A Working Weekend

Boy, it was a busy weekend! My sis came up after work on Friday to spend the weekend. Her approach to a weekend is "let's get things done!" so the little slave driver ran me ragged for a couple of days. Friday night we got the firewood ring set up and got the firewood transferred to it, then we swept and rearranged the patio.

Saturday morning we drove down to Chris's to get a 6 X 6 chain link kennel panel with a gate in it. When we got home with it, we fixed the end of the fence by the pole barn where I'd had a gate and a couple of crate panels wired in. Took out the crate panels and the gate, moved a couple of poles, and wired the kennel panel in that spot. Now I can get from the yard to the pole barn and vice versa without having to go through the house. If I ever get my new project lawnmower started, I won't have to take that through the house either to get it into the yard. (We worked on that yesterday, got the frozen wheel loosened and rotating again and got the spark plug changed, but it doesn't seem to be getting enough gas. My neighbor offered before to have a look at it for me, I might take him up on it. I don't think it would take long for someone who knows what they're doing to get it running.) I put a lock on the gate, so nobody can open it without the key.

We were still working on the fence when Mom arrived to visit. When we finished the fence we came in, and my mom and sis visited while I cooked meatballs and sauce for dinner. After dinner, my sis did some weeding in the rose bed while I fertilized the potted flowers.

Yesterday we replaced the plastic "feet" on my coffee table with new ones, got the queen mattress off my bed and carried out to the pole barn, and got my old queen mattress into the house and onto the bed. (My mom had given me her spare room queen mattress and springs, thinking they were better than my old ones, but they weren't. I've been sleeping on an uncomfortable bed since January because I couldn't get my comfy mattress in from the pole barn by myself. I slept really well last night!) Got my sis to give me a haircut - I can do the front myself but can't do the back, and have a hard time with the top, so she got the back and top short and I finished the front after she left.

I got tired of seeing the Youngster with a mouthful of cat litter, so I finally installed a couple of eye hooks on my sliding laundry room door and hooked either end of a bolt snap to them, so now the laundry room door is only open wide enough for the cats to get through to the litterbox but the bolt snap prevents dogs from nosing the door open. I brought my "shelf" boards in from the pole barn and got a couple of milk crates emptied; in a little while I'll go empty out 4 more milk crates and then set up some shelves in one half of my bedroom closet, to hold piles of jeans, t-shirts, shorts, etc. I've been trying to switch wardrobes - get my winter stuff stored away, get the summer stuff out, but everything's piled on the counters in the laundry room because I just don't have anywhere to put it. Once I get those shelves up I can put away everything piled in the laundry room and then finish organizing the laundry room. That's this week's major project.

I finally quit procrastinating and mixed up three more stepping stones today. Now that I've gotten one 60-pound bag of quikrete emptied into a bucket from which I can easily measure it (and the other bag standing next to the bucket for easy access), I'm going to try to pour three more every other day and get as many stones made as possible in the next 4 months.

Last Monday I finally transplanted the other little tomato plants I picked up the previous Thursday. They were a little peaked, but man did they take off once they were transplanted! I put 7 more into the garden (two of 3 different varities, one of another) and put another 5 into "pots". (Two of my pots are 2-gallon laundry detergent bottles with the tops cut off.) They've tripled in size in just a week, and the ones I put into the garden have nearly tripled in size. The Cherokee Purple tomato plant is over 2' tall already and is doing really well. The three tomato plants in the rose bed are also thriving. The beans, zucchini, and cukes are doing really well. I fertilized the garden today and thinned out the carrots; I planted too many carrot seeds too close together so I'm not going to have as many carrots as I'd like, but now I know how I should have planted them instead and I'll do a better job of it next year. The peppers are doing well, too.

I need to fertilize the herb bed, but it doesn't need watering yet so I'll do it the next time I need to water. Things are growing slowly there, but they're growing. Fertilizer should help. When I bought the extra tomato plants I also got a couple small begonias which are growing quickly now that they're into pots. The purple petunias I got are starting to get new flower buds on them, they should be very pretty in a few weeks. My impatiens baskets and pots are really starting to look nice, they make the patio such a pleasant place to sit! On our way back from going to get the kennel panel we stopped at a "barn sale", and for a buck I picked up a pair of heavy glass votive holders. I put those up on the plant shelf in the patio and they look lovely twinkling away there in the evening. (I'm not going to lose this pair the way I lost the last ones, to dogs knocking them down. They come in and sit on the mantel in the family room when I come in for the night.) I put a pot of impatiens on either side of the center roof support pole on the edge of the patio, and tied the pots to the pole so they couldn't be easily knocked over. So far, so good. I just have to keep an eye on my plant-chomping Goofball, so he doesn't bite all the flowers off.

Saturday morning I climbed up on the step stool to see if I could see anything in the kingbird nest. I can't actually see inside of it, but I can see anything that reaches the top of it and I saw one little yellow beak opening and closing. Saturday evening I could hear at least three different little voices peeping for their dinner. It looks like mama successfully hatched this clutch without being parasitized by a brown-headed cowbird. The weather is supposed to be baby bird-friendly until at least the weekend, but I'll keep a close eye on the temp under the roof and put something onto the roof to block the sunlight, and put a fan on to circulate air if necessary. Mama's become a lot less fearful of me, and will fly back and forth feeding her babies even if I'm sitting outside. I have high hopes for this little family, that the nestlings will make it and the whole family will stick around and help keep the flying insect population down.

Break's over, time to get back to work. I wonder where those other milk crates are.......?