Did You Know...

A single Asian Lady Bug can ruin an entire pot of coffee.

The sound of a vomiting child can wake you from a sound sleep in the middle of the night.

It's snowing again....

Duet

We had a lovely day at my parent's farm, celebrating my father's 84th birthday. My sister and her husband were here from Colorado and my brother and his wife drove down as well. The only one missing was my sister from Maryland, although we talked to her on the phone. They are still trying to dig out from 30 inches of snow. She sent some pictures of their deck with all the snow. IMPRESSIVE!

My aunt and uncle also stopped in for a bit. My Uncle Willis is Dad's last remaining sibling- he was the youngest of 7 children.

J15 played her violin during the morning church service at my parent's church. Everyone down there is always so appreciative when she plays. They have no one in the area who teaches strings so there aren't any other people who play violin anywhere nearby. But even more fun was the impromptu concert later in the afternoon. It seems that my BIL Dave has begun learning to play, although he is learning to fiddle rather than classical training. But still, they found a few things that they could both play. J15 has about 8 years of experience on him but he was able to play the melody lines and she was able to sight read some of the harmonies.

Definitely not perfect but still lots of fun.

And, of course, it is snowing again.... cue slightly hysterical laughter here......

A Winter walk

After sleeping for 13 hours straight, I woke this morning feeling better than I have all week. Still nowhere close to 100% but much better. To make it even better, the sun was shining and it was right about freezing. So the children and I took the dog for a walk. Then V and I took a walk together, just the two of us, talking about plans for the coming year. I remembered to take the camera along and snapped a few photos.

The stream is running. The grass is beginning to show through.

The little pool.

The tunnel.

Actually, it's the old culvert under the highway. Rumor has it that it was constructed so the cattle could use it as a tunnel to pasture on the other side of the highway when this was a dairy farm. I'm not so sure about that- but the deer use it- we can tell by the tracks in the snow.

Grrr, rabbits!

We have had snow cover for so long (since around Christmas!) that the rabbits are short on food. They have been hard at work on the apple. We were going to do major pruning on it this year anyway, they are just helping us decide which to remove. It sure looks like someone cut it off at the ground and it came up from the roots. Fortunately, the root stock was tasty. We noticed rabbit damage on all the shrubs in the yard as well. At least the blueberries and currants are well protected with wire cages. This just tells me that we will have to be very vigilant with our new trees that we will be planting this spring.

We are off tomorrow to my parent's farm. It is Dad's birthday tomorrow. My sister Julie is here from Colorado and J15 will be playing her violin at my parent's church tomorrow morning as a gift for my father.

I'm going to be starting a few more herbs soon, I think. I especially want to get my parsley started since it takes a while to germinate. We made a trip to the farm store this afternoon to pick up a new tie out line for Ticket (his old one got a serious kink in it and the cable is starting to rust and fray- I think someone drove over it when we had the sledding party). They had seeds there (of course) and I picked up some heirloom Four O'Clock seeds and some for purple coneflowers (Echinacea). I also picked up some seed for white patty pan squash. We had some from the farmer's market last year and they were so good. The kids nicknamed them UFO squash. I haven't grown much summer squash other than zucchini or yellow crookneck for a long time so these should be fun. I think that, other than a few herb plants, I'm done with seed procurement. Of course, I say that but whenever I see those colorful packets, they draw me toward them like a magnet..... It's like an addiction---JUST---ONE---MORE.....

So...very...tired

Ugh. This cold/flu is really draining me. I finally went back to work today. I was still running a temp of 99.5 yesterday morning so I stayed home an extra day. Yeah, I know, 99.5 isn't a real fever, at least according to the schools. But my normal body temp is dyslexic. I'm usually closer to 96.8 than 98.6! So if I hit 99, I'm sick. Anyway, back to work today it was. And now I'm beat. It ended up being an incredibly busy, stressful day. First, I get an email from my boss reminding me that my annual PA is due and could he come observe me during my group this morning (great! I can barely talk- this should be good) I survived that- it actually went well.

Then, right after I finished that, the other senior therapist in today informed me that she had to leave because she got a call from her daycare that her twins were both sick. So, I picked up the two groups she was scheduled for today. Of the two other therapists in today, one leaves at 2:00 so was essentially unavailable for anything this afternoon and the other is our new therapist who is still orienting. She had a cognitive evaluation to do this afternoon that I had to supervise. So, I was essentially back to back with patients from 9:30 this morning until 3:45 this afternoon- no more than a 5 minute break between. Definitely NOT fun when I am still feeling like something the cat threw up on the carpet. After walking our new therapist through the documentation process for her eval, it was already 4:30. Now, I normally get off work at 4, walk downtown and catch the 4:30 bus to go home. And I hadn't even STARTED my own documentation for the day.

So, I called V to pick me up at 5:20. We didn't get home until after 5:30. Luckily J15 was cooking dinner already since I12 and I had to leave at 6:15 to go to choir and confirmation. I would have loved nothing more than to curl up on the couch but I had to help with his confirmation class. They are making quilts to send to Haiti as a service project and since there is only one other woman helping who knows how to quilt I was volunteered to help (oh, and can you bring your sewing machine... and supervise the student using it?) It wasn't too bad. Six junior high aged students- two sewing, two pressing, two pinning. Three adults, one of whom has no sewing knowledge at all. So Linda and I supervised, checked and re-pinned prior to sewing. I12 used my machine. He's actually pretty good at it and we produced some spectacular 16 inch square 4-patches.

Now, I'm home and babbling...or hadn't you noticed the babbling part. This is the first time I've had to unwind all day.

Oh, in house news- the buyers asked if they could refinish main staircase- at their expense. No problem there, it needs it and was one of those things that was on 'the list' that we never got around to. They evidently had a showing this afternoon for potential renters and our realtor also referred someone to them who is moving into town and needs to find housing within 30 days. So it sounds promising that we will be able to move the closing date up a month. March 1 for closing sounds MUCH better than April 1!! Since there are no banks involved we can do whatever we want (within reason). Really, they should be able to find renters quickly. It is a beautiful house, in a great location- near campus, near downtown, near the busline. I should leave them a diagram of the plantings in the yard as a selling point. Who wouldn't want an established herb garden!

Better late than never

A few pictures of the past few weeks that I've been meaning to post. Now is as good a time as any. Not much else to say.

Snow on the lantern.

From the last ice storm. YUCK

The Full Wolf Moon sets on Saturday morning.

Beautiful with the frost on the trees.

But I can't wait for Spring.

Coupon madness

I've got a post today at Homemakers Who Work today about how my grocery shopping has changed over the years. Maybe we'll have to start a support group: My name is Judy, I used to clip coupons....

Wanna join?

This and that

My children shared. I have been coughing and miserable both yesterday and today. Grrr.... You spend all that time teaching them to be nice and share and then what do they do? They listen to you! So I was home from work today. I slept until noon then sacked out on the couch with my laptop, seed catalogs and a notebook. I was drawing sketches for different areas of the yard. Part of my permaculture plan.

A couple of people indicated that permaculture was new to them. I'm definitely not an expert, that's why I want to take a few classes but here is a definition from Permaculture.org:

Permaculture is an ecological design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor. It teaches us how build natural homes, grow our own food, restore diminished landscapes and ecosystems, catch rainwater, build communities and much more.

Or another one: (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people, providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable and ethical way.

As I see it, the idea is to use careful design to mimic the complexity of a natural system, encouraging diversity, interconnection and sustainability. Think of the typical suburban subdivision. Not much diversity, complexity or interconnection there. And it's not very sustainable. Now think of a forest. LOTS of diversity, plants and animals interconnected to support each other sustainably. One concept of permaculture is to design a "food forest" in our landscape.

Mostly today I was working on the design for the area that will be the herb and wildflower garden (mainly flowers that have tea and/or medicinal uses). This area will also eventually incorporate a patio area with seating and a space for our fire pit. I'm also planning to put in a trellis and was thinking about putting either scarlet runner beans or cucumbers on it this year. In doing some checking online about companion planting I learned something and now have a new flower to put on my list to plant. I learned that Four O'clocks, flowers that I grew when I was a child (I tried a sundial garden once) are fatally attractive to Japanese Beetles. It seems that the beetles find them irresistible and will fly to devour them. However, it also seems that there is something in the plant that kills the beetles. So they don't live to reproduce. Hmmm, considering how many beetles we had in the garden last year this sounds like an excellent addition. I'm thinking a few rows of these are in store. That, and they smell good.

And it's snowing here again. I believe I saw somewhere that we have now set a record for the longest number of days with continuous snow cover here. It feels like it. I am totally ready for spring. I'm itching to start little seeds but I know it's still to early. I'll have to satisfy myself with the little pot of chive seedlings on the windowsill. And my geraniums. We have a hanging basket of pink geraniums that we have had since the spring of 2008. We bring it in in the winter and put it out again in the spring. It has a bunch of flower buds shooting up. It had a couple of flowers last week and it was so nice to see something blooming.