Pioneer Woman at Heart

Wednesday it heated up to 90°F, and of course it brought rain. Now they are saying lots of rain coming our way, so weeding went to a halt.  Just when I was getting things caught up.  The rain however, will be the fate of my garlic getting planted.  Sounds just like our spring we had - so much rain you can't plant.  The struggles have been real this year.  We must get the fruit tree baffles in or at least made for spring.  That's on the "do it when the snow flies" list.  I have a lot of lists right now. Thursday it started out raining and muggy, but the temps went down to the 60's.  Layers went back on.   I got caught up on my library book stash however.  I even got some reading time with my current book too.  More patterns were collected for my crochet and knit stash. I didn't run out of things to preserve though.  Tomatoes were put into the dehydrator for tomato soups, pastas, stews, and even tomato powder.  It...

Someone, I'm not saying who, forgot to stoke the fire last night.  I got the chance to clean the ashes and restart it early this morning.  It's not too bad out - high of 50°F today with some rain in the late morning.  Lows are down to 20's.  Forecasts have predicted possible snow, but so far zero.  Towels dried great outside yesterday.  I wanted to get a dose of sunshine, and those stinkin' hunters were out back all day long.  Grr.  Either they have really bad aim, or they are shooting several herds of deer.  I'm guessing bad aim. We are warned by the news about deer disease again.  It was a problem last year too.  I'm not sure I'd want to be eating one around here. My jar of calendula oil and four thieves vinegar were ready to be strained.  Now I can use both.   Actually, I'm the first to try the vinegar.  I have a slight sore throat, and slightly swollen lymph nodes.  Two Tbsp. already went down...

King has pulled another "king -tas t rop he. " He is my lea st favorite dog and will remain on tha t list until I get over what he did.  Ugh. I hurried out the door with Zuri on a leash, and Jesse.  No different than any other day.  I t ypically take Kin g first, b ecause he does his bu si ness rather quick.  Yesterday, I took Zuri first. I went back to the door and guess what?  That #@* # dog, jumped on the knob and locked me out.  I had no phone, all of the vehicles gone for the day, no keys, entire house was locked up as tight as F ort Kno x , and I had one screwdriver and a metal no -trespassing sign to work with.  I debated to get the lad der a nd cl imb to check the second story windows, but put the la dder back.  To o ri sky.  Something just told me don't do it.  I kn ew exactly which window I'd break if it came down to that though.

You know that poem about "if you give a Mom a muffin" and how she gets side tracked?  Well, after I did my morning routine exercise, I headed out to see what needed harvested.  The zucchini looks pretty bad, and I have ants chewing away on them now.  Cucumbers look oh-so, not good either (sad about that), and only one yellow squash to bring in.   One daughter reminded me upon entering the kitchen, that I bought organic cream cheese to make a cracker dip we like.  So, I returned to the herb garden, where I could not even see the green onion I needed.  I'm not sure if passing cars saw me throw my hands in the air and started talking to myself...."where do I start?" Everything was a muddy mess from the rain, and it was hot and humid.  Very humid.   I ended up pulling all the "tall" stuff out.  Then I couldn't stand it, and went around and got more weeds pulled, but had to fight off an onslaught of sweat bees.  Even my ...

Like most of you, my hands, face, and lips are feeling dried up and awful already (cold and wind).  My younger two girls love the homemade lip balm, and we are almost out of homemade hand lotion.   That is now on my to-do list now al so. The last time I made the lip bal m I used small plas tic , round cont ain ers.   This time I u sed lip b alm tubes.  I used 10 of them.

My pot of calendula has been growing wonderfully.  It was recently time to cut and dry them, and make a jar of calendula herbal oil.

The start of my scrap blanket.  I'm using all the yarn I have leftover from other projects.  It's my "five minutes for me" handiwork when I need a change of pace from the other current handiwork. Big fluffy clouds. A butterfly that often visits the front porch flowers, and....