Slowly being busy

January 25...

Weather has been a bit odd, the January thaw was more of a March thaw. But been getting things done around here. Did quite a bit of cleanup in the general kitchen outdoors area. A lot of pots to shuffle around and some leaf debris to clean up, some stuff to throw out. And got a handful of put off errands done. It's no fun to make the more special trips out and about sometimes, but that's ok on a nice day, right?

Picked up a handful more stuff for the ongoing Fortunes Turning. It's kind of turning from Nightvale to Springfield right now. I realized I didn't have any spring/summer foliage, everything so far has been autumn and winter. Fortunately the out and abouts included hitting the craft stores- and Michaels was gold this time with their sales on some really good foliage. I picked up a couple "mats" of plants that when pulled off their bases is providing me with a shitton of small plants that look great scale wise.
And I've been obsessed with online searching for making mini's. I'm getting to the point where some of the stuff I want going on in the village is pretty much fuck that cost wise. I'm almost always very good at waiting for the right combinations of sales and coupons when I pick up pieces at the store. I hunt the clearance bins for damaged items that come super cheap and that I can repair or make into something else. Like I picked up a really cool bridge that was originally 20 bucks for 4 bucks- the railing was cracked and needed a dab of glue to be good as new.
I regularly scour the thrift and resale shops for stuff too. At least half of my buildings have come from thrift stores. Smalls are a bit more of a challenge, but I regularly look at kids toys for some of that stuff. Like after Christmas the local farm store had a neat and cheap clearance farming set full of goodies I want to put into spring season.
With all the fixing and refurbishing of pieces I do... now I'm really getting into some actual making of stuff. It's just cost prohibitive some of these odds and ends. It's one thing to pick up some of the buildings or smalls that just realistically are beyond my making skills. But I can make a corn stalk instead of paying someone else an unholy amount of money for it, lol. Or a bunch of other things. So yeah, been looking up a lot of interesting and neat mini making stuff. Actually compiling quite a pile of links of stuff together for future use. Fun times :)

Cleaned the crap out of the solarium too. It was just, ugh. Been mostly too cold for that too, but I figured I could blow the few hours of wattage running the space heater. But now the whole place is properly cleaned up and organized again so I can start wrecking it again, hehehee.
So now most of the bulbs are potted up, still have some to go. Got more garlic I need to figure out what to do with. Started a bunch of the wild gathered asparagus seed today- decided to use those rock wool cubes. Figured in the scheme of things, the few lumps of that out on the back 40 isn't a big deal, and I'm honestly curious to see how well it works or not. I did a cuttings test with the rock wool last fall, and that turned out pretty good for coleus and scented geraniums.
It does seem early to be starting seeds but... I have many pots already set up and cold strating in the solarium, and I've been starting pots of greens and some herbs and garlic greens for a few weeks now for some fresh eating off the windowsill. Unfortunately it's been overcast a lot and the lettuces aren't happy about it. But the garlic don't care :)

So now I'm off again.. need to finish up some things before getting ready for dinner. Mmmmm, chicken thighs tonight.