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?

Accomplishment!

Yes, you read that right.  I actually accomplished something today.  And just what was it that I accomplished?  Well, I'll tell you. 

I finally, at long last, finished this book!

Yay me!  Next time I go into town, I'll put it back into the Little Free Library and see if they have something else I want to read, though I still haven't read the book my brother gave me for Christmas.  I might even take it in tomorrow, if I can get myself dressed and moving.  Then, once I've dropped the book off, I can run by Walmart and pick up some more bags of garden soil.

Which segues nicely into my next accomplishment.   Ever since I've lived in this house, I've collected up twigs and small limbs that fall, and over the years, I've built up quite the collection of them.  Even using them to start fires in my wood stove, I still had a lot.  So, what better use for them than to fill my new garden beds?  

The best part, after getting the majority of the twigs up, I found a nice, thick layer of compost underneath them!  Once I added that to my beds, it filled them up quite nicely.  

And there was enough to fill both beds about halfway up. 

I'm going to let it all settle a bit, and hopefully get rained on a few times, then start adding soil later on in the year.  I'm well aware that these probably won't be ready to be planted this spring, but they weren't really intended to be part of this year's planting anyway.  

Speaking of rain, we are nearly 5" below normal for this time of year.  It's so bad, we're under a burn ban and red flag warning.  In fact, there is a massive wildfire in the county just to the South of us, covering some 3000 acres.  I sat outside by my fire pit a bit, but didn't light a fire -- not even in my wood stove this morning.   It got down into the mid 40s last night, which would have made a fire feel good, but I didn't feel like fooling with one. 

But as I was saying,  I got this entire section of the old chicken coops cleaned out, ready to start re-filling with whatever I want to put into it. 

I don't yet know what that will be.  I do know it won't be chickens, though.  I might move my potting table here.  With this one being on the end, it will get more light than where I have the table now.  At least, I'll be able to see when I'm potting stuff.  

Moving right along, I'd brought all of my plants inside last night even though it wasn't supposed to frost, just in case.  As soon as the sun came up, I put everything back outside, including the zinnias.  

They do need thinning again, but I'm debating on whether to try to separate the seedlings instead of just snipping one off.  I've got some pots I can up pot them into, so I may try to do that.  Then again, in just two more weeks, I'll feel safe enough to plant them into their permanent homes, since it'll be past the danger of frost.  According to Grok, it's probably safe to plant now, but I think I'll wait anyway. 

I recently watched a YouTube video on pinching zinnias, which I'd never done in the past -- probably because I'd never started them from seeds before.  I think I'll pinch these when they get big enough.  The video says to wait until they have at least two, and preferably three, sets of true leaves before doing it.  As you can see, these have just started getting their second set, so it's too early to pinch these.  We have such a long growing season this far South, so I have plenty of time.  

I might go ahead and plant some of my bachelor's button seeds, and save some back, just in case.  Oh, and look at this!  As I was taking photos of my bluebonnets to force you to look at, 

look what I found!  It's a baby bluebonnet!  

It looks like some of the other seeds I'd planted might germinate after all.   I know it can take a few years and several freezing and thawing cycles sometimes.  

Now, if you'll excuse me, House Of David season 2 is up on Prime Video, and I think I'll go watch an episode or two.  

Laters...

I Remembered

I remembered yesterday. 

I remembered to go get the garden soil.  I just didn't feel like doing it, so I didn't.  I have been so tired lately, I didn't feel like doing anything, so I came on home and watched TV, and knit a bit on the next sailor hat.   I tried to sit outside for a little while, but the mosquitoes found me in next to no time.  I really need to dig out my citronella candle now that spring is here.  

Anyway, I went to bed last night at a little after 6:30, and though I didn't fall asleep until sometime around 8:00, it was so nice just laying there not doing anything.  

Even so, I felt much better this morning when I woke up, so right after work, I zipped on in to Walmart and picked up four bags of garden soil.  

I put two bags into each bed, and it got them just over halfway full.  

I'll put a couple more bags in each one before I plant, but to be honest, it's probably got enough dirt in it since I dug out the clay.  I did some figuring and I can put four tomato plants into the one bed.  Now, I just need to decide which kind of tomatoes.  I'm leaning towards Roma tomatoes, because I've read they make the best soup.  

Don't get me wrong, I love me a good 'mater sammich, but there's no way I could eat that many tomatoes before they all go bad, so I'm thinking I can make tomato soup and put it into the freezer for next winter.  Tomato basil soup mostly likely, since I'm going to have a garden full of basil, too. 

While I was out there, I decided my green onions were ready to harvest, 

well, past ready, really.  I cut them, then chopped them up and put them into the freezer for whatever I might need green onion for.  I'm thinking omelets for one.  Maybe I can toss some into that soup while I'm at it.

By the way, I pulled up my little celery plant. It really wasn't doing anything, and the leaves keep dying off.  Unlike my bluebonnets, which are more gorgeous than ever. 

In other news, I watched the first episode of that new show on FOX, The Faithful:  Women of The Bible.  It was pretty good.  This one was about Abram and Sarai, and it got to the part -- spoiler alert -- where Sarai sends her handmaid Hagar in to get pregnant by Abram, and I'm literally shouting at the TV, "Don't do it, Abraham!  You have no idea the absolute hell you are about to unleash on the world!"  But of course, he didn't listen...

Well, it's already past my bedtime, so I guess I'd better get off of here and go get ready for bed. 

Goodnight, all. 

Feeling It

All that work I did in the garden over the weekend...yeah, I'm feeling it today.   Even so, I'd thought about running in to Walmart after work and picking up a couple more bags of garden soil.  Alas, I was nearly home when I remembered, and wasn't about to turn around and go all the way into town.  Eh, I'll go tomorrow.

If I remember. 

Instead, I simply dumped the one bag I already had at home into one of the beds and called it a day. 

Even that took more energy than I thought I had, so now I'm inside watching TV, which is my plan for the rest of my all too brief evening.  

I know there's a bit conflict over making Daylight Saving Time permanent, and while I'm all for stopping the time change, I'd rather have standard time permanent, for two reasons.  One, it's natural time, and our bodies are more naturally in tune with it.  Secondly, I already feel like I have to go to bed in the middle of the day.  DST just makes that feeling worse.  

OK, now that that is out of the way, my little zinnias are really coming on.  Even the one cell that I planted a second set of seeds has one growing. 

You know what the best part of that photo is?  See those little things that look like worms?  Those are oak tassels.  Yes!  The oak trees are dropping their tassels!  The Great Pollening is almost over!  Woo Hoo!  

You know it wouldn't be a gorgeous spring day if I didn't bombard you with yet another photo of my bluebonnet bed.  

And finally, someone in one of the veterans groups I'm in posted this today, and it was too funny not to share. 

 Now, if you'll excuse me, I know this is short, but my arms feel like noodles, so I'm going to get off here and just chill until bed time. 

Laters.

What Is This?

What is this?  Any guesses?  No?  OK, I'll tell you.  

It's the empty spot where my compost pile used to be. 

And just where exactly is all the compost that used to be in that pile?  It's here, in these two beds.  

Yep, I got out after church and moved the rest of that pike into my raised beds.  I was a bit appalled at how much trash was in my compost, though.  Weird trash, too, like I found four art gum erasers in it.  Art gum erasers!  How on earth did those get there???  I also found a lens cap to my old DSLR camera, which I'm also not sure how it got into my compost.  The rest was stuff like weedeater string, old plant tags from the store, and stuff like that.  At least that part makes sense.  

In the end, I think I got it all sifted out.  Now my beds are ready to start adding the garden soil to them, 

but by the time I got done, I was too hot and tired to start doing that.  

Not only that, I think Snoop Dogg has moved into my neighborhood, because every time I step outside, I'm bowled over by the stench of that skunk weed.  When did marijuana become legal in Mississippi anyway?  I don't remember voting for that.  

Anyway, I got all of the compost moved, then came inside and just rested for the rest of this day of rest.  I watched a few episodes of The Great Pottery Throwdown, and what I love about that show is the judges.  Your pottery could completely fall apart and you present them a pile of rubble, and they're still going to find something positive to say about it and tell you, "Good job." 

And finally, I remembered why I stopped doing Eye Candy Friday.  It's because my DSLR crapped out, and I just wasn't getting the quality shots with my phone camera.  I'm tempted from time to time to buy a new DSLR, but can't quite bring myself to do it.  It's not a practical purchase, but think how good my little bluebonnet photos would look with a better camera...

 

Done! —ish

I might not be able to move tomorrow, but by golly I'm done -- ish.  

This morning, I finally put the last raised bed together and got it into place.  It went a bit easier this time since I had already done one and kinda knew what to do.  Then I got the old tape measure out and made sure everything was nice and symmetrical, and I think it looks really good the way I have it set up. 

  

That's all I'm going to do for this year, but when I get it all into place, the other half will look just like this half, only in mirror image.   

After a bit of a break I dug out all of the red clay and I'm telling ya, it went so much faster using the shovel.   Of course, if I had known how thick that clay layer was, I'd have done that the first time, too.  Nevertheless, they both are done now, and ready to be filled. 

By the way, those stakes are only there to mark where the corners should be, just in case I bump them while working around them.  I'll pull them out once I get the beds filled, which I started doing after another break -- I'm at the age where I need a lot of breaks.  

This is a trick I saw on several YouTube videos and gardening sites for cutting your costs when filling a lot of raised beds, to use compostable bulky stuff like twigs and limbs.  I filled the bottom of this one with storm debris, 

and the other with pine cones. 

Since I'm going to be re-planting these beds every year, I can do this, because this stuff will eventually compost down and, as it does so, I'll have to add more soil on top of it.  I'll have to top up my perennial beds, too, but not as much.  Fortunately, my state tax return has already hit my bank account: $13 whole dollars!  Woo Hoo!  I'm rich!

Still, that's enough to buy three bags of garden soil.  I just have to convince myself to go to the store and get it.  It won't happen today, that's for sure.  Before I do that, I'm going to put in as much as I can of the compost pile that I've been saving for years.  In fact, after yet another break, I already started doing that.  I got a couple of wheel barrows full transferred, then decided I ought to knock off for a while, because I'm not as young as I used to be and I'm already feeling it. 

I was going to mow the front yard, but I'm not sure I'm going to get around to that.  Eh, I might here a bit later when it's cooled off some.  In the meantime, I got my hummingbird feeders filled and put out. 

And I decided that my little zinnias needed to be thinned. 

Even though the plan was to put three seeds into each cell, apparently, I spilled some and a couple of them had six or seven seedlings in them.  A few moments with my scissors and they're down to two plants in each -- or one if only one seed had germinated. 

In a couple more weeks, I'll thin them down to the strongest seedling in each cell.  Two weeks after that, we should be past the danger of frost, so into their permanent home they'll go.  

And what would a blog post be if I didn't show you my bluebonnets.  

I can't tell you how tickled I am that they've done so well this year. You know what?  I think I'm going to go mow that front yard anyway.  Can't have weeds blocking the 'bonnets, can we?