Gone Most of the Day

Well, not only have I not finished Cranberry Christmas, I have not taken a single stitch.

This morning I had great hopes of getting tons of stitching done but there were too many other fun things to be done.

Most of you have probably figured out that I have all kinds of crazy ideas and they always involve work for Vince. I’ve been trying to limit the ideas that escape from my head through my mouth if they are going to cause more work for Vince but there’s so much I can’t do by myself. Take the clothes line for example. We brought the poles. They had to be set in concrete, repainted, and the line strung up. Last year, Vince got here in April. I had kinda hoped the clothes line would be a priority. It saves on electricity and the clothes smell so much better. I didn’t ask. I didn’t mention it all but now . . it’s a year later so a couple of weeks ago, I brought up the clothes line. He dug the holes, I helped him get them straight in the holes and he poured concrete. This week he painted the poles and I’m still not sure about the lines but we’re almost there.

With the garden . . Vince loves having fresh produce but I can’t run the garden tiller and I can’t build raised beds. I guess I could but . . I’m not. I kinda figure if Vince doesn’t want to build the beds, then I won’t have a garden but he did so . . we had a garden and with the raised beds, there’s not much he has to do from now on.

This year, it was his suggestion that instead of planting the tomatoes in the raised beds, we plant them the self-wicking buckets so he built the trellis for the tomatoes. I’ll do all the planting, fertilizing, pruning, picking, canning or freeze drying. He shouldn’t ever have to build the trellis again

In Texas, I tried hard to raise worms so I would have castings for the garden but I had them in vertical plastic bins and it got so hot there, it was just impossible. I would love to have worm beds here but . . that would require work for Vince.

Yesterday, he sent me this video:

I watched it and I told Vince . . I would LOVE to have a worm bed but that means work for you to get it set up. We can either try to find an old bath tub or a small, non-working chest freezer or something like that but the initial setup is going to require some work on Vince’s part. He said he didn’t mind – he wants to be able to have the castings for the garden and not have to rely on storebought fertilizer.

Then he said he thought he saw a bath tub at the Restore. Since the weather may be bad tomorrow, he said “Let’s go see if we can find a tub today.”

We had to run by the bank – did that. Then he wanted to go by Tractor Supply to get some parts for hooking up the clothes line. Did that. Then we went to the Rehome store but the only tub was a huge corner type Jacuzzi tub. Nope . . didn’t want that.

I came up with an idea for Vince to build a wooden frame, put a tray on top, with a plug so the drippings/tea can drain out and be used, then put a 100 gallon grow bag on a screen “shelf” above the tray. I think that would be great for the worms – not terribly expensive and easy to get rid of when we’re done. Not like having to get rid of a non-working freezer or an old bath tub! He’s thinking about it.

From there we went to Walmart to look for soil for the buckets for the tomatoes and other plants we’re putting in buckets. It seems that the bags have gone from 2 cubic feet to 1.5 cubic feet and the price went up about 30% since last year. Crazy! That’s why I’m happy I’ll be able to re-use the soil from one year to the next by amending it with compost and hopefully worm castings, along with a bit of bone meal.

Walmart did have the mulch Vince likes marked down so he got a truck load of that and I got a few tomato plants.

We came home, unloaded the truck. Vince checked the Kellogg’s raised bed soil at Home Depot and it’s still 2 cubic feet and the price was close to what it was last year so we went to Home Depot. Got a truck load of soil, I got a few tomato plants, along with pepper plants and some flowers.

From there, we went to Aldi – not sure why but we were both hungry so we ended up buying several kinds of frozen snacks – mushroom arancini, calamari, brie in pastry with nuts and fruit, stuffed clams, etc. I did end up buying snacks for my road trip that’s coming up – pretzels, flavored popcorn in a bag, cookies, etc.

We came home again, had to unload groceries, dirt, plants. We were both exhausted! Two trips to town, unloading the truck twice, and NINE . . yes . . 9 stops!

We were supposed to have bad weather around midnight but it looks like all that is out of our forecast – just some thunderstorms around 5 a.m.

I’m not even sure I’m going to try to stitch tonight. I may take a shower and go to bed and read.