Actually, I probably don’t have more to do than anyone else, but I’m a bit scrambled, trying to decide the order in which to attack it all. Usually I prioritize based on what deadline is going to bite me in the butt first, and that usually works pretty well, but I’m going to have to work more efficiently than usual for a while.
I started working in the gardens earlier than usual, but I let a lot of good gardening days get by me. We’ve decided to ask our favorite landscape company for a little help with the lawns and leaves. However, the forecast for the next 48 hours is HIGH WINDS!!!, so we may not need any help with the leaves, unless we get leaves from Iowa while ours go off to the east.
I cut down the peonies on Friday, and Dear Husband carted all my composting trash out to the back. I still have some tomato plants to pull, and before Thanksgiving, I’ll have to cut down the ornamental plant that is trying to block my sidewalk (an artemisia, I think)! But, most of my gardening is almost done.
The Empty Nester sewing group is going to be here tomorrow, so I’ve been working on kits for them, and tonight we reorganized the area where they will be meeting. We added leaves to the table, swapped out a burned out light bulb, and moved the long library table from my studio out to the kitchen. Tomorrow I have to bring out the ironing board, and iron, and generally set up for the meeting. I want to move Halloween decorations in place for them, too, but I’m going to wait to hang the bats. I don’t want to give one of them a heart attack when a plastic bat comes flying at them!
My weekend is booked up, but Monday afternoon I can get back to washing interior windows. I have some plants that I’m FINALLY going to toss out, and several closets to clean. Then, I need to get back to sorting out some of my mother’s things. I guess, I’ll have to clean one day, and organize the next, and work on Thanksgiving plans the following day.
Let’s see….Empty Nester’s, the quilting bee, and Thanksgiving, and Christmas…..Christmas cookies, and decorations and.hmmmm,,,,do I want to do cards this year? SO many things to distract me! *G*
The War of the Iris
I noticed while I was on my hands and knees a few feet further down the garden that a small patch of iris was really short on dirt around it’s roots. Since I was there, I added som dirt, bringing it up around the edges of the rhizomes. Iris do really well in cool weather, so I thought there might be a bit more growth this fall, as they get ready to settle in for the winter.
I was putting a chrysanthemum in the basket by the front door and looked down at the iris as I passed. I could see the roots again! Apparently, where my iris is planted there is a back door to a chipmunk burrow. It’s too late in the season to move the iris, so every day from now until the chipmunks go into hibernation, I’m going to have to add dirt around these iris.
Doesn’t this have the feel of one of the Looney Tunes cartoons? I can just see one of those characters pouring tons of dirt over the iris and the chipmunks flinging back out again at jet speed! Darned little rodents!
Fall Gardening 2
I’ve planned to get into the gardens for an hour or two a day, while the weather lasts. It’s got to be easier on my body, and on my schedule, to spread it out over several weeks. With that in mind, I went out yesterday to plant six tulips about about a dozen lilies in the garden closest to the front door.
I wrote earlier that I had trimmed back half of the vinca in that bed. As I got ready to plant the lilies, I thought that it would be wiser to cut out the superstructure of the vinca, and remove as much of it as possible. I told Cop Car that I’m not kidding myself that I’ve eradicated it, but at least it will start from a much smaller base next year. That little project took the half hour that I thought I would be spending in the garden.
I started moving dirt with a trowel before I smacked myself in the head, got up, and started to shovel dirt out of the way. Clunk! Huh?? I tried again. Clunk! Okay….back to my knees with the trowel. I heard a metalic scrape. Light began to dawn. Probably 15 years ago, in an effort to outsmart the chipmunks, Dear Husband created a box for me out of hardware cloth. It’s a grid of wire that must be a half to three-quarter of an inch square. I dug out a huge hole, lowered the box into it, partially filled in the box, planted the tulips, covered them, lowered the lid, and covered that with dirt, too. It’s been buried there all this time. ONE lonely tulip has bloomed every year.
I figured that I was this far along, I might as well dig the thing out. Oh boy…..do my muscles feel it! Most of the work had to be done with a hand trowel. When I got most of the box emptied, I used the shovel to lift it out, and it came out in pretty darned good shape. There were two crocus bulbs, and three baby crocus bulbs. Not a single tulip to be found.
By that time, I had a hole that was perfect for the tulips and the lilies. IF the chipmunks let me have a year of bloom on the tulips, I’ll be lucky, but the lilies should last for a while, and be a nice addition to the garden.
Fall Gardening
I have been THINKING about gardening for a month or so. Lately, I’ve been telling myself that I needed to take advantage of the wonderful sunny, not too warm days, to get out and begin the work of putting the gardens to bed for the winter. When I started falling asleep planning what needed to be done, and waking up, thinking, “I’d better get into the gardens today, the rain is coming,” I figured I’d better DO something about it.
This morning I worked in the herb garden. Because we put a new layer of chat down in the walkways this year, there wasn’t much that needed to be done there. What a relief. It’s stupid to spend your time on your hands and knees weeding a walkway when it’s chilly and damp! I’ll put some Preen down later this month and perhaps that will help head off any seeds that have strayed from the garlic chives and feverfew and lemon balm.
I clipped the tomatoes at the base of the stems and then lifted out the branches and the supports. I decided to cut the garlic chives back this year, but I waited too late to keep them from spreading their seeds. I’m seriously thinking about digging them out next year. I don’t use enough of them to justify the headache of weeding out the new plants.
I cut back the sweet basil plants. There are still two small globe basils, but I’ll get them the next time. I’m growing zinnias in the herb garden this year. Zinnias were one of my Dad’s favorite plants. I thought the seeds I had would be plants about twelve to eighteen inches high. These are HUGE! I think some of them must be over 36 inches tall. I’ve left them for the time being because the birds seem to like the seeds, and we’ve seen humming birds visiting them. Once the hard frost kills them off, I’ll probably cut them down.
After lunch, I worked in the sidewalk garden at the front of the house. I pulled spent plants from several planters and moved three of the planters into the garage. I’ve had volunteer tomatoes growing in the volunteer vinca, and I ripped out all the tomatoes on the north side of the sidewalk, and half the vinca. I added dirt around the base of a very old Palace Purple huchera, and planted three small starts that were knocked off when I weeded. I have six tulips and about a dozen lilies to plant in that area when I get the rest of the vinca cleared out.
I still have some iris to clean out, and a dahlia to lift. I hope it will store over in the basement during the winter. I want to put straw down over the ferns and some of the daylilies, and there is a garden on the east side of the driveway that needs some TLC. I’m not done by a long shot, but I got a good start today. I think the rain that we are supposed to have this week will make some of the chores a little easier to do.
It was a good day for gardening!
THE Weekend
‘Tis the week or weekend for the bringing home of the boat! YEA!!!!
We’re not exactly sure when that’s going to happen. Dear Husband has to coordinate the un-stepping of the mast at the park district, with the company that will lift the Arr!! out. Everyone is just a bit iffy about how much work they have, so DH is trying to get in touch to see what their plans are.
If we are very very lucky, he will go this evening to get the boat ready, and the mast will be taken down early tomorrow morning. Then, he’ll have to motor to the company that does the lifting and wait in line. He could possibly be lifted out on Thursday afternoon and be on his way home in the same day, or this could stretch out until Saturday.
This will be the last time this year I will have to sleep alone due to the boat. In that sentence, there is a blessing and a sadness! lol There’s a lot to be said about both situations.
Everyone who knows me knows that it is my job to worry. I’ve already started worrying about bringing the boat home. The past few years we’ve had a lot of nightmares getting it home, and I worry not for the boat but for Dear Husband. I’ll be glad when they are both home safely.
Leg Cramps
At exercise this week, our guru had a suggestion for those of us who have leg cramps.
She told us that if you press one of your fingers hard beneath your nose for a count of eight long breaths, the cramp should abate.
I think this might be called “accu-pressure.”
Lynda, our guru, said that it had worked with the three people she had suggested it to. It seems well worth trying. Dear Husband gets leg cramps. Next time, I’ll try this on him.
Let me know if it works for you, won’t you?
Taking Responsibility
I was running errands earlier this week, listening to my favorite radio station. They have a new morning announcer I haven’t particularly liked, but he said something that blew me away. Basically, he said that if he didn’t like how something was being done, rather than complain he would take responsibility for doing it right.
We ALL complain about how things are run, done, accomplished or not accomplished, but how often do we step up to the plate and say, “I’ll do it!”?? There are times when I have complained, but I couldn’t see my way to a better solution. I think it’s okay to say we don’t like something, but wouldn’t it be refreshing if, when we complain or criticize, we also offer to step up to the plate and take over the problem?
I tend to listen to talk radio, and have heard some incredibly simple, fair solutions to problems that we are experiencing in government now. Why is it that these well thought out ideas are not getting heard by those who could implement them? We are so overburdened by government that our democracy is going to sink, yet we continue to implement laws and systems that require more man-hours to oversee than we can afford. Does this make sense to you?
Here are some suggestions that we could consider.
A federal tax of 15% for everyone. No loopholes. A similar tax, at a lower rate, for states. Our taxes would become instantly easier to prepare and we wouldn’t need so many IRS agents to audit tax returns.
A consistent form of taxation for everyone, to support education. Ending the use of property tax to fund education. Funding to be based on both the number of students in a school district, and base rates for each school. Towns/cities could levy taxes for additional support, if they wished.
A limit of two to four years on welfare, unless you are disabled. Assistance to train or retrain for a job during that time, to prepare you to support yourself.
Requiring our federal Senators and Congressmen to use the same Social Security and health care system that they have created for us.
Limiting Congressional Pensions
Requiring the budget to be balanced. Cutting back across the board in every department.
And while we are at it, let’s limit campaigning for office to six months, and limit the amount which can be spent on a campaign.
I bet you have more suggestions. I’d be happy to hear them. I think it’s time for the people of the United States to become responsible for their own government.
Feathered Friends
We have a large number of retention ponds in this area. Every subdivision has one, and so do the industrial complexes. Where there’s been a lot of growth, there are a lot of these ponds, and the birds love them.
I’ve noticed that the geese snooze on the north slopes of the bigger ponds in late morning. Some of the geese stand on one foot and some nestle into the grass, but they all bend their necks to put their heads under their wings while they sleep. We don’t see this type of behavior much at all during the summer, but we see it a lot in the fall.
Herons and egrets are still with us. We’ve been having incredible fall weather here the past few weeks. Mostly, it’s been in the upper sixties and lower seventies, with a lot of sun and no rain. The past few days it’s been in the upper seventies into the eighties, quite warm for October in the Chicago area. The weather forecast for this week has very little rain in it. We could use the precipitation to be getting ready for winter. I worry about our trees not having enough water.
Clean Linens
Occasionally something at the Yahoo home page will catch my eye and I’ll click on it. Today, there were two reports on the subject of how often do you clean bed linens and towels. Do you remember when we used to have chores assigned to days? Monday was wash day, I think. Now, it seems as though EVERY day is wash day!
I usually wash sheets and pillowcases once or twice a week. If it’s been very warm, and we have perspired while sleeping, I might change them more frequently. And, if I have had to use ointment on my fingers, I’ll change the bedding more often, so that it doesn’t have a chance to set into the fibers. Apparently, I’m doing fine with the sheets, but I should be washing the mattress pad every two to four weeks, and I probably do it four times a year.
I very rarely wash the quilts on my bed. Quilts were not mentioned specifically, but comforters should be washed monthly, and duvets should be washed weekly. If you share your bed with a pet, you want to wash the bedding frequently to remove pet dander and dead skin cells. Be sure to dry the bedding thoroughly so that you don’t create a habitat for mold spores to thrive.
Pillows should be washed every six months. If you wash a down pillow, dry it with a couple of clean tennis balls to fluff the feathers. A zippered cover for a pillow should be washed weekly.
This is the season of flu and colds, and attending to the laundry more frequently is one step you can take to preserve your health.
As for towels, the article recommended that you have FOUR SETS of towels per person in the house, and that it’s a good idea to color code them so that they are not shared. The reason for four — one in the hamper, one on the towel bar, one in the wash, and a spare. Wash cloths are especially risky breeding grounds for germs, so it’s important that they not be used by more than one person. When you’ve used a towel, spread it out on the towel bar, to help it to dry out.
We have two towels in three shades of green, and two towels in shades of pink to rose. We never share a used bath towel, but I don’t assign one color to Dear Husband and one to me. Actually, we do share one towel. I have one that hangs in the sink area, and we tend to dry hands on that towel. I might need to rethink that this winter. I have to admit I tend to fold my towel neatly, and DH slings his over his towel bar. All this time I’ve been ticked that he doesn’t fold it, and he’s been doing the right thing. I don’t think I’ll tell him about all this…..
Sweatshop
Elegante Mother was active in the Empty Nesters group of her church. We hosted the sewing ladies meeting at our home once a month, and I got to know the ladies as I helped with desserts and an occasional project. This year I became friends with a new member to the Empty Nesters and when I found out that she quilted, I invited her for a quilting day.
Mary lives half the year here with one son, and half the year in Texas with another son. She has been very active in a charity quilt program in Dallas. As we pieced and chatted, it was decided that we would try to get our Empty Nester group to participate in one of these programs. We began putting together kits for small quilt tops, and chose meeting dates for September and October.
Today was the big day, the first meeting for this new activity. We had been working for about six weeks, cutting fabrics and trying to make the best use of scraps that had been given to us. I had five kits ready to start sewing and two or three more on the design board. Mary had made some kits up, too.
I got up early, did dishes, cleaned, shopped for raspberries, green grapes, strawberries and blueberries for a fruit salad at lunch, and swept the front sidewalk. At 10:00, Mary arrived, and shortly after that just one more member came up the drive. I have no idea where everyone else was.
The situation gave me the chance to work one on one with a woman who had never pieced quilts. Hildy is an experienced seamstress, but she had never worked on quilts before. She chose a kit of squares that will make a three dimensional pinwheel quilt. I showed her how to press the squares into the right sized triangle, and then how to assemble the blocks. I was able to talk to her about the need for a consistent quarter-inch seam, and show her tricks to make it easier to get the seam allowance right. She seemed happy as a clam to take the kit home with her to work on this month!
So, perhaps this was a really good thing. Not all of the ladies are quilters, so I may learn from today and type up a page with a few tips that will help. I hope in the future we will be able to give them fabric and a pattern and get them started, but I think for now, I’ll need to do the cutting to create the kits.
It will be good to have the sweatshop up and running and the ladies visiting here again. I’ve missed them.