up and running

This was supposed to be my slow and quiet week where I happily worked on a quilt to submit to the State Fair. Have you ever noticed how "supposed to be" almost never happens? And I'm actually okay with that. I can type that now at 10:39am on a Monday morning. By 9pm Saturday night of this same week I might not be so optimistic.

So if I don't find thirty minutes in my schedule this week to download/upload photos and write, here's what I WOULD write about (just in case I don't make it back to my "calm" spot).

Monday - grapes & the jelly making process
Tuesday - pawpaw trees and my dumb dog
Wednesday - yardwork
Thursday - Syria
Friday - I'm officially an old fogey - my disgust with feminism's new definition of rape

Meanwhile I'm trying to get some housework done before heading into Raleigh for an afternoon of elections training. I'm not ready for it be this time of year again, but it's here, with October's municipal elections around the corner. Could 2013 slow down just a little bit please?

laboring

I married into a farming family. My father-in-law was a firm believer that if you were going to plant something in your yard, it better be practical (i.e. food producing). When we got married, he gifted our yard with six pecan trees. When we planted apples trees and pear trees (though one turned out to be ornamental), he nodded his approval. After we planted an oak, maple, and sycamore, he scowled and asked me if I was trying to be in Better Homes & Garden magazine. When I laughed and told him no, I just wanted a few shade trees without fruit or nuts under them, he smiled and said "That's good, then."

A few years ago we planted different flowering trees and shrubs along one of our property lines. My husband laughingly asked me how many of them were going to be edible. After they were planted, my brother-in-law asked the same thing. At my laughing answer of "none", he smiled and shook his head and said "Daddy wouldn't approve."  Several of those plants didn't survive. This weekend we replaced five of the eight that needed replacing: two flowering bushes, two blueberry bushes, and one fig tree. I guess we should have planted food-producing stuff all along.

We still have an apple tree to replace this fall.  I joked about getting one while we were at the farmer's market getting everything else, but the tree was quite tall and realistically wouldn't fit in Bobby's van. Maybe one day this week I can borrow a pickup and go back and get it. And the idea of getting two pawpaw trees is still floating around in the back of my head.

Having all this planted means more to cut around, but I think in a few years we're going to be very happy with the result. I've mulched the plants twice in the last year and a half, but putting mulch out is the same as telling the chickens "Here's a treat! Come and scratch through it and make a mess!" because that's what they do every single time. I would love to have a stone wall about hip high that runs about 2-3 ft behind all the plants, but that's not in our budget. If it weren't for the cement and digging a trench and leveling it with sand before starting the wall, I think that would be a project I'd tackle myself. But something about the thought of working with cement stops me short (which is probably a good thing).

So here's to hoping that in another year I can post a picture of nice-looking trees and shrubs!

20/?

Eight years ago I signed my life away and had two five minute surgeries that radically changed my life. Even though I could see almost perfectly the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, it still took a year to overcome the 24 year habit of reaching for my glasses first thing in the morning. The doctors told me before and after the procedure that at some point in my forties I would need reading glasses, and if I wanted to, they could then re-do the procedure on one eye so I could use that eye as reading glasses. That thought did not appeal to me then, and still doesn't now.

What did shock me was a few months ago when the words in a book were blurry that weren't blurry the day before. Yes, I was tired. I blinked. I washed my face. I used my eyedrops. Still a bit fuzzy. I started to put the book away and realized that the further away I held the book, the better I could see it (which is the total opposite of how I started out needing glasses). When my eye doctor told me I would need reading glasses in my forties, I was thinking MID-forties, not 40.5.  That's just too early!  But after several months of holding books far away, making my arms tired, and leaning back from the computer while I type, I finally broke down and bought some reading glasses at Target last week.

I had always laughed at the half-size glasses people wore, or the fact that they wore them way down on their nose.

But now I totally get it. I refused to buy such silly looking things like those above. I got normal glasses that aren't thick and black like my grandpa wore. And after a week of having them, I wish I had gone for the ridiculous looking ones above. If Bobby comes in to ask me something or I need to look at something on the news, the moment I look away from the book everything looks blurry. Not good. I even took them to church Wed night to see how that went. I could read my Bible much better, but I got so tired of putting them on and taking them off that I didn't even bother with them today.  This week I have my regular check-up with the eye doctor, and I'm curious what he'll say if I don't even mention reading glasses to him.

I'm beginning to appreciate the statement that shocked and horrified us a few years ago when a doctor said it to my husband : "Yes, getting old sucks."
(And I'm thankful my mother doesn't read my blog because she would be most mortified that I repeated/typed that.)

how not to clean the porch

Before my parents and sister came a few weeks ago, I began the arduous job of cleaning a very nasty back porch. Between spiders and rain residue, it was a mess. I was pleased with the progress I was making:

 Before

 And after.

 

And then the crazy happened. I was outsmarted by my dog. He had been coming up, going side to side, then leaving. Then he came up and just sat down after I petted him. So I kept working, not thinking anything about it, until I reached for the paper towels and they were gone.

 

My own dog paper-towelled my yard.

And that was the end of cleaning off the porch.

the Pawpaw Festival

A few years ago I discovered the song I loved as a child was actually a harvest song.
Pawpaws are a fruit that grow on a tree. After two attempts at planting the trees, we discovered Winston-Salem has a festival  every year where you can taste products made from pawpaws as well as learn about the trees, the fruit, and purchase seedlings. So this past Saturday we went.

It was crowded. Lines were everywhere, and we headed inside where the lectures would be held. Once inside, we realized we needed to divide and conquer. Bobby claimed a spot to listen to the lecture while I waited in the food line and got us both a plate of samples. After the first lecture, we joined the tour of the garden, though the guide told Bobby where he could get an overview as the orchard was planted on a hillside.

 I liked the concept of boxing in the trees (which I'm sure they did because the first two years and any non-wet summers they need an irrigation system), though with our chickens I'm not sure any mulch or food we placed inside the box would stay there.

 Pawpaws on the tree.

 

 And a close-up.

 

 

So what does a pawpaw taste like? I'm not sure. After the tour we headed back outside to purchase a raw one and possibly buy a seedling, but everything was gone. One of the sellers had even moved her truck!  The few nurserys left were selling their other plants (blueberries, figs, ornamental stuff) and the only person left with pawpaws had tiny ones, about the size of an orange, that they were selling for $5.00 (when we arrived it was $5 per POUND, not per ITEM!). A lady asked him why so much, and he said his manager told him since the demand was so high to up the price. Talk about inflation!

 

They did give us brochures and information, which includes several nurseries that sell healthy breads of pawpaws. I'm still not certain I want to plant two trees only to find out I don't really care for their fruit. Of the samples we tried, the ice cream and ham/pawpaw spread was good. The others were just okay. Personally, I'd rather stick with normal banana bread than pawpaw bread. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't as good.

 

So what do you think? Is it worth a $30 gamble?



off my table and out of the chair!

 Project #1: What was SUPPOSED to be a 3D tumbling block quilt quickly morphed into a star pattern as I placed different fabric into various positions before sewing. The only problem? How to connect them. Thanks to youtube videos and learning how to do a "Y seam", this quilt top has been folded and moved from a heap on the table into a "to be quilted" pile.  And yes, that is progress.

 Project #2 comes from out of the chair. Two years ago I started this quilt as a dare and was going to enter it into the State Fair. I quickly realized I didn't have enough time nor the required skills (nor an adequate sewing machine) to complete the quilt. I am happy to say that even though I used this as a "skill builder" project, it is now quilted, folded, and awaiting it's owner.

 Project #3 actually started in June when I took a class at the Sewing Expo in Raleigh. I was determined it was not going to sit in a pile for several years, so I simply sewed fabrics in strips around it until I had a decent quilt size.

And here's a close-up of the center block that started it all. The class was teaching you how to get two squares out of one cutting when doing applique. The block is huge (23x23), and I haven't yet decided how I'm going to finish the second one. I'm trying to complete finish a few other things first.

At some point, I hope to get around to quilting the tops, but my my current mindset is focused on too many other things (like garden stuff and housework and the upcoming kids' Christmas play practices and fall activity, etc).  It's a good thing I enjoy details and organizing. My husband laughs about the organizing part. I have so much going on at one time that our life and house often feels like things are in disarray. I prefer to call it a  perpetual state of motion.

And with that, we're moving on.

projects update

About two years ago a young lady was going to come live with us until she could financially get back on her feet. I re-arranged one side of the house, pulling all my art supplies and sewing stuff into one room so she would have one complete bedroom to herself and we'd still have a guest bedroom for company. And then she decided not to stay with us.  Since that time frame, I have slowly organized, re-arranged, divided, and sorted that one room that became my studio (or sewing room, since that is primarily what I do there).  I still have several big projects I hope to tackle and then move out, but this year I've really focused on tackling some of the "smaller" projects as a way of creating floor and table space. And here's two of the results:

 Um, well, obviously this picture DIDN'T turn clockwise. Anyway, we bought this rocker at an estate sale several years ago, and it desperately needed refinishing, something I've never done before. I'm not totally satisfied with the bottom pad, but this was the second one I made and it was semi-presentable, so for now this project is classified as "done".  It's nice to actually have this item out of my sewing room (along with all the projects I had stacked up inside it).

 

Several years ago our summer children (we used to host foster children from an orphanage in Belarus) demolished a pillow Bobby had. I had saved the pillowform inside of it, and when his "elevation pillow"  (a paralysis thing, I'll have to explain that later) had seen it's better days, I took the form and make two pillow cases for it. I should have put a zipper or velcro closure on it, but I was in a hurry and didn't, so now I'll have to remove an outer seam whenever I need to wash it. (Although I discovered it's too big for my washing machine; not sure what to do about that one.) But I was pleased with how it looks and was pleasantly surprised how the red matched and popped in our blue & white room (although I do have a yellow summer quilt on the bed).

 

So even though I'm not posting as much this year as previous years, I'm actually getting more stuff done. :)