Continuing Adventures

Yesterday my neighbor (the ninety year old one) invited me to go along to the salon with her and meet her stylist, because I hadn't gotten my hair cut since we moved here in Dec. because I missed my old stylist. That was very nice and now my hair has a shape to it again, and isn't just a wavy mass. Well, it's still a wavy mass, but it resembles a style again. And I got my eyebrows waxed too. So much better than shaping them myself with the tweezers! (I usually just give up on that.)

Anyway, after our nice time getting our hair done, she was backing out of the parking lot and accidentally drove off the driveway. We ended up with one back tire in the air and the opposite front tire hanging into the ditch with the frame sitting on the ground of the driveway. Luckily, she has triple A and I called for her and the tow truck guy was super nice.

The front tire got cut by a post that was holding up the driveway edging, so he put the spare on for us, and I drove us to the rest of her errands, to the post office and to the market. After we finished the post office and the grocery shopping, I drove her home and helped her put her groceries away. She shared some of the delicious cherries that she'd bought, and I headed home. Five and a half hours after I'd left in the first place.

I don't mind helping, and I'm happy to spend time and visit with her, but I have to admit, I wish I had more energy. I was worn out when we got home yesterday, and I'm still feeling so tired this morning. I have a lot of items on my to do list, including figuring out where to take her car to have her tire replaced for her. Hanging out with ninety year old's is definately too much excitement for me, lol.

Now, I'm not fishing for any comments about my neighbors taking advantage of me or whatever. They're nice people and they're more than willing to do the same and more for us when they're home. Plus, I believe that doing your best to help people in need (even to the point of suffering yourself, not that that is the case here by any means) is one of the main aspects of what Jesus taught us. I suppose I'm just venting a bit because I'm super sleepy. But my plan is to listen to today's Bible readings while I make frosting for the cupcakes I made yesterday, get outside and hoe in the garden before the sun gets too hot, and just work my way down the rest of my to-do items. I'll post later to update on what I get finished and what will be waiting till tomorrow.

Here's the list, in case anyone's curious:
1. Print out pictures of the chicken coop and garden to send to Ma and Dad
2. Pack up a box of things that have to get sent to Ma and Dad
3. Hoe the Cucumber Rows
4. Mow for 1 hour
5. Sew the last two dish towel aprons promised to Ma in order to include in the box
6. Hoe around the peppers
7. Print Coupons to go to CVS
8. Call the Craigslist guy selling straw bales and set up a pick up time to buy some
9. Water the Neighbors' Plants
10. Fill the Food containers for the Neighbors' garage cats
11. Get Photos on a disc to take to CVS to make photo books (There's a super good deal on these this week. Check out Money Saving Mom for more info on that.)
12. Make frosting and frost the cupcakes
13. Finish my t-shirt design I'm working on
14. Put out the trash to the road
15. Sweep up the chicken feed that spilled in the garage
16. Call the neighbor in Germany about where to take the car to get the tire replaced
17. Go to CVS, pick up straw, take in neighbor's car, drop off my payment for the hairdresser (she couldn't take Visa! I'm going all cash, as soon as I can organize it with Ben), mail package for Ma and Dad

Now, some of these things are obviously more important to finish than others and I'm planning to prioritize as I go along, but ideally, I'd like to get as much of this done as possible today. There's also my regular routines for morning and afternoon, such as the animal chores, and cleaning the kitchen, and making the bed, but those are simple enough to do. My biggest challenge won't be getting any of these things finished, it will be taking charge of my emotions and doing them cheerfully. But that is probably the biggest challenge of most people's day, whether they choose to accept it or not. :)

Thank God I'm a Country Bep(py)

Nothing too exciting today. Here are some pictures I took last night. My plans for the day are to mow and hoe for about three or four hours, shower and wash my hair and shave my legs (You know, really pamper myself with basic hygiene, lol), go over and watch Days of Our Lives with the neighbor, head back over here and knit or sew while watching Wipeout on ABC.com. This, to me, seems like a emminently satisfying day, and the only thing that could improve it would be to add in some baking. So I might make something yummy tonight too!

This picture illustrates why I don't think I'll be too bothered when the time comes to slaughter the chickens (in a few years after they quit laying). I thought at first that I would make friends with them and I wouldn't be able to handle cooking and eating them, but now that I've got them and I still can't really tell them apart, and I realize that it would be very hard to make friends with this face, I think it won't be impossible for me to handle. Don't get me wrong, I won't relish it, but I don't think I'll be an emotional wreck either.
That said, I do really enjoy watching the chickens while they peck and scratch. They're calming and there's just something peaceful about sitting and watching them do their thing. I think that now that I have chickens, I'll always want to have a few around.
They love the clover, so I've been moving the coop to a new patch of clover for them every day. And at noon or one, I rinse and refill their waterer and pick some of the very tall clover from our back meadow to give to them, and they love to scratch through it and eat the leaves. Fortunely our yard is more like a clover field than a lawn, so there's more than plenty of fresh clover for them.
We put up a net for these two rows of pole beans to climb. We did this on Saturday and the part in the foreground is a store bought net, and the back part of the row is lots of stakes with about four lines of garden twine run along them and tied at every stake. I really hope that this doesn't all come tumbling down once it's covered in vines and leaves and beans.
But for now, I'm just so excited by seeing the little tendrils spiral up the supports. Just like a bean stalk should.

In Times of Stress

My neighbors have been away for a little while this summer, and while they're gone, I've been looking in on their house and taking care of the pool and their cats. Also her mother lives there and didn't go away with them, so I've been visiting with her, and helping her out with things, since she's ninety and has a hard time getting around.

Well, yesterday we went to take her trash out to the road for her, and check the pool and everything, and when we got there, we found her sitting on the ground in her front garden. She had tripped and fallen and couldn't get up. And she'd been there all day, for 10 hours!

I felt so bad that I hadn't come by earlier. We got her up (nothing broken, thank God!) and helped her in and made her drink lots of water and Ben made her a sandwich. After she'd eaten, we visited a little while she had more water and then I helped her get cleaned up and into her nightgown. She seemed fine while we were talking, and she was aware and able to do things on her own pretty well. But all the same, I've been so worried all night that I should have taken her to the hospital or that she's hurt or sick in a way we couldn't tell.

I haven't gone by to see her yet this morning because I don't want to bother her too early, since she must be very tired. But I'm going to go as soon as I think she might be up, at 8 or 9, and made sure she's still doing well. And we made plans to watch Days of Our Lives this afternoon, so I'll get the chance to check on her then.

I guess the point of this post is two-fold. One, I'd like to sincerely ask for the prayers of those of you who would like to pray regarding my anxiety and my ability to deal with helping others. Also in thanksgiving that it wasn't much worse and for her continued health.

Secondly, I'd like to invite you all to share your thoughts with me about a few things. This situation has been making wish that I had a "real" grownup to help me. But I'm 28 years old! I am a grown up. So what makes a "real" grown up? And does anyone ever feel like they are one?

Also, I'm grateful for the opportunity to help someone in need, and sometimes I even pray for God to show me what I can do to serve him (and helping this kind woman is definately an answer to that, I'm sure), but how do those who serve others deal with the fear and anxiety that being both responsible and unsure causes?

Updated to Say:
I just walked over to make sure she's doing well this morning, and she was outside watering her garden and said that she had slept very well. She also invited me to come and eat breakfast with her a little later, so I think she's fine now. I'll just be keeping an extra watchful eye on her and making sure that she takes the phone outside with her!

The Yarn Diet is Still On

You guys are terrible enablers. Seriously, you're supposed to tell me more yarn is a good thing and yarn diets are silly to begin with. Ugh, it's just my luck to make friends with people who are sensible. ;)

Okay, I've made my order for the $5 needle and paid the $3 in shipping, ignoring the perfect excuse to buy an extra $45 worth of yarn in order to avoid paying said shipping charge. I've tried to convice Ben that the yarn is good insullation for the house, and will cut down on heating bills, but it seems like you ladies would be as hard to convince as he is.

Anyway, I've finished the gauge swatch for the Wildfoote yarn, and I'll write down the needle size and the stitch and row gauge rigth on the wrapper, then unravel the swatch and re-wind the yarn this afternoon. After that, I'm planning to start knitting another swatch. I'll just start swatching the first thing that catches my fancy, but it'll probably be another sock yarn. I have way too many sock yarns.

I mowed some of the yard and tied up the wisteria this afternoon. Using a push mower is getting me into much better shape than I have been. Sad as it is to say, I haven't felt up to running for a long while, and the other day, I ran in from the back yard because there was a heavy storm and I had to put the chickens away, and I didn't even really get out of breath. That's, like, a miracle for me.

Anyway, I've been trying to stay right on top of the mowing, mainly because it is such good exercise, and to me, is actually enjoyable and not boring and excrutiating like "exercising" is. I also weeded the garden a bit. It really needs to be hoed, but it's still to wet to do it. I've got the hamburger gravy keeping warm in the crockpot and the potatoes are all peeled and ready to be cooked and mashed when dinner time comes.

I gave the chickens the potato peelings, because I'd heard and read that they love kitchen scraps, but so far they've turned their noses up at apple peels and cores, a too soft peach with a bad spot, peach and plum peelings, carrot scrapings and beet tops. I don't know why I keep trying, I've obviously got a set of very weird and picky hens. They love clover though, so every day around noon, I pick them a big bunch of clover from the back meadow and throw it into their yard when I change out the water for fresh.

I'm really leaning towards a nap right now, and I have to say, with everything I got finished so far today, I probably won't feel even slightly abashed when I show up to finish cooking dinner with pillow creases on my face. Not even slightly abashed.

Breakfast cookies and desperate justification

I've spent the morning baking. I made up a batch of Breakfast Cookies and that recipe makes a TON of cookies. I'd never tried them before, so this was a new thing, and I really like the taste of them. I might halve it next time, since I even used my muffin scoop and made very large cookies and still got more than three dozen.

I think they're pretty healthy, I used the natural kind of peanutbutter that just has peanuts and salt in the ingredient list, and whole wheat flour. I'd say the only ingredient I question too much healthwise would be the sugar, and it would be easy enough to reduce that and use honey or sucanat or evap. cane juice cyrstals instead. I think they'd be great to experiment with, adding cinnamon and chopped apple, or maybe pumpkin puree for some of the peanutbutter.

Anyway, we both give the recipe a thumbs up. I ate two at 8am and I'm not hungry again yet, which is more than I can say for most of my muffins. I think the oats with all that peanutbutter is a very filling combo.


I also start swatching for a pair of socks for myself. It's really time that I start using up my yarn and fabric stashes. I've been working on the fabric, with the white skirt I made two weeks ago, and the one that I cut pieces for yesterday, but haven't done much knitting. So I opened the yarn closet with the intent to just start swatching the first thing that caught my eye. I picked this light pink Wildfoote yarn that I bought at the pretty little yarn store in Beulah, MI last summer when we were there for the James Family Reunion. It was expensive as far as socks go, but not so bad when you figure in the entertainment value of knitting them and the fact that they're a souvenir of the trip and the party.

Anyway, this was one of my last yarn purchases before I went on my yarn diet. I realized last night that it's been almost a year since I've bought any yarn other than cotton to make dish cloths. (I allow myself to cheat and buy more dishcloth yarn because I go through it so fast. They're just so mindless, I really like that about knitting dishcloths.)

But now I have a quandry. I'd like to knit these socks two at a time toe up magic loop, particularly because it's very fine yarn, and they'll get done more quickly if I work on them like that. But, I would have to order the needle from KnitPicks in order to do that, because I don't have a long size one circular needle. But, if I'm making an order, doesn't it just make sense to order other things too so that I order $50 worth so as to get the free shipping and make the order more worth it? I need my enablers to tell me that I should definately order enough yarn to make myself a sweater this fall to wear through the winter. Because, of course that's the only sensible thing to do in order to work through my stash!

I may need a yarn intervention.

Let's Go Outside

I thought it was about time that I showed off my garden a bit, since it's been growing for just about a month now. And while I was outside, I took some pictures of the house and the land, because I realized I hadn't shared what the house looks like when it's not covered in snow. This wasn't really the best time of day for taking pictures, and you'll have to excuse the weeds in the garden. I swear I had it all clean and pretty, but then it rained and rained, and it's been too wet to get back out there, so they're growing like crazy.

Here is the view down our driveway across the street. The farmer who owns that field just planted soy beans a couple of weeks ago, and they're coming up pretty well. It's nice to see a green field now, rather than a scrubby one.

Here's the view to the northwest. I like the barn way out there, it makes me feel like I really live in the country now.

This is a wisteria that has been growing like crazy on the dog run fence. I have to train it to go along the fence rather than into the dog run, but I'm not sure how you do that. Just tie it to the slats?

Here is our garden. It's on the west end of the house and the buildings in the background are our neighbors to the back. They're the ones with horses. And way back there are other neighbors on a different street. Our property line is right along the line of poplar trees.

My mini pumpkin plants are doing really well. I hope they really come up mini pumpkins. I saved the seeds from one we bought last year, so I don't know for sure they'll come true.

Here is the corn patch. I checked and it was definately knee high last Friday.

The four hills are my pie pumpkins. Once again, I hope they come up the same as the pumpkin I saved them from. It was from the grocery store, so I don't know if they will. There's a row of radishes running down the center. They're just about big enough to eat now. The biggest ones are just right.
This picture is of the eight tomato plants in the tomato cages, but it turned out pretty badly. I'll have to try again sometime when the light is better.

This row is peas. I have no idea if we'll actually get any, since it's so hot now and they got a late start, but we figured it was worth a try.

Two rows of bush beans. They came up very poorly. I don't really know why, since I planted one row and Ben planted the other, and they aren't even the same kind of bean, but there you go.

But the pole beans came up really well. We have to put in tellis or net for them to climb this weekend, they're starting to get their tendrils.

Here are the squash hills. There's acorn in the front and buttercup in the back. The middle one, butternut, never came up at all. I might try again and see if we get any, because butternut is my favorite. There's okra growing in there as well, but it really blends in with the weeds.

Here are the two pickle rows. We planted Boston Pickler and Burpee Pickler. Don't ask me the difference, we were just using seeds that were gifts. But both kinds are doing really well, and I'm not really planning to keep them separate or anything when we pick and can them.

This picture was supposed to be of the seven different kinds of pepper plants, but once again, I'll have to get a better one later when the light is different.

This is the better one of my two carving pumpkin plants. There's okra in this bed as well. I think Ben's got 12 or 14 okra plants all together. He planted it randomly and I've stepped on, like, three of them, because if it's not in a row I tend to stomp it. Actually, with my big clown feet and complete lack of grace, I've even been known to stomp rows. But plants are resilient, right?

This the view of the house from the road.

And here are the front flower beds and the front porch.

This is the back deck. I planted some catnip in a little bed to the left of the steps yesterday.

I need your help

I'm looking for fabric with baseballs or a baseball theme for a special project to wear to the Stitch n Pitch game I'm going to in Detroit next month. If anyone has some that they could trade with me, that would be great. I have lots to offer in return, yarn, other fabric, knitted dishcloths, embroidered pillowcases? Let me know if you can help me out, and we'll work out a trade of some kind. Thanks everyone!

But Whenever Monday Comes

Our long weekend was a really good one. We relaxed a bit, and also got a ton of work around the house finished. We mowed all the lawn and finished up some things on the chicken coop. We caged the tomatoes and pulled some weeds. We also watched lots of movies and took a couple of naps.

I had big plans for today, but so far I've been very slow going. Ben did the chicken chores for me this morning before he left so I could sleep in, and I didn't get up till seven thirty. Then I just spent the last hour reading sewing blogs. I'm going to have to get moving, because it's supposed to rain this afternoon and there a few bits of lawn mowing I want to finish. I also have to put in the edging for some of my herb beds and plant the cat nip and chocolate mint I bought at the farmer's market on Saturday. After I finish those outside things, there's plenty in the house to keep me busy. I want to start another skirt like the one I made the week before last, and there's always plenty of cleaning to do.

But I have a quandry too! I got the red striped part of my patriotic wallhanging embroidery almost finished and then I realized that I'd done most of it with an odd color embroidery floss that I don't have anymore of and can't really match. I'm very frustrated with it, and I know the smart thing to do would be to take out all the embroidery in the wrong color and redo it in the right color, but I just can't face tearing out embroidery so soon after I've put it in. Give me a few months and I can usually handle it. So, I'm thinking leave it unfinished for now, and just put it away till I finish the rest of the holidays and come back to it to have it to hang for next year. But there's part of me that is so sequential, and I have a really hard time going on to the next one (summer) without finishing this one. Guess it's just the old Salgat OCD.

Well, I've been procrastinating long enough, so I'd better make myself get moving. I'm offering the reward of a movie and knitting if I get outside and finish that work before the rain. Yes, I'm totally bribing myself. Doesn't every good farmer do that?