One Legged Man

My family has a quote that goes "I'm as busy as a one legged man in a butt kicking contest."  And that's been the last little while.

Last garden bed cleaned and planted fully.  Frost covers taken off them all.  The trellis for the peas wasn't quite enough so I spent some time running jute to provide the poor plants with more support.  If all the plants produce well I will be set for fresh peas for a while.

Only one batch of greens came up.  Seems the old seed was too old.  So sometime in the next couple of days I'm going to reseed those areas with new seed.  I need to remember to allow the plants to go to seed this year so I can harvest more seed.  And we have already harvested greens to eat.  They were yummy.

The beans seem to be very sporadic in sprouting so I'm giving them one more week and then I'll put out more seed.  I may actually go buy bean seed rather than using the bulk seed that I also use for eating.  But we'll see.

I found all the types of peppers I was looking for, including Ghost peppers.  I also found curry and cumin.  I'm supposed to go to the botanical garden sale this week.  I'm looking for bay laurel and any other hard to get herbs that we would use.

I ended up adopting two more cats.  They are sons of the one that disappeared.  Both from the same litter, their previous mom lost her fiance and then her job.  She was having to move back in with family and couldn't take the cats.  It was take them or watch them go to the pound.  I took them.  My old cat seems to be taking these two a lot better than their father.  Several possible reasons including that they've always been indoor cats and they rough house with each other - leaving him alone.  They aren't quite sure what to make of the dog but they're working on it.  The dog is following the commands to leave them alone.  I only had to tell him the first day, after that he had it down.

Pulled the repaired mower out to do the lawn.  Found out that certain features had been repaired wrong.  Doesn't keep it from working but makes certain things, like emptying the grass bag, a pain.  I don't know the wiring for it and can't afford a repair manual (vs. owner's manual) so I'm going to have to live with it.

Some friends and I spent an afternoon digging out bulbs.  I sent daffodils, irises, daylilies, and tulips to new homes.

And through it all, I'm still working on onions.  One batch at a time.  First chopping them, then carmelizing them, then dehydrating them.  And then all the scraps but the roots go into the crockpot to make onion stock.  I'm debating doing a second 50 lb bag just to get enough for the year done.  Onions are not my favorite thing to do but they are so incredibly useful around here.

Anyways that's just some of the things.  There have been others.  This week has had some true highs and lows.  And lots and lots of things needing to get done.

And one last wonderful tidbit.  I discovered that I can buy bulk meats at the local Sam's Club for a better price than a certain online company.  And I don't have to wait for specific sales/dates.  This will make it much easier to get my canned/freezer meats up to the level that I want them at.  I hadn't even known that Sam's Club would sell bulk rather than the packaged meats on display.  Truly a wonderful bit of information.  Especially since they sell lamb which is one of the meats I use to substitute for beef with my son.  Expensive - yes.  But the bulk packs sell for less than the display packs, so a lot less expensive than it could be.

Hope you all are having wonderfully busy weeks as well.