A foot of snow!

Very unusual for us to get much snow at all during a winter, and winter hasn't even officially started (according to the calendar).  Yet, we have a good foot of snow on the ground...  and on everything else.

He has spent a lot of time clearing snow off the greenhouse, shoveling snow away from the greenhouse, clearing snow off of the solar panels, clearing the ramps, etc.  

Along with our snow, we have had very cold temperatures.  It was 7 degrees out when I got up this morning.  We were ready for the storm.  He had a lot of firewood in under the porch roof.  He always does, but he brought up more just in case.  Luckily, we didn't have a power outage, but we were ready for that too, in case it happened.  I hope this is the last big winter blast we will see for a very long while.  

11/17/2013

I guess that getting my Heritage card and getting my deer tags for the last couple of years has been a good thing!  I was one of two women standing in line to get my tag, although the line was a long one.  I should have gotten it well before deer season but waited until just a few days before it started.

Anyway, This is what happened yesterday:

This deer is all processed and in the deep freeze now.  Sister came up to help, so we sent some of the meat home with her also.  Processing was a chore by itself, as it always is; but I'm happy.

11/14/2013

Been a busy month around here.  He has been working on getting firewood up to the house for the furnace here.  I think he believes you can never have enough firewood.  I think we might have enough to last a few days.

He also had a nice indoor project to work on.  Since he decided he's not going to heat the greenhouse all winter, he wanted someplace to put all the house plants that we've accumulated in there.  As always, he came up with a solution and built places for them inside the house here.  

I think we have plants in every room of our house now, except for the utility room and the pantry.  They look nice, though, and I'm glad we won't have to heat the greenhouse for the houseplants AND we won't have to give up the houseplants.  I've been happy to have a mostly quiet month without having any extra travel thrown in, other than our normal shopping and lab appointment days. We'll be getting ready for holidays pretty soon.  Fortunately, no travel plans there!  

October 19, 2013

September turned out to be a good month with some not-so-good happenings.  It all turned out okay in the end, though.  My mother came up from Florida to visit for the month.  We picked her up at the airport on 9/5 without any problems.  She did look exhausted, but she had been quite sick in August at her home.  She felt recovered enough to get on the plane, anyway.  We brought her home and thought she was feeling better.  Then she got to where she was having a hard time breathing.  We finally convinced her to go to the ER, but only because I had an appointment at the hospital for lab work anyway.

They admitted her to the hospital with acute congestive heart failure, brought on by whatever virus she had come down with in August that apparently had not been adequately treated.  So, she spent 3 days of her vacation in the hospital.  They did put her on some new medications and some oxygen.  In fact, they sent her back to our house with the oxygen.  She did well on that, even if she didn't wear the oxygen quite all the time.  She was supposed to go home on 9/29.

Somewhere, the wires got crossed with the company who provided the oxygen for her to come back to our house with.  They were aware that she was getting on a plane on the 29th.  They sent her with portable oxygen tanks, instead of a portable oxygen concentrator.  When we arrived at the airport, they told us the oxygen tanks are not allowed on the planes.  Yet, since she showed up with it, they wouldn't allow her to fly without oxygen either.  AND she needed a form filled out by a doctor to allow her to fly with the oxygen or without the oxygen.  Come to find out, the oxygen company didn't even have a concentrator device available for her to rent.  They said they could order one, but it would take 2 weeks to get here.

After spending 3 days trying to get several different doctors to sign off that she could fly without the oxygen, without any luck, we finally decided that trying this any further was pointless.  We had already made up our minds that, if the doctors didn't come through on the form, I would drive her home.  The airline very nicely refunded the unused portion of her air fare, since they wouldn't allow her to fly home with it.  So, we packed up our suitcases, loaded up the Blazer with oxygen tanks & paraphernalia, suitcases, plants, and plant starts -- and Mom and I took a road trip to Florida.

We left on Friday, October 4th, and arrived at her home in Florida Saturday afternoon.  We did spend one night in Dothan, Alabama, on the way.  I spent Sunday and Monday at her house visiting and resting up.  She loaded up the Blazer with plants and other stuff that she was sending home with me, and I left there Tuesday morning to drive up to Ocala, a place I had never been before.  I spent a very pleasant afternoon and evening (and well into the night) visiting my friends, Pam and Jerry, that I had not seen for several years.  I loaded Pam down with lots of plant starts, too!

Around noon on Wednesday, I reluctantly got back in the Blazer and headed northwest once again.  I made it back to Dothan and spent the night there once again.  On Thursday, 10/10, I drove a little over 13 hours to make it back home that night.  I was so tired, I didn't even eat any supper.  I was so glad to be home again and out of the Blazer!  I spent the next 3 days "resting up", and then went back to the hospital for my monthly lab work.  Afterwards, we did our monthly grocery shopping.  The day completely wore me out, proving to me that I wasn't as "rested up" as I thought I was.

I spent all of this last week alternately "resting up", doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, and the usual household chores.  The house was clean and looked wonderful when I got home from Florida, by the way!  He had done an excellent job on cleaning while I was gone!  I did finally get everything unpacked, washed and put away.  I also went through the stuff Mom sent home with me and found places for all of it.

In the meantime, Lee has been working around the place, as usual.  On top of critter chores, he's been building nest boxes for bunnies.  He has hauled 3 ranks of firewood (a cord) up to the house for the outdoor wood furnace.  He had some excitement while I was gone trying to light a fire, only to discover a bird had made a nest in the chimney pipe!  After cleaning that out, it was good to go once again.  He built a cold frame cover for one of his big raised beds today.  This is a 4' x 12' bed of cabbage plants.

Closed for a cold night

Back fully sealed up

Cold frame open

September 2, 2013

Happy Labor Day!  

Our August weather finally turned into normal August weather.  We've had our share of normal Missouri summer heat now.  He finally got the wasps nest torn off of the license plate.  After 2 more cans of wasp spray.  We did have to get some Hot Shot spray.  

He harvested Sugar Baby watermelons, some of which we put down in the storm shelter for winter.  He harvested pineapple melons.  They are sort of like a cross between a cantaloupe and a honeydew melon.  He doesn't like them, but I do.  We've passed several of them out too.  

We dehydrated an Excalibur full of cucumber slices, then powdered them in the blender to use in dips and soups.  I made some cucumber dill dip with the powdered cucumber and some dry dill that turned out pretty good.  We did get enough tomatoes to run a canner load of pint jars of tomato juice and sauce.  He's brought me enough tomatoes that I could probably do another canner load of juice and sauce.

My mother is flying in on Thursday for a nice visit.  She hasn't seen the new house yet.  We're really looking forward to seeing her.  She'll be here almost the whole month of September, so we're excited about that.  

We made a trip to Baker's Creek yesterday.  They had their monthly festival.  He bought about $20 worth of seeds for fall planting, greenhouse planting, and some for spring.  He's still been working on projects, including installing the front screen door.  

Hopefully, the heat will mellow out pretty soon and we can have some nice fall weather.

August Fun 8/9/2013

This is what the green bean high tunnel looked like in June

and this is what it looks like now:

We've had a lot of rain this summer.  Our August has, so far, been more like April weather.  I think we have gotten 12-14 inches of rain so far this month.  I think we're safely out of drought status now.  The pond is pretty full, so that's unusual for August, for sure.  We've been keeping ourselves busy.  This is a puzzle that Katy and I started and Isaiah and I finished:

The hummingbirds are emptying the big feeder within about 24 hours time now.  They take a little longer to empty the medium sized one.  They have their favorites.  We have counted as many as 12-14 hummingbirds around the feeders at once.  It's hard to count them since they move so fast, though.  Our plantings are all taking hold pretty well.  Not sure about some of the fruit trees, but the landscaping stuff all seems to be doing well.  

He found a nasty surprise this morning, though.  When he went outside, he spotted a wasp nest on the back of the camper:

He used a whole can of wasp spray on it.  Luckily, he didn't get stung at all.  Must be a good year for wasps.  Bet he won't be able to remove it whole from the license plate, but that's okay.  I just hope the wasps don't live through that whole can of spray! 

August 2, 2013

Photos of his pantry and utility shelving project:

North Wall of Pantry

West Wall of Pantry -- Lee's indoor workshop area

North wall of utility room

And these are the two vertical can rotation racks he built from the shelf scraps from the pantry and utility room shelves.

Large-can rotation rack, southwest wall

Small-can rotation rack, southeast wall

I am still moving stuff to the pantry from other places in the house, and rearranging other cabinets.  It has been fun, and I may change my mind a dozen more times before I get it all exactly where I want it.  In the meantime, I'm very happy with my pantry and utility room.