Crazy

So, I get to work bright and early yesterday morning, and one of my coworkers came up to me and said, "We're staying until 4:00 and it's mandatory now."  But I guess it's only mandatory for some people...but I'm not here to grumble.  Except that's exactly what I'm doing. 

I was so tired when I got home, I didn't do anything.  I went to bed at 6:30, and was practically shivering from exhaustion.  I didn't go to sleep right away, though.  I read a chapter in my book first.  

I keep forgetting to tell you that I finished reading The Oxford Detective Society.  It was pretty good if you like detective stories.  Now I'm reading one called The Baker Of Lost Memories. It's very compelling, and I'm having a hard time putting it down.  

But I was still asleep by 7:00.  Even after reading, and falling asleep watching a gardening video on my tablet...

All that to say, expect blogging to be sparse until common sense returns to the plant.  

Oh, wait...you'd never get a post then!  

In the meantime, look at this.  It absolutely sums up how crazy things have been this year.  I've got a bluebonnet blooming.

In September.  

 Silly thing doesn't realize it's supposed to bloom in March.  

Anyway, I'm almost as tired tonight as I was last night, so I'm going to bed.  Goodnight. 

That Was Strange

Wanna guess what I did this morning?  Do ya?  Do ya?  

If you said I made six more jars of pepper jelly, give yourself a cookie because that's exactly what I did.  

In my defense, I had one more pouch of the liquid pectin that I needed to use up, and I wanted to make some sort of jelly with it.  I'd actually thought about trying to make some mint jelly, but I knew I wouldn't have enough fresh mint, so I went with peppers instead.  I have plenty of those.  Heck, even after this batch of pepper jelly, I've still got two gallon size Ziploc bags in the freezer. 

I had enough jelly to almost fill a seventh jar, 

which went directly into the refrigerator since it didn't have the correct headspace to do the water bath canning thing.   No matter.  I expect it will be eaten up before too much longer.  Heh, I've already eaten two jars of the stuff by myself.  With cream cheese, on crackers.  It's pretty good, if I do say so myself. 

I made the jelly pretty early, so once I was done with that, I had time to get outside and work in the garden spot before it got too hot.  I dragged out the ol' roto-tiller and managed to get this spot level enough that I put two of the beds into their final spots. 

I'll still need to level the ground some more before I get the one at the bottom of the photo settled into place for good, but that's going to have to wait until it cools off some.  

Before I came inside to huddle in the air conditioning, I started filling one of the beds with garden soil.  

The plan had been to take the soil out of the planter where I had been growing the spare basil and add it to this, but since that basil is coming back, I might have to pivot.   I'm thinking I transplant those two into the bed where I pulled up the tomatoes and that will free up this dirt to use in these round beds.  I want to fill this bed up and get my rosemary and lemon balm moved into it pretty soon so they'll have time to get over transplant shock and settle in before the first frost hits.  

I think they will do so much better away from the house where they have good air flow and room to grow.  

Speaking of growing, I've got bluebonnet seedlings coming up all over the place. 

I ought to have a gorgeous stand come spring. For now, my little mum I bought is opening up and brightening my front porch. 

That and the wreath are all the Fall decor I have up at the moment.  I'm hoping I can motivate myself this evening to go through the boxes I still have in the house and get them sorted.  Then I can start dragging out all the boxes with the Fall stuff in them. 

In the meantime, I'll just be sitting here knitting on a new sailor hat. 

Yarn:  Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn

Colorway:  Rainbow Galaxy

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5 mm

This is the last of the HL yarn I have, then I'll be back to knitting from stash for a bit.  Although, I do want to go up to Batesville -- just not this weekend.  

And finally, I had a bit of a strange response when I saw the thrift shop had posted this photo of the Micropets I'd donated. 

My first inclination was to say, "Those are MINE!  I want them back!"  But it passed pretty quickly when I remembered that they'd been in storage for over a decade and I'd barely thought of them in all that time.  It's better that they go to a collector or someone who will treasure them.  

For what it's worth, these are the three beanie babies I kept.  

I'm not sure why I kept the dog, but there he is.  

I guess that's it for today.  I think I'm going to go take a quick shower while it's halftime, then I'll start sorting those other boxes out.

Don't envy me my exciting life...

Almost Fall

It has almost felt like Fall these last couple of days. Oh, it was still hot, but after the front passed through, the breeze had that crisp feeling that felt like Fall. Almost, but not quite. 

One of the meteorologists I follow said this was a not as hot front.  

 Yesterday morning, I mostly finished cleaning out the shed, and I'm pretty pleased that I finally got it done. 

I still have all of these boxes to sort through, and I've got to nag Cody to come go through his stuff, but for the most part, I'm done. 

All of this junk is ready to be hauled off,  

and guess what!  I actually...yes, I called the clean up man!  Woo hoo!  

He was going to come this afternoon, but when it started storming, we decided to put it off until Monday.  He said he'd come anyway, but there is no need for him to work out in the rain and muck and mud.  Monday will be sunny and drier.  Once that's done, it will be one more thing I can mark off my list.  

I wanted to show you this one thing I found in a box out there. 

Someone -- I can't even remember who-- gave this to me for Christmas years and years ago, long before 2001.  After the attacks, I put it away and never even opened it.  It is now up in the closet with the other puzzles, still unopened.   They're saying we will have a particularly harsh winter due to the Super El Nino, so maybe I'll work it if we get snowed in.  Or more likely, iced in.  I'm OK with that as long as the power doesn't go out.  

Even that won't be so bad, because I have a generator now.  That means I really need to get an electrician out to check that breaker, just in case I need it.  

This morning was our town's annual Downtown Jubilee, and I went as is my custom, but I didn't take a whole lot of photos this time.  I mean, they would look just the same as the photos I took last year, and the year before and the year before.  However, when I saw this old Beetle Bug, though I couldn't resist.  I haven't seen one in ages.  

I can usually pick up a few Christmas gifts from the vendors up there, but this time, nothing appealed.  There was one booth that had a whole bunch of polished rocks and gemstones, which Brennan loves, but those folks were a little too proud of their wares for my wallet.  A tiny little quarter sized stone for $15?  No thanks.  

I also found a man selling homemade apple butter, but he was very proud of that butter, too.  He gave me a sample, and it was delicious, but he wanted $15 for a pint sized jar.  I didn't want to pay that much for something Cody and Bren would likely end up throwing away anyway. 

The only thing I bought was this hot sauce for Cody. 

I thought it would be kind of a unique taste for him to try.  They had plain habanero sauce, too, but I didn't get it.  Now I kind of wish I had.  Cody is so hard to buy for, but I also keep thinking about how many of the gifts I got them ended up in the garbage or the donation box.  Oh my gosh, I don't even want to talk about their refrigerator...

How about the size of that flag?  

And the girl who sang the National Anthem did such a good job.  A little too much styling for my taste, but her voice was so strong and pitch perfect.  All in all, it was a nice little outing, even though I didn't stay long.  I made it home in time to watch all the football games -- and yes, I had the multi screen thing going at one point.  I'm trying to hurry up and get this post finished, because I'm going to need all four screens this evening.  Yes,  Navy, Texas, LSU, and Ole Miss all play at the same time. 

It ought to make for some good knitting time.  Speaking of, I finished this hat yesterday.  

Yarn:  Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn

Colorway:  Day Dreamery

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5 mm

In gardening news, I was laying in bed Thursday night and remembered that I had forgotten a very important part to my trash can composter -- the air holes.  I got out of bed and ...no, I didn't go outside and drill air holes at 11:00 PM!  However, I did put my drill by the back door so I'd remember to do it in the morning, and bright and early Friday, that's just what I did. 

I still need to add some more browns to get the balance right, but it ought to turn out some nice compost by spring.  

The next thing I did was to pull up the last of the pepper plants and cover that bed with some landscape fabric to absorb the heat. 

Then I covered that with a sheet of Visqueen to contain that heat so that the fungus or virus or whatever infected that bed will be baked to death in the sun. 

The downside to that is this will also kill or drive out the earthworms and beneficial insects and microbes, leaving me a dead, sterile bed.  Come spring, a good layer of compost will revive it, I hope.  

And finally, I have baby bluebonnets!  

I ought to have a nice stand of them by spring time. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got football to watch and knitting to knit!  

Laters. 

I'm Free!

I'm free!  I'm free!  At least until September 14, that is.  The rest of the plant will be free as of 2:00 PM today, but thanks to judicious scheduling of my vacation time, I have today off, too.  And as usual, at least one of my coworkers said, "You're so lucky to have these three day weekends!"  And also as usual, I replied, "It's not luck.  I saved my vacation days, and you too can save your vacation days to have three day weekends."  

"Oh, I don't want to do that!" this particular coworker replied.  

By the way, they already started re-arranging stuff at work, and we can't find anything.  "I feel like when they re-arrange Walmart!"  I told my coworker.  They're still determined to put the sub brazers back on the lines, though.  I think they have meetings up front to decide on the absolute dumbest way to do things.  Seriously, every time they have these big announcements telling us they're going to change stuff and it's going to be so much better, all that ends up happening is that my job becomes much harder.  

And they can't figure out why their turnover rate is so high....

Enough of that.  I don't have to think about work for a while, so let's move on to something more pleasant, like my garden.  

It's so much nicer to be able to get up and work outside in the cool of the morning, even though the humidity still makes it miserable.  It has been so hot and dry here lately that I gave all the beds a real good watering.  I probably overwatered some of the beds, but they'll dry out quickly enough. 

While that was going on, I built up the tomato cages on my second batch of plants.  

This will probably be as high as I need to make them, though I can add another tier to the cages if I have to.  All of my plants are struggling in this heat, so much so, I'm considering going ahead and pulling these old tomatoes out and composting them. 

Especially this one.  It's got some sort of fungus or mold growing right at the base.  

I don't know what it is, but I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be there.  I've sprayed it with Neem oil, but it keeps coming back.  

By the way, I was watching a video by The Millennial Gardener about making a hot compost bin out of a black plastic garbage can, and I think I'm going to do one for myself.  What with that, and the composting bag I have, I can make myself a two bay hot compost system, then when the bag finally tears up for good, I'll replace it with another garbage can.   

There isn't much else going on in the garden right now.  It's just too hot.  I gave my lemon balm a good haircut, but didn't save any to dry.  

I've already got so much of it, I didn't feel like I needed any more.  I've been thinking about moving my lemon balm away from the house, so it will have more room to grow.  I'd never expected it to get so big, because it had always stayed small when it was in the planter. 

I may put my cayenne peppers into those beds alongside the house, because they are doing very well there -- even better than the ones in the 4' x 4' bed.  In fact, I'm still getting a good harvest from them.

I might try to overwinter these plants -- the ones in the beds beside the house -- and let the others go to that great compost bin in the sky.  

I've been thinking about planting a fall garden, but don't really know what to plant.  The extension office posted this on their Facebook page earlier this week.  

The things I like most on that list are the onions, but I've already got so many in the freezer, I'm not going to plant any this year.  Garlic isn't on the list yet, but I expect it'll come later.  Even so, I have a bunch of it in the freezer, too.  I like baby spinach, but I don't think I could eat it fast enough to make it worth planting.  I don't know...with it just being me by myself, it's hard to plant for just one.  I'm seriously thinking about making another batch or two of pepper jelly, because I still have so many banana peppers in the freezer.  At least I can give the jelly as gifts.  Heh, my sister has already laid claim to a jar.  

Speaking of my sister, she finally got the headstone for our mother installed.  She sent me these photos this morning. 

She told me not to worry about the weeds, because they'll all be covered with snow soon.  It's already getting down into the low 40s up there.  They plan on doing something in the spring, when the snow melts.  I'm sure she'll send me photos when they are done. 

But I digress...

The extension also posted this list, but pretty much all I'm going to do on this is to put down some Weed 'n Feed in my front yard.  

I bought some last week, and I'm probably going to mow the front and side yards sometime this weekend, then put down my fire ant treatment first.  Then, in a week or two, I'll put down the Weed 'n Feed.  

OK, OK, I know I'm boring you with all of my garden talk, so I'll just say that the last thing I did before retreating into the air conditioning was to plant a couple of my packets of Bluebonnet seeds.  I've got several plants coming up from the ones I planted last year -- either the seeds still in the ground or from the ones cast by the plants that grew.  

Still, I put a few seeds in the bare spots, just to fill in some.  I've got three packets left in the freezer, and I'm thinking about making that bed wider.    It's only about 10" wide right now, and I have a couple more pieces of that edging, so I can extend it a bit.  I'm definitely going to wait until it's cooler to do that.  

Unless I can fit it in early one morning this week.  I've got so much on my to do list, but unlike my friend Marcy, I am not good at multitasking.  My main project for the week is to finish cleaning out that shed so I can call the clean-up man to come haul my junk off.  But I also kind of want to call a handyman and electrician.  However, I don't feel I can make those calls until I've got the first project done.  I mean, what if they all show up at once?  Then I'd be wayyyy overwhelmed. 

Speaking of my friend, I channeled her a bit this morning.  Not on the multitasking, but with the coffee creamer. 

Since she doesn't like pumpkin spice, she associates Hazelnut with Fall.  And yes, I did think of you when I was buying it in the store.  

I know you all know I love my pumpkin spice, but I think this is taking things just a bit too far. 

That fresh pine, on the other hand, kind of appeals.  I think that's because we associate pine scent with cleaning because of certain products that have been around far longer than we have.   I might get some of it next time I go into the Mart of Wal. 

And finally, I'm ready for some cooler weather!  

 I'm getting mighty tired of these 100° + heat indexes!  Bring on the sweater weather!

Winter Came Back

"It looks like winter came back!"  said the security guard as I walked into the plant this morning. 

"I know, right?" I replied.  "I had to go back inside my house to get my hat."  And I needed it, too.  It was a chilly 43° when I got up this morning, and that hat felt good on my head.   It didn't last long, though.  It was a balmy 75° when I got home from work, and that was most likely the last cold snap we will have this year.  

The first thing I did when I got home was to run out and pull the Walmart sacks off of my little tomato seedlings so they can get some sun.

Full sun, I mean.  Walmart sacks are pretty translucent, so they were getting decent light even covered up.  They all seem to be doing well, except for that one little cup that nothing has germinated in.  I'm hoping now that it's pretty much done with being cold, something will come up pretty soon.  If it hasn't grown anything by the time the others are big enough to plant, I'll just buy one.  Someone somewhere will probably still have some 'maters.  Maybe not Roma, but someone will have something. 

Once it had cooled off just a bit, I gave everything a good watering. 

Including the zinnias, which are really taking off.   

They say the best time to water is between 5:00 AM and 8:00 AM, but that's just not going to happen.  Maybe sometime in the future, I can set up a drip system on a timer, but for now, they get watered when I get home in the evenings. 

According to AdTube -- which is what I'm going to start calling YouTube because of all the ads you have to sit through -- I'm pretty much doing everything wrong anyway.  My beds aren't deep enough...I bought wooden ones...I filled them wrong...Oh, well.  It's a learning process.  

In other news, I was getting ready for work this morning in my kitchen when I heard something that sounded like rapid gunfire coming from the direction of town.  "Huh,"  I thought.  "The gangbangers are up late today"  Well, late for them, early for everyone else.  

It's kinda sad that this is where my mind went first, but this is the world we live in.  

Sometime later, I heard a car door close and someone driving away, and I thought, "What's going on?"  It was when I left for work that I found out exactly what had been going on.  It would seem a branch fell out of an oak tree -- which was the gunfire sound I heard-- and was blocking the road.  The car door was someone stopping to move it out of the way, because when I walked outside, it was in my front yard.  

After I got home, I grabbed it and dragged it to my back yard where it will be cut up to use for firewood.  The leaves will go into my newly re-started compost pile, and hey, it's free wood.  We don't turn down free.  And I'm hoping the cat will use the compost pile instead of my garden beds as her litterbox.  Getting the mulch down ought to help steer her in that direction...I'm planning on using cardboard for the tomato and pepper beds.  I have plenty because I've been saving boxes for like six months now.  

I don't know what I'm going to do in the zinnia bed.  I'm thinking wood chip or bark mulch, but I'm not sure if that will be enough to discourage the cat from digging.  Cardboard would be better, but not very pretty in a fairy garden bed.  Maybe I'll put down cardboard and put wood chips over it. 

Now for a bittersweet moment, it looks like bluebonnet season is about over.  But my plants are absolutely loaded with nice, fat seed pods. 

I'm hopeful that I'll get a stand going...wish me luck. 

In the midst of all of that gardening, there has also been knitting.  I finished the most recent sailor hat, but have not yet cast on a new one. 

Yarn:  Red Heart Supersaver Jumbo Stripes

Colorway:  Neon Stripe

Pattern:  Basic beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5 mm

On the bright side, I finally got all the tags attached to the hats I'm going to send off to the Seaman's Church Institute.  I still need to seal it up and go to my favorite place in the whole wide world -- the post office.   There really isn't any rush...but I do need to get them send.  Twenty nine hats -- for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.  

And finally, Salena, I found a t-shirt for you!  

 Perfect, huh?  

In The Deep End

I decided to go ahead and jump into the deep end...or off the deep end, one.  I guess we'll find out here in a few days. 

And what exactly did I do?  I moved all four of my tomato cups out into the outdoor bed, even though some of them haven't shown any signs of life yet. 

I figure it will be better for them in the long run not to have to move them around so much, and since we're pretty much past the danger of frost, I figured it would be the right thing to do.  By the way, those aren't going to be their permanent locations.  I just kind of stuck them approximately where they'll go to see how well spaced they would be.  It looks like they'll have plenty of room, plus room for the companion plants.  So, that's good. 

I did notice two more seedlings have come up -- in a different cup.  

They sprouted while I was at work today, so I hope I didn't mess them up by putting them out into the sun right away.  Since one of them hasn't even uncurled yet, I think at least that one will be OK.  

You know what else I think will be OK?  My bluebonnets! 

Just look at all of the seed pods they're producing!  

I'm going to go ahead and let these fall and re-seed the bed naturally, because I've got five packets of seeds in the freezer that I bought this year.   I'll scatter them in September, but I hope some of these seeds also take and I can get a stand going.  I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but I'm pretty hyped for this.  

You know what else I'm hyped for?  My new water bowl! 

It arrived today, and when I took it out to the fence, I noticed the old one was suddenly holding water again, after leaking for a week.  Go figure.  

No matter, I emptied it and put it somewhere out of the way and filled the new one up.  It's pretty good size -- holds 6.5 gallons, and is lower to the ground so it will be easier for rabbits and squirrels to access.   That'll be good for them because we are already in drought conditions, the entire state. 

My county is in severe to extreme drought, with no rain in sight.  Well, not much rain at least.  

Well, I guess I'd better get off of here.  I still need to practice my piano and read a couple of chapters in my book before I go to bed.  By the way, I've been reading In The Heart Of The Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick.  It's much more readable than In The Hurricane's Eye. 

So, the whale rammed the ship and it sank, and the men have been in lifeboats for...umpteen days now.  They're floating along, starving and I'm wondering why they're not even trying to fish.  I sure would be.  

And that reminded me that I probably ought to get some fishing gear to put into my bug out bag.  Then I said to myself, "You're too old to be bugging out anyway."  But I think I'll still get some fishing gear. 

Just in case...

So That Happened

After all my ranting and raving the last two days, guess what happened at work today.  Go on, guess!  

OK, I'll tell you.  I got an order this morning that takes four adapter tubes.  When I started setting up on that order, I discovered that three of the four tubes were bent wrong.  Not just slightly out of specs, either.  They were way wrong.  As in, not even close. 

Did you catch that?  On a single order, 75% of the parts I received from tubing were wrong.  Wrong to the point that they were unusable. THAT is why it's so frustrating and stressful to work there. 

I went over to the computer to pull up a print, just to make sure I wasn't crazy before I went over to tubing and started clowning, only I couldn't get the print to pull up.  Funny thing, instead of just saying "File not found" or something along those lines, our program gives you a whole paragraph telling you what could be said in three little words.  I don't rightly know what it says.  I've never bothered to read it. 

I put the number in a few times to make sure I hadn't fat fingered something, and when it still didn't come up, I took my pick list over to Group Leader Shark, and told her what I'd done and that when I entered the number, it just said those words.  She got on to her computer and tried to pull a print, but it did the same thing.  Finally, she said, "Just give them to me, and I'll take them to tubing.  I'm going over there anyway."  

Fortunately, it was only an 8 piece order this time, so it didn't take long to get the parts re-cut, but still...every single day at the morning meeting Group Leader Shark says, "Do your first and last piece inspection," but for some reason, the ones who do the adapter tubes never seem to think she's talking to them.  I can understand making a mistake every now and again.  We are human beings, after all.  But this is every single order, every single day.  Something is always going to be wrong with something. 

On a similar note, Demi-god met me as soon as I got into the department this morning and said, "My daddy got mad as **** yesterday."    After The Warden left, some of the supervisors had stopped wearing their uniforms -- including Demi-god's dad.  Yesterday, one of the other supervisors tattled on them, so they had a big meeting with New Boss, and he told them they had to start wearing them again.  New Boss told them he wanted them to look professional.  

I'm going to say what I said the first time someone made them start wearing khakis instead of jeans.  "It's a factory.  How professional do you expect them to look?"

Oh, and I'd briefly thought about giving New Boss a blog nickname.  My cousin used to say, "So and so has all the personality of a piece of cardboard."  I was going to call New Boss "Cardboard Boss" but I didn't want anyone to think he was the new supreme leader of Iran or anything like that.  

IYKYK

In other news, I hadn't planned on going to the store today.  Friday before a major holiday and all, I figured it'd be a mad house.  I was going to wait until Monday to go, since I have a dentist appointment that afternoon and would be in town anyway, but then, I got to thinking, "Even though it's just me, I still deserve to have a nice dinner for Easter," so I went.  And I was right.  It was a madhouse.   

I'd planned on getting a ham -- briefly contemplating the irony of celebrating the resurrection of a Jewish man by eating ham, but that same man said it's not what goes in to the body that makes you unclean, it's what comes out of your heart.  By that, he meant that all foods are clean.  (Mark 7:19)

And every Cajun on the face of the earth said, "Whew!"  

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

In the end, I didn't get a ham.  The cheapest one I found was $15, and I just didn't want to pay that, so I got a rotisserie chicken instead, and some macaroni salad to go with it.  I also splurged and got some candy, since my blood sugar has been pretty good here lately.   

Naturally, while I was there, I had to go into the garden center.  I'd intended to pick up some Roma tomato plants, but bought seeds instead.  

I'm not sure why.  I might go back Monday and get some plants already started.  Or I might not.  I might go ahead and start these seeds.  I'll decide later.  

I also bought six sweet banana pepper plants.  

I've decided to go ahead and harden them slowly, as if I'd had them inside all along, because I don't know how much direct sunlight they were getting on that shelf in Walmart.  

Speaking of, I noticed a few of my basil leaves have what appears to be sunburned spots, but the new leaves will probably be fine since they'll be used to full sun from the very beginning. 

I'm probably going to up-pot some of the bigger ones this weekend before the storms get here.   By the way, chance of tornadoes is low with this one, but we can still have damaging winds and hopefully some rain.  Rain which we desperately need...

Despite the lack of rain, my newest baby bluebonnet is getting bigger by the day. 

And look what I found on the others! 

Do you know what those are?  Seed pods!  I might just get me a stand going after all.  

In the meantime,  the ones I've got are looking pretty good. 

I think this will be the last of the daffodils, though. 

They kind of surprised me.  I had thought the daffs were done for the year. 

And finally, while I was in the Garden Center, three big Chinooks flew over.  I was able to get a shot of two of them. 

The really cool thing is, after I got home, they flew over the house, too!  I used to see this kind of thing all the time when I lived closer to the airport, but not so much since I moved into this house.  I can often hear them, but usually can't see them due to the trees and such like. 

Maybe next time, it'll be Apaches.

Hey, a girl can dream.  Right?