Well, it's not ALL done yet... I have one more day to work on the garden before I have to leave town for a few days. I MUST do it. I planted a row of borage/sunflowers, the started gourds, tomatoes, and all the peppers that would fit. Oddly enough, I had the hardest time getting the pepper seeds to start (and had to do a few rounds of trying), but I've ended up with more plants than I have room for. I have 30 in the ground; 2 jalapeno, 4 cayenne, 3 California Wonder, a Pepperoncini, 7 Great Stuff, 8 Bananrama, and I'm missing a few. Good thing I have a map of the garden. Somewhere. I bought another 100 feet of soaker hose, but I've yet to put the brassicas in. I have a drip system (ok, more like a spider web of tiny hose with drippy things attached randomly) that I could use for squash hills, but the way squash cross-pollinate, I don't know if I should just plant one type or let them all become varied mutants. That could be fun. Or not. I tore up a room's-worth of carpet today and put the strips between more rows. Just in time for a windstorm to come up and toss it all over. At least one pepper lost it's upper half, and the beets, carrots, and corn are messed up. Luckily those are still tiny and probably salvageable. The wind has done a job on the tomatoes, too, though the carpet missed most of them by an inch or two. The leaves are wind-burnt on several.
The 28.5 broiler chicks are looking almost edible. We had 30 the other day, but one died the other night and another is in quarantine. He's eating and drinking, and might make it. At least he's not laying on his side looking dead.
While I was in the garden this morning, Little Monkey managed to find 2 paint cans (stashed in the dining room) and a paint-can-opener. She also managed to access the paint, and carefully dipped my fancy new paintbrush and went to work. First (I think it was first anyway) she got some old computer paper to do her art on. Apparently white semi-gloss and beige satin don't show too well on paper. And a 2" brush gets the job done too quickly, I suppose. By the time I came in to check on her she'd painted a good portion of the seat and back of Big Sister's special Pink Chair. A dolly had also caught some paint upside her head. I was thankful it hadn't dried and was able to take things outdoors for a good hose-off. Little Monkey spent the rest of the day within my sight, certainly.
I have yet to put the final clear stuff on the dining table, but the antiquing is done. I long to have a table back! One is still covered with greenhouse-paraphenelia so the kids eat using stools as individual tables. THAT is getting pretty old, and a tipped cup or bumped fork manages to do a lot more damage from 3' up.
Tonight I made Beerocks, and they were pretty good. I forgot to put the egg in the bread dough (like I couldn't have spared a few) and it took forever, but they turned out well. And I made mine with fresh-ground whole wheat, so the pictures in the link are definitely 'whiter' than mine. I also doubled the recipe, which made it take even longer. I think start-to-finish was about 2 hours, but I have lots of freezeable leftovers and they'll be great for hubby's lunches/dinners. And I either made too much of the meat/cabbage mixture or didn't spread the dough thinly enough, because I had LOTS of it leftover. Which is okay; it was tastey alone. :)
Big Sister was a great help to me during dinner prep. Little Monkey fell asleep about 5 p.m. (after screaming at me that she wasn't tired) and Big Sister helped put away dishes, take some scraps to the chickens and mix the dough with me. For once she was consistently obedient (without delay, challenge, or excuse). It was a blessing, and I told her how grateful I was. I hope it continues, though it being 10:30 p.m. and my children are just now settling into bed tells me that we need to continue working on it.
With much to do tomorrow, I must close this.
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