SHEs Organized

My upper back is hurting. I'm sitting some while the challah is in process. The first challah loaf is rising, the second is in the breadmaker.

bw2, we seldom have challah left over to make french toast!

While the bread rises I think I'll cut the brownies and arrange to get to temple in the a.m.

I do miss Kathryn and hope she's having a wonderful birthday.

And a little later....the brownies failed. Don't know what happened the bottom layer, which is brownie, is burned or hard. Not sure whether to go to store for ingredients to make again, or go purchase something to take.

hard brownies = brownie brittle. One of my favorite desserts.

I recognize that I'm in the honeymoon phase with interstitial journaling so am reluctant to declare it a overwhelming success. Maybe I'll just say it has been very successful and helpful today. Who know if it will work for me on other days, but it has possibilities.

Teenagers, dogs and glass plates are frequently in cahoots together to make my dish cabinet look bare. I have one glass plate left. So....a trip to the dollar store for the inexpensive glass plates happened. When they break I won't stress. We use the glass plates for microwaving food or I wouldn't bother keeping them around.

We got rain drops today! It wasn't enough to even register a .01 of an inch in the rain gauge, but moisture did fall from the sky. Of course, I had to stay outside and experience the rain drops. My shirt showed individual rain drops but not enough to get the shirt wet. The air smelled dusty instead of what I remember rain smelling. I've always heard not to eat the first snow because it removes chemicals from the air, maybe the first rain drops do the same.

I can imagine d twins - sounds delicious and wonderful!!!! hope your back feels better soon!
sorry the brownies didn't turn out - they will next time!

d harriet hope your computer problems get fixed very fast!!!

hi d lady I am glad your journaling has been enjoyable! hope you get some more rain drops! not to many to cause a problem but to bless the earth!

hi d Nancy! your kitchen looks spiffy - very nice

waving to all of you!

TY Blessed!
K in C thinking of you.
LM I have seen several of those Interstitial journaling.
Aka captions log. It is sort of what I've been doing with my Rx and Food log.

Had dinner.
My knee is improving yea!
Got some more tweaks done to my new planners one in Teal color and the other Rose Gold.
I prob. mentioned that before
They came early so excited!

I have inserts coming in a day or two for them.
I have half of a dish cloth knitted up.

Yea my two page per day planner pages came.
I sorted them put the months together and have em in 3 mo. sections now.

Yes -- Happy Birthday to Kathryn! I hope she peeks in to see we were thinking of her!

Okay, y'all, I have three cheers AND a confession.

Three cheers for doing 30 minutes in the OUTDOOR zone. I finally got outside and pruned the stray "runners" (?) on the shrubs. I didn't try to reshape the shrubs or anything; I just trimmed those sprigs that start growing out a foot or so from the main part of the shrub. There's still a big bunch of overgrown shrubs, but that will be a project MAYBE for next year. I hope I can afford to get someone to do hard pruning again and put down mulch. Somewhere I read that it is best to just do mulch without landscape fabric or plastic underneath it -- that whatever is underneath will eventually crumble and fall apart, and that no matter what is under there, some weeds are going to spring up in the mulch and if one wants to keep it weed-free, one is going to have to pull weeds occasionally.
Do any of you have thoughts on this matter?

Okay... so that was the three cheers. Now for the confession:
First, as I told my dmom, the "opening act" for my evening --
DGD looked in the washer (there's a glass lid on the top-load washer.) She said, "Why is there so much suds?"
I said, "Well, I don't know... except... maybe I didn't put anything in there???"
Yep, turned out I washed a load of nothing.
I think I told y'all this last night.
THEN...
I got everyone in bed by 9:30... then made sure my alarm was set for 6:00 a.m. so I'd have them both up in time for school.
Something woke me up abruptly. I thought my phone alarm had gone off.
I just jumped out of bed and went to wake up DGS... sent him to take a shower.
Turned on my bedroom light, started telling DGD she needed to get up, started getting dressed myself...
Kept wondering why it was still so DARK outside the window.
FINALLY... I looked at my watch.
Y'all... it was 3:00 a.m.
When dgs came out of the bathroom, I told him I was so sorry, I didn't know WHAT woke me up, please go back to bed...
DGD was just looking at me like I had lost my mind. She went back to sleep pretty quickly.
DGS said he had a "rule" about going back to bed after he woke up. I told him to go lay down anyway.
He said, "No wonder I feel so tired."
When I went to wake him up when it was really 6:00 a.m., he was in bed with his shoes on.
He was a little harder to wake up. He said, "You know this is all your fault, don't you?"
It was hard not to laugh, but I felt so sorry for him! Here comes his Nana saying, "Get up! Get in the shower!" and poor DGS just goes ahead and gets in the shower. SMH...

I noticed on Life360 that DS was about an hour from home, and I called him just to tell him what was going on here. He said, "The kids would have been better off to have stayed at home." (They were with me because he didn't know if he would get home in time for school drop off, but as it turned out, they could have stayed home and had a normal night's sleep.)

I may be losing my mind.

LucyLee, I use a thick (5 -10cm - not sure what that is in inches!) bark mulch for paths, awkward areas, under shrubs etc.. As my garden is small,.and I.dont have a huge problem with weeds, I dont use any kind of membrane there, and so long as you keep on top of any weeds that appear, then they're quite easy to pull out. The bark will.also need topping up every year. I do have membrane under the gravel by the path in my back.garden and wind borne weeds also grow in that. Whatever kind.of mulch you use, weed seeds will blow in on the wind.

The real question is what weeds are actually growing in the soil around the shrubs ATM? If there's nothing, or very little, you'll probably get away without using a membrane.and.just use the mulch. If there are strong growing weeds./ grass etc then I would advise a membrane before the mulch. This will help smother and kill the weeds. It's very different just picking out a.small weed that's self seeded in the mulch,.than something with a strong tap.root that's growing up through the mulch from the ground!

The thicker the layer of mulch you use, the less maintenance is needed, but, whatever system you choose, it will require *some * maintenance each year (topping up mulch, removing.self sown.weeds.etc) - there's really no such thing as a.completely maintenance free mulch!