A late post about Sunday

I'm leaving this post as I wrote it, on Sunday the 18th. After going through a total reformat of my hard drive earlier this month, with a clean install, all updates and a new antivirus program, I seem to have gotten *another* virus on Sunday. While I could get email and access most sites, I could not get on to Blogger, Etsy, my spam trap or several other sites. I just did a system restore back to Saturday, and so far, so good.

Some days I hate computers.


The Home and Garden show was this weekend, so I went and did a presentation on propagation by cuttings for the Master Gardeners. More people showed up than usual, so there were a lot of questions. That always makes it easier in a way- I do better answering questions than I do following a script. On the other hand, one question can lead to another and I allow things to wander off topic- not good. I think I only forgot to mention one or two things, though.

Must remember to call the Extension Office tomorrow. When I had to reformat the computer, I lost the schedule for when I’m supposed to have articles to them for the paper. I have a nasty suspicion that one of the deadlines is coming up pretty soon. Also must ask about plant clinic, since I need to do that this year or I will no longer be a Master Gardener! Missed the refresher course due to illness, and I need to know what the procedure is these days. It’s been years since I’ve done Plant Clinic, and I don’t want to be one of those people everyone else hates because they make a mess of the paperwork. There is always a fair number of those, and I’d rather not swell the ranks.

Greenhouse still not finished. Every day Tim says “It will be finished this evening!” and every day it isn’t, because everything always takes longer than figured. Soon, I hope, as the house is being over run with flats of seedlings that I have to take outside every day and bring back in at night

Boxes of Interest

The cats are very interested in these boxes:

That's because the boxes contain these:

These aren't the horde that we ordered on the the internet; these are ones that the online place was out of, so we managed to find them in town. Five aruacanas and three gold laced wyandots. They are in our bathroom. Right now, they are cute and adorable and wonderful. In about four days, when they start smelling bad no matter how many times a day we change their paper, they won't be very cute any more.


This box is the biggest that the bathroom can hold; I really don't know where we're going to put the 26 when they arrive in the mail....

Dear Cat;

I thought that there would be *one* place in the house where you couldn’t get, one place where I could put breakable things without it ended up as a shrapnel bomb. As one can see here, I was wrong.

I realize that you’re gray like the gargoyle, and actually look rather attractive up there. If all you wished to do was sit there above the front door, I might put up with it. But I’m not amused when plaster gargoyles and 100 year old books come raining down. And further, now where am I supposed to put my alien-fetus-in-a-jar??!

Please restrict yourself to lower altitudes.

Thank you,

The Humans

For reasons I can't figure out, I havent' been able to upload photos to Blogger for several days now. Obviously, I've been able to figure it out before, and I've tried numerous times the way I was uploading before, figuring there was a temporary server glitch. No joy. I've tried every other way I can think of- using the 'blogger in draft' thing, loading from a URL (Flickr), doing it in 'edit html' mode, in 'compose' mode. Still no joy. I've run out of things to try.

We've been working on the greenhouse, trying to rebuild it- it collapsed in the heavy snow winter before last. In the process of putting the new plastic on the top, I bashed my thumb with the hammer and it promptly turned a shade of purple that would actually be pretty attractive if it wasn't on, you know, my thumb. It's bending again now, though, so I guess it'll be okay sooner or later.

I've also been planting seeds like crazy- tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, lettuce, all sorts of Asian greens, iris, lilies, a wide variety of perennials, and lots and lots of onions. Tim becomes obsessed with one plant or another some years; a couple of years ago it was potatoes (about 20 varieties, which yielded about 2500 lbs), this year it's onions. Red ones, white ones, yellow ones, scallions, red scallions... and we never have luck growing onions. Hopefully this will be the year we figure it out!

Because of all this planting - and also because my computer got a virus and I had to reformat and do a clean install, along with the attendant downloading updates and reinstalling software and hardware- I have not touched either needlework or beading. Or, for that matter, much reading. Well, sooner or later I'll run out of seeds to plant. Of course by then, it'll be time to transplant them to larger containers...

Finished the other block for the breast cancer fund raising raffle:

I love the ribbon and the wisteria, but I don’t like how the pale peach wandering lines went. I tried to do it free hand, and learned that doesn’t work. I need to draw things on the block before I do swirly things! I’m not sure *why* I can draw things just fine, but can’t stitch free hand.

This block, like the purple one, is all recycled fabrics. The shiny brocade on the left is, I think, older than I am- it’s something that was in my mom’s stash, and was, I think scraps from a dress of my aunt’s, as is the one right above it. The one on the lower right was a shirt of mine; the upper right is a yard sale prom dress; the others are from drapery sample books. Crazy quilting is a great way to use scraps, old clothing and samples. While all the embellishments on these blocks are new, you can also use old jewelry, trim and ribbons, although there is no good way of reusing floss.

First breast cancer benefit block done!

I’ve completed one of the blocks for the breast cancer research raffle:




I keep feeling like it needs more on it, but every time I auditioned something on it, it didn’t look right. I think I ended up with too many ‘dots’- French knots and beads- sprinkled around, and anything more makes it too busy and scattered. And I find, looking at it on the monitor, that using the rainbow colored silk thread on the one seam was a mistake- I should have kept to more subdued colors like most of the rest of it is. Maybe I’ll see if I can tone it down with some fabric markers or the like.

Now, on to the peach colored one. This one might go a litter faster- I’ve caught a virus (and there is a storm coming in) so hopefully I won’t be working outside today. And hopefully I won’t just fall asleep!

A Folly of Poultry

We have just ordered baby chicks and ducklings over the internet. (Why do we say ‘baby chicks’? That’s like ‘tuna fish’) We don’t know when we’ll get them; the hatching of all the different varieties we ordered must come off at the same time for them to ship them all in one box, like some harmonic convergence of poultry. They must all ship in one box to keep each other warm. We ordered four varieties of chickens and two types of duck; hopefully there will be a launch window for them this spring. With six varieties of bird all having to hatch on the same day, it’ll be a touchy thing.

We were only going to order two types of chicken- Barred Rocks and Americaunas- but the Marek’s vaccinations is a $10 minimum at 15 cents a chick. Tim’s mind could not get around spending ten dollars for a $1.50 job, so he figured that by ordering twice as many birds we’ll get a little more of our monies worth out of the $10. So now we are also getting five White Rocks and five Cherry Eggers as well. Come autumn, we will be up to our butts in eggs.

We are also getting three Swedish Black ducks, because they are calm natured and we should be able to turn them loose in the garden during the day for slug patrol and still be able to capture them in the evening. And three Khaki Campbells, because they lay a lot of eggs. As if we’ll need more eggs with all those chickens.

So now we will wait in suspense, wondering when we’ll get an email saying “They’re on their way! And by the way, to fill your order in this time frame, we’ve had to substitute 6 geese for the ducklings!” *shudder*