Fran Sale Stafford

Rainy Sunday Activity

The rain did come off and on today, so I chose to do stay at home activities. First thing this morning, I finished spinning the wine colored wool that I took on my walk yesterday and began plying it on my largest spindle. It was taking forever and after about 90 minutes, I wished that I had plied it on my wheel, but persisted throughout the morning and early afternoon.

I am trying to finish knitting a shawl with it before the end of June. This is the last 27 grams of the wool. The shawl had a major error in it and I had to rip it back about 2/3 of what I had already knit, pick up the stitches and start again.

After lunch, I started two loaves of sandwich bread for the week. Of course it had to be tasted while still warm.

I know that the fad during the pandemic is sourdough and I have made my share of it, but we both prefer yeast bread, half whole wheat with good stone ground flour.

Between rain storms, I took a basket to garden and picked a basket full of fat shelling peas.

While out there, I spotted 3 chubby asparagus spears among the thin ferny shoots, added them to the basket as well. Since hubby was having a chop for dinner with our corn, peas, and cantaloupe, I pulled a fresh small garlic bulb and a small potato onion. While out there I ran the broody hen off the nest for the third time today, grabbing the eggs under her. This has been a six week brood. Nothing I do breaks her.

The onion, garlic, and their tops were chopped along with half a green pepper that was in the refrigerator and sauteed to top his chop. There were enough peas for dinner and the first batch in the freezer. I planted about 2 or 3 times as many peas as usual and wish I had planted twice what I did. My dinner was many of my favorites, fresh sweet corn, just picked and lightly steamed peas, cantaloupe, and fresh bread. The hens get the pea pods, corn cobs, and cantaloupe rinds and seeds to make compost to feed the garden in the fall or next spring.

While wandering the garden, I picked a few raspberries and a blueberry, but they didn’t make it back to the house.

I love when the garden starts to provide and pay back for all the toil of the spring prep. Every couple of days the suckers are pinched from the tomatoes and the tomatoes and tomatillos are tied higher on their posts. I am seeing blooms forming on both. The cucumbers have been given a trellis, the bush beans are filling out, but no blooms yet. The potatoes have purple/blue flowers and desperately need a good layer of hay applied to them. I’ll tackle that the next dry day. The peppers aren’t doing much yet, but they will. I added more basil seed and a few Chinese cabbage seed to a bed that still had space. The only failure I am seeing in the garden is the corn. I have planted it twice and still only have 3 stalks and the pumpkins didn’t come up. I need a plan for that area that will provide us with something for the table, maybe more potatoes?

Today’s Walk

I periodically suffer from extreme GERD attacks. The first one landed me in the E.R. thinking I was having a heart attack. Now when it happens I grab the Tums, chew Fennel seed, avoid certain foods, but I don’t feel like heavy exercise when it happens. The most recent attack began last weekend, so walking our steep road was not appealing to me, doing the driveway to the mailbox and back, almost half a mile has been about all I wanted to do. Yesterday was better and we went to town to walk a part the old paved rail grade that runs between two towns. The part we chose is usually not busy with walkers, but we know there are a lot of bicycles. We ended up seeing at least a dozen walkers, another dozen bicycles, and three maintenance men mowing the edges. No one had on a mask but us. The path is about 8 feet wide with another couple of feet mowed on each edge. When we were approaching another walker, we moved off the right side of the path and kept going, doing about 2 1/2 miles.

Today I decided to do our road. I had a couple of ulterior motives because we are about to get a few days of rain and it will be muddy and the rain will knock down Rhododendron blooms, and because Artist daughter in law wants Cicada shells. I have been looking around the trees near the driveway and gathered a few, but mostly seeing live Cicadas. I found a windfall of them today along the road and quit counting at 60 gathered.

As they emerge wingless, they climb and the shell splits down the back and the new adult Cicada emerges, dries it’s wings and flies off to find a mate. We are in week 2 of the emergence and they only live 4 to 6 weeks then after laying their eggs, they die.

The one craft that I do that can be done while walking is spinning on a spindle. I stuffed some fluff in a bag, hooked it to my belt loop and took my Jenkins Finch for a walk and parked it in a Rhododendron bush to take a picture of the flowers.

I always love coming out of the woods after climbing this hill and seeing the roof of our house appear below the ridge.

The seasonal wildflowers continue to change. The multiflora roses, another invasive species here is blooming, the dandelion puffs have faded and the Goat’s beard puffs are emerging.

It was a pleasant day for a nice walk before coming home to prepare dinner for us.

Stay safe.

I’ve Lost Track

After retirement, days started melting into each other, but there were certain events each week that helped keep things in order. The spinning group met on Thursday right after lunch and I had a Thursday late morning regular appointment. Saturday morning was breakfast out and a Farmers Market run year round. Sunday we would have lunch at McAllister’s.

With the stay at home order, each day is, “What day is it?” followed by a check of the phone or computer to see where we are. There is no regular schedule, we get up whenever, usually early for me as the sun lightens the sky. Lunch is prepared after hubby is up, news checked, etc. Sometime during the morning or afternoon, some garden time and a walk are included. Some spinning on the front covered porch, except Asplundh has been chain sawing everything near the power lines for days. They even drown out the Cicada song.

Our state is in Phase II of reopening. Shops and restaurants can operate with restrictions, but we aren’t comfortable at our ages going in to them, especially since so few people heed the mask wearing and social distancing guidelines. I did venture in to the grocery this week and a man about my age without a mask crowded me every time I distanced to let other shoppers make their selection and move on. I am afraid to say anything for fear of enraging a fool. The employees are all supposed to be masked, though many wear them only over their mouths. The frozen food manager who always is loud, didn’t have one on at all. Thank goodness for our Natural foods store and their curbside delivery, they have mostly eliminated the need to go anywhere else. And our local plant nursery and garden center who have gone overboard to be safe and ensure safety, so flowers and vegetables have been purchased and planted to maintain.

Last night, the school board in the next county where daughter lives had a virtual meeting with hundreds in attendance to discuss school reopening for the fall. Daughter watched 3 hours of chaos and disorganization. The plans sound like someone came up with them an hour before the meeting and will have a detrimental effect on any parent who is working, working from home, lacking childcare, lacking the ability to connect to the internet, without transportation to get their child to and from the abbreviated days they are in the building. Tonight we had a video chat with our eldest grandson who turned 15 today and they don’t know how the new school year will operate where he lives.

Who would have thought in this modern age, that a virus would shut down the world and turn our lives around.

I spin, I knit, I garden and cook and try to make our lives as normal as possible, but someone please tell me what day it is.