Catching rain while we can...

Been decanting rain water into various jugs, tubs, and barrel today. It's that time of the year where it's gone from too much rain and remove watering trays because stuff is drowning to needing watering trays to hold the water up in the pots that need it daily.
Figure right now we got 200 gallons of decanted storage, and about 350 gallons of catch storage. Only drained part of the big 275 gallon tank today once I was done with the smaller tanks.

A total of 550 gallons of garden water once it is maxed out. And we could still set up another 275 out of the back of the house... and now I'm planning on moving gardens into the stableyard and that building will be doing some of it's own harvesting. I think I need to keep my eye out for another big tank or two for such storage.

We had a good rain cell last night- had a boom and flash so close was sure we would lose power, but we didn't. But now we are hot, sunny, and dry till late next week. I'll likely blow through quite a bit of what's still in the 275 tank before next rain to start filling stuff back up again. 

Most of the gallons and up plants are good- some of the smaller pots are off and on- I did catch those in time with watering trays. My small cells of herbs are toast.

It was indeed a wonderful weekend away for the 4th :) A rare true weekend off and away for both of us. We left the house in good hands and under excellent camera surveillance. Unplugged of any shit, and just hung out with most of my family, and a heap of our friends..
Got to hang out with my whole family- mom and siblings, my nephew after decades of not, and his new baby.. fucking trip.
Went to faire, and I dressed up as "that mundane" because of a lot of ugh in the dressing up in the ren garb department.

Got many excellent hair goodies- Thank you to...
Kimi Hawkins Roadhouse Adventures: My new barrette that is carved up with flowers and even in my fine hair hold in really, really well for the weight of it.
Rebecca O’Keefe Twisted Spiders: I was thrilled to get a new spider of orange and goldstone to add to my collection after a while. Even more squee was being able to add a tigers-eye hair clip spider!
Finally found my first Grichels to wear in my hair. He is wonderful :)
Brenda Mennenger Brazin’ Lady Torchworks: Wore one of my two new pieces to work yesterday, and I swear it brought good hair mojo on.
There was really, really tempting bee jewelry out of Pendragon and this metal dipped lost wax of another shop that I was in love with several pieces of. But if I had gotten that honeycomb bit, I couldn't have gotten the barrette piece. I also rather fancied one of the capelettes from the newer cape/cloak maker, but just didn't get around to that a second time after picking up the hair pieces that was my prime goal.


Gots extra squee of some Halloween goodies and a candle shop for the village... More mom sweater action than I thought- fuck my orange and brown striped one is awesome, and now I got a nice light blue ribbed one and an excellent dicky.
But damn yeah, got an instant pot!

Been so long since I last posted, had to relog my shit, lol.

It's been a spring around here. Since I last posted some crap apparently changed on the blogger, and I had to relog. Meh, guess it's about time.

But things have changed. Quit working at Meijer. It was just too much of some, too little of other, and just timing and time to move on and do other. Was a bit disappointed with myself that I couldn't make it to at least a year after not leaving after a couple months.. But I knew this summer couldn't go down like last one did. Been working on recovering from some mental and physical shit, and getting into a better place to be able to work on it. And it was likely to get into one of those declining circles if I stuck around though this summer season.
As it worked out in fortunes turning, my love picked up more paycheck as I was having to accept I needed to move on.. and at the same time my friend at the local gardening nursery and bead shop needed to pick up a regular part time employee a couple days a week for the warmer season. The majority of my paycheck goes to fueling my garden and beads..

We have new renters working on moving in upstairs. It's the grandson of the folks that originally built the house and we finished buying the back 10 acres from in fall of 2017. He and his gal and all have been working on getting the upstairs nice to move in soon. He also has been mowing down our yard in this wonderful giant borrowed mower till we can fix our little orange gal. The Sanctuary has been mowed more open than it has been for years.

And a week or so ago he downed three trees in the yard. The maple growing far too close to the south side of the solarium down to the ground. Holy shit the light difference and temp difference on that side of the solarium already! And the couple pines that were already half dead, one by a big wonderful maple, the other shadowing an iris patch that I now need to finish with cutting the wild honeysuckle out of, lol. And dig up a goodly bit of Jay's Sky iris to pass on at the shop and to plant in around the NB place.

Got this years peppers and tomatoes in the pots and ground last weekend, along with a lot of other seeding of beans, cukes, squashes, greens, flowers... a lot of stuff.

I still have to tackle the perennial beds, clean up the future asparagus bed that we got 27 three year from seeds crowns ready for. Trouble Hill and it's mints are in trouble and need cleaning up lest the weeds and ivy eat up all the mint. 

Kicking up a bit of creative juice with some of these changes too. Crystals and stones, colors and.. last night I strung up a tasty bit of tiny gem faceted lapis with treated lava glass daggers.

Been struggling a bit with the beer drinking alcoholism. Ok, a lot. Cuz yeah, I'm an alcoholic like it or not. But working on that too. Kicked smoking for serious, and been on vaping again. Yep, sucking any crap other than straight up pure clean air can be bad. Nicotine, was on 18, been doing 12 mixed with 9 to keep going down. The dude at the shop I pick my vape units from.. said he was on 25, and looked at me like I was crazy when I said I was working on kicking the habit down to nothing.

Sometimes it's about working on stuff. Sometimes about writing it down.. and catching up.

Good golly Miss Molly snow.. and record breaking cold.

And thankfully enough I had the last 3 days off and was able to call off today. 

 

Monday started the clearing the 350' or so of walkway to the pole barn by the road, along with a 25x25'-ish pad and another 125' or so of driveway. We did it 10' or so wide, past the actual driveway to help keep the passage open through the storm.

Monday was around 4-5 inches of snow, with knee deep drifting on the south side of the line. Good weather for shoveling, cleared the whole drive pad nice and wide with a high snow wall on the south side to cut duneing down, with some goodly salting and sanding in the pivot points on the pad.... and about 1/3 of the walk dug sidewalk wide.. the rest of the walkway only one shovel wide. Took several hours.

Tuesday was another 3 inches and we cleared everything off in a couple hours. Snow wall works nice :) Another round of salting and sanding the pad. 

Overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday we ran out of gas to run the furnace- well fuck. Good thing I had already set up a space heater in the vestibule Tuesday morning and had cranked up all the floorboard heaters to help superheat the house in case we lost power.

Wednesday was a big FUCK NO. Didn't even try to go outside it was so sub-zero with snow and blowing around. So the couple inches that fell didn't get cleaned off- and pretty much the whole walkway was drifted shut again.Spent the day inside cooking and buring candles and setting up heaters and dehydrators...

Today was me digging out the walkway over a couple rounds out since it was all almost 16" deep again, and mostly my love clearing the driveway of it's 4-5" of snow while I finished up the walkway and pad. Almost a replay of Mondays snow with all the additional overnight crap and minus the nasty dune in the driveway.

The best part of it being so gall darn cold is that it has made the snow light for shoveling. But it has been so cold I set up a box fan blowing from upstairs to downstairs to help keep the pipes in the basement from freezing. And with losing the gas on the furnace at the worst time sucks. 

Oddly enough, the storm has broken and temps from Sat-Mon are supposed to be warm enough to melt most of this off. So I'll be able to call the fuel truck in next week. 

As part of keeping the house warm has been a lot of cooking. And burning candles. I like the combo of warm wax of unscented, spice, and pine to warm up the nose along with burbling stuff on the stove and in the oven. 

Monday was a batch of chili, with ground turkey, a couple cans each of kidney beans and diced tomatoes, and a whole lotta onions and spices. Served up with shredded cheese, sour cream, and corn chips. 

Tuesday was a pot of tomato sauce and meatballs- made with whole frozen tomatoes from the summer gardens and pre-made GFS meatballs. Served up with angel hair pasta. Roasted off a whole baker of garlic heads and made some yummy roasted garlic compound butter.

Yesterday was Mom's Casserole. I put it in a slow oven and let it burple for hours. Also found one last tub of fresh mushrooms in the back of the fridge, and they were big caps. So I busted out a tin of crab meat and we had some crab stuffed mushrooms too. Baked off four squashes- they were the last of what was good, had to toss a couple too. And set up dehydrators of onions pulled from the frozen solarium. 

Today is a pot of soup. I started out thinking squash soup. Needed to pull out a bag of chicken stock from the freezer. Then got to thinking perhaps squash for another day, Matzo Ball soup today instead in light of all the other leftovers in the fridge. Left the squash pulp in the fridge and instead burbled up a frozen chicken boob in the frozen stock. A bit of diced taters, sliced carrots, handful of celery and whip up some matzo balls. yum.

My love has some good job action going on. I do too, and seeing how it goes. Just trying to sit tight and ride out the cold right now.