Category: Olio

For some reason, this week blended into a mess and I missed pre-order time for the market. Hubby hasn’t been sleeping well but was sound asleep when I got up and there were no pressing needs from the market today. Online, curbside grocery order didn’t have an available slot today until after dinner, so I took one for tomorrow, and we stayed in this morning. I let hubby sleep, while I sat and spun on my spindles and drank a mug of coffee.

Tomorrow, we will pick up our grocery order. Monday looks like the warmest (not warm), driest day of early next week, so we will go to the tree farm and see what we can bring home to decorate. I would love a root balled tree, but we couldn’t handle it and I don’t think I could dig the hole to plant it.

VDOT never came to clear our culvert as requested 3 weeks ago and last night it rained continuously from about 5 p.m. until the wee hours of this morning. The driveway that was already a mess is worse. I don’t want to try to dig out the culvert with the tractor bucket as I never get the hole in the right place and the ditch is then too wide. I guess I will have to file another report. I was supposed to get a confirmation last time and didn’t, so calling will probably result in being told they don’t have it on file.

This afternoon, I set up my table, table top rack, and floor rack to see what my set up will look like for next weekend’s Honor System craft event at Wilderness Road Regional Museum Noel Nights event. I wanted to make sure I had enough space and not too much space for the goods and that it looks appealing. I had planned on using baskets for the smaller items, but opted to use one of my 4 cell wooden crates that allowed me to load, carry, and set up in one step.

A little rearranging and some signage changes were made after I took the photo. It would be a nice Christmas gift to sell some of my supply so I can make more for next year when hopefully, I will be able to resume doing some craft and holiday events. It is all packed back up and I have scheduled a set up time during the week.

The weather blogger said we had entered Meteorological winter last week and though true winter is still 16 days away, it is cold, gloomy, and damp. We have already built fires several times to sit in front of to chase away the cold and gloom. The hens finished molt and most of them look fluffy and healthy again, but egg laying did not resume. For a while, the Olive eggers were giving me a few and one brown egg layer laid a few, but I have only gotten 1 egg all week. Not having power to the coop, I don’t want to try to light it as it would have to be battery operated and on a timer, so I will just have to buy eggs for a couple of months until they resume production.

I jokingly told my friend from the museum that if we couldn’t get out and about soon, I was going to “become a crazy old lady hermit, standing on the front porch with a broom to keep intruders away.” The Thanksgiving spike of COVID has begun in the county, with a rise of 14 new cases and 2 more hospitalizations since yesterday. With the county as small as it is, that is a significant rise, yet mask resistance is still prevalent here. One of my friends wrote on a social media post, “You have the right to chose to die if you want, but you don’t have the right to take me with you.” Follow COVID protocol, PLEASE.

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things (thoughts)

Every night this week has been a frost night, two nights into the 20’s f (-2-3 c). Though I was hoping for fresh peas for Thanksgiving, the wind was blowing so hard those days that putting down plastic would have been impossible alone. A few years ago I had some very flexible 12 foot long fiberglass poles that could be used to form a tunnel to cover with grow fabric or plastic, but they splintered over time and only one remains. I couldn’t make a tunnel with just one. If a tunnel had been made over the peas that could be opened for ventilation during the day and sealed up at night, perhaps they would have survived until this weekend when we are back in the upper 60’s f daytimes and only in the 40’s at night. Maybe next year the fall garden will be covered with a tunnel to protect it longer.

The chickens have had the run of the garden and they are doing a great job of breaking down the compost pile and weeding the beds.

The area to the left of the boxes will be returned to beds in the spring and the compost moved back to the shadier area. I wish the hens would do the same scratching and weeding in the paths between the beds, and move down to the “mint” bed and the long box below it, but they seem to like this corner. As online ordered and virtual craft show ordered gifts are arriving, I am saving cardboard again for springtime maintenance and more bed building efforts.

I have always been one to accumulate gifts early, to try to be done with shopping by Thanksgiving so that I am not dealing with the rush and hustle bustle, to spend the first week of December decorating the house for Christmas and preparing to have our family here for Christmas dinner or even a few days visit. Though the shopping part is done, the decorating this year is something I’m not looking forward to doing, it will just be us. I’m sure that at least some of my vast Santa collection will come out, we will go get a small tree and decorate it. It will be sad enough to be alone, but worse if we don’t at least try.

This month has been difficult in other aspects. We lost a young member of our family, a young Mom, not to COVID, but a heartbreaking loss, especially for her husband, child, parents, siblings and their families. Another family member is quite ill, again not COVID, but struggling to survive and heal. A friend has had a recurrent illness and is facing a third tough round of treatment. The news of these losses and illnesses of those dear to me have wrecked havoc with my emotions. I blog as a release, but have had to turn to some journaling as some of my thoughts and feelings I just can’t share out to the world.

Every day that it isn’t raining, we don our walking shoes and head out for an hour or so. There are many places to walk, some paved and more traffic than we prefer, the walk in the National Forest around the pond and it’s various trails, and my favorite is to go a couple thousand feet higher elevation to the Mountain Lake Conservancy property and walk one of several trails there, usually meeting only one or two people on the entire walk. We take our masks on these walks and wear them when there are other people around and we can’t distance ourselves 10 or 12 feet away.

This little herd of 6 deer seem to know that near the house is a safe place to be during hunting season, they are seen many times a day somewhere around the house, grazing on grass that is turning brown from the colder weather.

We have had to remove all permission to hunt on our property except for immediate family due to some problems, not serious in nature, but troubling. It is difficult to try to maintain good neighborly relationships, especially since we didn’t grow up here and though my grandfather was born and raised just a few miles from our property and I was born here, we are outsiders.

As a blogger, I like to know that I am being read and perhaps enjoyed. At the bottom of the post there are buttons to share, like, and space to comment. I would love your feedback there. My presence on Facebook has mostly been to share my blog and I may take another social media break so it won’t be posted there. Until next time, stay safe.