A local organization is hosting an “Abundance Exchange” and I dropped off 3 car-loads of regiftable items this afternoon!
However I have only given away, in my guesstimation, somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the stuff in each room of the house. (These figures don’t include the furniture I plan to keep.)
I STILL need to find someone to take my 75 gallon aquarium and fish.
I didn’t post here during the month of November. That was on purpose.
For the 2 years before this one I watched as blogs around the world participated in NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. I guess the idea is to post at least one entry every day in November. It gets you in the habit of daily blog posting, drives traffic to your site through cross-linking, and gets you entered to win prizes.
For the last 2 years I had a guilty knee-jerk reaction. “Yeah,” I said, “why don’t I post every day? I must be a really sucky blogger.” Then I felt like I wasn’t doing my job as a blogger very well. Last year I even considered giving NaBloPoMo a try for a year.
But by the beginning of November 2009 enough time had passed that instead of feeling guilty I was just determined. I won’t let some event, some group of folks, make me feel like I am doing something wrong. If I’m not in the mood to blog during November, I won’t. I need a rest from this garden (and I haven’t even finished cleaning it up yet!) In fact, I pledge to purposefully NOT post anything this November.
And I didn’t.
If you participated in NaBloPoMo this November, last November, in ‘07, or all of the above…I truly hope that it made you feel better about the whole thing. I hope that making sure you had a post ready for every day didn’t stress you out or wear you thin during a busy month. I pray that it improved things for you. Because that seems to be the intent of the program.
For me, I did have a restful November. Now I’m ready to get back at it! I’ll be starting indoor winter lettuce and herbs within the next week or two.
My wife has made it clear after a trip down into Missouri’s Marvel Cave this year that she has very little desire to go into any more caves, ever again. This might become a boys-only trip for the 3 of us. I guess we can handle that, if need be.
When we do make this trip, I intend to make an evening side-trip to Lexington to see a live performance/broadcast of The WoodSongs Old Time Radio Hour.
I would like for this trip to be in late spring/early summer (after school is done for the year) of 2011.
“Every time I went to the grocery store (actually at least 75% of the time) I picked up a little box of 1 dozen lids.”
How I did it: Every time I went to the grocery store (actually at least 75% of the time) I picked up a little box of 1 dozen lids. Over the course of a year I didn’t notice the expense because a dozen lids costs less than $2.00. I now have one year’s worth of lids (about 24 dozen) stocked away. Now if there is a single-year shortage of canning lids for any reason, I can feel impervious to the shortage.
Lessons & tips: There is only ONE FACTORY in the USA making canning lids. Am I the only one worried about this?
It took me 1 year.
It made me comfortable 
Bed Loft In Progress, otherwise known as BLIP. I got a lot cut and put together yesterday between about 1:00 and 8:00 p.m. The loft is basically complete up in his room, but it still needs a few shelves, a ladder, several support diagonals and the whole things needs to be sanded. I’m not looking forward to cleaning up a carpeted room after sanding, but it has to be done. Pictures when I’m able to call it done.
The lumber is in a pile in my garage. I have been making, checking, triple checking measurements and plans for a couple hours now. I’m about to change my saw blade and make the first cuts. I haven’t ever notched boards before, especially without a router. Wish me luck.
I have been promising to build my son a loft for his bed for over a year now. He is having trouble doing his homework in the common areas of the house where we’re bustling around trying to cook the evening meal, so he needs a desk in his room. A good place for a desk is under his bed loft.
I’ll start this project in the morning! I have the whole day off work Friday, so I might even get it done in one day.
I’m custom-building this myself from nice lumber. Should I put the loft completely together in the garage, to check it for fit, then take it apart again and reassemble it in his room, or should I just cut most of my pieces and put it together ONCE, in place?
Pole bean reseeding
One bunch of pole beans at the community garden weighed down their corn stalk poles so much that they bent over and touched the ground. They got moist enough after some rains that this happened. Very beautiful effect.
Mirai sweet corn, dried
Seeds for another year
When I opened the packet of Mirai sweet corn seeds this spring, I thought I had gotten a bad pack. Each seed was wrinkled and flat and completely unlike any other corn I had planted or seen while dry.
It was a hybrid, so I don't know what I'll get next year.
Surprisingly, it grew. Very nicely too. I have to say, Mirai sweet corn was the most delicious sweet corn I have ever tasted.
How tasty was it, you ask?
So sweet that I ate every ear without butter or salt. So sweet that I ate some of it raw. So sweet that it was actually difficult to cook with…the leftovers would be too sweet to eat. It might as well be grown as a sugar crop.
Mirai produced small ears of corn on short 5 or 6 foot stalks. Most stalks had two ears of corn. This one ear of corn yielded about a half-pint of seeds. Supposedly hybrids don’t come true from seeds. I’ll have to try.
Whatever happened to the pole bean teepee, you ask?
The pole bean teepee did not “fill out” the way I had hoped it would. In hindsight, I would say that I was too rushed to put it up and I didn’t prepare the seed bed well enough. I did nothing more than strip off a 4 inch wide swath of sod, place seeds in the trench and then cover them with bagged compost. The grass and weeds were the victors of this fight for life. Some beans grew, but they definitely did not thrive.
I think I’ll try it again next year. Help me remember. 
