While I was making pizza for supper, Dave came into the kitchen and said "Are there any more crisises we have to take care of?"
I don't *think* so.
One load of wash; all I hung out was Dave's flannel-lined jeans. The second time they blew off, I brought them in.
No stick-burning today!
Dave figured out why there are so few sticks to pick up: We're short ten trees.
I noticed yesterday that the bulbs in the fern bed have decided that coming up wasn't a mistake after all, and I see flower buds on the hyacinths today.
Dave raked the leaves out of the herb bed and the southern raised flower bed today. Chives, garlic chives, and an onion I don't remember planting are up. I *think* I see signs of chocolate mint; the oregano and marjoram are still lying doggo. In the other raised bed, the "hot spicy" oregano has definitely survived the winter, together with enough Joe Rickets strawberries to save the clone. The jury is still out on the lavender.
I started pulling out the Big R strawberries in the southern raised bed; they grow well, but those that have escaped into the herb bed produce better — and we don't get any of the strawberries anyway. The deer don't notice that bed, but the coons do.
In the process, I uprooted a tulip, which I replanted in the fern bed. Then I tried digging up the rest on purpose, to make a row of them, but didn't get very many before frozen soil frustrated me. I puzzled quite a while over the "big rocks" in dirt that has been sifted twice!
I got chilled back inside when the bed was about three-fourths clean; I should finish the job tomorrow. I don't think bedding plants are on sale yet, though.
I'm getting antsy to plant the lemon grass.
I *could* plant the multipliers now. I think we have some bagged soil to plant them in. I must inspect the garden tomorrow.
At least this time I know how my nails got black! I don't need no steenkin trowel to dig up the tulips — I can feel around in that sandy soil until I find a bulb, then pop it out with my finger. But I didn't get all of them because the middle of the clump is rooted in frozen soil. I also learned that the sprouts are really, really easy to break off the bulbs.
It was hard to uproot the strawberries in that last corner of the bed without stepping on a plant. Fortunately there is a large spot where I plan to set out the lemon grass when the weather gets warm, so I put one foot there and leaned on the frame of the bed to reach the last few strawberries.
I'm sure that a few warm days will reveal plants that I missed.
I haven't ventured into the garden yet.
The Roomba is doing the bedroom. While hosing off the stinky plastic that's been under the cat boxes for years, I realized how spring came to be associated with cleaning. The plastic is draped over the line in bright sun now.
It's all soggy out there. I hoed around in the garden yesterday and marked the spot where I mean to dig a trench, fill it with bagged topsoil, and plant my multipliers. I should have finished the job; its supposed to rain for days, and it will take a while for the garden to dry enough to dig in.
Another sign of spring: Dave forgot to turn the furnace back on after he cleaned the filters yesterday, and we'd been up for a while this morning before he noticed. ⁂
I just scored seven playing Hexavirus. Good time to quit and go to bed!
I learned how to use the "mirror" command in Z-Tree today. Quite handy for making back-ups.
Mad Anthony is still serving Po Boys on Fridays, so we went to First Friday — and Dave ordered a deluxe-deluxe hamburger and I ordered a fajita salad. We were both well stuffed when they were half gone, and we both cleaned our plates. Almost; Dave left a pickle and I left some ranch dressing.
Then we walked toward the fashion show, which appeared to be just beginning; Dave said "Where do you want to go?"; I said "Back to the car!"; "Fine by me.".
My red coat, with gloves in its pocket, was in the back seat, but I didn't have the sense to put it on. (I did wear a dupioni scarf under my fuzzy bowler hat.) Dave wore his yellow jacket, which the slightest breeze will penetrate, and all the flags were snapping. He did feel more comfortable after putting up the hood.
I wore my pearls to lighten up my black jeans and black turtleneck, but never took off my black overshirt.
Started to make new bike knickers today. I got as far as opening out the eating table and cutting along the drawn thread I found at one end of my unbleached linen. And all the pattern pieces are on the table.
Finished cutting by bedtime.
I can't have breakfast for another twenty minutes, and the calcium has to wait until noon: I slept so soundly last night that I didn't get my levothyroxin until nine. And my blood pressure at Dave's bedtime was down twenty points from the previous day. Getting stuffed to the gills is good for me!
On the way to Mad Anthony's —I can't honestly say we went to First Friday!— we observed that the creek is the highest it's been all spring, and this morning we noticed that the sand bar is under water.
Thank goodness we didn't get that rain with snow on the ground! This spring's thaw was just *perfect*.
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Rode my Trek to Owen's. Took the basket in, the bag boy packed it — and without squashing my mini sweet peppers.
I wrote down the time I left Owen's and the time I got back. Much to my surprise, it took only eighteen minutes. The ride felt terrifyingly slow, particularly when I was crossing Winona Avenue, and I never got above second gear. I wore full cycling regalia. I felt silly pedalling a wheelchair in that get-up, but I wanted to carry my wallet without carrying a purse, and it was too cold not to wear a wool shirt.
Since I didn't go out this winter, that's probably the first time I've worn the wool jersey since last spring; I was surprised to find that its cell-phone pocket is too small; I couldn't check the time without undoing the safety pin — and when you wear a wool jersey, you are likely to be wearing gloves . . .
The first few tulips I moved had been shallow and I got an exaggerated idea of how easy it would be to get the rest of them. And a *lot* more tulips have shown up. The limit on my digging-up is my patience with replanting. Toward the last I was stuffing handfulls of plants into each hole. I'm nowhere near finished, but if I get to the end of the bed before running out of tulip plants, I can throw them into the lily bed and dump some mulch on them. Their track record suggests strongly that they would thrive.
I also dug a little at the trench where I plan to plant onions.
I forgot to plant the onions yesterday, but yeah, rah the weather service says that the rain will hold off until late morning — but when I dumped the bag of top soil into the trench it turned out to be mud; no way that I could hoe it smooth enough that the tiny multiplier bulbs wouldn't get lost in the lumps. If I'd dumped it in yesterday, it might have been drained enough to use this morning; now I'll have to wait for the rain to drain off again.
Discovered this morning that when you make a cake of fruit, rolled oats, almond meal, and an egg, you want to put in at least as much oats as almond meal. It's edible, but not yummy.
Only one load of wash again. The manual says I can't soak my stained laundry overnight because after ten minutes, the machine will pump the water out. I'm testing that; when it had filled and agitated, I pushed "pause" and set the timer for fourteen minutes. [It let me soak the load; won't know about overnight until I try it.]
The sand bar is still underwater. I'm beginning to wonder whether they have closed the dam. And, as always, I wonder who "they" is.
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I don't think I can live with the "safety" features of my new washer. I can sort of see their point about not letting me pour bleach in while it's agitating —most people don't use bleach— but there is no excuse of any kind for keeping the lid locked while water is running in.
Dave says there is half a bag of potting soil in the barn — I can set the sets on the mud and cover them with potting soil. But I'm going to wait until it's lighter and less drippy outside.
I got some sewing done. All parts of my new T-shirt are attached, and I've basted the hip pockets of my new knickers together. I'm trying Kathleen Fasenella's "twin pockets" — you baste around the pockets, turn them right side out, press them well, then take out the basteing and have two identical pockets. But I've left the hems for later; I think that her method twins the hems too. Do you think that I should look up the advice before I try to follow it?
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Again, a score of seven at Hexavirus! Perhaps I should play only when I'm falling asleep.
And, again, I had breakfast so late that I don't get any lunch. Supper is already in the double boiler, in the fridge waiting for me to put it on the stove at five O'clock.
The multipliers are finally in the ground, all but one that I held back to put into the raised flower bed, if I ever get the tulips out of it. An entirely new clump has appeared in the corner. I didn't have the guts to dig at it this morning. Last time I did, I couldn't find the bottom of the biggest clump, but I think that its satellite clump can be popped out.
I always double the wrong letter in "satellite"; I wonder what's up with that?
I made a shallow trench in the mud, pushed the base of each bulb into it, marked each with a zinc tag, and put a trowel of potting soil on each set. I have a row of eight, and all of them looked viable.
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The double boiler is on the stove: augmented boullion in the lower compartment, frozen tamales in the upper.
After my nap, I dug down as far as I could with a trowel, shoveled dirt into a Rubbermaid tub until it was half full, and dug some more. All I got was dirt under my fingernails. I'm beginning to think the bulbs are *under* the raised flower bed.
Walked down to the beach this morning. The dam isn't closed. Several logs in the water, but I'll leave wading out for them to the young folks next door. Lots of rotten leaves on the beach, neatly windrowed; I must gather up some before the dam is closed — and before Brent gets after them with his bucket loader.
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Rode my flatfoot to the emergency room. Riding slowly across Winona Avenue didn't feel as terrifying this time — perhaps because I dare to exert my knee a little now.
I forgot to stop at Owen's, but my only reason for planning to was that I was going past — and on the way back, I didn't go past; I took the recreationway (Lovelesses don't come back the way they came), and that took me past Zales, so I dropped in on general principles and discovered that they sell the elusive plain black pigtail holders. Designed for people with at least twice as much hair as I have, but there aren't a lot of old ladies who still wear pigtails.
The flags on Market street have marked a magnificent old tree for destruction. Probably more than one, but I didn't see much of Market Street on this tour. The trees that line it are Market Street's major attraction, and the absurdly-wide sidewalks they are putting in are bound to get most of them and damage the roots of the rest.
Dave wants to get rid of his mother's sewing machine. The motor doesn't have much wear left in it, but it would do very well as a learning machine for a child too young to use a motorized machine; just detach the power cord.
And it has all the attachments. It had the manual when Evelyn died, but that somehow got lost. I think one can get one that's fairly close off the Web. I want to keep the silver pinking shears; the rest of the contents of the drawers go with the machine.
Dave also wants to get his Raleigh Pro into the hands of someone who will ride it.
We've been up in the attic looking for Dave's soapbox-derby helmet. I'm *sure* that I saw it after we moved. We didn't find it, but brought down a box that contained seven ink-tubes of topographic maps, mostly New York and southern Indiana, and a bunch of camper's cookware — including a tea kettle. Why did we ever want a tea kettle? A billy boils water just fine.
If you want some maps or some pots and pans, holler. The maps are in perfect condition, so I hate to throw them out, but they are forty years old — and everybody downloads their top maps these days. Which is frustrating for those of us who need paper maps.
Finally dug down to the bottom of one of the two remaining clumps of tulips, and moved them into the fern bed. Later on I saw Spot digging through the dirt I'd troweled aside. I don't know what he was looking for, but he's welcome to all the tulip bulbs he can find!
Just looked them up in Wiki — says that tulips are toxic to dogs and horses. Didn't say anything about squirrels. Also said that people who handle them a lot are likely to develop an allergy that sounded something like poison ivy.
Eternal September went down while I was reading Usenet last night, and is still down this morning, so I checked the Web site, and that's down too. I hope Ray Banana is all right.
My last chunk of corned beef is on the stove. I worried about leaving the broth on the counter all night, but this morning it was barely thawed enough to come out of the container easily.
I put an iron skillet under the pot as soon as it was hot; don't want it boiling again.
The beef was delicious, and when Eternal September came back up, Ray said that heartbleed-proofing his servers involved turning everything off.
Eternal September is the best-available Usenet access provider, but I'd feel better about it if I were paying a little something, to give Ray motivation to not quit, and someone else motivation to pick up the load when he wears out.
I think I'll serve Reubens for supper tonight. I accidentally bought sliced swiss cheese when I went to the store yesterday. Well, I bought it on purpose, but wasn't thinking about the corned beef at the time.
Interrupted writing to get my shoes out from under the bed, reflected that that is a ridiculous number of shoes but I wear all of them. Last sweeping day, I put the ragged old slippers on the top shelf, then an hour later I was stretching up for them because I wanted to go outside and my ragged old sandals are by the other door. Today I put my in-the-city cycling shoes on the top shelf, because it will be weeks before I dare mount the bike that requires them. (My out-of-the-city cycling shoes are in the garage with the bike stuff.)
After shaking the rugs, I took a yardstick out to measure the hole I got the tulips out of: only ten inches, but the dirty part of the frame extends a tad higher than the timber-top that I measured from, and dirt fell into the hole while I was finger-digging the bulbs out. And I'm pretty sure that the remaining clump is deeper.
When I came in for the yardstick, the Roomba had rumpled the rug in the closet and was choking on a knee-garter from a pair of pants that and fallen to the floor, so I turned it off and picked up the closet.
So now I'm finally back to what I sat down to say, and it looks trivial now.
I checked the weather this morning and thought at first glance that my unbroken string of nice days for walking to church was over, but the rain isn't scheduled to start until well after noon.
On the one hand, it's warm enough now that getting rained on isn't a big deal, on the other, I can't carry an umbrella while riding my pedal-powered wheelchair.
It's a good thing I dilly-dallied about starting the fire: I see flags flapping as I look out the window. Prediction says gusts can go as high as 30 mph.
Speaking of going to the store yesterday, taking my basket in and letting the bag boy pack it was a miserable failure this time. When I tried it and it worked, I had only a few items; this time I bought enough stuff that it had to be carefully arranged. Just for starters, he didn't put the milk in at all — which I could have coped with if I'd had the wit to pack some bungee cords on the bike.
Which brings up the question of *how* to carry bungee cords. They can't be hooked onto the basket, and the rack blocks access to the spot where a saddle bag would attach to the seat — not to mention that I've been looking for a saddlebag off and on for several years and haven't found any I could use. I put four short bungees into a plastic grocery bag, tucked the handles of the bag through one side of the rack, brought them back over the bag, and tied them to the other side of the rack, but that's a rather stopgap measure. (Visions of the bungees still being carried in this fashion ten years from now — I'm still using an old lawn chair and two windmill vanes as a laundry-basket stand.)
Then the bag boy bagged everything before putting it into the basket, which meant that even without the gallon of milk, it didn't all go. But I used two plastic bags for delicates and I'd brought only one, and taking two or three items out of each of three or four bags wasn't much trouble, so I guess that on net pre-bagging was a plus.
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I have exposed the bottom timber of the raised flowerbed's frame. I have not exposed the bottom tulip bulb.
I did find enough shallower tulips to finish edging the fern bed. But I also found two bulbs that hadn't sprouted — how many others are lying doggo?
It also worries me that this bed is my main reservoir of Kenilworth Ivy; all this re-arranging may have exterminated it. Some comes out between the timbers of the frame — but I've been exposing the frame.
I think the clump of tulips will fall apart the next time I have the energy to dig.
And it did, but it wasn't easy. I put a ring around one of the oak trees with the left-overs.
Raining today, so I hung the sheet over the shower-curtain rod.
It isn't enough that the washing machine has idiot lights, the idiot lights *lie*. It says "wash" when I can quite clearly hear water being pumped out, or feel the washer shaking as it spins. I don't think I've caught the "spin" light lit.
I went out on the patio for some reason and discovered that the cottonwood bud covers are coming down. You'd think that the glue would decay in the sun and weather, or at least get too loaded with dirt to attach permanently to my feet, but it never does. If the covers are still around, they are still sticky. And they hang around for *months*.
I have a committee meeting tomorrow night, so we are going to the Golden Corral today.
And, the wash all hung, I should get on with my nap so that I'll be up in time to dress. I think I'll wear a black T-shirt and pearls.
⁂
I did, but wore a print overshirt that hid the pearls. Oh, well, *I* knew that I was wearing them. We had a fine time and ate too much.
I didn't mention that the daffodils and hyacinths bloomed yesterday — or that they got snowed on in the afternoon. Still a thin layer of snow out there, but it's bright and sunny.
⁂
Still bright and sunny after my nap, so I thought I'd run the cultivator around the garden before I dressed for the committee meeting. Picked up my dirty slippers, stuck my arm out the door to see how much coat to wear, put the slippers back. It's a lot colder than it was when it was a lot colder!
But most of the route to the church is sheltered from the wind.
I hope. This morning I picked up a fluff of cat hair, threw it out the door, and watched it fly away to the north. A little bit later, I found a string of fleece that had fallen out of the lamb pelt, threw it out the same door, and watched it fly away to the south.
I don't have to whisk eggs next Saturday. The benefit of having a real food-service man in charge: He is going to buy pre-cracked eggs, so all we have to do is to pour stuff into the pans.
Urk. I don't remember us checking to make sure we had pans. Or no-sticky spray.
I can't say it was an unpleasant shopping trip — but nothing went right.
I scheduled my visit to Big R for today instead of next week because there was only one change of litter left in the bag the last time I changed the cat box. Then, when I was all ready to go and at the last minute checked to make sure my grocery bags were in the trunk, I remembered that the last time I bought litter, I left one of the bags in the car because the roads were icy.
Which was a good thing: as I was walking through Big R toward the farm supplies, I met one of those flatbed shopping carts they have for large purchases piled up with every last bag of corncob litter.
And then I forgot that I meant to buy toilet paper there. But I did get a six-pack of marigolds. I was too pooped to plant when I got home, so I set the six-pack on the rosemary pot where one side of the dirt was left bare when I forgot to water for a few days last winter. I doubt that I can spare the energy to plant them tomorrow either, with all the Easter preparations going on.
I planned to have lunch at Big Apple Bagels and buy a half dozen wheat bagels to take home, but they were out of wheat bagels. So I ordered a "mediterranean veg-out" bagel without noticing that the primary vegetable was raw cucumber. Which wasn't too bad with a bacon bagel covering up the taste. But by "veg out" they meant that the vegetables jump out of the bagel. On top of that, the hummus was a thin batter that got all over everything. Perhaps I should have chosen cream cheese instead of hummus; it might have glued things together.
About halfway through the second of the three strip malls, I discovered how much good riding my flatfoot instead of walking has been doing — my bad knee got sore. Sitting for a while at Big Apple helped, as did using a cart for a walker at Big R. I appear to have recovered from that, but I think I'll put a hot bag of popcorn on my knees tonight.
I did find a headlamp at K-Mart, but I'm not sure I'm going to be happy with it; it takes up a *lot* of space under the throat of my sewing machine.
I picked up a few cans of cat food at Pets Plus.
The two shoe stores in Sprawl One had sandals left, but all were either sneaker-casual or gilded bistro, nothing I could wear to church. Which was no surprise, of course.
I was very surprised that I couldn't find paper handkerchiefs at Aldi, and disappointed that they had discontinued the mexican-design paper plates I like in favor of blue-flowered plates. I grumble a bit each time I see "decorated plates" on my receipt; I would like to see *un*decorated paper plates for sale. Of a middling quality, that is; really-cheap plates and extra-fancy plates are plain. And I was so tired by the time I got to frozen foods that I forgot that I wanted apple juice.
I didn't even consider stopping at Aunt Millie's Outlet.
The bad knee seems to have recovered all right, but I felt a twinge in the good one on the way home from church.
I did not wake up from my nap feeling bright and bushy-tailed.
Or, it appears, like writing.
Felt kinder wore out today, but the wash is all put away except for a couple of pieces that need ironing.
I appear to be fully recovered now, but the weather bureau says it's going to be windy, so this is not a good day to burn the sticks.
I went for a ride around the neighborhood yesterday evening, and decided to go up the Heritage Trail recreationway until the pedalling got difficult. Much to my surprise, I made it all the way to the top. Perhaps not the highest point, but I could see a downslope and thought it somewhat rash to go farther.
Put some frozen chicken thigh in the fridge to thaw last night. This morning, I felt bored with poaching chicken in gravy, not to mention that after such a weekend, we really don't need gravy. So instead I put Knorr chicken stock in the rice cooker with a bit less water than the package called for, added two fingerling potatoes, two chunks of sweet potato, and a carrot —egad, I forgot the celery!— set it on "cook" until it came to a good rolling boil, then turned it to "keep warm" and added a cipollino onion, a mini-sweet pepper, and the chunks of chicken meat.
By good luck I hadn't yet emptied the cup I used to measure the water, so I chopped up a stalk of celery poured, in about half of the reserved water, and it's now simmering on the stove.
And the kitchen smells like hot celery. The lower temperature of the main pot doesn't emit as much. I think I'll wait until lunch time to transfer the celery; I like it cut small and cooked until it disappears.
On Friday, or maybe Saturday, I checked the fern stubs carefully without seeing the faintest fleck of green, but three curls had emerged in an entirely new spot. Easter morning I looked again and there was a faint speck of green on the clump nearest the door and the fronds were uncurling. This morning, not much progress on the unfurling fronds, but there are several specks of green that are definitely emerging curls on one fern. No signs of life on the others yet.
I have two sticks of Neutrogena Wet Skin Kids sunscreen. It's way past time for me to remember where I put them last fall. I don't think they are in my dresser, though I have yet to dump out the drawers and put items back one at a time. They don't appear to be in the drawer in the shower room where I keep grooming supplies. They aren't in the jar where I put stuff I take out of my pockets after a bike ride.
Six tons of topsoil were delivered today. Dave scattered it into various dips in the lawn, and topped off the raised bed where I plan to plant marigolds.
There's a green speck showing at each of the markers in the row of multipliers.
Bloodroot is putting on a pretty good show in the lily-of-the-valley bed. Narcissus and daffodils all over the place.
I'm sure Prrtz is in earshot as Alice reads this. Tell him to be envious of Al.
At the Easter party, every time Prrtz got comfortable in a chair, somebody would sit in it. Yesterday, I walked into the living room and found Al curled up in the Lazyboy and Dave on the sofa.
Six tons of dirt isn't very much dirt.
I planted the marigolds today. Ever since I bought them I've been fretting about how to arrange them in a square bed. One in each corner and one in the middle leaves a marigold to dispose of; every other arrangement I came up with called for more than six.
Just before planting, I asked Dave. He said, "Three on each side."
Duh.
I planted the remaining multiplier, too, and stuck a paint stick that had been used to stir yellow paint in beside it. I don't expect it to do as well as those planted earlier, but I don't have all my eggs in one basket.
I'll put basil in one of the remaining two spots, when I get around to buying some.
I've begun digging up clumps of garlic chives instead of harvesting garlic chives. Despite using chives lavishly and wasting a lot, I don't think I'll get all the unwanted clumps dug up. And I've been *very* careful not to let them bloom; it helps that the flower buds are delicious if you get them before the stem toughens — and the stem above the tough part remains delicious. But by the time the flower opens, all you can eat is the bloom itself.
When I first planted garlic chives, I put them on the west side of the north raised bed, then later moved them to the south side of the south bed. But I didn't move quite all of them, couldn't trowel out those that took refuge in the point where the corner of the bed touches the concrete walkway, and attempting to pick them to death just barely kept them from spreading.
This morning, as I was walking along the concrete walkway with spade in hand and savory pancakes on my mind, I noticed that original clump and thought "I'll bet that I can get that with this spade." Previous attempts to spade them out had failed, but it had rained last night, and up they popped in only two pries!
I've been digging clumps that had just come up, or came up last summer — it would be a lucky unwanted clump that had been growing two years. This clump was at least ten years old. I didn't *believe* the tangle of roots and tubers that little handfull of chives had on it! I couldn't hose all the dirt off the roots, and it took ages to clean the chives; eventually I just whacked where I could even when it meant leaving an inch of tender white stem on the root.
I looked out and thought that the flowering crab was in bloom, but it's red young leaves.
The daffodils and the hyacinths are doing great.
It's blooming cold out there. 49.5°F with 15 mph wind.
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But I perspired riding to Owen's and back, wearing a silk undershirt and my wool jersey under my yellow jacket.
I started late and got home just before sunset. I went because we were out of salad, and I bought milk on general principles, but I forgot (again!) that we need yogurt. I should put yogurt on the list!
I planted the last two cipollino onions in a bit of left-over row between the multipliers and the garlic; marked only with twigs: no paint stick or zinc marker.
I discovered that I *really* like cipollino onions just before they went out of season. The last one that I cut up had a green middle, so I figured that planting the last two bulbs would be worth a try. They require a "mediterranean" climate, whatever that is.
Tonight my ten-O'clock snack was a *superb* chef salad made of newly-purchased bagged salad with avocado, colby cheese, shaved ham, bacon bits, garlic chives, a niggardly dab of generic ranch dressing, and Milagro tortilla chips.
I read on Facebook that it's now legal in Indiana to run a non-functioning red light, if you look all around and proceed with due care. I haven't been able to verify that.
Doesn't matter much. I've been doing that all along — and I haven't encountered a non-functioning demand light since we moved to Indiana. I was caught off guard the first time I left Owen's parking lot, and missed the light because I was looking back to see whether a car would come along to trip it.
Now there's a jaw dropper. I put the sweaty undershirt I'd put into a bucket of water after yesterday's ride into the washer, set it for "drain and spin", and heard water running. I opened the lid, and sure enough water was running into the washer! It didn't run long, but what part of "drain and spin" suggests running water in?
Dave had a wonderful idea for breakfast while he was lying in bed last night, but when we got up, he couldn't remember what it was, so we each had sausage, egg, and cheese on an english muffin. Which used up the last two muffins; it's well past time I made another trip to Aunt Millie's Outlet.
The ferns are coming up, the smallest ones first. Most of the tulips that I moved are lying on the ground because of the long, loppy stems from having been buried so deep. There's no sign that any of them feel up to blooming.
The bloodroot blossoms are still pretty, but you have to look under the leaves to see them now. The narcissus in the lily-of-the-valley bed are still going strong, but those in the lily bed need to be deadheaded, and I've already picked the blossoms off the daffodils in the fern bed. Hyacinths and muscari are still in full show.
While wrenching my water bottle out of the Trek's cage one day, I reflected that this bike was designed for people who don't ride, so the cage was probably intended for the kind of bottle that you buy with water already in it, so I put the water bottle back on the Fuji and put a bottle from the case on the Trek. The cage doesn't hold it even as well as the old cages do: the old ones let it tip, it could actually fall out of the new one.
And I'm not going out into this gorgeous sunshine because I have sewing and ironing to do — but I'm not sewing and ironing either.
I think I'll put a knife in my pocket and go behead some flowers.
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I pulled some weeds while I was out there. Also decided that the shirt I was wearing should be torn into cleaning rags — it needed repairs that the fabric wasn't sound enough to hold, and, really, a *black* short-sleeved shirt?
Then I did a little basting on the bike knickers I'm making, and while searching my little bag of stuff for my new plastic thimbles, I found the half-used stick of sunscreen. Yeah, rah, it's *much* easier to put on than white lotion. Probably does more good, too, because I don't have to spread it so thin.
Now I need to remember where I put the new stick last fall. I *thought* I put it in my underwear chest. Well, I didn't see it in the little bag of stuff until I dumped everything out; it might be under a handkerchief.
Decided to see whether the Raleigh Pro we are going to give Nate still works — it does, but I can't ride it because it's way too tall for me. Then I dug everything off the Fuji, pumped up its tires, discovered that I could mount it without undue risk to my knee, and rode around the block!
When I got back I felt that dismounting did pose undue risk, so I laid the bike down and stepped out of it, losing a slipper in the process. I won't be riding to Aunt Millie's Outlet any time soon, *but the door is open*!
On the other hand, my knee got sore as a boil during the night — could be this is one of the things that doesn't hurt while the damage is done, but only later. On the third hand, it felt all right when I woke up.
We're packing today. Dave found a suit that almost fits. I'm sewing an extension on the collar of the white shirt that goes with it. Which seems odd, because he's thinner than he was when he bought the shirt, and he bought one that was too big because of his thick neck.
I think I'll have to wear a dress to the wedding, as my best pair of pants looks like jeans. (Not as in blue with gold stitching, as in would look at home on a tractor.)
If hot weather isn't predicted, I'll wear my black pleated skirt, because it's full enough to hide all sorts of junk in the pockets in my underdress, and I won't have to carry a purse. I'm also taking a short-sleeved dress and a purse.
I dead-headed narcissus yesterday, and pulled up a lot of mustard-looking weeds. I'll have to find out what their name is; I'm pretty sure a nature-hike guide told me they were noxious.
The lake isn't where it should be on the first of May, but it's definitely rising. Brent (our neighbor) is loading the debris piled on the sandbar into a trailer.
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Planted a short piece of row with stale seeds, then put radish seeds an inch apart on top of them.
Dave has planted a row of carrots. I haven't bought any other new seeds yet.
I sprinkled all the melon, squash, and other cucurbits over the compost heap; if any of the seeds are still alive, the vines can sprawl over the pile of wood chips from stump grinding.
I'm giving serious thought to planting a square of multi-colored corn, but haven't yet worked out where to plant them that both "sprout" and "dead" are covered. Nor how close to plant them when I've no idea what percent will come up.
Definitely on the north end so they won't shade anything if they grow.
I picked a cottonwod pod off my foot today; it didn't leave a patch of gum. The pods have been surprisingly few and unsticky.