Today, we decided that perhaps summer will come, so went to Lowe’s and purchased enough peat moss and sand to fill our hoop house boxes back to the top. Over the years, as I’ve taken produce and weeds out, the quantity of the boxes has diminished.
Category Archive: Life
Spring? and Churn dash/Hole in Barn
![IMG_4055[1]](http://fiberadventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/IMG_40551-e1456880447915-283x300.jpg)
and yes when the rain is this hard, it is this dark during the day
Today, I saw daffodils starting to bloom and some of the early cherry trees, but it is so cold, windy and rainy, I wonder if it really is spring. But then if March is to come in like a lion, she is doing what she should.
There are now 9 of these “Hole in the Barn Door” also known as “church dash”, Shoo Fly and a number of other names. http://www.quilting-in-america.com/churn-dash.html I’m not sure how many there will be as I’m just using some fabric given me. I made 4 that I have now unsewn because they didn’t fit with these blocks. So will use a different fabric with each of them.
Strawberry jam
We’re nearly out of strawberry jam and with my DH, that isn’t acceptable. So now with 6 more pints, we may make it until strawberry season. I just did not make enough last year for gifts and us, but fortunately, I still had frozen berries in the freezer. I believe I have almost enough to make it to next season
So with some catch up housework and babying this cough, and some spinning, I had enough energy to go check the bees since the temperature got up over 60 degrees. The poor bees did not make it through the winter. So I want to rototill that area and plant a bee friendly area, then next year, we’ll get bees again.
No running, jumping, or ladders
Today was the last visit to the doctor who repaired my ankle (at least until he sees something he doesn’t like on an annual x-ray) It’s marvelous the inventions that are now available to us to help us live a more normal life. My instructions are no running, no jumping, and stay off ladders. Other than that, have a normal life. That is good news and he is also happy with my 10,000 daily steps.
We came home hungry and nothing was prepared,, so I pulled out a jar of canned potatoes, added seasonings and milk and put in VitaMix for a short time. We heated that and Bill claims it was good enough to market. Of course I didn’t think to take a photo until it was mostly gone.
Sharing
There will be no post tonight because someone decided that sharing her cough and sore throat was important. So today was spent doing my walk, coughing and coughing and resting. Tomorrow should be better.
Spinning and making raisins
The hot wire has now been extended. Maybe that will keep Beau on the side he is supposed to be on. He so loves us and thinks he needs to guard us, which would be okay, if he didn’t follow the car out the gate.
The raisins were miserable to get off the screens.
However we now have another 20 cups of raisins made from our own grapes.
I tired of doing the same spinning, so am now doing some small pieces of various colors, then will go back to the sweater yarn. I have also decided I need to spin another piece of wool to add to the sweater yarn so it will be 3 ply.
Tired Thursday?
I am so ready to have this be the end of the week so I can have a Sabbath Day’s rest. One more day.
Today we spent much energy and time toting the rest of last years hay over to the sheep pen and spreading it out so they could stay out of the mud. I don’t remember having this much mud before. We have fewer sheep and more mud. I guess it’s all that rain.
My sister did a marvelous job on all these Sunbonnet’s. She had the first one all put together and the second one, I finished with the sewing time I had today.
The sashing is all cut out for two more and there are 35 little girls left, so I think I’ll do another one like these two and then put a solid corner on the last one – but wait – that means I need 16 girls and there are only 15. I wonder if she has any of these fabrics left -though I doubt it. Any thoughts on how I can make 15 work out? If I added another girl from my fabrics, it wouldn’t match any of the fabrics she used. Tomorrow, I really need to get back to the quilting, as I now have 5 quilts hanging on the board with one on the machine and 4 more hanging in the closet ready to be quilted.
A little gardening, a little canning, a little shopping
I froze grapes in gallon bags last fall because I just didn’t have time or energy to make grapes then. Also, I find the raisins easier to dehydrate once the grapes have been frozen and thawed. So this morning I canned 6 pints of grape juice from the thawed raisins.
After coming home from gym, I sold my first spinning wheel to a man who has taken one lesson on the same type of wheel. It’s a good wheel and he should enjoy it.
After lunch, I went out and worked on one side in the greenhouse. It’s amazing, even baby carrot seeds dropped last fall have started growing. There were these carrots left in over winter. They are a bit short as I need to dig down farther to give them more good growing soil and less hardpan. Not only were carrots starting to grow, but the weeds had a great start. Tomorrow, I will put down the preplant nutrients and water well. This weekend, I’ll start sow some cool weather crops and hopefully get some tomatoes and pepper seeds started in the house. (Need more hours)
We retrieved the sewing machine that had to be serviced and made a stop at Costco, which is rarely cheap. We had $55.00 in rebates off this, so that helped ay for the extra dog treats. We should be good for another year of treats now.
I certainly don’t want to forget that Beau wants to be a house dog, and therefore has been climbing the fence. That would be okay if we could trust him not to leave when the gate opens. We can’t so he has to stay behind the fence. He weighs about 120#, but fortunately walks well on a lead. So, in the dark and driving rain, we ushered him into the quarters he shares with the sheep at night. Now I wish you all a good, restful night, knowing that tomorrow will have new challenges.
Busy, but not accomplished
Some days are just too long for the energy I have and too short for what I want to achieve. This was one of those. After walking half an hour this morning (I’m doing 10,000 steps a day now), I rested my legs by spinning on my electric spinner. Then it was time to go to the medical appointment to try to avoid knee surgery.
Lunch already! Ok, we decided since we were close to a Whole Foods, we’d pick up some bread we especially like and put some in the freezer. Since they only had 2 loaves left, we didn’t fill the freezer. However, we decided to eat there, which won’t happen again soon.
Home again and another half hour of walking which gave me about 3000 steps. Then it was time for a webinar on replacing zippers – continuing education which I enjoy. After that it was time to feed and put the animals to bed. A few more steps to complete my day and oh, yes, another batch of grapes on the dehydrator that weren’t drained enough made the smoke detector tattle on me again. This time I was right there and saw what happened. So this was a day, plenty happened, but nothing gained in the studio or in the garden. And tomorrow I start over again with the steps and the gym which I am grateful I can do.
Elephant babies
