularly liked was the idea for using Aloe Vera as hair conditioner. Just massage in some of the gel and then rinse it out. I bet you could use it for hair gel, too. She apparently doesn't have oily hair as she says most of the time she just rinses her hair out and doesn't use shampoo. That wouldn't work for me. My hair gets oily. I remember my sisters and mom used to sit there and try to pronounce the ingredients on shampoo labels and we'd get quite a lot of laughs out of it. It's not funny anymore. In fact it's just scarey that we are exposing our babies to chemicals that may be harmful from day one of their birth, with those nasty, but oh, so convenient, baby wipes. I'm so glad they didn't have 'em when my kids were little. We used warm washcloths and then threw them in the diaper pail with the cloth diapers. But I was using wipes for almost everything when my grandsons were babies. I was into disposables in a big way.

I watched a little afternoon TV the other day. Caught Valerie Bertinelli's promo about Cindy Crawford and how she looks so good at 42. Oh, for Christ's sake! EVERYBODY looks good at 42. Show me Bridget Bardot now. Or Raquel Welch. If THEY look as good now as they did when they were in their 20's, THEN I'll be impressed! But don't you think it's so sad that so many women in their late 20's and in their 30's are ALREADY worrying about looking OLD? Geeeeeezzzzzzze, girls, lighten up! You aren't even at your prime yet.

And then I saw Janet Jackson pitching for, I think, Weight Watchers. I was surprised because I didn't know Janet had ever even BEEN overweight. That's another thing I think is sad, that so many attractive, vibrant young women are actually wasting so much of their time and money worrying about a few extra pounds. When you're really overweight, you don't have to ask anyone "Does this make my butt look big?". And don't expect to impress me if you've only got 20 pounds to lose. Sheesh. I can do that in two months if I want to. What is the motivation, really? To impress other women? Whew, that's gonna be a hard one. Other women can have really high standards for each other and they can be really mean. To catch a man? The truth is, most men don't mind a little extra padding on a woman. Those guys who say, "No fatties, please", are so shallow they deserve to miss out on a wonderful woman just because she's a little rounded. They'll most likely leave their skinny woman if she gets a zit too often or when she starts getting older. If they can find someone else to have them, that is. If you want to lose weight for your health, consider that it's not necessarily how much you eat, it's what. You can be skinny and your health can be terrible. You can be a few pounds overweight and be glowingly healthy.

I also saw where this farmer in Ohio is giving his cows waterbeds to lay on. He says they give more milk.

If anybody's interested, HERE is a recipe for homemade Worcestershire sauce. Don't that beat all. I don't use enough to make it worth it, but I thought it was interesting. This blogger is apparently from "Across The Pond" and so some of the ingredients will sound right out of Harry Potter. Heh. Treacle is a syrup, maybe like our corn syrup, I think. I tend to forget sometimes that certain products that are available in one country are unheard of in another. Graham crackers, for instance. In England, they don't know what those are. But I do understand they have something called a Digestive Biscuit that is close to our Graham Crackers.

HERE is a recipe for making your own chocolate chips. Using coconut oil and cocoa powder. What could be simpler than that? Plus that coconut oil is supposed to be really good for you.

I noticed an advertisement for Depends in a magazine at the dentist's office that said roughly 30% of women past menopause have incontinence problems. There's that little accident almost every woman has had at some point or other when she sneezes or coughs suddenly, and then, with increasing age, that can develop into the need to go being so immediate sometimes you can't make it in time. Most women don't need Depends and they don't need surgery. They just need to get in the habit of using their muscles to stop and hold their stream for a few seconds at a time, several times through their bathroom time. It's easy to remember to do it then, and the working of those muscles against resistance makes the exercise more effective. It takes a few weeks to see results, so just get in the habit and let the time pass. No pun intended.

On somewhat that same subject, I was reading the other day on a blog where a young woman was actually stocking up on toilet paper for The End Of The World As We Know It. Really now. I guess she's not old enough to remember going to the outhouse where there was the old trusty Sears and Roebuck catalog, and you just hoped that you didn't end up having to use the slick pages with colored pictures on them! Or maybe she never went camping, where you used any kind of leaf you could find, except for poison ivy, that is. These days, old phone books and newspapers would work just fine for Number Two. Lots of people already use what they refer to as "Family Cloth" for Number One. Of course you would not flush either one. But then if TEOTWAWKI happens none of us will have running water, anyway. I can remember my mom burning paper that had been used for these purposes, and oh, that's the nastiest smell. But in a worst-case scenario, I can't see toilet paper being very high on a survival priorities list. Washing "Family Cloth" wouldn't be as nasty as laundering diapers. After all, you'd only have a few little drops on each cloth.

Of course as long as I've already got you all grossed out, I might as well forge ahead and mention about how some people are saving their urine to fertilize their gardens with. I understand it has to be watered down to keep it from burning things, but that it can be thrown undiluted on the compost heap. If you take a lot of prescription medications though, I don't think you should risk doing this. If I ever start, I wouldn't use it on anything but flowers so if I give you a cabbage, don't worry.

While Hubs and I were driving into town the other day, they were talking about what would be a "deal breaker" for a woman picking a man to get to know better. They had people calling in. One said anyone who wears gold chains. One said tatoos. One said being drunk. I just laughed and laughed at that because I have some of my own. Yeah, excessive drinking and excessive tatoos would be a turn-off for me, too. But also I'd be turned off by a man who had a long, scraggly beard that he braids. And trust me, I have seen that in Bartlesville. If he looks dirty or sweaty or stinks would be another turnoff for me, either from B.O. or too much cologne. Of course there are situations where anyone would be dirty, sweaty or stinky but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about being dirty or stinking as a way of life. Foot odor. I mean the kind that almost knocks you down when they take off their shoes. Actually, really bad foot odor is caused by a fungus and if you spray on some Tinactin and treat all your shoes with it, the bad smell will go away. If a man smiles at me and I see black teeth. When Hubs and I were part of a dancing group, there was a woman that would cut in on us all the time, and then her husband would be standing there to dance off with me. He was a nice man. He was clean and dressed nice. He had a nice smile and no bad teeth that I could see. But his breath was horrible. I got so I watched for her to come towards us and we'd dance off in the other direction. Not so much that I was jealous of her affinity for Hubs (although that DID annoy me some) but more because I just didn't enjoy dancing with her husband. So yeah, bad breath. I wouldn't be turned off by a few too many pounds, but there does come a point when that would be a turn-off. Not only am I turned off by visible butt-crack, so also am I annoyed. I mean, don't they feel the draft?? Sheesh! Wear suspenders! Or overalls! Or at least longer shirts! And be conscious of whose standing behind you when you bend over, Dude! It's even worse if your Tidey Whitey's are coming loose from the elastic back there. Seen that. Ewwww. But at least there's underwear, eh? Stupidity. Boorish, chauvanistic, vulgar or otherwise rude behavior. Anybody that paints themselves half one color and half another and stands in a sports stadium without a shirt cheering on "their" team. I'm sure I could think of others. I'm even turned off by some of Hubs' habits. I guess I really am, as my mother once told me, "too hard to please". Heh.

We've been having some cold weather but no rain. It hasn't rained in forever, seems like. We had a little dusting of snow quite a few days ago that melted within the next day. But that doesn't provide much moisture. I think last winter someone said a foot of snow only melts out to equal about an inch of rain. Of course it's not as bad to have a drought in the winter as it is in the summer, at least the moisture that IS in the ground is retained longer and things have gone dormant so there's not as big a demand for water. But you can lose things in the winter if the dry goes on long enough and you don't add water. We've already watered our new trees twice. And to think, we thought we'd be done watering when winter came.

The chickens are doing fine. I found a big jar of sesame seeds that I have had in the freezer FOR YEARS, maybe even a couple of decades, so I decided a good way to use them up would be to feed them to the chickens. OMG, they love that. As soon as they come out their door in the mornings, they go to the wooden slab where I usually pour a little pile of the seeds, and then they look up at me expectantly. I open their little door during daylight hours even when the temperatures are freezing, and let them decide if they want to be out in it or not. So I guess you might say I'm getting more used to being a chicken owner. So far, so good. The last day that we had temperatures up into the 70's, I opened the big chickenhouse door and the back window. And then when I shut the chickens up for the night, I forgot to close the window. When I went to bed THE NEXT NIGHT, we were expecting a low of 18º and I happened to think that I didn't remember ever closing that window. So I went out with the flashlight and sure enough. They were all perched up on the roost, bracing themselves for a cold night and that window was wide open. (The opening is covered with a wire screen so they were otherwise safe.)

THIS JUST IN!!! I MADE SOAP!!

Glenda has been trying to convince me it's not as scarey as I think it is. She told me everything that she does, which is SOOOOO much less complicated than some of the instructions I've seen. No thermometers and matching up the temperature of the fats with the lye water. No need for a crockpot. I used my stainless steel spaghetti cooker. No expensive ingredients. She directed me to Soapcalc and when I told her I was wanting to use chicken fat, she told me I probably needed to add some coconut oil and some olive oil for bubbles and cleaning power. So I plugged those into Soapcalc and came up with a formula that was heavy on the chicken fat. I have so much of it collected and I can't think of a dang thing to do with it OTHER than to make soap. I've been frying chicken in it and that tastes OK, but unlike the old Crisco ads, there's more when I finish than when I started because now they throw in so many pieces of fat to make the chicken weigh more. I end up rendering those out while I fry the chicken. It's probably not good for him, but the dog loves those chicken-skin chitlins. Oh, I know, some folks use it as a spread on bread and call it schmaltz, but I don't even like the sound of that. I tried using it for part of the fat in a piecrust recipe when I was making chicken pot pies and that was a dismal failure. However, the chickens did fight over the last pieces of that raw pie dough.

Glenda told me I needed to "wash" my chicken fat and that was a bit of a challenge, since my chicken fat wanted to mix in with the water and didn't solidify overnight in the refrigerator. So I ended up reheating it and skimming the fat off the top. This gave me enough washed fat that I have enough to stick in the freezer for another batch later on, if this one works out.

The chicken fat was awfully yellow, so I wasn't sure how the soap would look, but it turned out to be a nice creamy yellow. Looks like sugar-cookie dough. Maybe it'll lighten more as it cures, I don't know.

And I was afraid it would make the soap smell chicken-ey, but I put in some lavender essential oil and all I can smell is that. In fact my whole house smells like lavender now. That's worth making the soap, right there. Heh.

Glenda said there'd be fumes when the lye was mixed with the water, so I had Hubs set up the stainless steel rolling cart outside the office door. It was about 40º outside at the time. It did get hot and make some fumes but they were not noticeable outside except for a little "smoke". If Jay saw me outside mixing up my lye-water, I hope he didn't call the Sherrif, thinking I was making Meth. From there, it was easy, just let it cool some and then add my fats, whir the stick blender around in it, add my essential oil, whir some more. I thought it was never going to get to trace and then when it did it seemed like it got thick fast. I had a hard time getting it poured into the molds. Two of my molds are old pre-made frosting containers. I can get all I want of those at the recycling drop-off. When it's time to slice the soap I'll just cut the containers off. The big round thing is a silicone cupcake pan that I bought at a garage sale specifically planning to use them for soap. The tops look like roses, some of them, and others have some kind of curlique design on them. I read somewhere that you don't really need to get what they call "trace", just so long as your fats are incorporated with the lye water. I don't know if that's true but I think next time I'll pour it into the molds sooner and see what happens. Unless someone puts a comment on here and tells me that won't give me decent soap.

Glenda's instructions said to put them in a low oven for a couple of hours to help them harden up, but then she said she doesn't always do that, so I opted not to do it either. They seem to be hardening up OK on their own. First thing in the morning I'll see if I can slice the soap that's in the frosting containers. All I'll have to do with the ones in the cupcake pan will be to push them out. Then they have to cure in a dry, dark place for awhile. Days? Weeks? Months?

I imagine now my perspective will change a little at the recycling drop-off. I'll be looking for things that will make good soap molds.

It was easy. It was fun. I wish Glenda could've been here to hold my hand and cackle with me when things started coming together. But oh, well. Thanks so much, Glenda, for all your good advice.

Well, that's all the blathering for this time. I've made some ham salad spread and some Kansas Sunflower Bread shaped into sandwich buns, so I'm off to make a sandwich for lunch.

Y'all stay warm and have a good weekend...... XOXOXO

Letter From Ilene, Second Week of January, 2012

2012-01-11T15:30:00.000-06:00

This was started on Saturday, January 7.

On Friday when it warmed up to 60º, Hubs and I were outside digging rock out of the zinnia bed. The part between the maple tree and the house, which measures about twenty feet long, was finished a few days ago, and chunks of wood have been buried there to replace the spaces left by the rock. We cut up some branches of the old dead pine tree that stands near the garden. If you look close you can see through to the back fence where one of its branches still on the tree is hanging over the fence in the far upper left corner of the picture below. Hubs doesn't want to burn this wood in the fireplace insert. He says it makes too much creosote. So this will be a good use for it, it will lie in wait for the rains and soak up extra water for when the rains stop coming. And the zinnias can send their roots down for a sip. There is some wood that you shouldn't use for this sort of thing. One is cedar. Another is black walnut. But I think pine is probably OK.

I had JC helping me the day we rasselled these big-mama rocks out of the hole, using a prybar and a shovel. They were really heavy.

Instead of trying to get them out to the rock wall, I decided to sink them into the ground leading from the driveway and going around the side of the house, toward the cellar. When it rains a lot, it gets kind of muddy in this spot. You can't see the stones very well as I'm waiting for it to rain and wash some of the soil into the empty places around the rock to help them settle in. I thought maybe this spring I will sow something low-growing around those rocks. Thyme might work, as that spot is somewhat shaded by the carport to the right. I've got some pink rock cress seed that might do. There's time to think about that later on. That white thing is our other water-collection tank. Right there in front of it, you can see it if you squint, is a Crape Myrtle and there's a volunteer hollyhock peeking out from under the right side of the tank. It'll bloom next spring, and then I'll collect the seeds and plant it where I'd rather have it growing. I'm hoping the Crape Myrtle will fill out next year and eventually screen out the tank.

This is where we dug today. I dug out as much rock as I could by myself and told Hubs I'd come get him when I was ready for The Big Guns. I had the sun working against me in the picture above, but after Hubs got a thick slab of limestone jackhammered out of the hole, I just threw in a few logs and picked up our tools while Hubs took two lawnmower trailer-loads of rock out to The Rock Wall, and then we went in and had a cup of coffee. It's hard to see, as the logs in the hole are shaded, but we've done about ten feet in two days and we have about thirty feet to go before we get close enough to the tree where we have to stop to keep from killing the tree.

I was so disappointed in my zinnias last summer. I had had Hubs run the tiller there and since he didn't mention running into any rock until he got to the far west end, I thought he'd had pretty smooth going. Well, no, the tiller apparently just skimmed over 8" of soil on top of 20" of rock. And that's in the GOOD spots. So the zinnias stood there wilted most of the time, and they bloomed but the flowers were small and the plants themselves were not big and healthy like all the years before. And of course there was that bare spot where somebody's dog tromped through right when the zinnias were in the seedling stage. *Damn dogs......* I kept enough of them alive long enough to make seed, by mulching heavily and watering about every third day. But I griped about it a lot, saying how I thought zinnias are supposed to be drought tolerant and that was just stupid because I know that they are. At The Ponca House, the zinnia garden stood there in bloom all the time that the house was up for sale and didn't ask for anything in return but a little dead-heading. I'm sooooo looking forward to watching how much better this zinnia bed will do next summer. I love zinnias. And oh, they draw the butterflies and bees and I have even seen hummingbirds visiting. I know this is not very practical, to be working on a bed for flowers when the vegetable garden is more important. But sometimes you need food for the eyes, too.

I'm hoping we can do enough each day that the weather permits this month to finish, because after I have surgery I will not be able to do any digging for awhile. I'd really like to improve the flower bed that's right up against the house where the western-exposure windows are, but I won't be burying any wood there because I've always heard having wood underground right up against your house draws termites in this climate. Termites are a common problem for houses here. Frame houses are more prone to termite infestations than brick, of course, but brick homes are not immune to them. You have to watch for the mud tubes that termites make from the ground up along the foundation, so that their army can be protected from the elements while they travel into the wood of your home. Trust me, you want to watch out for these diligently. Termites can make lace out of your home's framework in pretty short order and they can do horrible damage if they get into your roof.

I have seed for several different kinds of Amaranth. I've read that it gets very tall and that it thrives in dry, rocky soil and full sun. So I will probably plant some of those at the front of the house where it's so dry.

Running along the back of the zinnia bed are my iris. Iris aren't particular and they will grow in rocky soil. They all bloomed last year and looked just fine. I think eventually I will dig more rock out from where they are growing but one must pace one's self and there are things more pressing right now. I have to force myself to stay focused. If I don't, I end up doing only a little of everything and accomplishing nothing.

Behind the iris is where I planted the plum bushes Paula brought me and one that Diane sent me. I did dig rock out before those were planted there, but I'd be willing to bet I didn't dig deep enough down. That will be done at some point, I'm just not sure how soon I can get it done, it being winter and surgery coming up and all. I don't mind digging rock. I like having my hands in the earth. There's a symbiosis to it that brings me joy. (It's OK to laugh if you want.) I dig a hole and remove rock. The rock goes out to The Rock Wall where it keeps Jay's lawn service folks from using our land to turn their truck and trailer around on, and provides a little wind and dog protection for the Comfrey that is planted out there. Plus I like the rustic way it looks. And it helps to keep my soil from eroding off into the ditch. In the process of digging the hole, I find grubworms, which are dropped into a can and taken to the chickens.

This provides them with extra protein, causes them to eat less purchased feed and decreases the number of potential bugs next year. Plus it makes my chickens love me.

I looked it up, and apparently grubworms are larvae of May-June Beetles. Does that mean June Bugs? I actually thought grubworms were the larvae of those wasps that attack fruit trees. The chickens convert the worms to poop, which will keep their chicken house a little warmer now and enrich my garden later, and hopefully at some point the chickens will lay some eggs. Meanwhile, the soil in the hole I dug gets amended with pine logs, providing me with a useful way to dispose of them, and making me need less additional soil, and all this will hold the moisture better and not have to be watered so often next summer. I'll get bigger and better flowers, which will draw the butterflies and so on. It's all good. *Grin*

You shoud see my To Do List:

Finish digging rock from zinnia bed.
Finish digging rock from potato bed.
Finish digging rock from around plum bushes.
Dig rock from square garden bed.
Dig rock from both tomato beds.
Dig rock from between comfrey plants.
Dig rock from under Jerusalem artichoke raised bed.
Dig rock from melon/pumpkin bed.

We have dug rock out before planting most of our trees and bushes. I dug rock out of the cabbage bed last summer and the broccoli that I planted after that made the most beautiful heads that fall that I have ever grown. We dug rock out from the little shade garden to the north of the northern-most shed, where I transplanted the blueberry bushes and several other things that needed shelter from the relentless hot wind blowing from the south and sucking the moisture out of everything. We dug rock out of a trench along the back of the herb garden where I wintersowed Desert Willow tree seed. And I'm telling you, that area that I designated as "The Herb Garden" is so rocky that hardly anything will grow there, not even herbs. So my herb garden has been moved to a half-circle garden to the north of the back patio. Which is better anyway, because it's just outside the door and more convenient. Also better protected from deer and rabbits. I dug rock out of the north fence line before I planted crabapple tree seeds.

There are not enough hours in the days during which the weather is decent to get all the rock digging done in time to have a "Kick A- - Garden" next summer What do they say? "Slow and steady wins the race"? Well, I don't know about winning any races.... Hopefully each year will get a little better until it's time for me to go to the nursing home, and then somebody will buy this place and take for granted that they can grow things without having to dig out rock first. So if you can go out and poke your finger into the ground and plant a seed in the indentation, and have it grow and thrive without much else from you but a bit of water and some weed control, count yourself truly blessed, my dears......

However, I am not plagued by moles or voles. Heh-Heh-Heh.

It's hard to keep myself from planting seeds right now. I planted some lettuce in dishpans before Christmas but it was seed I'd had for a couple of years and didn't come up. So I replanted with newer seed at the end of December and I've already got a few little seedlings. Maybe it's the old seed or the new, but I don't care. And of course I've already done some wintersowing.

This is now Monday morning, early. We have dental appointments today, around noon. We've put it off too long already and it's time to go in and face the music. If the weather permits I hope to be able to do a little digging after we get home. Yesterday I dug another three feet or so and I think I got the hole pretty well cleaned out. I'll let Hubs take a look at it and make that final determination. There's still some rock in the bottom of the hole but I've broken through and it breaks apart in thin pieces. I think that's what they call shale. There was a distinct increase in the numbers of grubworms in this section. I nearly filled the can twice. I'd estimate that can holds about two cups when full, but I dare not fill it to the brim or they crawl out and burrow back into the ground a lot quicker than you would think they could.

I also began pre-germinating some cabbage seed, some Bok Choi and some Barbados broccoli. I'm saving my Packman broccoli seed for fall planting, but I've had this Barbados package for awhile and since there were only, like, twenty seeds in the whole package I thought I'd see if they'd germinate. If they do, I'll go ahead and plant them. If they don't, then I've got that package out of my seed stash. Lordy, I do hate how stingey the seed companies are getting with their seed! That's another argument for growing open-pollinated plants. Once you see how many thousands of seeds just one plant makes, it makes you feel real disgust for the seed companies that are putting only twelve to twenty seeds in a 3"x5" packet. They might be able to save some money by resizing their packets down to the size of a postage stamp but they won't because they don't want you to realize how few seeds are in there till you open it. Y'all know how annoyed I get with food manufacturers who resize their package. Some don't even bother doing that, they just do like seed sellers do and fill the package less full. Then all they have to change is the printing that says what the weight is. Do they even bother, anymore, to add that statement saying, "Some settling may have occurred in shipment"?

But anyway.

These seeds, as soon as they show signs of breaking through the seedcase, will be planted inside and kept under light until I can start hardening them off for early garden planting. I thought maybe it might be a little too early to start them, but I looked back on the Grandma blog to that year when I had such a good yield of the Copenhagen Markets, and I started them in January.

I started a pot of beef soup yesterday. As many of you know, I keep a large container in the bottom of the freezer in which to pour the liquids that vegetables are canned in, or the water that is left when things like broccoli or peas are steamed, and also any little bits and tads of left-over vegetables I might have. I noticed the container was full, and I've been trying to use things out of the refrigerator freezer lately. It has gotten so crowded in there I can hardly find anything. And I was kinda in the mood for some beef and barley vegetable soup. So I thawed out the vegetable broth, put it in the pressure cooker with some boneless stew meat, and pressured it for about an hour. About an hour before suppertime I cut up five small cloves of garlic, some onion, carrot, and celery and threw that in the pot along with a can of chopped tomatoes, a couple of handfuls of barley, and seasoned with a little oregano, basil, fennel and thyme, and let that simmer until the carrot was cooked through. Oh, it was good.

I almost never make beef soup the same way twice. I use what I have. I might start out with scraps and broth left over from a roast or a brisket. I might have some beef broth with bits of meat in it canned up in quart jars. But since I had all this vegetable broth, it just seemed like using up the little package of stew meat out of the freezer was the best choice this time. In most cases, if I add grain or beans, I don't add potatoes. It seemed like the vegetable broth was a little heavy on the liquid from canned corn. I think in the future I will save it separately, in smaller containers, and use it as the liquid in cornbread with a little dry milk powder added in. It's so very sweet, I could then probably cut back on the amount of sugar I use in my cornbread recipe. So this time I didn't add corn to my soup, which I normally will put in even if there is other grain, or beans, or potatoes, or okra in it. Sometimes I will add green beans and peas, but I didn't this time because it was just Hubs and me eating and as it was I started with a half-gallon of vegetable broth. My green beans are in quarts and I didn't want to only use part of a jar, nor did I want to end up with a huge pot of soup that was going to be heavy on the beans. If I use okra, I like to use black turtle beans AND corn or rice, and I always use tomato because the acid in the tomato turns the okra slime into a nice smooth and tasty thickener. In fact, one thing that I almost always use in beef soup is tomato. I feel like it really kicks up the flavor. I love thin soup, Hubs prefers it thick. So generally I make it kind of in-between and I give myself more of the liquid and him less. I have to have corn muffins or homemade bread with mine, Hubs might eat a few soda crackers.

Soup was something my mother made a lot in the winter. Especially if someone was sick, or if she had a busy day around the house planned, such as doing laundry or cleaning house before company was to arrive. She hardly ever used garlic or herbs. But she grew a lot of onion so that was her seasoning of choice. When I was smaller and we lived on the farm, she did most of the farm chores and so it was common for her to set a pot of something to simmer and set a batch of bread dough to rise nearby. Then she could finish things up pretty quickly as suppertime was nearing. I don't know why she never had any of us girls out there helping with the chores, or why she never delegated the preparation of supper to my older sisters. They did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen after supper, and saw to it that I, the baby, got my bath. When I got old enough it was my job to dry the silverware and take the supper scraps out to the dog. I guess she figured these chores were enough. Mom didn't teach any of us how to cook. We made cookies sometimes but I just think we must've learned how to do that in Home-Ec at school. Maybe it's just as well, since Mom didn't have any patience at all. But in my case, it was really hard on Hubs to live through all my cooking failures.

This is now Tuesday and Hubs and I are back from seeing the dental surgeon. We had our appointments at the dentist yesterday and the good news was that I have simply a missing filling and there's a small piece of the tooth broken out right next to where the filling was, so the dentist can replace the filling and fix the broken spot in one procedure. That will happen this week and I'll be done. Hubs, however, has some decay and some wobbly teeth. Our dentist doesn't do extractions, so he sent him to the dental surgeon to get his opinion. Hubs had most of his teeth pulled while he was in the Navy as a young man. They took all his top teeth and left him with only nine teeth on the bottom, all in the front, to hook a partial to, and made a full denture for the top. They were rough and it was an ordeal. Hubs was in the hospital for three days. I find it really hard to believe that a 20-year-old is going to have such bad teeth that they all have to be extracted like that.

But anyway.

He's had new dentures made several times over the years and he's had this last pair for years and years. He says they're the most comfortable he's ever had. But, it turns out that only three teeth are worth saving and we had a long discussion with the surgeon about what the best options are. Hubs could opt for having a new partial made around just those three teeth, but it would put a lot of stress on them and there is no telling how long they will last. The only advantage to that is that those three teeth would help to keep the bottom plate in place. The disadvantages are many. A partial is more expensive to make than a full bottom plate. Removing nine teeth costs the same as removing six. But removing six now and three later costs twice as much. Plus, since he is closing in on 70 years of age, the second surgery may catch him at a time when he is not physically up to it. If he has all nine removed, he can be fitted with a full bottom plate and if he cannot keep it from moving around, he can go back after a few months and have two posts implanted, and his bottom denture can be modified to work with the posts, no new ones would need to be made. So the surgeon said he would have a conversation with our dentist and then our dentist will call Hubs and schedule him for denture fittings and we'll go forward from there. There are lessons to be learned here, but not for Hubs since it's too late for all that. The first lesson is, take care of your teeth beginning when you are young. The second lesson is, have all your dental work current before you go into the military. The third lesson is, no matter how much you hate it, go to your dentist for check-ups, at least once a year. Oh. And don't smoke. *Sigh.* I guess this is going to be our big expense for the year, but it can't be helped, and I'm not going to make Hubs feel guilty about it. Things like this happen. It's all a part of aging, which is depressing enough on it's own.

This is now Wednesday morning and I write this while I wait for my peat pellets to expand. The seeds that I started pre-germinating just the other day have started to germinate and time is of the essence. These are the Barbados broccoli.

I don't like planting pre-germinated seeds when they have already sent out a long root and are trying to shed their seed coat. It's too easy to damage them. To make matters worse, the root tries to imbed itself in the paper towel and it's really tedious to get it loose. I prefer that they are at the stage where they are just beginning to break through, and these broccoli seeds are just right.

You have to find something you can use to plant with. You shouldn't use your fingers unless you have long fingernails that you could use for gently scooping them up. Paula recommends wetting the tip of a toothpick and for some seeds this is perfect. The round seeds are a little trickier because they roll. I tried several things and what I wish I had was a bitty spoon. While you work, be sure to moisten the seedlings if you're going to have the towel unfolded for awhile.

These are the ones that haven't germinated yet. There were not very many in the package to begin with and after this picture was taken I remembered I had a second package, so I put the few that were in there with these and put the folded paper towel back in the bag.

The Bok Choy got a little too far along. The thing is, when you pre-germinate seeds they germinate a lot faster than the package says they're going to.

And the germination rate is much higher.

These were really tricky to plant. I had way more than I'll need, but that means if the transplant kills a lot of them, I'll still have enough for the garden. If most of them survive.... well, there isn't much else growing out in the garden yet in the early spring, maybe I'll go ahead and grow them out and sell them or share them with the neighbors. And the chickens can have some. They do love their greens.

Hubs has been complaining that he never knows what the temperature is, since the wind blew our thermometer off the wall outside last year and broke it. So I bought him this one.

Yes, that does say 60º. We are supposed to have a cold front coming through any time now. A low of 21 tonight and a slight chance of snow or rain. It hasn't rained here in a long time. They got some south of here yesterday but none for us. Then only a high of 34 on Thursday with it getting down to 12 that night. After that it's supposed to start warming back up again. What can I say. It's a roller-coaster. At least we're not buried under 18 feet of snow, like they are in Alaska right now, so I'll keep my yap shut and not complain.

I did the wash this morning and I'm glad that's out of the way. I got three loads on the line early and it's almost dry now, at 2:30. The wind has come up and it's a cold wind, so the temperature will be dropping soon. I've already replenished the chicken waterer and the feeder so I won't have to do it when I shut them in tonight. Twice this week, the chickens have put themselves to bed before I have gotten out there. That's encouraging. Aldine has not made any crowing noises since that first day. I don't quite know what to think about that. Paula's Hubs says that sometimes pullets will crow. Aldine is just so much bigger than everybody else though. No spurs yet. No wattles. But two of the smaller chickens have wattles. I swear, these are the weirdest chickens. I've started to check for eggs but none yet. June told me a story about how her daughter raised chickens for a 4-H project. When she found her first eggs, she gathered them up into her skirt and ran to the house. Of course by the time she got there, several had broken. June said she told her, "When you find eggs, don't run." Good advice and something I will probably have trouble remembering when that day comes for me.

Hubs and I have been working for two or three hours every day during this warm spell on the zinnia bed. I've lost track now how many loads of rock he's taken to the rock wall, or how many grubworm feasts the chickens have had. Today we started early because it was already warm and we knew it was going to be turning cold. We used up all the pine logs that we had to bury. We also dumped several big bags of Leroy's nice chopped leaves on top of the logs and then put dirt on top to cover everything. I wouldn't do it if the leaves weren't chopped. I made that mistake once and ended up having to dig the leaves out because they were not letting anything send their roots through them into the soil. You'd think leaves that have been buried all winter would be nice and soft and mushy, but noooooo. Some leaves will crunch up pretty quickly all by themselves. Pecan leaves come to mind. But most leaves need to be chopped if you're going to bury them.

We now have about 13 feet left to go. Those black bags are holding down leaves that were dumped into the hole and that marks where we left off today. When we dig the next three feet or so, we throw that dirt on top of the leaves and pine logs from the previous dig. When we get to the point where we are going to stop, we have dirt from the beginning of the dig saved back in some of those kitty litter buckets to finish off with. As you can see, we are closing in on that maple tree that is right there behind the little John Deere trailer. Give us a couple more good days and maybe we can finish this task. Before we can do any more, though, we need more wood. Hubs said he'd take the chain saw after more limbs on the old dead pine tree. Better to have them come down now than next summer during a wind storm, when I have something growing in the garden spot that is below it. (or when one of us is working out there....) Since tomorrow will be cold, we'll have a day off and it will be welcome.

Hubs has bought the threshold for the junction between the dining room and the entry hall, and we have all our other materials. The floor is ready. If we get bored before the weather gets good enough so that we can resume our work outside, we might finish that. Or not.

I made sweet and sour pork for supper last night. I had chunked a boneless pork roast and prepared it all at one time, the last time I made this dish. I put the extra cooked pork chunks in pint-sized freezer containers. And one day a couple of weeks ago I cooked a big batch of rice in the pressure cooker and froze it on a cookie sheet in meal-sized blobs. So all I had to do with this meal was combine ingredients and heat it up. Tonight, though, I have no clue what I'll make.

Well, I think I have blathered on long enough. Really one day is so much like the next for us. We're boring. So I will press "Publish" and go out to bring the wash in off the line. We just keep on keepin' on, hope you're doing the same. Hugs to all.....

Herbal Adventures

2012-01-05T06:40:00.000-06:00

Please note there's a new blog on my sidebar. It's Teresa's Happy Okie. Teresa's been one of my readers for a long time and you may have read some of her comments from time to time. I like my readers to know one another, sort of like we're all sitting around my kitchen table, so go take a look at her blog and get to know her, OK?

And now on to the topic... (not that I'll stay ON it, but....)

One of the things that I think is really sad is that God put so many things on this earth to heal us of so many of our afflictions and to make us more comfortable and/or healthy, but we think they are just pretty things to look at -- or worse, weeds, and we either ignore their real purpose or we set about trying to eradicate them because they crowd out our grass. Grass! We Americans spend so much money growing weed-free grass. Grass has its uses. Livestock graze on it. It keeps the soil from eroding away. Can anyone think of anything else? Yet, back in our family history, I think most of us can say that we had a great-great grandmother who gathered herbs and had a little herb garden outside her kitchen, and to whom everyone in the family went for help when they were hurt or sick. Her remedies were only as good as what she had on hand and what knowledge she had managed to glean from family members before her. It must've been difficult in those days when the family would move, and end up where all the plants were different and the old standbys that people had learned to use sometimes didn't grow and thrive in the new land. We hear about certain noxious weeds having been brought here by people from other countries, and I always wonder what qualities those plants had that made them do that. Did they simply accidentally bring the seeds along with crop seeds or was there a medicinal use for the plants that has long since faded from knowledge?

Our ancestors knew how life-or-death important seeds were. My German ancestors came to America by ship in the 1700's. From a book that was written about that period of time, I learned that it was a very common practice for the women to sew wheat seeds into their garments. Whether it was early smuggling to avoid too much scrutiny, theft or a tariff of some kind, or just a way to pack the seed and protect it from getting lost, I don't know. But the fact that it was done testifies to its necessity. I wonder if the person who was their "medicine man or woman" also had herb seeds sewn into their clothes. Here they are on a ship travelling over the high seas and everybody is scared to death of getting their clothes wet. I bet those ship captains thought they had the wimpiest passengers in the world.

Usually the person who doctored with herbs believed also in many superstitions. My great-grandmother, for instance, believed in the act of passing a baby around the legs of a table (takes two people to do this) to ward off illness. It was these superstitions that everyone pointed to when trying to discredit the use of herbs as just so much folklore. Everyone remembers watching westerns on TV where there was the "Snake Oil Salesman" who would come to town in his decorated wagon and sell preparations that were supposed to cure everything but actually cured nothing at all. My mom told me that her dad had rheumatism and when the Medicine Man came to town he would stock up on liniment. Truth be told, there were good Medicine Men and bad ones. But the bad ones caused the distrust that grew for the whole lot. Doctors in the early west had very little at their disposal to treat illness and/or pain. During the Civil War, many doctors used whiskey and/or hypnotism during surgery, having little else. The pharmaceutical industry began in the late 1800's. Aspirin in pill form (comes from willow bark) was invented in 1897 as a pain killer. So also was heroin, but it was quickly discovered to be too addictive. Laudanum was widely used for pain and a lot of other things, having been developed in the 1600's but not known about in America till much later. Both heroin and laudanum were actually opium, made from the poppy plant. There was morphine, which was developed in Germany in the 1800's, also made with opium. And then most of us know that the reason why Coca-Cola is so named is that originally it was sold as a medicinal drink and contained cocaine, which is made from the leaves of the South American coca plant. Our federal government got involved in 1902 by issuing licensing and then again in 1906 by passing The Pure Food And Drug Act that required truthful labelling, and the use of "patent medicine" took off.  I can see how the traditional healing herbs might have begun falling out of favor when the more powerful, addictive substances came into use. And then doctors actively began trying to discourage people from treating themselves with herbal remedies because many of them flew under the radar and may have contained narcotics and also because knowledge of the gentler, non-addictive drugs had already died out with the persons who still knew how to make and use them, when everyone turned to the more powerful stuff. We tend to think that things that work fast are always better. But the problem is, the speed of their action almost always comes with addictive or other harmful side-effects. Neither was it commonly felt by doctors that prayer made any difference except that some were beginning to learn about the placebo effect and so they didn't discourage prayer as long as it wasn't used exclusively in the treatment of whatever was wrong. But if you said you wanted to use herbs and prayer to heal yourself, the doctor of the middle 1900's, who mostly considered himself God, would tell you off and banish you from his care until you came to your senses.

These days, however, we are beginning to see the long-term harmful effects on our health from medications produced in a laboratory. The Pure Food and Drug Act means little to the average person when the list of ingredients in the medicine bottle are only recognized by someone with an education in pharmacology. And when the list of maladies the product is expected to treat is accompanied by a longer list of side-effects that are often worse and more numerous, one has to wonder why we should be expected to pay upwards of $3 a pill in order to trade one malady for another. Doctors are a lot more aware of this than they let on, but many are still too quick to reach for the prescription pad. I'm not sure why this is, except that I know doctors see many, many more patients in any given day than they should be seeing. It doesn't leave them the time to educate the patient. Just write out the scrip and send them on their way. The drug companies also employ many underhanded tactics to get the doctor to prescribe the latest and most expensive drug on the market when something that's been around long enough to be in generic form would do. So we end up being guinea pigs for the drug industry, which has become notorious for putting drugs on the market that haven't been adequately tested. Antibiotics have been used so routinely in the past that now we are faced with infections that actually feed on those antibiotics rather than being killed by them. As one doctor that I know quite well said to me, "It's all poison." So the pendulum has started to swing in the other direction and use of herbal remedies is becoming more respectable every day. Got a kidney infection? Your doctor will tell you to drink cranberry juice. But actually, vinegar will do the trick as well, and vinegar is cheaper. Probiotics is coming into favor. Tests run on Kefir, for instance, reveal that consumption of it can protect you from e.Coli. People are growing as much of their own food as they can, making their own salves, lotions and soaps, and using non-chemical products if given the choice. Because we have become a nation of people raised on chemically-produced food. Should we be surprised that cancer is number two on the list of causes of death in the US?

I also think it's sad that it's illegal to grow certain herbs. All it takes is for a group of people to start abusing it, and all of a sudden the beneficial properties are thrown to the wayside. I don't want to get up on the soapbox about this because I already have, but during a time when anyone over 21 can legally buy liquor and tobacco, I think it's incredibly stupid for our government to step in and arrest people for growing marijuana. We can't easily buy lye anymore because it's an ingredient in meth. Yet, lye can be made by running water through wood ashes. Go figure. What're they going to do now, ban wood? Now they're considering banning castor bean plant growing because they're afraid somebody's going to put ricin in our food supply. There are sooooooo many poisons that could be put in our food supply that I just don't understand how outlawing just a few of the many are going to keep us safe. And besides that, we're pretty effectively poisoning ourselves every day taking prescription medications. I managed to grow one castor bean plant last year, and it was huge. It provided some quick and effective shade where I had none. Unfortunately, an early frost killed it before the seed heads had a chance to mature.  HERE is information about the castor bean plant.

Most of us no longer have elders in our families who can hand down herbal knowledge. But there are lots of books on the subject, some with lots of colorful pictures, instructions on how to make tinctures, oils and teas, some include how to find herbs in the wild. Some are steeped in mysticism and include thanking the plant for your harvest and I think it certainly can't do any harm but I'm not sure it's necessary. I have several books on the subject but often I find myself wishing I knew someone who would just take me by the hand and lead me into the herbal world.

They say you don't tend to remember a remedy until you actually use it and have it work well for you. The thing is that Hubs and I are rarely sick these days (knock on wood). Heh. I guess there you have MY mysticism.  We get a flu shot every fall, which they say is "made from eggs". Lots of people won't take the shots and I didn't for awhile. Anytime they come up with something really quickly, like the serum for the swine flu epidemic they thought we were going to have back in the 1980's, is something I tend to shy away from. Anything thrown together fast is dangerous. We take normal precautions -- wash our hands, avoid crowds.  I don't feel comfortable in crowded places. People in crowds are rude, I can't easily get to what I want to look at, and I certainly can't stand anywhere and think about anything because I'm in other people's way and somebody's always got a kid having a tantrum. I don't like standing in line to pay. So I'm a curmudgeon. Sue me.

But anyhoo, I decided maybe taking an online course would help. I signed up on HerbMentor.com for their free herbal course. There are some back issues of their free email newsletters HERE. There are instructions on how to make your own incense, which I thought was neat. The instructions call for purchased stuff and dried herbs. I wonder if you couldn't use stuff you already had.... like sawdust (un-treated wood only) and beeswax? Another newsletter had rose petal projects, including infusing rose petals in honey. I thought of Diane on that one, but I don't know if she has roses on her place. Better buy some Rugosas, Diane! The free course was on supermarket herbalism and I got a link to one little segment per day for a week.

I learned several things.

If you have made garlic infused oil and have stored it away in your freezer, you have a remedy for an ear ache. A caveat is not to use it if the ear drum has been perforated or if there is any drainage present, and to warm it before using. Long ago, I was told by someone I knew that when they had ear aches as a child their daddy, who smoked, would blow cigarette smoke into their ears. I don't know if there's any benefit to this or not. Spike has allergies and when he was a child he would get ear infections a lot. Usually he wouldn't say anything about it till Friday after 5:00. You could go to the drugstore and buy something called "sweet oil" for the ears but I never found that it helped much. I do know garlic has some powerful mojo, and I can see how garlic oil might do the trick. Go HERE for more information. I get inner ear infections every so often. Usually it is because I lie down in the tub to wash my hair. Sometimes there is pain, and sometimes there is just dizziness. Swimmers get this so often it's called "Swimmer's ear" and somewhere along the way I got a recipe for something to squirt into the ears after getting water in them. It's 1 part rubbing alcohol, 1 part hydrogen peroxide.

I did not know that Chamomile tea, when used in steam, will unstuff your nose! A couple of handfulls in a large pot with probably less than a gallon of water, bring it to a boil, then put a towel over the back of your head and bend over the pot, tent-style. John, the LearningHerbs.com guy, did a lesson on this. He recommends that you throw it out after you've used it in this manner, suggesting your nose is going to drool into the pot (YUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKK!), but if it was just you, and you wanted to, I wouldn't see why you couldn't be careful not to let your nose drool into the pot and then you could drink the tea also. HERE is everything you ever wanted to know about Chamomile, with lots of compelling reasons why you should also drink it. Of course tea that you drink is better steeped (and here again, it appears none of us are letting our tea steep long enough -- 20 minutes is the recommended time for receiving the herbal benefit. I think I have always been told to steep for half that long.) and I have heard boiling herbs make them taste harsh and/or bitter. So maybe the Chamomile wouldn't be fit to drink, I don't know. Nothing is said about whether it will reduce the benefits you receive from drinking it though. I'm just sayin', because considering what chamomile flowers cost -- or how labor intensive they are to harvest if you grow them -- I just kind of hate to throw it out if all you've done is breathe the steam. As always, consider my penny pinchin' ways and do what seems right to you. No biggie.

Something I also learned about Chamomile tea is that you can heal pink eye (conjunctivitis) by making a cup of tea and then swabbing and covering the eye with the warm tea bag. In this case you can have your tea remedy and drink it too. Heh. I remember having pink eye when I was in second grade. Our whole class came down with it like a house of cards. Our teacher brought in a tube of silver oxide ointment and put some in everyone's eyes as soon as their eyelashes started to stick together. We were healed by the next day. When my kids were young and brought pink eye home from school, I went to the druggist and asked for a tube of it and got the same results. But by the time my grandkids were getting pink eye, the druggist told me the product was neither sold or recommended any longer. So we had to go to the doctor and get antibiotics. I wish I'd known about chamomile's healing properties then.

I don't know if you know this, but there are "rakes" that are sold to make chamomile flower picking easier and faster. Johnny's Selected Seeds has a berry/chamomile rake for sale but it's $89. Amazon has one for $111. Lee Valley has a berry scoop HERE for $24.50 but I'm not sure the tines are small enough for chamomile flowers. Just on a whim I looked on eBay and found this for $22 and free shipping:

It arrived really fast, coming from a nice woman in Iowa. It was said to be walnut, has a Steincraft, Presque Isle, WI stamp on the bottom, is 6" high by 4.5" wide. It's very light and I think the wood is probably only pine. I wasn't sure if the "tines" would be close enough together to use as a chamomile flower picker, but I think they will. If they are not, at least maybe I can pick blackberries, gooseberries and blueberries with it. That got me thinking how easy it would be to make one of these, not only out of wood but also metal or even rigid plastic. How about making a scoop out of a a bleach or a vinegar bottle with the bottom cut out, and slits cut in the sides of the scoop?

John also talked about garlic and onion and all the herbal uses there are for them. If you have a sore throat, heat up some honey and pour it over chopped onion. Then take a spoonful every so often. Go HERE for more information about the herbal properties of onions. If you have a bad cough that won't go away, put garlic-infused oil on the bottoms of your feet when you go to bed (wear socks), and in the morning you'll wake up with garlic breath and no cough. Several years ago I heard about someone putting Vicks Vaporub on the soles of their feet just that same way, for the same thing.

It sorta looks like garlic, onion, chamomile and honey are the wonder drugs of the herbal world. He talked about a lot of other things. It doesn't cost anything but your time to take the free course. Of course they sell things, but that's not required if you're not interested in buying anything.

Of course if you grow as many of your herbals as you can, you will have your herbal remedy materials already on hand. I love having herbs in the garden.

Most of you remember that last summer I was lucky enough to hook up with a woman who lives not very far from me who gave me quite a few nice Comfrey roots. I was just tickled to death because I'd been trying to grow some from seed with no success. I bought the seed from Sand Mountain Herbs and I've since been told that Comfrey seeds are sterile. So I feel a little cheated out of my money on that one. But getting free roots more than made up for it. I planted it in spots about 3 feet apart along the inside of our "rock wall" along the road. I was just out there yesterday and I have six plants that are showing green. I had nine a few weeks ago and I hope this is just because, well, it IS winter, afterall. I'll know for sure when spring comes. Comfrey is another one of those "wonder herbs". It's very high in protein and is good to include in your chicken's diet. It also heats up the compost heap. It IS an invasive and will shade out other things. Some people plant it in their orchards because it is so good for the trees, yet shades out the dreaded Bermuda grass, which has a growth inhibitor in its roots. A salve made from the roots and leaves makes a healing salve for your skin.

Another plant that is said to be so good for your skin is Calendula, "Pot Marigold".

I have grown Marigolds for years. I love those little short bushy ones with the dark red-to-orange petals because they look so good all the time, as long as you keep them deadheaded, and they are nice to grow along the borders of the tomato bed. Although I was told by a master gardener that this draws spider mites to your tomatoes. And I have grown also the tall marigolds that get about three feet tall and then flop over. I enjoy those too. I enjoy weeding around them because I love the way the leaves smell, though some people think they are "stinky". These marigolds are in the Tagetes genus. Their seed looks like this:

Pot Marigolds, however, are not in the Tagetes genus. Their genus is Calendula. You can tell they have a history of herbal use because the species label is "officinalis". And this is what their seeds look like:

Big difference, huh? This is not to say you can't use Tagetes in one of the same ways as Calendula is used. Tagetes is edible. Before I started adding Turmeric to my chicken broth and to my rice, to get that pretty yellow color, I would use dried Marigold (Tagetes) petals. And you can throw the flowers into a salad if you so desire. But if it's the skin healing properties you're after, make sure you get Calendula and not Tagetes. HERE is information on Calendula.

Before winter started, I trimmed back my Rosemary and Lavender. A few of the sprigs, I put in water to make roots for new plants in case these don't make it through their first winter. Some of the Rosemary has finally got some roots.

Some will root and some won't, and I don't know what the difference is. It's magic. So far I have potted up fifteen rooted cuttings. There are still a few left to do. Some of them will make the transition from water to soil and some won't.

But this is the beauty of plants. Well, beyond the obvious. I don't feel bad about spending money for seeds or plants as long as I can grow extra seeds or propagate the plants somehow. I sell the plants at my spring garage sale. If I even sell ONE of each different plant, I have paid for my seed. If I sell two, that covers my expenditure of potting soil and the increase in my electric bill for the extra lighting. Anything beyond that makes up for things that didn't come up, or that didn't make enough extra to sell. Plus it gives me something to do in the winter months.

Still no activity on the lavender cuttings. I threw some away today. I don't think any of them are going to make any roots.

The rest of the cuttings from the plants, I placed on newspaper to dry. It's been my experience that things dry better on newspaper than just on a bare surface. The newspaper must wick out some of the moisture. This is the Rosemary.

They have been dry enough to work with for quite awhile now, I just haven't gotten around to it. If you are going to infuse herbs in oil, you MUST dry the herbs first. Otherwise you invite mold into your infusion.

I love the smell of both these herbs.

I decided to infuse the dried lavender in some grapeseed oil that I bought a few months ago when I was making Comfrey salve. Which is, by the way, wonderful. When I cut the tip of my finger making sauerkraut last fall, it was the Comfrey salve that I used. I had no problems with infection, even though my finger looked like hell. I think it would have worked even better if I had used some of the Comfrey root, but I wanted all the roots that I had to go towards making healthy plants. Although the tip of my pinkie finger has been completely healed over for quite some time now, it is still tender and I do have to be careful of injuring it as I work. One day I was outside looking in the truck for something I thought I'd left out there. I had my hand under the seat when a gust of wind came along and swung the door shut against me. I had my knees braced and the force of the door slammed against the back of my calves, which jerked my knees backwards and pushed my upper body, and therefore my hand that was under the seat, forward. Wouldn't you know that there would be something pointy under there that my delicate pinky finger got crammed up against and gave me what looked like a blood blister under the skin. I folded myself over the seat and just boo-hoo'd because it hurt so damned bad, both my knees and my finger.... Then crippled back into the house as soon as I could gather myself to do so. I hate the wind that just scours over everything out here. Hurry and grow, trees!

But anyway.

So I put the dried lavender in a quart jar and poured the grapeseed oil in it to cover. Then I dug out a little coffee-cup warmer I bought at a garage sale and set the jar on that. I figured when the oil got hot, I'd be able to smell the lavender. It's been several days since I started turning the warmer on during the day, and at first I didn't think I noticed any smell but yesterday I finally did. Not a lot, though.

Lavender has a lot of uses. HERE is a pretty good list. Normally the flowers are what is used, but my lavender didn't bloom this year. The "leaves" have a nice smell though so I don't see why they can't be used for many of the same purposes as the flowers are. With some plants you do have to use the part of the plant that you're told to use, or you can end up with some unpleasant surprises. Pokeweed comes to mind. For Pete's sake, don't mess around with Poke unless you know what you're doing! But I don't think there's much to worry about with the lavender, especially since I'm not going to use this batch internally.

I haven't decided what I'm going to do with the dried Rosemary yet. HERE is everything you'd ever want to know about Rosemary. It ain't just for cooking! I might try making a liniment by infusing it in rubbing alcohol. I wouldn't mind smelling like a Christmas tree!

This is Clary Sage, the darker green leaves are what I just picked, and those lighter ones in the pile on the bottom right were dried earlier.

I don't have very many of these, so I may just try them in tea or save them for if anyone gets the stomach flu, as they are supposed to be calming for the stomach in a tea. Some of the older leaves that were brown in spots and kind of ragged around the edges, I threw to the chickens, and they devoured them. Clary Sage is a biennial, like Dame's Rocket and Hollyhock, and so did not bloom in this, it's first year. I first planted both plants together out in what I have been calling "The Herb Garden", and they nearly died there. In the nick of time I transplanted them into partial shade, one went under the Nanking Cherry bushes along the patio and the other went to the north side of the Fraidy Hole flower bed. Both have done well since then, so I'm looking forward to the major growth spurt of next summer, complete with fragrant flowers and mucilaginous seeds, including some self-seeding action so I can keep these nice plants going. HERE is everything you'd ever want to know about Clary Sage.

I also dried some Lemon Verbena. I mixed some with Gunpowder Green Tea and have been drinking that with a little honey. I keep forgetting I've got some dried and powdered Stevia I could've added and then I wouldn't have had to use my expensive honey. I find myself drinking too much coffee, and here sit all my nice teas I bought and some of the mints and things that I grew. Shame on me!

I bought my Lemon Verbena plant at Atwood's last spring, and it did well for me growing along the south side of the house. The brick wall intensifies the heat, sometimes rainfall doesn't reach and the ground is still very poor there, so it's been hard to find anything that actually will thrive along that strip. But the Lemon Verbena has and so has the Lavender. Lemon Verbena is not winter hardy in Zone 6, so I potted this one up and brought it in. Then let it get too dry. It looks awful right now but it's starting to leaf back out, as you can see by the lighter green leaves on the ends. HERE is information on Lemon Verbena.

I have read that when you bring Lemon Verbena in, it immediately goes into a decline and looks bad all winter long, till you set it out again in the spring after danger of frost is past. But I didn't find this to be the case. It actually was very, very happy being inside as long as it got plenty of water. That might be because when I dug it up, it was wet, and I just eased the shovel contents into a pot. Sometimes I think there's some great secret to this sort of thing and sometimes I just think, if it happens, it happens. When it get going good again, I may try to get some cuttings to root.

Well, I think that's enough for this post, don't you? Y'all have a good weekend! XOXOXOXO

Letter From Ilene, January 3, 2012

2012-01-03T16:46:00.000-06:00

Well, it's official. We should start calling Aldine "Albert Dean". Last Monday, when the chickens came bounding out into their yard, Aldine crowed. Not once. Not twice. THREE times. I hope she is going to be the only one who is not a hen. I mean, afterall, I did buy chicks out of the bin marked "PULLETS", and I paid more for them than the standard run chickens cost. I'm not entirely unhappy about this development. When I read an account of how the hens are more contented with a rooster around, and how the rooster protects his flock, I sort of wished I had bought a rooster. And when I raised these chicks without a mother, I felt sad for them that they never got to know the safety and security of being able to duck in under their mother when they were frightened. These chicks only had each other. I've lost three potential egg-layers now. One to cross-beak. One to a chicken-hawk. And now this. So I think I'll welcome the prospect of letting at least one hen go broody. Of course, that means no eggs from that hen while she is on the nest, and for awhile after the chicks have hatched, as well. That will reduce my laying flock to six. During good conditions, a chicken will lay an egg a day, but they will be small eggs at first. So that will be more like half an egg a day. That will be enough to provide me with eggs for household use. As the eggs begin to be larger, that will give me a few extra to freeze for when production goes down. Chickens go through a moulting period in the fall, and they don't produce then. Although I have read if you provide them with extra protein, like adding Comfrey to their diet, they will lay through moulting. And they don't lay eggs as regularly when the days shorten, either, unless you provide a few hours of additional light. This whole chicken-raising thing has been an experience and an education. I have more of an understanding as to why eggs produced in a natural environment are so expensive. I paid $2.65 per chick. I've bought feed three times, at about ten to twelve dollars a bag, but I will just begin using that third bag this week. And a bag of corn for $10. I will probably need to buy a second bag before winter is over. This is not including my start-up costs, buying chicken wire and 2x4's for their yard. I've used hay from the bale that I bought last year to mulch the garden with and leaves that we have collected from curbs, friends, and neighbors for their bedding and litter. I bought a heated waterer that I'm not happy with. In fact, we actually found a waterer that I like better in the plastics recycling bin! A $30 waterer, mind you, complete with all it's components, that works beautifully once I got the hang of it, except that it isn't heated. So I took the water reservoir off the one I bought and just use the heated base to set the waterer on top of. I bought a large feeder that worked OK once Hubs suspended it from a hook, and after I topped it off with a bleach bottle with the bottom cut out of it to keep them from trying to get up on the edge of it. If they do that, they'll poop down the side of the feeder and mess up their food. I use a milk jug with the bottom cut out of it for the top of the waterer, because it's the same situation there. Dumb clucks.

The chickens STILL do not put themselves away. They do not sleep on the roost unless the light is on over it. Otherwise they dig little wells in the litter on the chickenhouse floor and they all bunch up together. I've had to barricade the nest boxes when I discovered they were all crowding into them and making a wet, nasty mess by doing a lot of pooping in there. I hope by the time they need the nest boxes for egg-laying they will be out of the habit of trying to roost in them. Maybe it will work if I remove the barricade in the mornings, as I have read that egg-laying usually happens a couple of hours after daylight breaks. With these chickens, who knows? They have been non-conformists in so many other ways. But they have been fun, for the most part. Hubs loves watching them. At first, everywhere they went, they went together. In a bunch. Now they race round and round the chicken house flapping their wings like they're trying to take flight. One chicken will run at another, and it will stand there and stick out its chest and they'll look each other in the eye for awhile, then go on about their business. There's lots of scratching in the dirt going on, that looks kinda like a line-dance step. I go out there and they crowd the gate so that I can hardly get in. They turn their heads and look at me with one round eye, they peck on my shoes and tug at my pants legs. The zipper of my jacket has a little tag on it that they jump up and try to eat. But they don't want me touching them and if I should manage to pick one up there is a general alarm. Now that I know Aldine is a roo, I hesitate to do anything that will cause him to think of me as something he has to protect his flock from. I wanted to be able to transport them to the garden for some pre-planting clean-up but I'm not sure how I can accomplish that. I'm thinking about getting an estimate on fencing the garden area. Then I could just open their gate, and the gate between the yard and the garden, go out there and call them. A fence would solve my dog-digging issues, too.

I hope when Albert Dean comes to maturity, he will have the instinct to do the mating dance. They say some roosters don't do that anymore and they're rough with the hens. Just like some men say, "Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker," I hope Albert Dean comes to know that "Spurs can make her yours but dancing's more entrancing".

We have had some unseasonable warmish days, and I've had Hubs and JC out helping me dig rock out of the zinnia bed. It is a miracle those zinnias grew there at all. We have only gotten to the tree. There's all that space past the tree left to do. Two lawn-mower trailer loads of rock went out to "the rock wall". The bigger rocks, I put down as stepping stones leading from the driveway. We walk around the house from the driveway a lot and it does get muddy there. The rocks were so thick that I had to dig the dirt out under them, as I didn't want them to be "toe catchers". But at least that eliminated the need to haul these biggest rocks out to the wall, which would've been quite a task.

While we were out there digging, the man came to read the electric meter. I took the opportunity to ask him if my having a greenhouse built there at the back door would be a meter-reading problem for him and he told me that our house is the only one on this end of the road that does not have a radio-activated meter-reading device installed on it. Don't that just beat all? I didn't even know they used things like that. He said he wouldn't even have to come past the mailboxes or get out of his truck if it wasn't for our house. Sheesh. We've been here over a year. And no one's told us that before. I asked him what that would cost and he said "nothing!", and added that all he had to do was write it up and bring the device with him next time he came to read the meter and put it on. I told him, "Let's DO IT." That will solve another problem. He doesn't always read the meter right. Sometimes we get a great big bill one month and a bitty one the next, and not because of a big seasonal change.

Hubs bought a contractor pack of 30 fluorescent bulbs for about $30 the other day. When you buy this many bulbs, you need to store them where they will not get jostled around.

We recently learned the light boxes that use these bulbs are no longer made, and that they will be phasing out the sale of the bulbs gradually, as people convert over. *Sigh*. Well, I guess that's progress. They say the new, thinner bulbs produce less heat, and so are more energy efficient. I think they are more expensive, too. We have four recessed light boxes in the office, one in the pantry, and one in the garage. Each box holds four bulbs. Plus there are two sets of shop lights on each of the three shelves of my seedling-growing table, and each of them takes two bulbs. When you have seedlings under light, you kinda want the light to be putting off a little heat. So not sure the new bulbs will work very well for the light table. Before he bought the bulbs at Lowe's, he priced them at Walmart. All Walmart had were packs of two bulbs and they were $5 a pack. Quite a price difference. Hubs has a long history of not being very frugal, so I'm grateful he decided not to buy those. His family was really poor all the time he was growing up. He and his siblings all have this attitude that if they throw money around, it proves they're not poor anymore. Hubs has finally learned that one of the things that makes you poor IS throwing your money around and not getting the most value when you spend it. But I'm telling all you people that have been married for less than 40 years, changing your spouse's attitude about money is a long process and probably the most daunting task you will ever undertake. Prepare to sound like a broken record on the best side of the spectrum, and to have many money-related arguments on the worst. For years.

Lots of seed catalogs coming in the mail these days. Some I requested, some I never heard of before.
I have ordered, and received, my order from Swallowtail Gardens, as follows:

AN01241 CALENDULA, ORANGE STAR - 100 SEEDS $1.99 $1.99

VN00009 MORNING GLORY, SPLIT SECOND - 30 SEEDS $2.99 $2.99

AN00173 CLEOME, QUEEN MIX - 1,000 SEEDS $1.99 $1.99

AN11204 COLEUS, WIZARD SELECT MIXTURE - 50 SEEDS $1.99 $1.99

AN01771 COLEUS, SUPERFINE RAINBOW MASTERBLENDS MIX - 50 SEEDS $1.99 $1.99

AN00293 NASTURTIUM, TALL SINGLE MIX - 40 SEEDS $1.99 $1.99

VG09010 BROCCOLI, PACKMAN - 50 SEEDS $1.99 $3.98

VG01289 LETTUCE, FLASHY TROUT BACK ROMAINE - 1 GRAM $2.49 $2.49

VG01162 LETTUCE, MARSHALL ROMAINE - 200 SEEDS $1.75 $1.75

VG00111 LETTUCE, WINTER DENSITY ROMAINE - 1 GRAM $2.49 $2.49

VG00117 LETTUCE, NEVADA SUMMER CRISP - 200 SEEDS $1.99 $1.99

VG11001 LETTUCE, CARDINALE SUMMER CRISP - 200 SEEDS $1.99 $1.99

VG00204 STRAWBERRY, FRESCA - 20 SEEDS $1.99 $1.99

VG00013 BEANS, NICKEL - 100 SEEDS $2.49 $2.49

I've already wintersown the strawberry seed. All twenty seeds. Gosh I hope it didn't deplete their supply sending me so many strawberry seeds FOR $2.00. I hope at least one of them germinates after getting winter stratified.

I have an order placed with High Country Gardens for spring delivery. I ordered a Jacob Kline mondarda, Redbirds in a tree (Scrophularia macrantha), Munro's Globe Mallow (Sphaeralcea munroana), a Flowering Ash (Fraxinus cuspidata), and Father Hugo's Rose (Rosa hugonis).

Here is what I have ordered from Baker Seed:

Strawberry Spinach GR107 1 $2.50

Rocky Top Lettuce Mix SB103 1 $3.00

Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge TO117 1 $2.75

Marsh Mallow HB190 1 $2.25

Garden Huckleberry GR103 1 $2.00

Love-Lies-Bleeding - Red Amaranth AM103 1 $2.50

Joseph's Coat "Perfecta" Amaranth AM130 1 $2.50

Golden Giant Amaranth AM117 1 $2.50

Delaware Indian Sacred Tobacco FL525 1 $2.50

Oriental Scarlet - Poppy FL580 1 $2.25

Fledderjohn brown soybean SY105 1 $3.00

Quinoa, Brightest Brilliant GS112 1 $2.50

Oats, Hulless GS129 1 $2.25

Millet,German Foxtail GS107 1 $5.00

Shallu/Egyptian Wheat GS103 1 $5.50

Musquee De Provence Pumpkin SQ152 1 $2.75

Costata Romanesco SSQ122 1 $2.00

Thai Special Cucumber CU142 1 $2.00

Afghani Sesame GS128 1 $2.25

Sweet Mace or Mexican Mint - Marigold, French FL465 1 $2.50

Scarlet Flax - Wildflower WF115 1 $1.50

White Whippoorwill Cowpea CW155 1 $2.50

Turkey Craw Cowpea CW133 1 $2.50

Plus I've worked out a seed trade with Diane for some peppers, tomatoes, squash, spinach, brown mustard and wild flowers.

I think I'd better not look at any more catalogs.

This morning I went for my appointment at the podiatrist's. Xrays revealed a huge bone spur on my heel. My pre-op appointment is scheduled a few weeks away, with surgery a day or two after that. It involves a small incision done on an out-patient basis, three weeks in a removeable cast, three weeks in a brace and then a shoe with an orthotic. "When you do this will I be normal?", I asked. He laughed and I realized I might as well have asked him, "Will I be able to play the violin?" so I laughed too and said, "I mean, will I be able to use my foot normally." He said that, barring complications such as infection, it is a simple surgery that returns the foot to its state before the bone spur. I'm really counting on this, because the pain has really impacted my life. Oh, to be able to go on walks again..... He gave me a Cortisone shot, which, if anything, has made me hurt worse, and put a $100 "Aircast" on. I sure wish I could rub a little chamomile tea on my heel and have this bone spur go away. Heh.

Hubs is using his Bulldog tool on the hallway floor. He is nearly finished and I'm so glad. It really kicks up the dust and makes a lot of racket. He ushered the dog and cat into the office with me and shut the door. I'm clean-up detail on this project, anyway. I swept up the pieces and lots of the dust, but there is a layer of dust throughout the house now. Not even any point in cleaning that up till he's finished. I guess if you're gonna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. He asked for hamburgers and french fries tonight so that's what he'll get and then that's all I'm good for today. It's been a long day and my head hurts.

Well, that's it for today. Time to pad off to the kitchen and put those french fries on. Hugs to all....

Letter From Ilene, Early January, 2012

2012-01-01T08:21:00.000-06:00

Christmas is over, at least the frantic commercialized greed that passes for Christmas here in the US is. Everybody's gotten their presents and returned them or exchanged them and now the stores can sift it all out and determine whether they had a good season or not. I don't know what it is, exactly, that depresses me so much around Christmas time, but I know the greed and commercialism is at least part of it. In the grand scheme of things, this is all so pointless, this acquiring of an overpriced handbag; the latest toy that will be broken or in the garage sale by summer, which is only wanted because the commercials tell your child everybody wants one; the latest techno gadget that'll be outdated as soon as you take it out of the box; and all those little do-dads that are bought as gifts for someone who has not the remotest need or want for it. At some point, it seems like intelligent people would step back and ask themselves WHY they actually buy things. So much of it is bought to impress others. I ask you, should this be our motivation? Are we so devoid of the qualities that draw true friendships that we have to buy stuff to impress? Should we let some designer in New York City or France or wherever, or some actress with a heavy italian or french accent dictate to our tastes?

On one of the news shows Hubs watches, they were talking one day about how unfriendly people are becoming. It's so easy to become impersonal when the only way you interact with others is by the written word. I've seen some pretty brutal verbal attacks on forums that tend to draw people who only come to be ugly or live vicariously through someone else who is. People don't visit each other at their homes much anymore. And then there are all these games people play where winning requires that someone or something be killed. I believe these things change our brains. So though I'm saddened when I hear that someone maced all the other shoppers during competition for a sale item, or someone gets shot or knifed, I'm not much surprised.

And also back there behind all this are all those "presidential candidates" tearing each other down. Why is it that, out of all the intelligent people in the US, the Republican Party cannot find a decent candidate? Is it because NO really smart and capable Republican WANTS to BE the president? I'm not for Obama or against him, but really now. Without a Republican that is a better choice, what option does one have? And why should the people in Iowa have so much more power over who gets nominated to be "The Candidate" than people in any other state? The computer age is here. There's no more need for The Electoral College. Our election procedures need to be modernized. Think of all the money that could be saved if no one had to get a tour bus and go to Iowa for the caucus.

This is the year the world is supposed to end. In December. Or I guess it's "The World As We Know It". Don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun of it. The fact is, The World as I knew it has already come to an end. Everyday life is so different now from what it was before technology took us by storm. Regardless of what this year brings, it IS good to be prepared for an emergency situation. It IS good to be as self-sustaining and "off the grid" as you can be. It IS good to be as healthy as you can be. It IS good to get right with God. And I don't necessarily mean everyone should run out and join a church. Church is great if it's a loving environment and one in which you feel comfortable. There's nothing like a good Church Family. But going to church does not make you a Christian. Going to church doesn't even help you to learn about the bible, because the way it is written is open to so many ways of interpretation by man. This is why there are so many denominations, because somewhere along the way a group of church members found they didn't agree with the doctrines of their church, and so they started one that fit them and their beliefs better. Sort of made things up along the way. Some churches are horrible, full of gossip and people trying to inflict their will upon other members in the name of God. They make you feel like you are not a good Christian if you do not attend regularly, and at some point a decision is made that an ornate, expensive building in which to worship is needed, and those who do not contribute towards it are not good Christians, either. None of this really has anything to do with God or with being a Christian. I remember at one time being troubled about donating to my church because I didn't agree with the way the money was being spent. I was told that didn't matter to God, that God would bless me for donating just because I was donating. That still doesn't make much sense to me, because I believe there are some things you can't do with God. You can't make deals with God, you can't buy blessings from God, and just because you ask God for something doesn't mean you'll get it. If I go to a church and they need a new roof, yes, I'll donate, and with a happy heart. On the other hand, if they just want to buy something so they can show off, I won't participate in that, I don't care how many meetings they summon me to or how many times they treat me like I'm denying God. My beliefs are simple. Yes, Virginia, there is a God. A God who loves us and delights in us. One who is grieved by the mean and selfish things we do, but knows what's in our hearts more than we do. One who allows bad things to happen to us for lots of different reasons. Sometimes living through bad things is the only way to make us do or learn something that will be very important in the future. Sometimes it's a way to open our eyes and make us appreciate what we do have. Sometimes it's a punishment and a call for us to turn our behavior around. And yes, I do believe it's possible for God to give up on us and just let Satan take us over. And death? I don't know what I believe about death. I don't believe death itself is a bad thing. Some people die quickly and some die after a long period of great pain and misery. I hope I get to go quickly. But after that, it's anybody's guess what happens exactly, and there are as many theories as there are grains of sand. The best advice I ever got about religion was from an old pastor I knew when I was a teenager. I was so confused, had a million questions and found all the answers contradictory. As I pressed on, I'm sure his answer came because he was frustrated with me and wanted to be disconnected from me and my inquiring mind in the worst way. He looked at me over his glasses, sighed a deep, exasperated sigh, reached out and patted my hand, and said, "Just believe....." Bless him, Father, even though he knew not what a perfect answer that was.... It's said over and over again in the book of John in the bible.

But anyway, that's enough Redneck sermonizing. On to the day-to-day things you have come to expect from my letters.

Happy New Year, by the way. I always look forward to the fresh start the new year brings. But really, if you think about it, every morning can be a fresh start. Or every hour for that matter. There's really no need to wait for a whole year to pass. My mother was an atheist. She believed in "Mother Nature", she said. I think if my mother had known about how to become a wickan, she would've been one. She loved spring and got much joy from the emergence of the first jonquils and tulips of the year. So she decided to adopt her own birthday, which was in March, as her personal "New Year's Day". I thought at the time that was pretty self-assuming of her. But then, Mom could be like that. She also openly disparaged people who had other beliefs than she did, which was just about everybody. I know I have some readers who don't believe in God and really the things I say are not aimed at them or at anyone else for that matter. I'm just talking about how I believe and how I live my life. It's not my goal or my job to try to convert anyone against their will and I can have love in my heart for people without asking about their beliefs first, just as I hope they will have for me.

I've updated the *Index (top of the sidebar) to include posts on the Grandma blog. I'm only back to September of 2010 right now, the month that we closed on The Ponca House, but I will add more as I have time.

I made up a batch of laundry powder from Glenda's recipe HERE the other day. I have problems with the liquid because it separates into blobs and even though I shake the bottle before each use like you're supposed to, I'm still never very sure if each washload gets an equal amount of each ingredient that's in the jug, and seems like the last of it is a lot more watery than the first part of it was. I have had a similar problem with dry home-made detergent, because I noticed that the grated Fels Naptha soap tends to not want to mix in. It's yellow and everything else is white, so you can easily see veins of unincorporated yellow. I tried powdering it up fine in the Cuisinart but that didn't help much. I think it's a density issue. Glenda's recipe calls for BAKING soda as well as WASHING soda, so this time I put the grated soap in the Cuisinart with the baking soda and whirred it around. The baking soda is finer than the other powders and it seems to coat the grated soap and dry it out a little. Then I combined that with the other ingredients in a gallon plastic jar (like pickles come in -- or that powdered whey if you know anybody that uses that). This jar was clear so it was easy to see where the yellow streaks were. It took a lot of shaking but I think it's combined pretty well now. It might help, too, to let the grated soap dry out for several days before mixing it with the other ingredients. I have enough of my liquid left for another washload or two and then I'll start using this. I'll tell you one thing I'm pretty happy about, and that's how easily stains come out if you just take a bar of Fels Naptha and dip the end in some water, and then rub the stain with it before the garment is washed. I remember when Spray & Wash first came out and I thought that was the best thing since sliced bread. But oh, that chemical smell. It lingers, too.

I have good news about the flooring project. Hubs has found something that works on removing all the "thin set mortar" from the hallway floor. At Lowe's, of course.

It's a Bosch Bulldog Rotary Hammer.

Here it is outfitted with a forged-steel spade.

It cost $168 and then the spade cost extra. Hubs used his military discount which gave him 10% off and that paid the 8% sales tax plus a tiny bit extra. We get 5% cashback bonus for using the Discover card for home improvement during the month of December. Every little bit helps. I told Hubs that if it works well, then it will pay for itself. You know how I love things that do that.

He tried it out right away and got roughly 1/3 of the concrete scraped clean enough that a little hand scraping will easily finish the clean-up. He said it kind of wore him out to use it and that made me even more glad we'd bought it because he can break the job into small pieces and do what feels reasonable each day that he works on it. And we don't have to worry about getting a rental item checked back in early enough to avoid an extra day of rental charges.

Don't you just love how power tools have names? BULLDOG. The jackhammer we bought a year ago last fall is a BRUTE. Heh. Or maybe we should all caveman grunt like Tim The Toolman.

But OK, whatever gets the job done. The beauty of it is when there's a power tool involved, it's incentive for a man to do the work, and I'm all up for that. My hand is still sore where I hit it with the hammer so many times. I'm thinking, though, of giving names to some of my household appliances. How about "Wild Boar" for the dishwasher?? Heh.

Most of you know I get up in the mornings really, really early. I've been noticing, as I round the corner on the way to my office that I can hear the water heater heating. What's up with THAT? Nobody's run any hot water in at least 6 hours, maybe more! I told Hubs about that and so he bought an insulated water heater jacket. At Lowe's. We could call it "The Bear Hug". Maybe the word Hug is too effeminate, though.... Heh.

Now, I've had people tell me that if you have your water heater in a heated space, it doesn't need to be insulated, and I believed that for years. But think about this for a minute. What temperature is the water INSIDE the water heater? Is it that warm OUTSIDE the water heater at any given time?? I hope not, and I therefore rest my case. Another thing I suppose you could do with an electric water heater is to get one of those power switches that's on a timer, like people use to turn their lights on and off in the house when they're gone to make it look like they're not, and plug the water heater into that. I have heard, and I don't know if it's true, that turning your water heater on and off is not good for it and shortens it's life. I do know that turning your electric water heater on before it's filled all the way will shorten the life of it's heating coil. Immediately. But this other thing, I don't know. Another thing is whether the energy needed to heat a tank of water that's cooled all the way down is more than that needed just to keep it at a certain temperature constantly. I don't know the answer to that either and I've heard "experts" contradicting each other.

I heard that Sears/K-Mart is going to close about 120 stores due to lack of profitability. Bartlesville has a Sears and a K-Mart. I like going to K-Mart because it's never very crowded. But if you want a new battery for your watch, they may not have the one you need. If you want to buy more than one or two of any given item, they may not have that many. And sometimes when there is a sale, they don't have much in stock. So shopping at K-Mart can be frustrating. Our Sears is out at the mall and the last time I bought anything from them it was a metal storage shed that I ordered online and picked up at the store.  We had an unnecessary trip out there when all that was in was the floor kit because the e-mail looked like the whole order was in. Nonetheless, I hope it's not our Sears that closes because that'll leave a big hole out there at the mall, and the mall has its problems anyhow. I just almost won't go out there at all, there are so many teenagers and unattended preteens hanging out there. Parents just pull up at the doors, drop them off and drive away, secure in their belief that no predators lurk there.  This is just something bad waiting to happen.

I've been taking a little free herbal remedy course from LearningHerbs.com. I'm working on a post about herbs and some of what I've already learned and will post it in a few days.

Today being January 1, we are having the traditional southern Good Luck meal for this day: Black-eye peas seasoned with ham, with cornbread and fried potatoes. It was a tradition in my family as far back as I can remember.  Mom's mother wasn't a very good cook, although Grammy's Shelby ancestors did come to Missouri from The South. Mostly my mother cooked German style because my dad's German grandmother taught Mom how to cook. It was said that Great-Grandma Liz Hufferd Dalton Stimpson could even cook possum. Mom could make some things that were absolutely delicious. Other things, not. Baking-powder biscuits were not her strong suit. But oh, the bread. Chicken and noodles. Pie. Potato salad. Pot roast.

I cooked my peas in the pressure cooker yesterday so all I have to do today is make the cornbread and fry the potatoes. And yes, my cornbread has sugar in it, southern style. But regardless of whether I believe that eating black-eye peas on the first day of the new year actually can bring good luck, this is still a good meal to start the year with. What are we without our traditions? I was kind of shocked that a one pound bag of dried black-eye peas cost $1.99 at Homeland, though. It seems like only yesterday it was thirty-nine cents. I wish my yield of Purple Hull Pink-Eye southern peas had been big enough this summer that I could've had more than just enough to plant for the following year.

When I was at Lowe's yesterday, I found a display of "Italian Pine Christmas Trees" marked down 50%. They were small trees meant to be given as Christmas presents and had a little stake that said "Merry Christmas". When I got home I did a little research on these trees and they are probably Italian Stone Pine trees, and wouldn't you know that they are probably not winter hardy in Zone 6. Sheesh. I planted and mulched them, anyway. If they die, they die.

It was so windy yesterday, and it continued through the night.  I could hear something blowing around outside below my bedroom window. As soon as it's light I'll go out and see if I can tell what's blown away. We try to weight everything down, but every now and then, I get careless. One time Hubs found one of my kitty litter buckets all the way down at the corner. And another time, one of my fencewire tomato cages down by the mailboxes. Of course this wind, and the warm weather we've been having, make the ground dry out faster than it normally would. So probably today or tomorrow our new trees will need to be watered.

I can't think of anything else to share with you this morning so I will press the "Publish" button for this time. I know lots of people will be making resolutions and that's another thing I just don't do anymore, but if you do, I hope you will make reasonable ones and be kind to yourselves with it. Be kind to yourself in all ways, in fact. And others. That might be a resolution worth keeping, because it would be effortless for most of you, being already kind and caring people. I'm grateful to know you. It restoreth my faith in the human race.

Hugs to all.....

Letter From Ilene, Last Week of December, 2011

2011-12-24T10:30:00.000-06:00

First of all, I want to wish all my readers a merry Christmas. As usual, this blog was started much earlier, so I will leave you to it:

Sunday Hubs found an interesting channel called LinkTV. HERE's their website, in case you don't have that channel. It was a piece called "Gashole" and can be seen in its entirety on Hulu HERE. It's about how oil companies have squelched the development of alternative fuel systems, all the while standing up in public talking out of both sides of their mouth, as my dad would've said. Aunt Viv, Dad's sister, would've put it differently. Something about blowing something out of somewhere..... And she'd have her eyebrows knitted together and her eyes squinted up when she said it. Oh, Aunt Viv could be impressive when she was mad.

It's really time for the American people to make a statement to the oil and gas industry. We need to scale back our gasoline consumption and be prepared to continue it for a long time. But we won't because we are hooked on gasoline. And they know it. So they can charge whatever they want at the gas pump and we'll pay it. As long as they stay together, and they will, (this is called "being in cahoots") they will continue to make exorbitant profits at the expense of people who can barely afford enough gasoline to get themselves back and forth to their jobs. I was talking with one of my little old lady friends about what it was like to live through World War II and she said that none of her teenaged friends had cars and even if they had, they wouldn't have had any gas for them. Because everything went to The War Effort. There was a family car but it was used exclusively and sparingly by their father. There was no mass transit here. Everybody walked. Or rode bikes. Or horses. Or they didn't go at all. Everybody was invested in the war. If they weren't in the military, they had loved ones that were. And the folks at home were expected to do without things so that our troops could have it. People might be surprised at how many of those places where they think they just HAVE to go are not really necessary at all, in the grand scheme of things. Now, our teenagers have their own cars and they are in them cruising around, all day every day. If we have more than one teenager, each one has their own car. Most of them have never known having to give something up for a greater cause. And we, as adults, are no better. At the very least we should be batching our trips, buying things in larger amounts, and therefore shopping less often.

This is now Monday and there have been a few new developments with the floor. I was sitting quietly on the hall floor, resting my poor hand that I have accidentally hit with the hammer while aiming for the chisel, FAR too many times, when I noticed that the floor in the hall is not level. There is a small crack in the concrete slab near the closet door. And the floor is higher near the closet and stairwells than it is at the wall between the hall and the dining room. I thought about how persnickety those locking strips are about fitting together, and that made me realize that we're going to have a problem if we try to bring the flooring through the doorway from the dining room. The floor is going to have to curve upwards, lengthwise. And that means, we might be risking the integrity of our floor all the way across. Step just right on any spot that isn't touching the floor and something's got to give. So Hubs and I talked about it and we decided to change the direction of the flooring in the hallway. We'll have to have a small threshold in the doorway between the hall and the dining room to make the transition look nice. And the advantage of this also is that we can finish the floor up to the hall and then deal with the hallway after all that is finished.

Paula and her hubs have been trying to help us with much appreciated advice, and so on that advice Hubs went to both tool rental agencies we have in town. One had a Hilti hydraulic hammer that they said would probably do the job. It was about $48 for one day. But the blade was really dull. The other place also had the same thing, with a sharper blade, but it was $10 more per day. After Christmas and New Years' is over we may go ahead and rent one so we can finish up. But for now, the push is on for getting the kitchen and dining room back together.

So this is progress made on Monday. All the pieces snapped together easily. PRAISE GOD!

When Hubs rests, he goes to his LaZBoy. I go to my office and sit down at my computer, where I write to you, read my e-mails, and bunny hop around on the internet. I noticed that on Ramblings Of A Happy Homemaker, Pam has a cute idea about using a small book in lieu of a greeting card. And that got me thinking how much I hate cards. They are so expensive and just get looked at a few times before they go in the trash. What a waste of $2 to $10. I left a comment about how this could be done with CD's or DVD's as well. Use some pretty paper to make an envelope with a fold-over flap (like a jewel case but out of paper) and write on the flap. Or get some pretty post-its, write on that and stick it onto the case the CD came in. I bet there are lots of things like that that could be written on and used instead of a card. Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, Hallmark!

I thought I had read through all of Pam's posts earlier, but I must've missed some. I clicked on the "Tips" category across the top of the blog. I found where Pam had used jars for storage and I left a comment about my rag-painted tomato sauce jars for storage of herbs and mints and how I've seen people put photographs in pretty jars. There could even be two photos back to back so it would be reversable. Add some little extras that are appropriate, like little silk flowers and ribbons where there is a little girl's picture, or pieces of Lego with a boy's. Or hey.... and I'm running with this.... Have the kids make "art" to fit in a jar. Lots of people give candy or cookie gifts in jars: Christmas candy or any kind of cookie for now. Chocolate kisses or those "message hearts", or redhots for Valentine's or an anniversary. Or even a person's favorite candy for their birthday. Hubs loves Snickers and M&M's. He said to tell you he likes big jars. Heh. Jelly beans at Easter. Candy corn in the fall. Except that I can't stay out of the candy corn. Homemade caramel corn looks good in a big jar. Of course you all know how I've never met a jar I didn't like. Sometimes the lids reek of whatever was packed in the jar originally. Dill pickle jars! OMG.... Maybe that dill smell would come out of the lid if it was soaked in baking soda and water. But even then I'd close the jar back up afterward and leave it a few days and then do a smell test to make sure the odor is gone. I wouldn't want to give someone a jar of chocolate chip cookies that smell like dill. Of course if a canning lid will fit, it's nice to use that instead. A round paper insert can be made to lay on top of the canning flat before the band is screwed down, and write or draw whatever you want on that piece of paper. I've done that before with small jars of jam. And an added caveat is that I wouldn't use the original lid on a jar that was ever used to hold a non-food item. The glass is non-absorbent and as long as it's well cleaned and sterilized might be OK, but I'd still prefer to err on the side of over-caution where food storage is concerned. I see lots of candles in jars but I don't do that. Once you get candle wax on the inside of a jar, it's really, really hard to get completely clean again, especially since you don't want to get any candle wax down your drains or on anything made of cloth.

Pam also has written about how she bought an unglazed floor tile that she uses in lieu of a pizza stone. I have a couple of pizza stones I bought at garage sales but I've never used them. I use those stainless steel pizza pans that have lots of little holes in the bottom and that does the trick for me. Plus I don't have to preheat my oven so long. Someone put a comment on that post that she'd want to make sure the tile hadn't been glazed because of chemicals that might leach out in the oven, and I'm not sure if even that would be safe, now that I think about it. Several years ago, those ceramic pitchers became fashionable, and one of my sisters had one that she kept her orange juice in. Then she read somewhere that putting food in unglazed pottery can lead to lead poisoning. That's one thing that you have to be careful about when using things in ways they weren't manufactured for. Especially where food and/or high heat are concerned.

Of course I, myself, have been guilty of sharing ideas that haven't been completely thought through. I'm trying to be more careful about that.

Once again, I don't remember exactly how I got there, but I ended up watching some hugelculture YouTubes made by Jack ?Sverigo? who lives in Texas. He has land that looks a lot like mine and he is doing hugelculture, swales and terracing on his land. The first of that series is HERE and you can probably find the four additional segments on the You-Tube sidebar after you've watched the first one. He had a lot of good ideas and I enjoyed each one. If you are curious about the soil-enriching seed mix that he is planting in his hugelculture, it looks like that can be purchased HERE pretty reasonably, although I understand that the shipping is high coming from California. I looked them up on Dave's Garden "Scoop" and they seem to be getting decent reviews. He has a website HERE, and I linked his list of tenets because I've read them and I think they're worth reading. It looks like there's a lot of information on his website, maybe not everyone's cuppa tea if they're not survivalists, but even if you don't agree with everything, there are still some good ideas to be gleaned and some things to think about.

This is Tuesday night and here is our progress today:

Now, you know how I think the part of the Hoosier cabinet that hangs on the wall is too low on the right has been buggin' me ever since Hubs put it there. Today I had him measure from the bottom corner of the cabinet top to the floor. And yup, Hubs had to admit it's hangin' half an inch lower on that side. He measured twice because he just didn't want the first measurement to be right. Heh. I rest my case. I don't know why he makes me go through all that. I'm a quilter. I can tell by sight when something isn't even. It'd save us both a lot of time if he just didn't fight it.

We are now about as far as we can go till Hubs builds the little wall between the kitchen nook and the dining room. We could see on the floor where there had once been a wall exactly where he's going to put one. Why they would do what they did when they rebuilt is beyond me. That is the water line that goes to the outside hydrant there, and there will be a little access door on the "kitchen nook" side. Hubs said he could frame it out so we can tell where to lay the floor. Then we can wait for Joe to pull that electric line that's sticking out of the wall there.

While he's doing that I might do some more scraping on the hall entry floor. Ugh.

Oh! Oh! Oh! My ten free baby pine trees came today!

A fellow named Jules Dervaes, out in Sacramento, California, has turned his front yard into gardens and is becoming well known for his personal fight against chemically-altered foods. He produces about 6000 pounds of food in his small front yard. Of course, it being California means he can grow year round. But even half that is impressive when you compare that to the grass most people grow in THEIR front yards. An introduction to him and his family is HERE. He speaks during a Sustainable Living Program at UCLA: A 49-minute You-Tube HERE. Slide 5:36 minutes into the program for Jules' participation. I got 29:29 into the 49 minute presentation when the presentation locked up, but I scooted the slider over a tiny bit and it took right off again. It's kind of long and he does a lot of stammering so be prepared. I know that Denimflyz, on her blog, had a post about how she heard it is going to be against the law for people to have their own gardens, I forget where. But I think the movement towards controlling the food supply will be more gradual, subtle and pervasive than that. The chemical companies, Monsanto is the most well known, are buying out seed companies. They are producing seed that produce plants that make sterile seed. You know what that means. Eventually, anyone who wants to grow anything will have to buy seeds or plants from a chemical company. Is that scarey or not? And just like the oil industry, they will be able to charge whatever they want to for those seeds and plants, and like Monsanto does with it's GMO soybeans, if you happen to be able to save viable seed from what you grow from seeds or plants bought from Monsanto, they will be able to sue you and take everything you have. I read about a farmer who was sued by Monsanto because his soybeans, which he did NOT buy from Monsanto, crossed with a neighbor's GMO seed and Monsanto sued him for saving that seed, something he normally did every year. Like I have said before, it's all about the money, honey. If they can make everything cross-polinate with their GMO stuff, then there you have The End Of The World As We Know It. Line up and get your bottle of water and your cube of Soylent Green from Monsanto.

This is now Wednesday. It rained all day yesterday but today I took my little pine tree seedlings, shovel and ten 8" plastic flower pots (about 10" deep) out to the edge of the raised bed, planted the seedlings in the pots and sunk them down into the bed, filled in around them with garden soil and mulched well with grass clippings from the pile. Then barricaded them to protect them from digging dogs and to hold down the mulch. They really had some long roots. I will need to get them into their permanent spot before they break dormancy for sure. But it will be spring and I will be itchin' to get my hands dirty by then. As it is now, whenever we get a sunny day, the wind is cold and cuts right through to the bone. So maybe this will be OK for now, and an early spring planting will give them a month or two to get all settled in before all hell breaks loose.

Hubs has built the frame for the wall now. He saw Spike yesterday and told him he'd be bringing the carpet over today. JC helped him load it up. Spike has sold his truck so Hubs knew he would have to deliver it, anyway. At least it's out of our garage. We still have the carpet tile. I'm thinking I might have some use for these. They are heavy, rubberized on the bottom and were probably made for commercial use. We cut up one to make pads for the furniture that's on the new floor. Placed fuzzy side down, they allow the furniture to slide easily without scratching the floor. The rubberized part is a little sticky and that part helps the pad to stay in place on the furniture. The stairs going down into my office have carpet tiles on their treads, and the cat has chosen one that she stops at to sharpen her claws. That part's OK. It's the part where she runs ahead of me and then stops dead in her tracks on that particular step that concerns me. I'm always afraid one of these days I'm going to accidentally step on her and that'll cause me to fall down the stairs. I've already fallen down those stairs once, due to missing a step, and that was not an experience I want to repeat.

And now it's Saturday morning. I'll try to post this today because I wanted to let you know that Lee Valley has free shipping on orders over $40 until January 3, 2011. I'd love to have their U-Bar Digger (aka broadfork) and I might order one. I haven't decided if I can justify $125 plus a $15 surcharge. This is the place that has that Maslin pan that Glenda and I both have. And they also have a steam juicer that so many people swear by. I bought one and made pear juice from the pear trimmings a year ago last fall but I got a bitter product (probably from the stems and seeds) and so the jury's still out as far as I'm concerned. But I do really love my Maslin pan at canning time. It's the only pan I have that will hold enough to fill all seven quart jars and will still fit on the corner burner of my cooktop.

Mother Earth News is offering a subscription for $10 if you pay online. That's for only six issues but it's a year. You can opt to get your magazine mailed to you and also e-mailed. I chose that, and I got to see the most recent issue right away. There's quite a bit in it. The one that comes in the mail will be easier to read and Hubs, who isn't computer proficient, will like it better. I've been getting their little free newsletters for about six months now and I really enjoy them.

On Thursday I was looking for something in my refrigerator freezer and something fell out on my feet. That's the second time in as many days, proof positive that it's time to start working refrigerator freezer menus out. So on that day I pressure-cooked the last of a bag of chicken legs and thighs and we ate some of that with some frozen mashed potato blobs and peas. Then I removed the remaining chicken off the bones, poured the broth into a container, put new water in the pan with those bones and some bones I'd been saving in the freezer, and pressured up another two quarts of nice rich broth. The next morning I dug out a couple of quart containers that said "chicken in thickened broth". So I cooked some chopped carrots ($1 for a two pound bag at Aldi), celery, onions and peas and ended up with enough chicken pot-pie filling for eight individual cassoulets. I made the first four for Friday's supper and I must've not had the pie crust thin enough because there was 'way too much of it and I ended up having to heat up the remaining filling and spoon it over what was on our plates. This meant that one cassoulet was too much to eat. *Sigh*. But they were good otherwise, and I'm glad I hadn't made up the last four yet.

After making the pie filling, I had extra of the carrot/pea mixture, so I combined what was left with the broth I made and some pieces of chopped turkey I found in the freezer, and stowed away four quarts of soup into the big freezer. When we want soup, all I have to do is add some noodles (which are already in the freezer) and a little more broth, and we have a fast supper. There's four meals. I found a small package of sliced black olives, half a big butter tub of pasta sauce and a small package of cornmeal, which shouted in unison, "Tamale Pie!". I had enough for one in a skillet, which we can warm up for supper tomorrow and one for the freezer in a loaf pan, which will be a quick meal on a day I'm too busy to cook.

I like to get the most out of an already heated oven, but it being cold outside, even if I only baked the potpies, the oven would help warm the house.

I also found some pork chop bones I had saved, so I pressured them and ended up with a nice broth that will taste good as a base for gravy or for a pot of beans.

We usually don't buy bone-in pork chops but these were on special and that made it worth the fact that we were also paying for bone. I haven't been able to find boneless pork tenderloin on sale lately.

When given lemons, make lemonade. When left with bones, make broth!

I am using my 4-quart pressure cooker more and more these days. Sure beats crockpotting for 24 hours. This one's aluminum and I'd rather have a stainless steel, so I'll watch for one at garage sales. One really nice thing about pressuring is that is softens the bones and then you can either make bone meal out of them for the garden, or you can safely feed them to the dog, a little each day, without worrying about sharp pieces making their gums bleed or lodging somewhere in their bodies. I'd rather use it for bone meal in the garden but if I do I have to barricade where it is buried for so long to keep the neighbors dogs from digging it up that it's more inconvenience than it's worth. So Sonny The Pig Dog gets a little bit each day and then makes white poops in the yard.

It got down to 20º last night and the chickens made it through just fine. But their water froze. It stays a lot warmer in that chickenhouse than it is outside so this is the first time that the water has frozen. At least now I know when to plug in the warmer. I have read that some people just bring the water inside for the night and then take it out in the morning. The chickens are not roosting at night. They're crowding into the nest boxes and sleeping in there. Pooping, too. What a mess.

The floor is now finished except for the hall. Hubs needs to nail the mopboards back on and there's some putting away of things for me to do. When the little wall on the right side of the doorway is finished, that tall bookcase will probably go there, turned sideways. Or maybe the baker's rack. I haven't decided yet. But here's what it looks like now:

We probably won't tackle the hallway till after New Year's Day. I don't know about Hubs but I'm exhausted and sick of crawling around on the floor.

This is what the frame looks like for the little wall that is to replace that big ugly room divider we took out. There will be a small door on the left side of the wall for access to that water line. I don't know that we'll ever NEED access, and I pray that we don't, but just as sure as we build the wall around it with no access, it'll happen. That board leaning up against the wall is a 1x6 and will be the facing for the inside of the doorway that goes on before the edge trim. There'll be a little painting to do but that won't be till after Joe does the electrical. So we are effectively DONE till January. PRAISE GOD, MARY AND BABY JESUS.

And that, my dears, gets you back up to speed on what's been going on around here. I have to say that, when I look back at all the things that we two old duffers have accomplished during this year, in spite of limited funds and hellish weather, I am well pleased.

This will probably be my last post for 2011. If I think of things I want to tell you, I'll just start building a post but not publish it till 2012. Of course those of you who have my e-mail address are welcome to e-mail me at any time. As you already know.

“This is my wish for you: comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, love to complete your life.”

XOXOXOXO