It is still too early here for much yardwork, although things are starting to green up. Our weather has been volatile, with highs in the 80’s, then snow showers. People have been out mowing lawns.
We worked really hard last summer refurbishing our 20 year old strawberry patch. The plants had petered out and the soil was packed and hard. By last fall there were new plants and new runners coming along very nicely. We had to fence the whole thing due to rabbits eating the strawberry leaves. We had a whole herd of bunnies in the neighborhood. Our next door neighbor trapped and then released about 10 rabbits in the country. There were far fewer rabbits hopping around by the fall.
The fencing fell down over the winter. We planned to put it back up in a couple of weeks. Wouldn’t you know it, the minute the strawberry plants started to emerge and green up, there was a rabbit nibbling them. Husband was out last weekend in pelting sleet laying down a makeshift carpet of plastic fencing to foil the rabbits until we can put up a proper fence when the weather is better and we have more time.
How are your garden and yard plans coming along? Growing any fruits or vegetables this year?
Another week that zipped by at breakneck speed. I feel like I barely get time to comment on the blog these days. The next month and a half will be this way. Maybe longer, depends how the spring goes.
Monday my friend Paul and I drove to Minneapolis to pick up some lighting fixtures that had been repaired. We enjoyed lunch at Doolittle’s Woodfired Grill, and had an uneventful drive to and from the big city. Tuesday was a trip to Northfield, with just me and loud music and my mind wandering. It was fun to see the farm fields and I saw a little snow in one ditch, and nobody doing any fieldwork yet. It’s early, it’s only April 12th, but when the snow melts and the temperatures are above average, everybody sure gets antsy. And when the weather is all over the place like this, who knows what’s gonna happen in two weeks. Crop Insurance doesn’t kick in until April 15th, so most people won’t start planting corn before then.
I do plan on picking up oat seed and corn seed Saturday afternoon. Remember I talked about that wagon frame a couple weeks ago and moving the flatbed wagon from one frame to the other? I haven’t done anything further with it yet but maybe this weekend. Especially since I use it for seed. Won’t take long once I get my butt in gear.
Our play at the college, Swimming in the Shallows, will open on Thursday. I’ve been busy with that. I painted the floor with a base coat of white one night after rehearsal. I don’t consider myself a good painter, my style with the floor is to thin down some paint, and use a couple hand sprayers and just have at it. It’ll look like something! Often a show will take place in multiple locations so the floor may have to cover all the bases. Not always, sometimes it is just a house, and I can put a rug down, but often it needs to be rather neutral, and I don’t ever wanna leave it just plain black. A couple of the themes in this show are water and a beach. So first I mixed up some white paint, put it in a typical garden variety sprayer, and just based the floor white.
It’s kind of fun to watch the dots fill in the floor. It’s oddly satisfying. Then I’ll come back with blues and browns…or something. I feel a little like Georges Seurat, a little bit of pointillism.
I’m working with the marketing department for this show because they have a large format printer and I’m making tessellations. Repeating patterns. My original thought was to use objects from the show like shoes, purses, cigarettes, but I couldn’t exactly make tessellation from those items. I found a free website where I could create and modify repeating patterns and then I include approximations of those items inside the pattern.
This was a sample as the marketing department and I worked out scale. There are six freestanding walls that will have six different patterns on them. I don’t want them so busy the audience is trying to figure out what it is, I just want to turn it into a texture. We talk a lot about texture in lighting and scenic design. Two of the walls closest to center will have patterns that are just squares with some images inside. The next two walls are more like diamonds but slightly skewed. And then the last two walls, centered on each side, are very skewed. It’s a visual metaphor for the twisted relationships in the show. Or the way real life can be twisted sometimes.
The electricians have finished in the shop. Three and a half days. The outlets and the lights are wonderful.
I have lights over the bench!
And I have exterior lights that I’m excited about.
We had some kind of issue with the garage door opener, but on Friday I had the door company come back and fix it. I wasn’t home, but from my phone, I was able to open the door, pull up the shop camera, and watch the door open! I cackled gleefully. Then I watched it close again. From my phone. I giggled.
I got the stereo moved out there last weekend, and I have a Bluetooth adapter for it and now I just need to get the speakers mounted.
Three weeks ago while I was folding up clean laundry I discovered that one of my green fuzzy socks was missing. I’m pretty thorough about shaking out clothing to make sure socks are hiding but even after checking the usual suspects, I didn’t find it. The remaining green sock went to live in the “single sock box”; it was the only inhabitant.
On Saturday as I was getting ready for the day, I noticed the poor lonely green sock – usually if I don’t find a sock within three weeks, I never do and I was lamenting the loss the green sock. I love all my various fuzzy socks.
Five minutes later, as I pulled clean sheets out of the closet, the errant green sock cascaded out of the fitted sheet. I hadn’t found it because I cycle through my flannel sheets and had not pulled this set out since the sock had gone missing. As I was happily re-joining the fuzzy pair I pondered the coincidence that I hadn’t thought about the missing sock for three weeks until just a few minutes before it returned to me. Part of brain says “coincidence”. Another part of my insists (fairly adamantly) that it has to be some weird confluence of the universe. I can’t imagine why the universe would care about my socks.
How long do you keep a solo item that is missing its mate? Where do you keep them?
I am afraid I made a grave error with my last purchase of loungewear. I bought a really soft and fleecy cardigan that I wear over pajamas. The texture is very similar to fluffy cotton socks. Our dog is obsessed with stealing and chewing socks. Who do you think made off with the cardigan belt the minute I got it out of the package? I got it back before any damage was done. Now, though, I am afraid Kyrill thinks the cardigan is a big sock for him to chew!
Husband tells me that I am not allowed to cook in the cardigan as it is a cream color and he doesn’t want me to stain it. I confess that I do cook in my pajamas sometimes. I never wear them out of the house, though. My usual outfit is a sweatshirt with corduroy pants and soft socks. I wear those to work, too. I only have one pair of sweatpants. I only “dress up” if I have to testify in court as an expert witness.
I am still assessing what clothing choices I will make now that I am not working full time. I don’t think I will stock up on much more “loungewear”, especially if it is soft and fleecy like socks. I am drawn to comfy but not baggy, pants, and soft sweatshirts. I am taking care to keep my new cardigan out of Kyrill’s reach, along with all the other things he loves to steal and chew like socks, pens, papers, and eye glasses. Terriers certainly are good at helping us always put things away!
What is your favorite “loungewear”? Any memorable work uniforms?
I was listening to a jazz station the other day and a song came on that I remembered.
“Li’l Darlin’”, a 1958 song by Neil Hefti for the Count Basie Orchestra. And I recall hearing it late nights on MPR with Leigh Kamman and the Jazz Image. I went down an internet rabbit hole looking up Leigh and the Jazz Image. He has a Wikipedia page. He even has a website created by his daughter and others.
He was on MPR for 34 years, in radio for 65 years.
Born in Minnesota in1922, he grew up in central Minnesota, and spent time during WWII in the Armed Forces Radio. The last edition of The Jazz Image was September 29, 2007, and he passed away in Edina, MN, at age 92 on Friday October 17, 2014. From the look of things, his contribution to jazz music is severely understated.
He used music of Alice Babs as his ‘filler music’. But Li’l Darlin must have been in there somewhere, how else would I have known it? And that led me to Count Basie, and a recording by the DePaul University Jazz Ensemble, and down the hole I went. I had forgotten how poetic he was on the program. From a substack website by Tyler King called “From Astaire to Sun Ra: A Jazz Journey”, there’s are quotes from some of his broadcasts: “wrapped in honey and floating on a cloud” or “Here we are in pursuit of a timber wolf howling across Miller’s Bay, Leach Lake; and we are headed to Star Route, Walker, Minnesota zip code 56484.” Pretty good imagery!
And in the words of Duke Ellington, “If it sounds good, it is good.”
Thanks for the memories, Mr. Kamman.
It must be spring as the college put out the ‘Ornery Goose’ seasonal email.
The college has several nesting geese. This one has moved to a new spot in the parking lot this year.
At home, I picked up the driveway markers, and I took off the rear blade, but I haven’t taken down the snow fence yet.
I have started picking up sticks, branches, and roots from the dirt work done last fall. It’s a little too muddy in places yet, especially with the rain and snow we’ve been getting lately, but there’s a lot to pick up and we’ll get them eventually.
And before it snowed and rained last week, I cleared a downed tree off the edge of a field and pushed brush back into the trees along the edge. Trying to keep nature at bay. Or least in its place. It’s a yearly battle.
The weather was so nice Friday evening, Kelly and I and the dogs sat out on the veranda for an hour. We didn’t have wine or even chairs; we just sat on the steps and talked and watched the chickens and the clouds and the world go round.
I’ve had three electricians working in the shop this week. One journeyman and two apprentices. There is so much planning and forethought required in this, it is one of those situations where I’m paying for his 20 years of practice, in addition to the 3 days of work. Look at the skill it takes to create concentric 90-degree bends. Plus, all the code requirements, and the cleanest way to get all the wires where they need to be with the least amount of conduit.
Part of me wonders why I hired this out and didn’t do it myself? All the aforementioned is why. Plus, he has a scissor lift.
I did pick up the lift early and mount the lights to the ceiling, and I’ll install the ceiling fans myself, but they’re doing the hard work.
It will be nice to have the large garage door opener hooked up, and outside lights when needed, and better inside lighting, and outlets all over, and a dedicated outlet for the air compressor, and two welder outlets! One inside, one outside!
Can’t wait. It’s gonna be SO COOL! And then really, I’m gonna stop spending money. On this.
I moved some tractors on Tuesday. I was going to hook up the big tractor to the soil finisher, my main spring implement, but decided it wasn’t quite time for that yet.
Moved the scrap metal tote outside so I can get to the grain drill. And it will be time to pick up seed shortly.
It’s interesting the chives growing wild are greening up, but the chives in the pot are not yet. The ground stays warmer than the cold air surrounding the pot I suppose is the reason.
We had new lighting put in the bathrooms we had remodeled last year. The lights had these newfangled clear bulbs in them. I imagine they are considered more decorative than regular bulbs. They are nice and interesting, but were a bit of a problem to replace when one burned out last week.
There was no indication on the bulb as to its wattage except some gold writing on the top of the bulb that was completely unreadable. We could discern they were a Sylvania product, though.
We headed to Menards with the burned out bilb as a reference. I was astounded by the varity of light bulb shapes and sizes. When did this happen? I guess I just haven’t been paying attention to lighting trends for the past few years. In fact, I am guilty of not paying attention to much when I buy light bulbs except the wattage, which probably explains the variety of light bulb colors in our house. Some are “soft white”, some are “bright white”, and sometimes it looks pretty odd with white and yellowish bulb colors in the same light.
We encountered a helpful young woman clerk in the lightbulb department who was able, at a quick glance at the burned out bulb, to tell us we needed 40 watt soft white replacements. Now we know. I decided I like bright white bulbs in the other lights in the house, but we’ll stick with these for the bathrooms.
Any decorative or fashion trends that are surprising to you? Are you a bright white or soft white kind of person?
The Badlands Opera Company staged Into The Woods last weekend at the local college auditorium. It was a fantastic and absolutely professional production. Costuming, special effects, and tech were superb. The cast was comprised of all local folks, and their voices were fabulous. The director/ Cinderella’s Prince was a 30 something local man who had made good as a theatre professor in another state. This was his directorial debut. About half of the cast are members of our Lutheran Church.
The oldest member of the cast was our church organist. She played Jack in the Beanstalk’s mother. She is a feisty 76 year old with a huge soprano voice, wonderful acting skills, and a sharp tongue. Most of the other leads were in their mid to late 30’s, and I realized I have watched many of them grow up through church and school productions. We were at the infant baptisms of the Baker and the Witch! Cinderella’s parents are wonderful ranch people who I have known for years and worked with when they were foster/adopt parents. We sat with them at the Friday night opening and talked and joked. It was wonderful. Little Red Riding Hood’s dad is Husband’s real life barber!
When we got home from the performance I took a look around our home, a pretty modest home for the most part, and saw the family mementos and possessions we have, and thought about the relationships we have built over the decades, and I considered how priceless they all are. They wouldn’t be priceless in the marketplace, but they are irreplaceable to us.
What are the things and memories and relationships that are priceless to you? What is your favorite scene from Into The Woods?
Another Wednesday, another blizzard warning and snow day.
For good measure, the three of us took Thursday off as a snow day as well. Wanted to make sure we gave the roads time to improve. And really, on the north side of Rochester we only had about 2 inches maybe, and most of our driveway didn’t have any snow on it. Credit to my dad for having the road built up like he did 50 years ago. I remember maybe 30 years ago there was a snow storm every Thursday for about a month. I would plow the driveway before milking in the morning, Kelly would take the kids in and go to work, and then before they came home, I’d clear the driveway and again wait for them out at the highway. Must’ve been before cell phones, and in one of those odd little memories that sticks with you, I remember sitting in the tractor with the door open while one of the sheriff deputies that we were friends with, stood outside and we talked for half an hour. I remember watching his ears get more and more red and thinking “I’m sure glad I’m in this tractor cab.“, and “why doesn’t he end this conversation and get back in the car already??” Maybe Kelly finally came home, I don’t remember. Maybe he wasn’t cold. Maybe I should have had him get in the cab out of the wind at least. Don’t know.
Daughter and I have the place to ourselves this weekend as Kelly flew out to Boston to staff a booth for some work-related event. Flew out Saturday, works Sunday, back on Monday. I don’t think you can even call that a working vacation. Sounds like just plain ‘work’ to me.
I think I have finally finished farm bookwork and can get our taxes done now. The software I use generates a Year End report that will be 31 pages this year. About half of it being farm related expenses, and the other half being household expenses. There’s no profit on the farm this year and that’s primarily expenses related to the farm shop. I always enjoy looking at the final tally of these expenses. The dogs cost us $3000: Half is vet expenses, the other half are dog treats, joint medications, and frisbees. Pretty astounding how much we’ve spent on groceries.
I have finally, I think, finished all the construction in the shop. In fact, I moved the miter saw and table saw off to storage corners. I started moving bolts to the new bolt shelves and placed another order for more storage bins and dividers. I am throwing out a lot! A lot of not only old, rusty, bent, things, but just bolts that I’ll never use. For example, a box of nuts and bolts from my father-in-law when he had a grain bin taken down. There’s just not a chance I’m gonna use 1000 round headed, 1 inch bolts, that have a glob of tar on them. I also threw out a box of 3/8 inch flat headed plow bolts. Again, it’s just not something I’m gonna use. I use plow bolts, but they’re ½” diameter and 2 inches long.
I have two boxes of stuff I’m saving for my crafty sister. Just weird little odds and ends that she always appreciates. Although in this case, I’m not sure what she’s gonna do with all this metal stuff without a welder. Maybe I should buy her a tube of JB weld to go with this junk. I mean “these supplies”.
One of the boxes of dad‘s odds and ends and bits of doo-dads, contained eight sets of ignition points and three condensers. I have no idea if they’re from tractors or cars and it sort of boggles my mind that if he replaced a set because it wasn’t running well, why did he not just throw it right away in the first place??
I saved those for my sister. Some of you might know what those are. Electronic ignition and everything these days has eliminated the need for these things, but these were a pretty remarkable creation in the history of the automobile and kudos to whoever invented them.
(OK, I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, Charles Franklin Kettering, founder of Delco, and worked for GM, is credited with creating this ignition system. It was first used on the 1912 Cadilac. Huh!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delco_ignition_system
The online auction in Plainview finished on Tuesday. I had taken a small, 4 drawer toolbox that I got for free, a large 5 drawer ‘document’ cabinet that had large, shallow drawers, and the anhydrous applicator toolbar. There were two other, much nicer anhydrous applicators than mine on the auction. I got $200 for that item. A lot less than I paid for it ten or fifteen years ago. I also got $40 for the small free toolbox. So at least all that stuff is out of my hair.
I’ve got 1 chicken laying eggs in the garage.
I’ve chased her out of the garage a couple times recently, so I was keeping an eye out for eggs. Every now and then I get a chicken laying eggs in the garage for some reason. Once they were nesting up on a shelf behind a box of sidewalk chalk. This time she’s on the ground, behind a shovel. I figure that out one day when the shovel was tipped over. Chickens are so weird.
Hey- check out this ‘egg fetcher’ tool I use when the eggs are in the corner underneath the nest boxes:
WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON THING IN YOUR JUNK DRAWER? DID YOU GO LOOK OR DID YOU JUST KNOW? WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT MANY OF THAT THING?
Over the years I’ve tried a lot of different food plans. Whenever I hear of someone talking about how good they feel on some particular diet, I get curious. I’ve even tried raw a couple of times; the second time I lasted the longest – four days. Tried the zone for a bit. The Mediterranean is pretty close to our regular habit, although as vegetarians, we pass on the occasional fish/meat.
The keto diet was the one that I toyed with for quite some time before giving it a shot. I have two good friends who swear by it. I loaded up on a few keto carb substitutes and I made it three weeks. But I didn’t feel better. In fact if you factor in how much I was thinking about carbs, dreaming about carbs, crying about carbs, I was much worse.
So it probably won’t surprise anybody that every now and then I let my delight in carbs get the better of me. Every month or so YA asks if Great Harvest is making Derby Cookies; they are her favorites. She is also very fond of the various cheese breads that Great Harvest makes. When she looked at the March newsletter, she was happy that the Derby cookies were on the docket as well as the gouda garlic bread. Since she was traveling and I was in party prep, I made the bakery run on Saturday (that’s when they do the gouda bread). I thought that ordering ahead would help, but it didn’t. In addition to YA’s bread and cookies, I left the bakery with a White Cinnamon Chip loaf and an Apple Caramel loaf (mostly apple, not much caramel – a perfect ration for me).
This is a lot of bread, even for me. YA will take care of the gouda and probably most of the cookies. Guess I’ll just have to suffer through my two loaves. Sigh.
Anything that occasionally just makes you lose control?
I was much alarmed recently to see that some strange State legislator from Iowa was proposing to annex all the bottom southern counties in Minnesota, including my beloved Rock County, and make them part of Iowa. I haven’t seen much in the MN press about this, so I am hoping that it is being viewed as a political stunt and nothing to take seriously.
I lived within 15 miles of Iowa my whole life and lived in south central Iowa for a year, and I sure wouldn’t want to become an Iowan. Too conservative for my tastes. I also lived for a year in southern Indiana, and my, was that strange after living in Manitoba for six years. North Dakota is conservative, too, but I have managed to tolerate it for 37 years. People here are quirky enough to make life fun and interesting despite the influence of big oil and conservation politics.
We still plan to move to Minnesota in the next year, but if the Iowa annexation actually happens, it sure won’t be to Luverne!
What states or countries have you lived in? Where would you consider or not consider living?
Trail Baboon 