The weekend is here

The weekend is here and it looks like it will be crazy! We are hosting a wine tasting party for a few friends and we have some more canning to do, as well as baking and laundry and general cleaning and yard chores.

I have let all the chores get ahead of me yet again. Sigh. I know I am not the only one who doesn't have the time and energy to clean, but even though I mean well, I still have trouble getting to it. So, tonight and tomorrow I will clean the rest of the house, do a couple loads of laundry, grocery shop, and bake bread for the party and for next week (unless we eat it all, and then I will have to bake more on Sunday).

The wine tasting tomorrow night should be a lot of fun after all that work. We have about 8 people, 6 bottles of wine, and a really nice pasta dinner. Sounds like a good time, right? :)

On Sunday we have to get some work done outside (if it doesn't rain too much). A friend's neighbor sent me a whole mess of plants and bulbs and tubers that she divided this fall and we need to sort through them, figure out what they all are (hopefully) and get them in the ground. We also need to get a space cleared to store the dahlias, since they will be ready to dig up within a couple of weeks. A good chunk of the garden beds will also be ready to clean out soon, since they are about done producing, now that the weather is cooling off.

On a side not, I have to find something to do with 4 cabbages. They haven't been picked yet, since I am not sure what to do with them, but they will split before too long and I am worried. I can make a couple of dinners with one or two, but there are still two more to use up. I am thinking sauerkraut, but I have never made it before and need advice. If anyone knows a good method, it would be super if you could share.

The last chore I can think of is to put my herb garden to bed. We laid out a pretty design this summer, but it was getting late in the season, so the herbs I planted never really took off until a couple of weeks ago. Some are doing really well and I was thinking to move them into a large planter I have and over-winter them in my dining room. Then I could have fresh herbs for as long as they last. Next year, hopefully I can get it planted earlier and hopefully the neighbors cats won't find it so appealing and I will have a good enough crop to be able to freeze or dry a bunch to use the rest of the year.

Day Two

I made it one of my goals on Spark People to write in a journal once a day. This may prove difficult to keep up, but I thought it might be helpful. Accountability is a good thing.

Today was pretty good, I made most of the goals set for eating and I did all the exercises I was assigned. The program set me up to do 30 minutes of cardio and a full body weight training routine three days a week. Hopefully I will be able to do it more often as I get going, at least the cardio. I am riding my stationary bike for now, but I will be able to do more outside things like yard work and walking as it warms up. I don't know if walking counts, but maybe I can even get in shape to go jogging. Cross your fingers.

I am ready for spring. It is sort of here, but the weather keeps going back and forth between grey and sunny. This weekend we are taking out the old cherry tree in the backyard and hopefully we can buy a new lawnmower. Ours in kinda toast, but since we got it for free two years ago, I think it's OK. I still feel a little bad about the cherry, since it is a great tree, but it doesn't fit where it is and it is splitting and if it loses a limb, that limb will fall into my bedroom. Not a pleasant thought.Once the tree is out we will have more space for the vegetable garden. I want to put in some vine crops this year and hopefully we can work them into that area.

For now I am going to go relax. I think I will be a bit stiff tomorrow. It has been a while since I have worked with weights. Night.

Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

Mine is doing nicely, thank you. :)

My bulbs are coming in now and I think that some of them worked very hard at multiplying last summer.
We still have 15, count 'em, 15 bell peppers.
And 16, I know it's crazy, tomato plants. The are all doing very well, although the tomatoes are ready to be move up a pot size. They are getting rather tall and want to lay down.

I am super pleased though, since there is at least one plant alive in each peat pot. Which is much better than we did last year. I think we might be getting the hang of it. Soon it will be time to plant the rest of the early seeds. Hopefully this weekend we will have time and can get some yard cleanup done. The flowers need to be weeded and the lawn mowed, although I need a new mower for that, since ours gave up the ghost last year. The only problem with that plan is that it has been cool and windy and grey for the last few days and it is not nice to work outside when it is not nice. Oh well. Later!

A picture post

These are the first of the seeds we planted for our garden this year. 16, count 'em, 16 tomato plants, in 7 different varieties (yes, we are nuts, no, I am not quite sure there will be enough tomatoes for canning). The round ones are green bell peppers. :)

This is my shamrock plant, which I am showing off because it is happy enough to bloom. Yay!

Tiny green points in my bulb garden. These are snow iris.

Flash on weighing day. He is 5 months old now and I think he is getting bigger, but I need to start measuring him more carefully to be sure :)

I baked an apple pie with some of the apples that I froze last fall. Shane thought it looked pretty and told me to take a picture of it. It tasted pretty good, too.

We visited my parents at Christmas and drove over to the coast one day. The waves were coming in and the sun was shining through the clouds. I loved this picture.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Well, it works for Star Wars anyway, for me...whatever.
Anywho, I have been gone for so long that I am not sure if any of you are still bothering to check on me...other that Chantel who is so good about reminding me of how lazy I am. I have been busy and lazy and all those other good things that come with life.
Shane and I are well, and Flash is doing great. He is growing and eating and loving his box. We have planted a lot more grass and lettuce and he just wanders around and munches away. We also have a new roommate, my friend Autumn, who will be staying with us for a few months. I am really enjoying having her around. We have been best friends since kindergarten and it is great to be able to spend more time together.
She also teaches a yoga class at a local dance studio that I have been attending for the last couple of weeks. It is great, but I am not in good shape and not very flexible, so it is quite a workout for me. So, HA to all those people who say that yoga is not exercise. HA, I say.
I have been spending my winter working on my crafts and relaxing. I am working on getting better at knitting and am still doing ATC's when I have to time and creative energy. I also like to kick back after work and just relax. Work is starting to get really busy right now, which is nicer than having nothing to do, but still tiring.
We are going to be starting our seeds for the vegetable garden soon. I bought a bunch of tomato seeds, as well as some beets and peppers, from this great website that sells heirloom seeds and it turned out that they were out of one of the varieties we wanted, so they sent us two substitutes, plus a whole mess of other samples, including lettuce, more beets, radishes, zucchini and another tomato. I think we are planting 7 or 8 types of tomatoes. Yes, we are crazy. No, they will definately not go to waste. We love to can, as you may have noticed, and it would be great not to have to buy tomatoes. In addition, I got a food dehydrator for Christmas, so there will be tons of drying experiments. Yay! (Bethany, I look to you for good ideas and advice)
Other than that, life is just normal. We are going to the (really late) holiday party for Shane's work this weekend, as well as a friend's baby's 1st birthday party. Another friend is having a Pink Papaya party next weekend and there are several of my friends going to that, so it should be entertaining. As the weather warms, we will be getting the garden and yard tidied and ready for the season.
Overall, life is normal and good. Yay!

Cherries

I almost forgot to tell you about the cherry harvest.

We ended up pitting and freezing 10 1-gallon bags of cherries and sending about 45 pounds home with my father-in-law to make cherry wine from. YUM!!!

Also, we took a bunch to friends and work.

There were still some left on the tree, but they were getting bad, so we decided to let the birds finish them off. A bit messy, but we were very tired of cherries. I never got around to drying any, so I may try to defrost some of the ones in the freezer and dry those. We will see if that works.

I am going to get a bunch of apricots to dry as soon as they are ripe...mmmm.

Things that I am doing

instead of blogging for your enjoyment.

ATC's

Still doing ATC's, and still loving it. I am going to be doing several swaps this summer. Here are some of the cards that I have already done (and sent out).

Letterboxing

I have also been doing some letterboxing, even if you cannot tell from these photos. Nikki and I dragged the guys along on a trip to Maryhill Museum and the Stonehenge memorial. The ostensible purpose of the trip was to locate some letterboxes, but we also saw the museum, had a yummy picnic, and generally had a really nice day. We did actually find a couple of boxes as we wandered. Yay!

This is Nikki and myself feeling regal. :)

The peacocks at Maryhill (and there are tons of them) were hungry too. Noisy things. :)

Gardening

Gardening has sadly fallen down to number three on the list. We got some late season annuals into the boxes on the front porch, which I am really enjoying. Also, the Dahlias are starting to get pretty big. This shows the buds which opened a day ago, but I haven't gotten out to take a picture of. Working too much. I will try to get some tomorrow.

There really is a bud there...can you tell?

This is my porch...it needed the color.

Long time no see...

I know that I have not posted in a long time, but I have a good excuse. I have a new hobby...and a yard...and a garden...and a husband...and friends. :)

Let's start at the top. My new hobby is Artist Trading Cards, or ATC's. They are neat little portable art. The idea is to create a piece of art, in whatever media you like that will fit into 2.5 x 3.5 inches. The simplest way to start is to use a playing card for a template and decorate that, although it looks nicer if you use card stock as a base. I haven't bought any cardstock yet, so the playing cards will do for now. You then decorate it by drawing on it, creating a collage, embellishing a picture, or whatever you can think of. You then trade your creation. That's it. Simple and fun. A card can take as little as an hour or two to create. I am participating in a yahoo group for ATC's called ATC World. The people on ATC_World participate in swaps, which are organized trades in which you make 5 or 6 cards on a particular theme or method and then send them to a moderator. The moderator will the give each person in the swap a card from each of the other people. So, you send in 6 of your cards and get back a card from each of 5 or 6 other people. Nifty way to do it, and it saves a lot in postage. I have participated in one swap, which I mailed off this morning, with the theme of the Green Man. The cards were definately a freshman effort, but I really had fun doing it. I cannot wait to see what I get back from everyone else. I signed up for another swap that ends the 30th of this month, and made those cards up yesterday. I think there are also a couple of other that I will do that are due in the next few of months.

As for my other hobbies, I was trying to get some letterboxing in before my friend left for Mt. Rainier for the summer. She works up there developing curriculum and studying the volcano and loves every minute of it. The program also hosts an exchange with scientists in Japan, so she will spend next summer at Mt. Fuji. So so cool. The sad part is that now I will not see her for the next two months. Very Sad.

Shane and I have been squeezing gardening and yard work into what spare time we can scrape together. My yard is looking decent, but needs weeding. The bulb beds are all bloomed out and need to be weeded and have the leaves trimmed back. My veggies are being slow, so I may have to add some more tomato and pepper plants to augment what is looking to be a fairly small crop. I envy Bethany her lovely plants. Hopefully it will all come out right in the end. At least my potatoes, onions, and rhubarb are doing really well. Also, the cherry tree is getting very close to being ready to start picking. This is going to be a big job this year and I will pay in cherries if anyone wants to help. :)

Other than that, I have been super busy at work for the last few weeks, so my weeknights are spent winding down. Over the weekend, Shane and I went to dinner with my boss to visit and hang out. Shane and my boss really get along well and they love to talk about lab stuff.We went to a really good Mexican restaurant in town. Yummy. We spent Saturday clearing out the garage, using a chemical cleaner on the floor, and sealing all the cracks. Whoever built this house did a crappy job on the concrete work. Tonight Shane will be spraying a sealant over the whole floor and when that dries we get to start in on the modular shelving system that he is building along one whole wall for storage. Yay! I am so excited to have real storage.

So, in the near future I have cherry picking, card making, shelf building, visiting with my family and Shane's and above all relaxing in the sunshine whenever possible. Oh yeah, and Ren Faire is the end of the month...if I can squeeze it in :) For now I am off to eat the yummy stew I put in the crock pot this morning. See ya.

Lately

I have been very lazy lately. I seem to have done no blogging, little housework and lots of lying around watching TV, which is a feat since I do not have TV (hooray for Hulu). Shane is out of town this week at a training seminar and I have made all sorts of promises to myself about the things I am going to accomplish before he gets home.

So far, so mediocre. I worked on my embroidery last night, which I am woefully behind on, which was good, but then I got tired of that and watched hulu and played solitaire for way too long and then couldn't get to sleep early as I wanted to, so I am super tired today. Poor Chantel had to deal with a lot today. On top of being tired, my allergies have conspired to make me lose my voice, so she had to do pretty much all of the phone work in the office. Poor Chantel.

I had planned to get up and clean the kitchen this morning, but that did not happen, since I forgot to set my alarm early and was too tired to wake up on my own. So, I say to myself, I will do it tonight. Ha ha ha. I am so tired right now that I will have accomplished a lot if I manage to make it home without falling asleep on the freeway. I just want to make dinner and climb in the recliner with hulu and my book. I am also thinking about running by Dairy Queen for a Blizzard on the way home. That would be naughty, but it sounds good. I might not though, since I have brownie fixings at home. Brownies require mixing and baking and cutting, so much effort. Sigh.

Ok, enough whining. I will drive everyone off and have no followers. ;) So, the plans for the week are still cleaning and working on my embroidery and cross-stitch. I also would like to get the garage emptied out and clear the laundry closet. I want to clear out the closet, because one of the girls at work is giving me a washer and dryer! Yay! I know it sounds nuts not to have one, but it was a money thing, as in, they are expensive and the laundromat is cheap. But for me, convenience counts. So, since these are free, Shane can't complain. The garage needs to be cleaned out because when Shane gets home we are going to clean, patch, and seal the garage floor and the driveway. Whoever patched it last did a crappy job. Crappy. Once the floor is done, we are going to be building in shelving and storage cabinets along one whole wall of the garage. Shane is planning storage for canned goods, my crafts (although I am still arguing for the spare bedroom closet to be craft land), Christmas stuff, a bunch of books we don't have room to shelve, and all the other assorted crap we own. I am excited to be getting everything organized, but I never look forward to the work it takes to get there. Oh well. It will be nice when it is done and I don't have to shift through stacks of boxes or dig around in a dark closet for the fabric I need or the suitcase I am looking for.

Other than cleaning and clearing, I hope to get out and find a letterbox or two this week with Nikki. It has been a couple of weeks since we have gone. I also need to get a journal to set up for my letterboxing notebook and finish all the notes that go with the boxes we have already found. I would like to make the journal kind of like a scrapbook, with notes and pictures of the boxes and the fun we have hiking or driving to them.

I also need to get the lawn mowed and some weeding done in the veggies and bulb beds. I have no idea if I will manage all or any of this this week, but I can dream. Cross your fingers for me and I will come back in a few days and let you know how it went.

Vegetable gardening

I spent so much time in the last post talking about my flowers, that I figured I should give equal time to the vegetables we have planned. As I said, we are starting some of the seeds inside: red bell peppers, green bell peppers, two kinds of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and three kinds of tomatoes (beefsteak, orange, and pear). In addition to that we have bought onion sets and potatoes.

We are close to having the second garden bed ready to plant, all that is left is to mix in the chicken manure (stinky stuff). I am not sure what all we will be planting in the beds. Aside from what I have already listed, I think we will set up a trellis for pole beans, plant some more types of peppers, and maybe put in some vining plants like squash, pumpkin, and raspberries. Between all that and my fruit trees, I will be very busy canning and freezing all summer and fall. :) Yay!

Getting my veggies ready.

Over the last couple of weekends Shane and I have built a grow-light and planted seeds for the vegetables that we need to get started indoors. The light system is really neat. It has two fluorescent lights in the correct colors and the height is adjustable, so as the seedlings grow we can raise the fixture with them. The frame is kinda jury-rigged, but we can always build a new one, since we spent about 5 dollars on this one. The whole thing, including the light, timer, and frame was under sixty dollars and we can very easily take it down and store it away for next spring.

We planted the seeds late last week and we already have some sprouts in the cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. I am eager for the tomatoes, since we will actually be planting tomatoes that I like this year. :) Also, the rhubarb that we planted late last summer is starting to get leaves. This makes me very happy, since it was kinda pathetic last year from being planted so late and I was dreadfully afraid that it would not make it through the winter. Hooray for being wrong!

More of my bulbs are blooming now, including 1 very cheerful daffodil. Its siblings are coming along with some fat little buds, but it is the only one to open so far. Also, the hyacinths are putting out their little stalks full of buds and I am eager to see the flowers start to open. The sad part about bulbs is that they do not last forever. The aconite and snow drops are nearly all faded now and the crocus are starting to get droopy. I will survive that though, since we planned the bed to bloom in waves, the daffodils and hyacinths will replace the crocus and then the tulips and more daffodils will replace them. We should have bulbs blooming in the front bed until at least early May. By then, my iris bed should be getting its act together and the roses will be getting ready to bloom. The roses will last till frost, as will the dahlias we will be ordering this weekend. To top it off, the iris bulbs we bought are rebloomers, which means that most of them should bloom again in August or September. !!!!! Aren't flowers the best?

Flowers!

There are flowers blooming in my garden!!! I am so pleased. They started opening late last week and are so pretty. Only the earliest bulbs are blooming right now, but they are so nice. We have Iris reticulata, early snowdrops, aconite, and snow crocus. The hyacinths and tulips are poking through the ground and should be the next things to bloom, along with more varieties of snowdrop and crocus. Hooray!

Last weekend we got a bunch of pruning done on our fruit trees and took a big limb off of one of the sycamores. Once we get those branches all cleaned up we will go get some dirt for the second vegetable bed and get started planning and planting those. So far we only have onion sets to plant, but I keep reminding myself that it is very early. :)

I am ready for spring...can you tell?

The weekend is winding down

I accomplished some things that I had planned on this weekend, but not everything. The biggest thing that did not get done was the spaghetti sauce/salsa canning session. Shane worked today and we had to work on the garden yesterday, so there was no time. Hopefully we will be able to make that happen next Saturday. My friend Nikki might come help if we do.
I did get quite a few of my other tasks done. Yesterday we ran errands and put in a lot of bulbs in the bed in front of the house. We still have some more to go in and another bed to prep, so for the next few nights, Shane will work on it once he gets home. I made four batches of pear bread today and have a ham in the slow-cooker for dinner (and lunch and dinner and lunch and dinner--it's a big ham for just two people). I ran around town some this morning and found a birthday present for Shane and some yarn for my afghan and some Christmas projects. Yay for yarn on sale!!
Right now I am trying to convince myself to go out and prep the bed for the next set of bulbs before Shane gets home so that we can get them in the ground quickly, but I am being very lazy and haven't been able to talk myself into it yet. I also need to charge the batteries for my camera so that I can post some pictures of my projects and the gorgeous fall colors that are showing up in my yard.
For now, I will tough-up and go out to dig for the bulbs and hope that Shane gets home early so we can get them all done before it is too dark.