Pumping Brakes is Girls Work evidently

But the call for help  gave you and I an opportunity to drive over to the Masters Lair at the big farm workshop and see how The Dodge is doing.   The 53 Dodge Pick-Up Truck that was released from the barn and is getting ready for its new life as a roadside vegetable stall attraction! It has been cleaned, not  painted  though as I do like the old look it has. And Our John is pleased to be able to announce that it RUNS! The motor not only starts, but it will also idle.  But  it does not STOP yet, hence the pumping of the brakes.  Tonton and I were put in the cab and hoisted to the ceiling, then John realised he had left his wrench on the hubcap and we were let back down with a hiss, the wrench retrieved, then once more we were hoisted up. Between  the brake pumping I inspected the rather complicated dashboard.

OK seems simple enough, pull throttle, choke the choke,  turn key.  Or is it turn the key pull the choke, throt the throttle?  Is it in order from left to right? Well it is an old Dodge Pick Up!   What does Pick Up mean anyway? Head surely must mean headlights.  Panel? There is a Panel? I need to consult. 

I was told there is a problem with the oil gauge, I am guessing Rust but not being a mechanic or in fact not being, in any way, prone to Tinkering with Motors or Messing about in Boats for that matter, I would not hazard that particular guess Out Loud! There are times in a girls life when it is best to just push when told to push and stop when told to stop. It is enough to sit 1o feet up in the air, playing with my new steering wheel and making like Jethro out of the Beverly Hillbillies.  Maybe I should put a rocking chair in the back for Ma!

Once we were lowered to the floor of the workshop on the hissy thing Dog and I dutifully went to inspect the motor.  Look what we found!

A horn! Seeing my excitement John leapt to the steering wheel and blasted me straight into the world of the deaf.   Then he produced the prize. A hood ornament.  He found this in his collection of stuff that resides in the workshop. 

The Dodge Ram.  Who could say no to a shiny hood ornament on a rusted dilapidated old truck.   It is the perfect juxtaposition of shiny and rusty.

There are issues with the fuel tank (it being rusted right out)  and having no muffler (rusted out also)  and shuddering tires (perished rubber). But all in all, as we went for a slow wee drive, John showing me the little quirks and foibles I would need to know for driving it up and down the lane laden with asparagus,  I decided that my new truck  was in pretty good shape.  It did quite well  for an old truck that had sat in the barn for 12 years with chickens using it as a nesting box. Ton will have to start riding on the deck though like a real Dog, with his tongue hanging out and not squashing the tomatoes in his excitement! 

The sun is coming up today into a clear cold sky.   SUN!  Now, I know I was going to do my award list this morning but we have once again run out of time. Tomorrow I shall get up earlier and have that ready for you by dawn.  So I hope you will forgive me having your weekend reading a day late.   I do enjoy that page.  But Duty and Daisy calls.

Good Morning.

celi

THe A-Z of saving money while running an efficient, sustainable home and lifestyle

Today we are going to discuss how to manage your home sustainably.  Sustainable means not stretching your resources, environmentally, financially or emotionally.  We all try to work within our means.  For me on the farmy  it means thinking about and creating systems  that encourage that cycle of use and reuse.  We need to scorn the cycle of greed, abuse and waste.

Ronnie sent me the Kreativ Award, a few weeks ago, and I must apologise for taking so long to get to the awards page.   Ronnie is a great blogger to have around. Endlessly positive and up beat.  And she has been so patient with me.  Thank you Ronnie. 

The lovely Jess and her Startling Llamas have awarded me with the ABC award. Now Jess is somewhere out there but is on a wee break, however if you get a moment pop over just to see the shots of her Llamas. They are too too beautiful.

The Kreative Blogger asks for more details about me and evidently the ABC award demands an entire alphabet of things about me.  (Oh dear.)  I hope you do not mind if I don’t put you through all that. However I thought maybe I would add a wee twist and create an A-Z of  helpful hints on how to run your home sustainably while saving money. Or more precisely if you can’t make lots of money, how about trying to save yourself some money. We could call it saving your environment while saving money the sustainable way.

I cannot tell you How to Be – That would be both Rude and Arrogant.  So when you read this page take a few ideas here and there that might fit into your own way of running a house and home. It has to begin in our homes.

Firstly I think it is important to note that running an efficient and sustainable managed home takes a little extra time. I have very few but very important electrical gadgets.  I wash clothes only when they are dirty.  You can wear a pair of jeans and hoodies more than once you know. I hang towels on racks to dry after the bath (well hopefully I have just dried a clean body). I water down my dishwashing liquid and use half the specified amount of laundry soap.  I have a spray bottle of vinegar for just about everything else. I turn the tap off when I am brushing my teeth and water the pots with a watering can  from a rain water barrel. I know many of you pay for water and saving water is easy.  Put the plug in when you are washing your dishes! But this is just the little stuff.

But most of all – Live within your means.  This is the big stuff.  Financial and environmental. Can your income sustain each purchase? Can your home absorb it? If your fridge is bulging with old food and your storage areas are packed to the gills and you have to push through tightly packed clothes to get to to your usual outfit- then you are living beyond your needs. This is not sustainable.  If your cupboards have dark corners of stuff that you have not used for years, then your home has no air, is clogged and you are not living a sustainable lifestyle. Having a CSA box, or using organic flour is a good start but wasted effort when your home is choking on itself.  The fossil fuels used to harvest organic wheat are exactly the same as the fossil fuels used to harvest GM wheat.  So to create a fluid cycle we need to curtail excessive living.

The cardinal. My first spot of colour.

A & B.  Get up earlier!  Give yourself fifteen minutes or 30 minutes extra a day. To save the planet your best investment is time. You cAnnot Buy it.  If you want to run a sustainably managed household and live en environmentally friendly lifestyle that counts -then you need to spend time on it, not money,  in fact you will save yourself some money.

C & D.  Only use the Dryer when you have to. You will save yourself 50 cents per load. In my household that would be 1.00 per day . Well that mathematical equation is not hard.   I save $365 a year at least by drying my clothes outside on the clotheline or inside on racks. If you do not have room for an outside clothes line, buy a couple of racks and put them in a sunny spot of the house. The added advantage of drying your clothes like this is that they will last longer.  $365 is a plane fare half way to New Zealand!

E&F Watch the Energy that you use. Pay attention.  This is all so simple and old fashioned. Turn the lights out when you leave the room. Turn you TV off AT the TV when you are not watching it, (the remote only turns off the screen.)  Use a laptop instead of a desk top computer.  Turn your computer OFF every night. Only heat the rooms you use. Turn the house heat DOWN. Wear clothing appropriate to the season. If you are walking about your house in a T-Shirt in the middle of winter then you have your heating too high.  If you have goosebumps when you enter your house in the summer your air conditioning is too low. As well as Wasting your money, you are endangering your health and the health of your family. Hands up who has had a cold or the flu this winter! Hands up who keeps their house heated over 67F.  Or at 50 in the summer.  I rest my case.

G & H. We use neither central heating nor air conditioning. I have not turned these on for over four years now. Both of these are a luxury. We are in Illinois, it is either very very hot or very very cold.  Many schools don’t even have air conditioning.  No-one had it in their houses out here until the 50′s and the 60′s. The Matriarch has never lived in a house with airconditioning.  So just rewire your thinking. Instead of thinking – I can’t live without it, think -when do I need heating or cooling.   You do not need it all the time. Save yourself some major bucks and make a real movement towards reducing your energy consumption.. The National Grid in many big cities is only just managing to keep up with massively increased demand.  Hovering on collapse. We do not need more power plants, we need to use less power.

I & J. By not turning on our central heating  we save almost 1,400 dollars a year.  This is a round trip  to NZ.  So I may not be able to make the money but I have saved it by investing in a woodstove, chopping some wood, wearing a couple of extra layers  and my socks and slippers in the winter and often my hattie because I Just like my hattie.

K & L. Rubbish In Rubbish Out. On the farm I apply a rule. If it comes onto the property it has to stay. Either my animals or I  will have to eat it, use it, grow it, re-use it or recycle it.  So I try not to bring Rubbish In that I have to throw Out.   You already know to avoid packaged foods,  and to use your own shopping bags. What else is clogging up the trash? Have you seen where your rubbish goes? In those big trucks, it is shocking.

M & N. Do Not buy bottled water. Filter your own.  Bottled water is a rip off, lazy, way too expensive and not guaranteed pure at all. Never drink or eat out of hot plastic!

O & P. Cut up Old clothes for rags. Try not to use paper towels. I have a draw full of white kitchen rags that I wash frequently. Never let a dishcloth sit overnight, they are terrible collectors of bacteria!  Wash them in hot water and hang in the sun to sanitise.

Q & R  Use hankerchiefs instead of tissues. I know you are horrified, but a nice old soft pillow case cut up into hankies is so much nicer than a mean old paper raspy tissue.   Think of the trees. You can also buy the sweetest old fashioned hankies,  for when you go out.  If you are home with a cold use the nice soft washable rags. You can even hem them if you feel like it.  Once again it is a saving!

S & T Take your leftovers  to work for lunch.  When I dish up dinner, I have Johns glaSS container on the counter as well, like a Third plate. So his cold meat and salad and cold vegetables or pasta  or rice is already in the container, waiting in the fridge when he gets up in the morning. All he adds is his peanut butter and jelly sandwich though how a grown man can eat that I have NO idea.  But by making his lunch I have  saved almost $700 per year.   That is two off peak round trips from Chicago to Los Angeles if John wants to fly over to see me off.  Plus he eats good food.

U & V. I have a Soda Stream too. I am actually addicted to bubbly water. My habit was costing around $10 a week. Now it costs almost nothing. I use filtered tap water and make my own bubbles, a tank of the gas lasts almost 6 months. 10 x 52 = $520.   Well that is a few internal flights in New Zealand sorted.

W. Shop once a week. Make a very good shopping list and remember to take it with you. Have a food budget. Plan what you will eat this week. Buy only what you will eat and can afford. Do not go shopping until you have eaten everything in your fridge. Use it all up.  If there is wasted food in  your rubbish bin, you are throwing away money, and wasting resources.  It is estimated that in the U.S. almost 30% of food is wasted. I find this hard to believe actually but even if a quarter of what you buy is then thrown away,  this is an easy gap for us to close.   Rewire the thinking again – You cannot have everything you want.  So grow up – prioritise and choose.  Shop small for perishable items. If you come in under budget, this is travelling money too. I call it coffee money. Buying a coffee in NZ is expensive! When eating out, take your own doggie bag jar!

X. Use glass for leftovers. Plastic containers have a dreadful habit of losing their lids and eventually end up as waste. Mason jars don’t, plus you can wash them and they do not lose their shape or wear out. So use the plastic for kids lunches and the glass for leftovers in the fridge, and the lunch I hope you will  take to work.

Y. Wear your clothes until they are worn out then reuse the fabric.  Repair fallen hems.  Do NOT buy sale items.  Do not buy  ’Here today and Gone tomorrow fashion’  items unless you are 12 and you will DIE if you cannot have them, then start saving. Only buy what you actually need and matches your look. If this happens to be on sale that is Wonderful. Sales are designed to entice you to buy things you do not need.  There is a rule, only buy what is very, very essential or very, very beautiful.  Apply the Rule.  If your drawers and closets are bulging, no more shopping!  Most of these clothes are made off shore and the waste from those clothing factories is astronomical let alone the pollution.  However if you see a little black dress that is perfect.. of course buy it immediately.  Do NOT go shopping because you are bored. Clothes have a massive carbon footprint.

Z. Credit Cards are deadly in the hands of the thoughtless – if you cannot afford it you  cannot have it!

Yikes I have run out of alphabet and the sun is coming up.

Grow your own Vegetables in your lawn, or your own herbs in a pot on the terrace or your own sprouts in jars in your kitchen or all three.  Plant some flowers out doors for the bees.  If everyone did this just think of the amazing food we would all be eating.  It is a Win Win. And with your grocery bill going down you will save even more money into your coffee savings jar!

XYZ Sustainable means Sensible.  That’s all.  Thoughtful too.  None of it is hard. It has all been done before. Cook at home and sit down to dinner every night with your family. Talk about it. Get everyone living in the house involved in saving some money and running a more efficient sustainable home and lifestyle. Money saved is indeed money gained – PLUS the added bonus of a responsible lifestyle lived within your means. Massive debt is not sustainable, it is a modern and insidiously destructive premise.

This Cuppow lid turns a glass jar into a travelling sippy cup.

Living well and creating your own sustainably managed environment is awesome.  Instead of just buying organically how about we live organically too.  Sustainable cycles are do-able right there in your own home.

Windy, rainy and grey today.  Tomorrow I shall name a few lovely bloggers who I shall pass these awards onto, I am late getting to the farmy already.

Good morning

Celi

Walkabout the Farmy on a Still Sepia Day

Good morning.  I took you around the farmy yesterday. Yesterday was a day of bird song. It was still, overcast and bright. Which is actually a perfect day for the camera if you want some serious light for the densest colour in your images. Sadly we are still waiting in line for our spring colours, my sepia world persists.  I would like to have shown you the birds but they were way, way up in the tops of the trees. But I know I heard a red-winged blackbird, and the mourning doves are back.  Their spring song was sunny all in itself. The exciting news is that my Cardinal has appeared, he comes every spring with his wife to nest high up in the mulberry tree.  Cardinals are very cheeky birds, bright orange and they flit about like little nightclub lights.

My lambing pen sits quietly.  Waiting like me. With the really big barn doors open, you can see inside. Look at that fantastic old hand made gate.   It is almost one hundred years old and is one of my favourite barn gates. 

No lambs yet, just a cat.  Thing One I think, but he was so fast asleep in the cleanest pen in the place that he did not even raise his head the lazy sod. What if I had been a big fat mouse!?. 

Because it has been steadily  getting a wee bit warmer in the last few weeks,  the bees have been up and about. You will see that we have moved the blog hive away from the big trees. It was just too cold in the North shadow of that shelter belt. When we lifted it,  we found that it was quite light, too light, (they have eaten up their stores of honey) so I have begin to feed all the bees sugar water.- see the little jars? – once I start this I must continue, probably until Late March, Early April – whenever the first flowers are in full bloom.  But for now the bees are buzzing all over looking for food, with day after day in the upper 40′s. So I am forced to feed them sugar water. Especially this weaker hive.  The problem with feeding this early is that the bees will become active and the queen might start laying so that is why I have to make sure not to miss a day until the first decent run of flowers.  No grass in Pat’s Field. Of course not – it is way to early! I am going to drive you batty for weeks now, staring at the fields willing that grass to grow! And we all know how exciting it is watching grass grow. Actually for me it kind of is!! 

Look at that rain cloud. Though we had no rain yesterday. It is so exposed out here. The spring winds will start soon. Maybe I should create some kind of sound track so you can hear the howl of the winds hurling across the plains.. not yet though, not yet. For the moment we are still.

We are entering the time of year that I call the slog.  It feels like spring should be coming. We feel like surely we can wear one less layer of clothing. It is not cold enough to light the fire but not warm enough to open all the windows. The nights are almost above freezing but not warm enough to leave the seedlings out at night. So hundreds of little plants in their paper pots lined up in their trays, are carried  out every morning that is  over 40F and carried  back in that evening. The floors are covered in plants at night.  I stare and stare across the tundra desperately seeking green.

Today I start to clear the flower gardens. I never cut down old plants in the autumn, I like to leave the seeds heads up until the birds have got every little mouthful out of there.  So today I start to clear and compost. 

Ok enough chatting. The dawn is here,  (this is the view out my loft study window about three  minutes ago as promised) I had better hurry up and publish!! Looks like there may be a bit of rain heading our way.  I am off outside to play.

Good morning.

celi

Undressed Apple Crumble in a Jar

On Friday night there is to be a birthday dinner for the birthday siblings. In New Zealand.   In the summer. Too far for Mama to catch a cab from the U.S. prairies.  Sadly.  Senior Son has been working  on creating a Mama Meal from The Kitchen’s Garden Pages.  Then it was discovered, with eyes rolling in horror, that I have not posted the Apple Crumble and an emergency call was put through.

So very quickly yesterday afternoon, I gathered the last of the apples, made the crumble,  and wrote  down the recipe. This is harder to do than you think, when you have made the crumble your entire life by just heaving it all together and stirring. Now if you are invited to the dinner on Friday  - close your eyes.

The  Crumble

• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1 big tablespoon bran
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 4 oz cold butter
• zest of half a lemon

Grate the very cold butter into the dry ingredients, (grate and stir, grate and stir, etc) zest the lemon in and mix with your fingers until it is crumbly. It needs to look like chunky breadcrumbs.

Grease your widemouthed jars  (this will work in a baking dish just as well).  Pack with sliced Granny Smith Apples (or any other tart apples) until the jars are about two thirds full.  Do not add sugar to your apples, leave the tart taste alone. Top with about 1/2 inch of the crumble. Sit your jars on a baking sheet in the oven for 45 minutes at 350F..  (about 160C I think.)  Be careful when you take them out of the oven. They are hot and awkward.  Don’t serve too hot. 

I made these as individual servings in wide-mouthed Bell  canning jars (Agee bottling jars in NZ) . The pictures are of UnDressed Only-Just-Cooked Apple Crumble as I did not want to lose the light for a photo.  These can be made ahead of time, (to the above stage)  then warmed on low.  Just before serving, create layers of colour in the jar.  Maybe you could add a thin layer of  whole blueberries or raspberries, then a small ball of icecream and a wee curl of lemon.  Your sister will help with this.  Jab a shiny spoon into the dessert and serve quickly so that the crumble stays crispy.

I hope you can find the pint sized wide mouthed jars! If not you can make these in individual ramekins.

If you have a few desserts left over, screw the lids onto the jars,  pop in the fridge and take them for a pernick-nick  (home talk for picnic) down at the beach on the weekend.  Apple crumble is just as good cold!

Can you see Mary’s Cat lurking in the back of this shot? He is thrilled that I am taking photographs of food outside again!

Today we are forecast to reach 50F. All the baby plants have been watered gently with the hand rose in the shower, and are waiting to go outside as soon as it hits 40F. Hopefully we do not get too much wind. The big doors have been opened in the chook house, as well as the barn, so everyone is feeling springy and the chooks are laying like mad with all that extra light!  Maybe I should make a pavlova and have a birthday celebration too!

Dawn has come. Good morning!

celi

c

Sausage Rolls made with Buckwheat pastry.

• Look at that! A little dot that has got itself caught in my text. Ah well. In NZ  every little shopping centre has a bakery. They are everywhere. Whereas in the US people stop at a Taco Bell or drive-in Starbucks for lunch and in England they pop into a Nero’s or little cafe for coffee and a sandwich,  in NZ we run into The Bakery. Each bakery makes his or her own fresh bread, meat pies,  sally lunns, custard squares, filled rolls, apple turnovers, sausage rolls and more, lots of lovely stodgy get-fat NZ food.  Everything is sold in little brown paper bags.  Including  hot sausage rolls. Ah sausage rolls.

There are two birthdays in my family this week and no party is quite right without some seventies sausage rolls.

Though today I  made the sausage rolls with a new pastry.  

Buckwheat Pastry: In a food processor

• 1 cup regular organic unbleached white flour
• 1 cup organic buckwheat flour
• 1tsp salt
• add 8 oz  (2 sticks) freezer chilled butter cubes slowly (pulse each time)
• enough chilled water to combine.
• press together then store wrapped in the fridge.

Mix thoroughly together:

• 1lb ground pork sausage meat
• 1 small egg
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp fresh or 1/2 tsp dried rosemary
• pepper and salt to taste
• 1/2 tsp orange zest
• 1/2 a small finely chopped onion.

Roll pastry out carefully.  It is not going to work like normal pastry so you will press more than roll.  Cut into three wide lengths. Brush water around the edges.

Lay the sausage mixture out onto one side of the pastry sheets. Roll the pastry and the meat making a long log. Place each log carefully on the baking sheet with the seam down.  Brush with whipped egg and sprinkle with a little sea salt. Cut the log into small portions.  Separating slightly.

Cook at 375-400 for 30 minutes. 

Buckwheat pastry has a lovely light crumbly melt in your mouth texture. It is my new favourite pastry.  Buckwheat is a grass.  Not a wheat. It has no gluten.  I look forward to making a pastry with only buckwheat, that might be interesting!  I have a feeling it might taste good with apples.

This year we are going to be growing a field of buckwheat flowers for the bees. Buckwheat grows fast and goes to flower quickly so it will be good flower for the early summer bees. Buckwheat honey is very tasty. I shall  electric fence it after the flowers are finished and let the pigs eat the grass as roughage.  Maybe I will let it go to seed, harvest it, and make buckwheat flour, we will see. It sounds like a lot of work to me!  Otherwise once the pigs and sheep have eaten the little field down we will  sow a late summer feed crop like chicory, mustard greens or some kind of brassica in the same field for the stock to eat in the early winter.

It rained in the night. Rain is good.

Good morning!

celi

A tiny bit of spring is not always pretty

You will remember that the day before yesterday we opened the Big Barn Doors so that our hawk could find his way out. Which he did.  I have left them open. Yesterday was fine and clear and gentle with just a touch of spring was in the air.   The sun streamed into the barn, drying out  the corners. We got up to 40F and that was fine with me. The early touches of spring are more promising than pretty. But they are there.

Well maybe cats in the sun are pretty.

TonTon trying to climb a vertical ladder to get into the loft is borderline  pretty but only from above.

Queenie loving her time in the sun with some grass but on a dog chain is not pretty but she is happy on the inside.  Daisy was mooing with disgust, watching little Queenie being led out to the grass in the orchard but Daisy is much too big now, and you will remember  her last day on the feed chain. 

Clothes on the line frozen solid because I forgot to bring them in last night was not pretty.  And those guineas are never going to win a beauty contest, but never mind. 

This Fat Mama sheep who insists on getting fatter with no signs of being anything other than a Fat Mama is quite pretty but lambs would be prettier.  She gave birth to her quads in April last year. I was hoping we could bring her confinement back to early March but maybe not. 

Garlic coming up is a bit pretty though.

Wild onions coming up, which means plant yours now Cecilia, but I forgot to sow them yet, is really not pretty.  But it is green in my sleeping garden.  I will sow the onions today!

This ugly little clump of chives battling up,  knowing that there must be at least one more bout of bad weather to get through, before the real spring, is pretty though.. trust me this is PRETTY.  The first thing I eat out of my garden is chives.

My trusty weather man tells me that we will be having a lovely day today too. And it is dawning a transparent navy outside my loft window. I really must bring the tripod up and take a shot of my loft window sunrise for you one day!   It is 19F (-7) out there at the moment though.   I wonder what today has in store for us!

Good Morning!

celi

Hawk sets up Housekeeping in the Barn

Yesterday  I stalked the hawk who had moved into the barn for a few days hunting. Taking photographs of suspicious flying raptors is a very different concept from taking a photo of a cow as she stands and leans and stares. However, even without the right lens or light,  I amused myself for a while. Bob from Texas Tweeties (my blog resident  bird watcher, who is well worth watching himself, if you like birds, which I do)  has told me that he (or she) is either a Coopers Hawk or the smaller Sharp Shinned Hawk. They are almost exactly alike though the Sharp Shinned Hawk  (try and say that eight times in a hurry) is a bit smaller. 

All the cats were thrilled to be hauled back to the house and locked inside. They were literally and I mean literally climbing the walls in the barn to hunt the new guy, everyone was in a high state of agitation and someone would have lost an eye!  These guys are lethal hunters and need to eat every day.  There would have been tears before bed time. 

I sat in the barn with my camera propped on my knees for ages, until my arms ached  (like a real bird watcher) and soon he began to fly to and fro.

There is very little light up that high in the barn.  I am sitting on a kind of cat walk very high up in the eaves. 

We had opened the big doors in the hope that he would fly out so we could get on with mucking out. He got quite frantic when we started to work  in the barn yesterday so  we had to abandon the floors until he vacates the premises.

He seemed disinclined to oblige.  He has the sweetest little call too. He would fly quite close and sit and watch me (wondering if I were food) then cheep.  More of a bop actually.  Such a tiny sound for so formidable a bird.   

So I just kept practising my wildlife photographs.  You can see that I am sitting about 60 feet from this window. Lamenting the loss of my old zoom lens. 

They fly very fast, you cannot track this bird. I have many shots of empty space. 

The shot below is from earlier in the day when the sun was shining straight into the barn and even blurred with speed he is a magnificent bird. 

As a special thank you for the accomodation he decided not to kill any of my chickens, and the guineas lay low all day after screaming their heads off (wah, wah, plonk) half the morning. The barn was completely empty of pigeons all day too, though there was evidence of night time snacking! By evening it was quiet. So without fanfare he must have swooped low, seen the big open doors and silently moved on.

And so it dawns again – a Sunday morning. The weather man writes that there will be lots of sunshine today, which is good as the little plants in their little paper seed catalogue pots are once again lined up at the door awaiting their rides to the outside.   I ran out of newspaper the other day and made plant pots from the pages of actual seed catalogues.  The irony does not escape me!

Good morning.

celi