The week before last I started writing a blog post. Lately I start blog posts, then step away for various reasons and come back to it and write a little bit more, and so on. Well ... then the world went sideways and I have shoved that blog post to the back burner while the family figures out what is going on. The almost daily changes to the COVID-19 status and updates have caused a lot of uncertainly for almost everyone I know and am connected to on social media. Today our governor announced a "Safer-at-home" order for 30 days. I can work from home. I'm so thankful my job is still going. My son will be switching over to online schooling. I'm supposed to hear from the school district tomorrow. My husband is off work for the foreseeable future. He works for a small business and they had to shut down (temporarily close, we hope). My heart hurts for everyone who is being hugely affected by the shut downs that are occurring. Last week we made sure we had enough feed for the animals. This week we are finding our new normal. Poor weather didn't help. I'm hoping the weather improves for our area. Last week it was mostly grey, cold and snowy. My crafting mojo has almost completely disappeared. With the entire family being home and my craft room being taken over by chicks -- yes, they hatched! -- there will be no podcast episodes. It's one thing to chat to your phone when you are home alone, it's a whole other thing talking to yourself when your family is in the next room. I'm sure you are thinking "Well, what are you doing with all that free time since you aren't crafting?"
Well, I've been keeping busying. I'm keeping "office hours" for work, playing with seeds and seedlings for this year's garden, and taking care of chicks. I've been doing a few rows at a time on the sweater I've got on the needles. When I'm not doing any of that stuff I'm keeping the home and wishing for at least the sun to come out. In the evenings and over the weekend we were watching "Naked and Afraid," and "Alone" because nothing makes you feel better about being self-quarantined than watching people live out in the woods or desert and slowly starving. Seriously, though, there wasn't much else for us to do, thanks to the crummy weather. So ... I wanted to write a quick post to say I'm still here and I'm feeling fine. I processed a lot of emotions last week and I'm feeling optimistic that all the COVID-19 virus stuff will not drag on for months. The family is doing okay. Look for a "coffee date" post in the near future. Let me leave you with a photo of some freshly hatched chicks and a meme I thought was amusing.
What sweet looking chicks. Their floof wasn't quite floofed out yet.
This type of blog post is for when I have a lot of little things I want to share, or when I feel the need to catch up.
So, grab your coffee/beverage of your choice and join me. I had the perfect opening to this blog post. Then I went away, and apparently didn't hit save. Ugh! How frustrating. I have lots of things I want to chatter about. I feel like a squirrel that is easily distracted by shiny things. Or, maybe it should be a crow distracted by shiny things? Ahem ... I'd say a post like this is long overdue. But, like I said a moment ago, I've been easily distracted. Because I have about a billion things running through my mind all the time. Maybe it's spring fever? Did you ever watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch. The sitcom from the 1990s. There's an episode where she has spring fever. It's sort of how I feel, except that I'm not scatterbrained. Or am I? I just don't know. If we were having coffee ... I'd chatter about the weather. It's a bit manic right now, but is definitely on a warming trend. After a winter of almost all gray, all the time, the sun and warmer temps have been greatly appreciated.
The last couple weekends have had lovely weather. We've been making the effort to go sit out in the sun and get our Vitamin D.
Today the weather has decided we needed more snow. I'm not even taking a photo of it. Just say no to snow! If we were having coffee ... I'd mention the hens have been enjoying the sunny weather too. They bum rush the door when they hear someone walking up the coop steps. I'm always worried they will either trip me, in their eagerness to get outdoors, or I'll accidentally step on one.
They love having the one path right next to their coop. The walk up and down it, and lay down and catch some sun rays. When they aren't eating the snow.
Egg production is back up. Which is awesome since we need more eggs for the incubator. About one more week before baby chicks hatch out. And that means I've run out of quilting time. I need to get the craft room ready to be a nursery for all those little fluffy butts. Since they can kick up quite a bit of dust from food and pine shavings, I need to put my machine away if I want it to stay in good shape. There has been no progress on the quilt from. Drag! Not completely unexpected on my part though. I seem to go through spurts of wanting to quilt.
If we were having coffee ... I'd let you know that Shadow, our bigger female rabbit, was looking pretty big last week. So I brought her in to the house and got her set up in her own tote. Yesterday she gave birth to two baby buns. Unfortunately only one made it.
Do you see how big she is? I thought she'd have at least six babies. No, she's just chubby. I guess. There's a reason why I call her a "whole meal" She's a big girl!
Yesterday she was hanging out on one side of the tote, while the baby was tucked into a corner on the other side. Welcome to the world, little one. It felt a little cool so I fluffed off some spinning wool and tucked it into that area.
Today Shadow is in full protective mama mode. She lunges at anyone who tries to get close to her. Ask me how I know.
I'd feel a lot better about things if she still had the baby parked, and covered up.
But Mamma Shadow knows best. She does lay next to him. And over him. If she tries to leave him alone, he roots around and manages to find her.
Which brings me to Feffer. He's been thoroughly enjoying the nice weather. I think he has spring fever!
Thor and Loki have been reunited. It was an interesting re-introduction to each other. I'd tell the story, but I'm not sure everyone would find it as humorous as I did. Let's just say it involved a lot of "dominating" from both parties, and Feffer catching a peep show.
If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you how the deer are still coming around to the back yard and through the front yard. They know hunting season is done with, and they have nothing to fear.
I thought I had already talked about the deer on the blog, but a quick look back tells me I have not.
The deer have been coming to the back yard in the morning and in the afternoon. It's been such a rough winter that we feel sorry for those that made it through the hunting season. My husband has been tossing corn out to them. The deer all come running up like puppies. It's a sight to see.
If we were having coffee ... I'd give you an update on my "Great Gardening Experiment" (tm)
I broke one of the cardinal rules, i think. I didn't do a very good job of writing down the date I planted all the seeds.
*sigh*
When I last recorded I had inserted a video snippet of what my plants looked like. The majority of them were leggy and I didn't think they were going to make it.
So I plucked out almost all of the seedlings. Yup. I did.
On Thursday, Feb. 27 I plucked out the leggy plants and replanted tomatoes and pepper plants.
Now that I look at the date, maybe stuff isn't as old as I thought it is? My sense of time has been off. My note says "Picked and replanted tomato and hot peppers. I know I pulled out the lettuce, too. Basically, one habanero plant is left from my original planting on Sunday, Feb. 2.
This little guy is this tall now.
Okay, so it is just over a month old, from date of planting. Is this normal? It's so hard to guage when you watch people's youtube videos and see blogger's photos.
I feel like things should be bigger, or more leaves should be popping.
This is what the set up currently looks like.
I have a fancy-schmancy LED grow light. This one, actually. It's like looking in the sun. I may have said that already.
A sweet little broccoli plant.
Chives. I miss having chives.
These are my roma tomatos. I didn't plant a lot. Just in case. I didn't want to be overrun with tomato plants in case this is a successful adventure. The plants that are the farthest back in the photo, those are transplants I pricked out and re-transplanted. This was my first time doing it and I was nervous I'd accidentally rip the plants. All made it. Yay! Now, because of this and watching the YouTubers, I'm daydreaming about having a greenhouse. Only I don't know where it would go and I don't know how much I'd actually use it. In the meantime it's a nice daydream to have.
If we were having coffee ... I'd let you know that baking and kitchen fun has slowed down a bit. I still have a plethora of recipes I want to try. We can eat only so much, otherwise I think I'd be puttering every night, cooking up a storm. Last weekend I made a batch of baked donuts. I'm bound and determined to make baked donuts that have a good flavor, and don't stick to my pans.
The recipe I used came from "Dinner at the Zoo." I think this has been the best recipe I've tried so far. However, the donut part doesn't have a lot of flavor. I like the texture a lot. I'm taking my sweet time going through the "Great British Bake-Off" show. I enjoy the show so much, and I like seeing non-professionals coming up with such beautiful products. I've also been watching the Spring Bake-Off championship and the Holiday Baking-Off championship. If we were having coffee ... I'd let you know I finished up the audio book I was listening to It was "Feed" by Mira Grant. I'm now listening to "Deadline," the second book in the series. I'm about halfway through, and it's got my attention. I'm pretty engaged into the story. My husband finished it and we are waiting for the third audiobook to be available.
If we were having coffee ... I'd say "Hey, I have been knitting and spinning." I'm saving that share for the next podcast. I've chattered so much about all the other things that I won't have much to talk about, except the crafty stuff. If we were having coffee ... I ... would say how I've been thinking about writing frequently. It's hard. For a variety of reasons. So many of my days I feel I have nothing to write about. I don't treat this space like a typical diary, I think. I feel I need a story, other than "Got up, went to work, did some stuff, weather was great" type things. Those don't make for interesting stories. I do love sharing about the animals and the garden. Those posts will be coming more frequently, I think, now that it's near spring and babies are being born and chicks are hatching out. Well, that's all I can think of that needs to be said. Thank you for reading!
