Sunday, Situating

[CathyS]

I have 2 racks of plants in the kitchen windows. They are chrome and I have white sheer drapes on the windows with some lace at the top. The plants are all in the same room and have the sun year round. It's a joy to have plants, but I can't imagine over 300! Yikes!

[blessedw2]

sounds lovely d cathy

hi d rose! glad you took a break to be here with us! you must have needed the sleep!
the lanai looks lovely!

hi d harmony so nice you two figured out who it was! it's okay - I have done that too - oh my gosh I found myself falling into it and after I parted with the man then it hit me that I was wrong. I laugh because he may be thinking that he forgot instead of me mixing it up!

I hope the gutter work won't be too bad. I hope it will be an easy job and that you have a very nice week

Hi d Harriet! thank you! Dh's smile and giggles truly made all of us laugh yesterday!
oh my goodness - my dh forgets to work things out first with me - sometimes I wonder if he is literally forgetting or keeps thinking he will talk to me later instead of just handling it - putting it aside - I don't know if he is hiding it - which I think dh does sometimes - but it is always something that I have to be involved with without letting me know until the last minute. (which I would rather know). I end up feeling like the bad guy but I try hard to remember that I talk to him. I try not to feel bad but I always do. (if he would talk to me then I and he could be on board together on what he wants to do). I think it's more common than I think. I have heard my d sis in laws saying the same thing.
Happy birthday to your sweet dd 43!!!

hope your d stepson gets the powder room fixed again!
how nice that your ds and d dil is on a vacation together!

hi d Nancy I hope your sinus pain goes away!
glad you had a nice service!

hi d lady waving back at you!
nothing better than coming out of service with comfort and peace!
enjoy your lunch!

[CathyS]

Supper is in the oven. Pork chops with actual shake n bake because dh requested. I had run out of bread crumbs, so we had to go to the grocery store to get one or the other. (I got both because they were on the same shelf.) We are also having the allrecipes website roasted potatoes and carrots. I par boiled the veggies and left out the honey from the recipe I chose.

I baked a spice cake and brownies today.

If anyone is watching the Bills game, our snow looks like what Buffalo is getting.

Dh put a nice fire on, so I am going to sit with him until supper is ready.

[blessedw2]

I still feel guilty about not seeing dh- dd older said he is lonely and bored. He is disappointed that he is not going home this Monday.
I have to think about what I can do to help him be busy when I am not there.

Flip flopped laundry
dw is done and I need to do a put away
I went through the pantry and cleaned it up a bit.
now for cat litter

[Harriet]

Dd24 doesn't understand why I'm upset, but I just lost our cloth bathmat because the rags I have weren't enough to mop up. So now I have a new rag. And it's just not worth the frustration to 4 different family members. But, we do seem to have it fixed. Let's hope.

Powder Room, blessed called it. Yes, that does make it sound like a nicer little place. It's super small - sink, toilet, and no room for a trash can, lol.

We're going out to pick up Japanese food and take Hibachi to dd43 and family. I love the carrots and grilled broccoli with fried rice. Yum.

Cathy, I don't think my quick solution, remembered by Harmony, will help. We had a door mat that was like a rug cushioned, but rubber on the other side. We'd flip it over and it would grip furniture laid on it, but slide along on the cushy side to where you wanted something to go. Nowhere near the help of actually getting proper wheels, but it helped in a pinch.

[Lady Maverick]

I'm wondering about doing a cost analysis between purchasing wheels and modifying the shelf to work with them VS selling the existing shelves and purchasing rolling shelves to replace them. I recently looked at wheels and they were over $10 each. The rolling shelves we are using are around $100. If you could sell the existing shelves for $50 or $60 then the cost would even out.

I enjoyed a slow-paced afternoon. I have spent part of every hour in the garden playing in the dirt and keeping the firepit going.

I absolutely love plants and spend about an hour (or so) a day in the garden just because it brings me pleasure. However, the thought of 300 plants sound waaaay past fun or pleasant. I remember helping DS14 water his boss's 100+ plants. There is no doubt his landscape is beautiful and doesn't feel cluttered but the amount of work it takes to maintain that many plants is way past what I am willing to do.

I am sitting next to 14 plants that I am playing with inside the house this winter. Their purpose is to bring me joy during these winter months while I can't grow much of anything outside. This morning I removed 3 plants because they were not bringing me pleasure. Two of them I put in the garden with very slim chances of them surviving winter weather. The 3rd one I put into the trash because it didn't look healthy.

At church this morning a fellow gardener asked me if I had tried growing mushrooms. (I haven't). He told me of several master gardeners in this area that are doing it successfully. One is using a 12x12' room in his house and making $1000 a month profit from selling mushrooms at the farmer's market. I have zero desire to sell mushrooms, but I am intrigued to learn more about raising them for my own use.

I need to plan the homeschool assignments for next week and get them on the hourly schedule.

[Ramblinrose]

I have always loved and kept plants in my home. My lanai has at least a dozen of different sizes. I plants in AZ but gave away all but one. I grew it from a small plant and it rode in my suv back seat with a seat belt around it when I moved here. It is now huge and loves living in my lanai. It’s twice the size of a bushel basket and I have no idea how big it will get.

I am starting to process where I will grow my sunnies. I have been watching the direction of the sun since I moved here. I know I will plant some in my large pots. I also have some other perennials seeds I want to plant as well. I may put them in the brown and see what happens. My Mexican sunflowers grow like a bush and I have a spot in my side yard when I think they will grow. This year will be an experiment as I have never grown plants here. It’s exciting if my learning curve works

I have a new to me sunny I want to grow so they will probably end up in a barrel planter. I get excited when I grow a sunny when it’s new to me. I will also grow a few favorites that my friends in the desert always wanted me to grow. And I have two white sunnies that I love so of course I’m going to try and see what happens when I plant them.

I just need to sit. Down and plan out what I want to do. I have the planters but need to buy a bunch of planting soil. Most people around here, with the exception of my neighbor don’t grow flowers. She also raises butterflies.

[Harriet]

LadyM, I have only considered growing mushrooms in the woods by inoculating (is that the word?) logs with spores of mushrooms. One of the things in life that I haven't gotten around to trying yet.

I was actually thinking that maybe the lady with so many plants was growing something for sale. I myself will have way too many of one variety of violet I know, but it will just be a happy situation, not an attempt at doing anything with them. I can see how someone could get overwhelmed with a lot of plant babies in the house.

Ramblin', I will not go smaller than my big tree-sized planter this coming year. Of all the plants, those in smaller containers did not fare as well even though I was faithful with water. But yes, big pots should do a good job for you. On the one hand, I can't believe you are already planning a flower garden but on the other, if I was starting impatiens indoors as I assumed I would last year, I'd already be late with the seeds!

We had a great birthday meal. Dd had baked herself a cake and we sang and sliced.

[Harmony]

Mostly perennials here in my neighborhood. And palm type stuff. About a block away, a guy had a HUGE vegetable garden at the back of his property and we talked with him once. He gave me his schedule for growing these in this hot Florida climate. I should look at that. RRose, sunflowers grow well here. I grew some once about 5 houses ago. The ones I grew (just for fun so the girls could see them) didn't grow very tall but they had medium sized heads. I left them there and let the birds eat them. I remember a friend once came up to the house and spied them...and looked at them in surprise like he was seeing a UFO! I don't know why, maybe he never saw them grow here before.

Oh, Harriet, yes, a throw rug turned over will work to move furniture around. I did that when I moved the sewing machine cabinet to the pink room. But they do sell some sort of plastic pad to use under legs of furniture...I've seen them advertised on tv commercials. Maybe cathy could try a-river? What's the alternative, emptying the shelf and getting someone to help move it and then reload. Sounds like a big job. How many shelves are we talking about here?

Made me think of the big heavy-duty (very heavy) wheels we have to put on our scaffolding. These are way heavier than household use with ball bearings inside I think...and we paid hundreds for sets of these! Then there's the little round ones mostly plastic on our little drawer units which probably wouldn't hold up to any sort of weight.

So, one more little bag to go out to the rolley bin. Dinner was some fish, baked sweet potatoes and Lima beans. Easy dinner to make.

I am glad we don't go to small group on Sunday Evenings any more. It always was a bit much after half a day at church and stopping for errands on the way home. I'm getting to not want to go out very much at all these days.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Shelf moving:

I have those shelves too (including the castors) and parts are available. For instance, Solutions (I think they are in S. Ont. too) have all sorts of accessories for them and I got 2 solid shelves designed to sit snugly in on the wire shelf for the appliance shelves.

But these are expensive accessories. For moving furniture around I kept pieces of carpet and just put it upside down on the floor, lift one side, then the other, and then slide things around. Things like the roll top desk, and filing cabinets, I planned ahead and they are already sitting on top of the carpet because there's no way I could lift even a corner a fraction of an inch!

A busy day is almost over. Church this morning was very busy for me because I was the usher and also serving communion. On top of that, the poinsettia at the front was given at least 2 quarts of water and it went right through and all over the chancel. Thankfully that is tile (for accessibility reasons) but it took ages to realized the extent of the problem and clean it up properly before service. Then after service, the communion coordinator forgot to pick up the glasses from the pews so I ended up doing that while tidying up after. So I got home 15 minutes later than planned.

I got enough work done for the meeting this afternoon and it went well but left me with guidance on a whole lot of upcoming things.

Dinner was fine, I rested a bit after dinner and then got some niggly little things done.

I'm back at my computer and debating napping. Dh is picking up ds at the airport just after midnight. It would make more sense if I drove out there in our car, and dh in ds's and then ds could leave from the airport to home and cut 40 minutes off the trip. That would translate to 40 more minutes of sleep before his 7 a.m. shift. Dh doesn't want to let me. It is a snow storm right now and, of course, dark and dh knows I don't like driving after dark so won't let me drive after dark. I can't make him understand the difference between not liking to do something and not being able to do something. And he's ignoring that I took him to the hospital in the dark and had to go back that night, in the dark. I can drive in the dark, I just don't like it (my eyes are haloing and the eye doctor says there's nothing to be done about it.)

Anyway, I'm don't want to stay up and fight with dh if I lose, that's a wasted opportunity to sleep, since tomorrow is a day off from babysitting.

The number of days babysitting is starting to add up. Not the advertised 4 times a month, 2 weeks with 1 day, 1 week with 2 days back to back and one week off each month. Instead it will be 11/31 days for January, with 3 of those overnights. We love having him but it is very hard to find time to do things like require chunks of time to get me into focused productivity, like bookkeeping and residents' association work. Grabbing ten minutes here or there works for housework, but not other work. Or grocery shopping. Not to mention being rather tired after a day or two with him. On the other hand, is that why I'm losing weight all of a sudden? I'm not getting a lot of steps in but I am moving all the time, bending, lifting, and shifting from spot to spot.