Sowing Our Wild Oats

Actually, oats are one of the few things we DIDN'T order to plant...

We filed our taxes on Saturday and went through our list of seeds, trees, and plants last night to remove extraneous items and get our list to a more-manageable volume and price. Today, while I was home sick, I ordered all those items. The damage:

• 15 fruit, flowering, or windblock trees
• 24 bushes for a hedge
• 18 bushes for a windblock for the driveway
• 143 fruit plants/bushes
• 2 packets of herb seeds
• 8 "decorative" plants
• 31 vegetable seed packets
• seed potatoes for white, red, and blue potatoes
• starter sets for red, white, and yellow onions and leeks
• 1/4 lb of sunflower seeds
• 1 lb of jerusalem artichoke starter
• all manner of food processing, storage, collection, and garden-maintenance supplies

In total (after taxes, shipping, handling, etc.): $541.86

And those totals do not take into account the 30 or so seed packets that we already have, the seed starter supplies that we already have, or the "free" seeds and plants that we will get as "valued customers" from three of the four companies we ordered from...

Sure, some people might say we're crazy. And M says he definitely didn't till enough ground for this garden, but these are not all going to be planted at the same time. We have specifically planned so that we will have some replantings, so some sort of vegetable production from late spring through fall, and even possibly into early winter (weather winter, not calendar winter). And several of the varieties we bought are heirlooms, rather than hybrids, so we can harvest the seeds and use them next year and know that we will get the same plant next year as this year...so, we won't need to buy as many seeds next year. And we'll already have a good windbreak and a small orchard/fruit yard started, in addition to perennial and re-seeding annual flower beds to keep calling pollinators back to our garden and yard year after year.

* Stringham high: Tax refund not as high as we had hoped, but combined with money put back, definitely enough to pay for plants, the installation of the coils for our geothermal heat pump, and a nice sum on a credit card.
* Stringham low: M is still going to be unemployed after this Friday.
* Stringham super-high: M is less stressed about being unemployed than about continuing in his current job (as attested to by his fingernails)--how sad is that?

State's Unemployed Worker Total Increases by 1

M called me as I was leaving work yesterday to tell me that, yet again, he will be unemployed. At the end of next week (February 27), he will be (for the 3rd time since July) "let go" by his company. Once again, his boss is considering going directly to the president of the company to plead for M. After all, he's really the only one working on a couple of extremely important projects, and definitely the only one who knows what's going on in every top-secret and high-importance project they have.

Yes, of course, he's bummed, but we have a plan. So long as the state's unemployment funds hold out, with our current budget, we still should be able to pay all the bills. But we're still going to scale back in a couple of places. We have been preparing for this since last fall, buying dried beans and nuts and canned goods and rice, etc. So we may not be able to eat as healthily as I would like/need to lose weight, but surviving is far more important, and I'll just switch diet tactics.

Not that it's all about me. Oh, no. M is handling it far better than I expected, though part of it is that he hides more from me now, I'm sure. And, hey, this is the third time in 8 months, as I mentioned earlier. By now, this is getting to be old hat for him. :) At least this time, he has warning...

We're getting our taxes done this weekend, and then we plan to order our seeds and plants so we can further cut our grocery bill (one of the very expenditures we have any control over) this spring, summer, and fall. And then we'll be setting up an appointment for our geothermal heat pump to be installed for the end of next month. (Click the title of this post for more information.) Yes, a big expenditure, but oh! how much money it will save us! (Our propane was filled yesterday for the 4th time since October...$300-600+ per fill. Sheesh.)

And a few years ago, we discovered the joy of the crockpot. We mentioned to M's mom that we liked using it, and she got us a FABULOUS crockpot cookbook. We have now nearly exhausted the recipes in it. So I ordered 4 more on Half.com (possibly the best book-lover's website out there). We have three of them. I'm excited!

Is it sad that I get so excited about a garden and crockpot recipes? I don't think so. It's better than getting all worked up about, say, the results of a football game that doesn't impact my life at all....

And I got a book today about eating properly to increase chances of fertility. It may be an utter crock, but from what I saw when skimming it today, it seems well-balanced, a load of practical information and tips, and far more credible than things like Atkins or South Beach. So what the hell, I'll give it a try. (And it's meant for men OR women, so M can maybe now get rid of his "baby belly" and transfer it to me....)

That's our life in a nutshell at the mo'. Stay tuned for more.

* Stringham high: Geothermal heat pump. Woo!
* Stringham low: Unemployment. Bummer.
* Stringham super-high: The freelance work for Steph just keeps pouring in. And she just keeps sending it out to others because she's got so much. Oh, and the contractor came and fixed our roof last Friday afternoon...Damage on Wednesday, complain on Thursday, fixed on Friday. Damn, I like it here!

Windy Days and Bunnies Always Get Me Down

No, folks, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Since our trials at the beginning of the month with snow, it's been nice--warm weather, or cold but without show or ice. So I've been busy...catching up on hours at work mostly, and doing some urgent freelance work.

This morning is finally relatively quiet. M and Maurey are still asleep in the bedroom while I sit here on the sofa and George is in the picture window, watching the traffic and talking to the few song birds that have come out of hiding. (Either that, or he's complaining to the sun that he can see it, so a direct ray of light should be falling on him, damn it!)

"So why is she writing?" you ask. Because of the wind.

"The wind?"

Yes, the wind.

We had some lovely warm weather late last week and early this week, up in the high 40s and low 50s. It was fantastic. And on Wednesday, that warm front met up with a cold front, and boy, howdy! We had straightline winds measuring at 60-70 mph. Luckily, the trees withstood this time (probably because there were no leaves to act as sails and pull the trees surfing through the soil). But our roof didn't. Yep, right there, every place our roof had been injured in June, shingles were blown off or up, sticking up like the feathers of a bird that has been handled very roughly and then hit back and forth a couple of times by kids with badminton rackets.

M was pissed. He had taken pictures. So I sent the pictures to the contractor who had repaired our roof (still waiting for good-enough weather so he can fix our soffit, gutter, and siding over there) and explained that we wanted him to repair the damage and we didn't feel that we should pay, despite the abnormally high winds, because those shingles have been on for less than 4 months. He responded the next day by saying that the shingles we had were simply not rated for such high winds and that we would probably want to consider, when we have our roof replaced in a few years, using a higher-rated shingle.

But he is an upstanding member of the community, and he fixed them for us. Later that evening, when I got home, it was to find him climbing his ladder onto our roof. Turns out, he told M, that the problem wasn't that the shingles weren't rated highly enough but that they had been put on so late in the year that there hadn't been enough heat to activate the adhesive on them to make them stick to the roof. (Okay, I'll admit, I thought There's ADHESIVE on shingles? Who knew?)

* Stringham high: We had a good Valentine's Day. We slept in, partook of some nookie, went to the roller derby [at halftime, they were auctioning away busts--no, not heads, plaster casts of the players' BUSTS--so we saw some art (boobs)], had some junk food (mmm, fat-, crack-, and sodium-based fries and burgers!) on the way home from roller derby, and shared a bottle of wine while playing Rayman's Raving Rabbids (BWAAAAAAAAAA!) until 2 AM.

* Stringham low: We had a real winner of a genius sitting behind us. Real smart in very stupid way. And he had to anounce every thought that stumbled through his head (and directly to his mouth) VERY loudly--and one of his daughters (the one sitting just at my left ear) was turning out to be exactly like him...my hearing will never be the same again. (But he was a great dad to the three young daughters he had with him.)

* Stringham super-high: M feels he had found his place in this world last night. We got to the derby and picked our seats in the stands, and within a few minutes, he had a redhead sitting directly behind him, one just on his right, and another (me) on his left. He even got some brushes on his arm from the sizeable bust of the redhead on his right (when they're that large and the stands are as crowded as they were, it was unavoidable). He was one happy man. I think a redhead in front of him (plenty walked by, but none sat down and stayed) would have simply made him...explode...from happiness.

Oh, Woe Is Snow!

I diligently went out on Thursday evening and dug out the area in front of my garage door, and some of the driveway, too. At the end, I was still suspicious that the snow between the treads that M's SUVhad left was too high for my car to traverse, but I thought it was good enough that I would at least be able to give it a go for work on Friday morning.

Friday morning came, and I got up as usual. I checked outside and saw something from a nightmare--the snow was back! Everything that I had so diligently cleared the evening before had been filled back in by the wind overnight! There it was, mocking me--I saw a very slight indentation that indicated the areas I had shoveled and shoveled and shoveled to clear, but that was the only hint that I had ever been outside the night before. Even my footprints had been filled in. The snow I had piled up from shoveling was still piled up, though, so this drifted snow must have come from the roof and the yard and the fields. So yet again, no driving to work for me. I drove M to work in his SUV and then went to get groceries and a second snow shovel (I have never seen Walmart's parking lot so empty) before slogging home again to freelance. (Hey, we have to pay the bills somehow, and if I couldn't drive to work, I was still going to make the best of it.)

Yesterday, the sun was out, the temperature was in the high 20s, and the wind was mild, so M and I again went outside to clear. This time, I spent 3 hours outside (M was with me for about 2 of it) and cleared the area in front of my garage door alone and about half the driveway with M's help. Finally, we were sweaty and exhausted and couldn't stand without falling over, so M treated the remaining snow and slush with salt. We had cleared enough snow away that by the time we were finished, the sun had finished melting whatever we hadn't been able to clean up, so we were satisfied that we would be able to finish the rest today.

This morning, the thermometer read 36 degrees outside, so I thought shoveling would be a breeze, especially with the fantastic second snow shovel I had bought Friday, which had proved to be far more effective at clearing packed snow than our other shovel. Well, I was wrong. Things had melted just enough that I couldn't get much of a handle on things. Whereas yesterday, the snow had been packed tightly enough that one or two good shoves of the shovel would break up iceberg-sized pieces, this morning, every shove or scoop attempt I made seemed to simply pack the slush together more tightly. This was not going to do.

Finally, I told M that we should test it. No use exhausting ourselves if my car could get out, after all, because that was the point of this little exercise. So I pulled my car out of the garage and drove down the driveway. I slid a little in the slush, but no problem there. Ah, but when it came time to pull out of the driveway, it took a very long time to get enough traction to pull out. That isn't a problem, of course, at an intersection, say, at a stoplight, where everyone can see you sliding a bit, or on a nice long flat stretch of road. But our driveway, of course, is at the top of a hump that most people can't see the top of in time to slow down because they drive far too fast and don't expect the driveway. So pulling out of our driveway in the best conditions is always a little risky, even when you can go from 0 to 60 in only a couple of seconds.

Anyway, I drove down the road, turned around, and put my car into low before turning in to the drive. I made it halfway up the initial incline and then spun my tires feebly. I was going nowhere. But maybe, I reasoned, I could use the same process that had gotten me back into the garage on Thursday afternoon. So I backed up a little and then pulled forward again. *grumble* Just more useless tire spinning. I tried the process again. This time, I fishtailed a little, but nothing productive. M signaled for me to stop after I reversed once again, and he started shoveling the tracks out. Turns out that I was losing traction right where he had stopped spreading salt the night before.

So he started digging out that area, up to the top of the drive's incline, and I started digging out the area next to the road, in all the crap that had been piled up by the state snowplows and had since been very slowly thinned by M's efforts on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday but that had still managed to suck my car tires firmly down, like a suckling infant on a mother's breast.

Finally, M believed he had the top of the incline cleared and told me to try it again.

Woohoo!

I parked my car back in the garage, and we finished clearing out the tracks on the incline (we're letting the stuff in the middle melt on its own now that my car's undercarriage can clear it) and the rest of the crap at the bottom of the drive onto the road.

Now I am no longer prisoner on my own property. Not that that's a bad thing, of course, if I had vacation days and didn't HAVE to make it to work to make a living (I ran out of freelance work on Friday afternoon)...

Lucky me, I get to go back to work tomorrow. It will be a bittersweet return, however, with three days' worth of work piled up for me and a fellow employee, whom I was beginning to count as a close friend, let go on Friday (not because she was a bad worker--quite the contrary, she kicks some major ass!--but because her security clearance wasn't quite up to par for this particular branch of Federal service).

Stringham high: Woo! I can go back to work!

Stringham low: This storm required the use of an entire 5-gallon bucket of ice melt to get our driveway clear enough (but nowhere near completely clear) for my car to get out and back in.

Stringham super-high: Warm weather is making an appearance this week--in the 50s by next weekend!

The Cold Hands of (Mouse) Death, Plus Alpha

The recent band of weather that crossed through the Midwest gave us 6 to 7.5 inches of snow, depending on the measurement location in our yard. M has been able to get to work, but my car will only drive farther than two feet in this in reverse. (I suspect it has something to do with how low the nose of my car sits.) I had the foresight to try to test how well my car would drive about an hour before I was supposed to be at the chiropractor. I backed my car out of the garage and did quite well until I tried to move forward in the snow--I made it about 6 inches and could go no further. I basically "rocked" my car all the way back into the garage, driving backward a foot or so, then driving forward in low for a few inches, then reverse, then forward, ad nauseum. I attempted to use our snow shovel to clear the snow--at least down to just a couple of inches--in our driveway and succeeded (even with M's help after he got home) in clearing out the area directly in front of my side of the garage and about 6 feet further. Only 40 more feet to go!

Then M cleared a path to the mailbox and came back to tell me that unless some miraculous thaw happened overnight, I wouldn't be going anywhere again today...the snowplows that had so graciously clear our highway had, of course, piled snow 2 to 3 times higher up at the end of our driveway. I resigned myself to my fate and wandered back into the house with M because my thighs by this time could distinguish no feeling from others except cold, even with my thermal underwear on under my jeans. (My feet were quite toasty, however, in my wool-blend socks and work boots--I really need to remember the brand of these socks and sing their praises to everyone I know. The boots, by the way, are Wolverine and cost me $30 about 7 years ago at Meijer.) After all, I discovered a couple of weeks ago that when I have freelancing work, most of the projects end up paying better than my "real" job anyway, without the time and gas costs of a commute.

So what does all of this have to do with mice or gardening, the proclaimed reason for my blog, you ask? Well, smartass, as I was shoveling snow in the drive yesterday, I apparently hit a mouse with the snow shovel. I have no idea if the mouse had been caught unexpectedly in the falling snow , had been burrowing in the snow, or had been up to some devious task, but there it had been, ostensibly minding its own business, when, CRUNCH! (or maybe THWACK!) it got bowled over by a snow shovel. I didn't even realize I had the creature in my clutches until I removed the shovel from the pile of snow I had built (using the shovel plow-style, because the snow had to be moved too far for me to "shovel" it practically).

There, when some snow toppled into the void left by the shovel being removed, the mouse also toppled. It was wriggling about, whether in cold, pain, or both, I don't know. Then, more snow fell down from the top of the pile, and the mouse was hidden from me. I didn't even think to search it out to do it in. Instead, as I "plowed" another shovelful of snow into the pile, further covering the area where the mouse had twitched, I said a quick prayer that it would die a quick, relatively painless death or somehow find its way out to warmth and comfort. I figured the latter was unlikely or that, if it were at all likely, the warmth and comfort would be found only after much pain and struggle, so I really did hope--for the mouse's sake--that Death (the one that comes to collect mice and other rodents, not the one that collects humans [see the movie Hogfather for a pictorial representation]) would appear quickly for it, riding on its sleigh or snowmobile, or whatever Death requires to get along, to help this creature find its way to the River Styx. (Which makes me wonder...does the River Styx serve a purpose for animals, too, or is it solely for human use? Did the Romans have kids ask that question, like little Christian kids ask about dogs in Heaven?)

So anyway, here I am, sitting on my couch, blogging and freelancing, covered in a couple of blankets and one cat for warmth, seriously debating whether showering for warmth will be worth it once the water starts to evaporate, while M is at work, probably nice and toasty...

By the way, in my freelancing this morning, I came upon a phrase (plus alpha) I had never heard or seen before. I asked a few of my friends if they had heard it, and the response (3 of 4--a 75% response rate) was a unanimous "no." I Googled the term and was able to find one description. Reading the description ("It is a textbook example of English being imported into Japanese as gairaigo, and subsequently losing all of its meaning to an English speaker.") made me giggle a bit, thinking of Engrish and the hopeless problems ever present in translating English to Japanese and Japanese to English. Ever wanting to encourage learning and the expansion of minds, then, I decided to share here (click the title of this entry to go to the description).

Stringham high: One more mouse is down. Inadvertently, sure, but we'll take luck over talent any day.

Stringham low: Just a few inches of snow can trap me at hour house (maybe not too much of a low....).

Stringham super-high: Snow is pretty, and with this much of it in this big a yard, you can make snow cream!

The Cats (Sort of) Have a Kill

Well, they had some help from Mike, but the kitties finally "made a kill" this morning. They started chasing the mouse around our bedroom around 3 AM. At some point, I locked them out of the bedroom for jumping all over me in the bed, but I let them in again around 5, and when I started getting ready around 5:30, they were hunting again. Actually, they were falling over each other to get this mouse cornered. Under the dresser, under the standing mirror, under my nightstand, around the trunk, into the bathroom (yes, the mouse actually ran directly at my feet) where I was.

Maury had it cornered in the bathroom, behind the litter box, but then he lost it. So I pulled out the litter box, the box of used litter, the container of fresh litter. Still, he couldn't see it. So I kept both eyes on the mouse and called to Maury as he wandered in and out of the bathroom and bedroom, looking for the thing that was right in front of me.

Finally, he saw it, and chased it into the bedroom, behind my nightstand, under the bed, to Mike's closet, back under the bed, and back by the hamper. At some point in this chase, Mike got involved, trying to help. (Well, it was better than on Christmas morning, when our help just ended up in a mouse getting away...but let's face it...who wants to start Christmas with a death in the house, even if it is death of a mouse?) George is still sitting by my dresser, looking at the trunk, like he's trying to say, "Guys, I have it! I know it's here! Come back and help!" (The mouse is still by the hamper, I'd like to remind you.) Now I'm getting dressed, trying to watch this and dress at the same time so I can jump out of the way if the mouse starts diving at my now-bare feet. (Mike is exclaiming that the cats have the mouse worn out. Of course, I say, it ran right TOWARD me to get away from the cats. Not a wise move, nor one that a field mouse at the height of its energy and thinking abilities would make.)

Maury can't see the mouse, apparently, and is wondering off, looking for it yet again, but Mike moves the hamper, and George moves faster than Mike has ever seen him move (other than running to you when he thinks he's getting soft food, tuna, or dead cooked pig). So now George is monopolizing the chase, and how! This cat knows how to catch. He's chasing it just as fast as Maury was earlier, but under a suitcase and then (after I moved the suitcase), under my fuzzy red slippers and into a pile of belts or straps of some sort that has fallen off of one of the unpacked boxes, and back between my slippers. (Seriously, I've got to start hanging my shoes up, as much as the mice like to hide under and around them.)

Mike pounds on the slipper really hard and then lifts it (the mouse is a little dazed, but still alive). George picks it up, holding it high in his mouth, and PRANCES out of the bedroom and down the hall. But he drops it, and it runs back down the hall toward the bedroom. It stops right in front of Maury and rolls over on its side, popping its feet up in the air, playing dead. (Very smart mouse, because now the cats just stare at it, like, "Hey! The toy stopped working!" I tell Mike to finish the mouse off, because it has now started to twitch, and it's most likely in some pain, having gone through the earlier crushing. So he does, and then he lets it lie there for a bit while he goes to get some toilet paper to pick it up with.

"Isn't it ironic that the cat with no claws is the better hunter?" Mike asks. But George is older and has more experience and has always shown more of the down-and-dirty potential in his playing with toys. Maury just likes to chase things and often loses interest after catching them, but George loves beating the crap out of them and then picking them up and throwing them to a new place so he can pick them up and beat the crap out of them again.

The cats sit in the hall, staring at the mouse's prone figure, and then, next thing we know, George has eased up and sniffed the mouse. Then he picks it up and runs into the living room with it, Maury following closely. Then follows the ritual of George holding his "kill" and standing very still to warn Maury off. (I have pictures of this intricate dance.) And then, realizing that Maury is not going to steal credit for his kill, George drops the mouse. And then proceeds to pick it up and fling it through the air like he does his stuffed "puppy-mouse," apparently missing the point completely that the mouse is supposed to be ALIVE when he does all of this. We watch this for a bit, as George drops and throws the mouse a few more times. We giggle a little, more at George's delight than at the treatment of the mouse's body. Finally, he flings it, and it lands on the storage chest coffee table. Now the cats look everywhere for it but can't see it. So they stare at the storage chest. Mike is giggling maniacally and giving the mice catnip as a reward. They keep eating their nip and then stopping to stare at the storage chest, then going back to their nip, and so on. So I tell Mike to hurry up and get rid of the mouse's body before the cats figure out where it is. We know that George likes to devour his toy mice tail-first, and I really don't want to find that puked up somewhere when I get home tonight. And nothing like finding mouse intestines strewn about the house, Mike points out.

So the kitties were rewarded with a lot of catnip, and although they didn't technically make the kill, they got much further this time than ever before. Who knows, by spring, maybe they will have made a kill all on their own.

Then, next fall, we'll have to start the learning curve all over again...

Wish List

I couldn't force myself to be productive, per se, after we got back from our errands today, so I started in on performing MY bit of expertise. M's decided that planning the garden is his thing, so he's learning about what to plant where, how to plant certain plants next to each other, how to prevent pests, etc. So what was my expertise to be? Planning time, of course. With the planner I purchased two weeks ago specially for the occasion, I lay on the floor and grabbed one of our books from Christmas.

Three hours later, not a thing was pencilled in to our planner, and I had read only one chapter of that book, but I've added to our shopping list, added to the list of things we need for our emergency kit, and created a wish list. We decided last spring that our anniversary, because of its timing, is a perfect way to help the earth by planting something. No fancy dinners, no flowers, no cards...just me, M, a trowel or shovel, a bucket of water, and some gardening gloves.

And with all of this focus on building a home that can sustain us, we've decided that we really would prefer that people get us useful things. Not that we don't want fun things, but we're finding more and more that the useful things ARE the fun things. So we've created a little wish list, sort of like a bridal or baby registry. But this is our life registry. The perfect gifts for any occasion, in no particular order:

Books

How to Live on Almost Nothing and Have Plenty by Janet Chadwick

Managing Your Personal Food Supply: How to Eat Better for Less by Taking an Active Role in Producing, Processing, and Preparing Your Food, edited by Ray Wolf

Practical Skills: A Revival of Forgotten Crafts, Techniques, and Traditions by Gene Logsdon

The Self-Sufficient Gardener: A Complete Guide to Growing and Preserving All Your Own Food by John Seymour

Storey’s Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance edited by Deborah Burns

When Technology Fails: A Manual of Self-Reliance & Planetary Survival by Mathew Stein

Primitive Wilderness Living & Survival Skills, by John and Geri McPherson

Diaper Changes: The Complete Diapering Book and Resource Guide by Theresa Rodriguez Farrisi

Heart & Hands: A Midwife’s Guide to Pregnancy and Birth by Elizabeth Davis

Emergency Childbirth Handbook by Barbara Anderson and Pamela Shapiro

Childbirth Without Fear

Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin

Small-Scale Food Processing by Emma Judge and others

How to Make $100,000 from a 25-Acre Farm by Dr. Booker T. Whatley

The Legal Guide for Direct Farm Marketing by Neil Hamilton

How to Direct Market Farm Products on the Internet

Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook by David Werner, Carol Thurman, and Jane Maxwell

Medicine for Mountaineering & Other Wilderness Activities by James A. Wilderson, M.D., editor

Ditch Medicine: Advanced Field Procedures for Emergencies by Hugh L. Coffee

Deck of Edible Plants

Deck of Poisonous Plants

Tools

Battery- or crank-powered weather radio

Supplies

Emergency First-Aid Kit

Knots “cheat sheet”—an 8 ½ x 11 laminated card with instructions for several key knots on each side

Old clothes or blankets that can be recycled into quilts or patches

“Umbrella” style clothes dryer or posts for clothesline

Canning supplies—especially jars (new or used) and lids, pots, cooking racks, cooling racks