Circles and Such

 I'm still spinning. Combing, dizzing, and spinning are calm activities.
Plying, dying and wrapping the yarn into skeins are exciting activities.
These two skeins are in an avocado dye.

 On the other side of the stove my homemade chai is reducing.

 Instead of throwing out this celery stump, I'm growing it in the windowsill. I did one last fall and now have a large celery plant, waiting to be transplanted into the garden this spring.

 I can't take much credit for the Bee Balm that is my small business's best seller. Everybody loves it and wants more. I'm shipping five tubs off to New York City today.

 The concoction below, however, is a new product: Healing Herb Ointment. It's a bit greasy, and it smells earthy. But oh-my-goodness ... is it full of good stuff!

 In addition to all these lovely oils and butter and wax, it's infused with plantain, yarrow, and dandelion.

My baby thyme plants are growing.

 One more circle from my house -- this large plate. My mother gave it to me. It was gifted her by an elderly lady whose parents were missionaries in China long ago. The plate came from them, and who knows how old it is and where it came from before that.

 If you don't follow my other blog, here are a few shots of the nearly-finished kitchen. All the shelves are up on the stove-side!

 One more long shelf will go up on the sink-side (below). But the shelves are full now, and the kitchen looks homey.

 Our local thrift store is rearranging for spring, but I found these jars amid the chaos. Those are 1/2 gallon Mason jars, at 50 cents apiece. I was chuffed, as the British say!

Otherwise, farm life is slow now because it's still cold. Freezing temps (just barely) at night, and windy during the day, and cold. I'm eager to put all these herbs in the ground ... but not yet. Not yet.

Ripping It All Out ~

Today began the Great Kitchen Redo. We started with the great emptying of stuff:

 We'll be living with chaos in the dining room for a while.
Then we continued with the Great Ripping Out:

Apparently these cabinets were brand new in 1986!

The only thing we actually ripped out today were the two lower cabinets on either side of the oven. We figured that indicated serious commitment, haha! Adam wants to work from the floor up; we'll be putting in a plywood floor, either painted or finished with epoxy.

It didn't take long, but it was exhausting! The kitchen is by far the ickiest room in the house. We've threatened to do this redo for months, and we knew if we didn't give it a good start, we'd put it off again until after the wedding (in June) and after summer, and then after Christmas and .... yeah.

In other farm news:
The three baby chicks are fine. I've named one Applesauce because she has a cross-beak.
Adam has begun cutting down unwanted crepe myrtle trees along the road front.

This tree is now removed.

 And he's building a new fence to divide the pasture in half. It's a natural fencing technique from England in the Middle Ages, used to keep pigs contained.

 A double row of low posts, filled with woodland debris, becomes a thick barrier.

He'll leave a wide gate on the right-hand end and a small gate on the other end by the garden.
Adam has trimmed one pear tree and begun cleaning out the garage too. Much must be done before the wedding in June -- we'd better "get a move on"!!

Mouse Patrol

This morning I decided to bite the bullet, as they say, and address the most mousy place in our old farm house ... under the kitchen sink.

I've been avoiding this task. But I knew from the mouse droppings and the volume of mouse poison being consumed, that it was a Very Mousy Place.

Adam put this poison bait down there yesterday; it was already half eaten, 24 hours later.

I got my stool, sat in front of the sink, opened the doors, and pulled everything out. Then I began to spray and wipe.

Great mouse holes abound under our sink. I plugged a couple with steel wool, and a few others with old dry sponges. I told Adam we need some of that hole-filler stuff in a can. We had a can of it under the sink, but of course it was so old I couldn't even get the cap off!
I pulled out my two tubs of cleaning supplies, cleaned out the tubs, threw out some stuff, and reorganized.

In one spot in one tub, the mice had truly set up residence. They'd chewed up lots of sawdust and made some sort of nest, I think. It did not smell like other mouse nests I've smelled in my time. They'd also chewed into a plastic container of drain cleaner. I wonder what they thought of that!
A few items had drifted down there and belonged elsewhere.

And then I texted Adam (who was back by the barn) to tell him we had a leak under the sink. I found water and bubbled down there, indicating I'd just dumped some water below when I finished doing dishes. (sigh) Adam came to examine:

 He had help, as you see. Adam has done just about every kind of work there is to do around an old house. He had that plumbing fixed in no time.
I will not tell you how much mouse poop I wiped up under there. We have declared all-out war on mice. Sometimes I sit in the quiet house and instead of hearing the clocks tick I hear the mice nibbling on that rock-hard poison. It's a little disturbing.
In other farm news, Adam's made great progress clearing out the orchard, but he wrenched his elbow a bit, tearing vines out of the trees. He's also been scything some areas around the little guest house. And he's hoping (beyond hope) that it will dry enough to continue laying water pipe in the ground. Tonight his hip is hurting, and his bad leg makes him limp. The damp, cold weather got him so disheartened this morning that he had to bake. That's when you know it's bad! haha! He made blueberry muffins to cope.

I don't like his discouragement, but I sure do enjoy his coping mechanisms.

Baby Steps

On Tuesday I was still off work so I launched into some tiny projects around the house. Adam was out in the drizzle, shoveling manure and watering it down with rainwater from his barrel system. More on that in another post.
I addressed the chaos that is our back porch. It's not a large space. I moved that bookshelf (with the paper towels in it) down, and put up two coat hooks. I'd bought them years ago and never used them in a previous house. Sometimes it's useful to be a packrat. I'll hang one more hook there.

I have almost no closet space in this house -- one small closet for Adam and me, and an itty-bitty closet in Julia's room. That's it!! So hooks galore is one solution.

Alright ... next project:  the kitchen window. I loathe nasty old mini-blinds.

A kitchen window is important. When day-dreaming while doing dishes, the window is essential for pleasant thoughts, occasionally even enchanted day-dreaming. Rusty mini-blinds do not enchanted day-dreams make.
Mr. M. was clearly afraid his mini-blinds would come down in his dishes. He nailed them in.

And he screwed them in. See the bent screw up there?

It was fun ripping all that out!

I'd been inspired by a kitchen window photo from my friend, Melissa:

I hope she doesn't mind my lifting this photo from her blog. I'm not quite sure if it's her kitchen or one she found online. But isn't it magical? J'adore the shelf and tea things! (((Sigh))) And the little cafe curtain. And the fall berries and leaves. If I were standing at that sink, I'd be drooling in it.

Anywho, after a trip to Wally World, I returned with the correct rods to hang curtains on doors. This is the door to the back porch from the kitchen:

And right behind it, the back door to the deck. Those are matching cafe curtains, but I only had two ...

So I had no curtain left for my wannabe-magical kitchen window. I went digging around and found some tea towels I never use. Wrinkled of course.

Somehow I love a magical look, but I'm a bit challenged in making it happen in my house, haha!!

At some point I'll find the right lacy curtain for there. Or a better, bigger tea towel. Magical curtains should have some POOF!, and this towel arrangement lacks poof.

Our crazy weather has confused my gardenia bush, so it's blooming. "Is it by chance spring yet?" it is wondering.

My Japanese magnolia has one lone bloom too, poor thing.

Inside and Out

Adam got busy early this morning on his winter garden, which is about 25 x 25 feet. He mowed it again, and tilled it across, and then the other way. Then he dug out rows too. Above you see him in the tilling stage. Later he went to a local farm store and bought lots of seed -- lettuce mix, spinach, arugula, collards, kale, broccoli, and some others. We hope to have lots of greens to sell at the winter farmers' markets when other farmers are out of things to sell.
While Adam was busy outside, I decided it was time to attack the grossness in the kitchen. Between ladies' Bible study this morning and work this afternoon, I addressed this:

No, that's not some bizarre brown decorative stripe. That's greasy dirt way up above the stove. Ugh.
The unusual Mr. M. (the previous owner) loved hanging copper molds and pots around the upper regions of his kitchen. The family removed them all, but not the nails, and not these copper brackets in the four corners.

The nails were All Over The Place. Some men who live alone have this Nail Philosophy. Use whatever nails you have handy. Never move an existing nail if you can simply drive in another one. Bent ones, ugly ones, long ones. Doesn't matter. They were everywhere.

See? Do you really need a nail this long to hang a little copper mold?

 Okay, so here's the Grunge Stripe. I scrubbed away at that. The old dirty grease extended up to the fearsome wallpaper border overhead.

Progress. Adam makes huge progress. I scrub dirt. We're getting there! The seeds go in tomorrow!

Here's to Better Ceilings!

What's happening on the farm? Inside the house, our contractor is trying to make progress. He cut out the damaged sheetrock in the living room ceiling.

The next day (Tuesday) he put up new sheetrock and mudded it in.

He did the same to an even worse portion of ceiling in the corner of the dining room as you go into the kitchen. It's a relief to have those two ugly spots looking so nice

The roofer still has not come. It's not a big roofing job -- just repair work to a few spots up there that leak. Our contractor says he may just do it himself, rather than waiting. It's been raining on and off, and I wonder if that lovely ceiling work could be damaged. I hope he's put something into the attic to protect his work.
He's also finished scraping off all the popcorn texture on the living and dining room ceilings, and I'm pleased about that.
This afternoon he's working under the house to reroute the vent return in the dining room. Its new spot will be on the only interior wall long enough for my piano.

This is a dark photo. It's the kitchen cabinet where the new vent return will come from under the house. The hole on the right goes into the dining room. A portion of the cabinet will remain on the left, just enough to hold my cookie sheets and baking pans.

Speaking of my piano, I'm still waiting to hear back from the mover who called me back yesterday and promised me that he would move the piano this weekend. He couldn't yet give me a quote. (ugh) Not sure how much that will set me back. They will drive from New Bern, and that will be pricier than if I could find a local mover. There just aren't any in the county. And really, we mostly know elderly people with bad knees. Or even not-so-elderly people with bad knees. We've often just found a friend or two capable of moving it. Don't really know any 25 year old young men who can heft their end of a piano, and Adam says unequivocally that he cannot lift half of a piano anymore. His knees can't do it either! Here's hoping that the piano actually gets moved.