Distraction

Have you ever gotten distracted and lost all track of time? Unfortunately it's something that happens to me and even more since I received a brain injury about a year ago. This evening I was going tell you about Pastry/Baker Chef Jobs, then stopped to think what exactly I was going to say.

I ended up going to the kitchen to get a cup of tea, seeing all the plums sitting there waiting for me to make them into jam and a sink full of dishes waiting to be washed. I washed the dishes while the water heated for tea and once the dishes were washed I poured the boiled water over the tea bag in my cup and washed the plums. Since they were washed and in the pot, I turned on the stove and cooked them, put them into a colander and squeezed the fruit through, removing the pits. You see, these are Damson Plums, about the size of a cherry, so the pit is not easily cut out of the plum like it is with larger fruit. I added honey to the cooked fruit and returned it to the heat to cook it down into jam. This is the first time I've made jam using honey instead of the sugar and wanted to give it a try. It seems to have worked very well, though it is much more costly than using sugar. This was the 3rd batch of jam I've made in the last few days, going to my yard to pick more plums as needed. I plan to give jam as gifts this Christmas and have a good stock for my own use. I made the 1st batch 'plain' using just the plums and sugar. The 2nd batch I added some cinnamon to the mix, the first time I did this and it turned out very nice. This, the 3rd batch, I substituted the honey for the sugar. Now I plan to make a batch using brown sugar instead of the white, just to see what it tastes like, and a batch using apples & cinnamon with the plums. I'm not fond of Damson Plums as an eating plum, though I know people who do like them for just munching on. However, when it comes to cooking and jam making I think there is nothing better than the Damson Plum and they are well worth the extra work involved with using the smaller fruit.

Oh ya, I drank cold tea and am now too tired to tell you about anything else. Off I go to bed. Good night.

Wednesday April 30

It's hard to believe that April is already over, that in just a couple short hours, we will cross the line into the month of May. Time is flying by so fast, it's almost insane. Life is like a roll of toilet paper... the closer we get to the end, the faster it goes.

Today I got up and unloaded the bricks from my truck. When I was about 3/4 done, my friend Art showed up and helped me finish it off. Then he went with me and helped me load the last of the bricks, a small load in comparison to what I brought home the last two days. Art also helped me to unload and stack them. Most of the bricks that still had the mortar attached were thrown in a pile to the side of the stack of bricks I was building. Art put some with mortar still on them into the stack (grrrr) but that's okay... they can be cleaned up later on. While he was still here, I took the hammer and started cleaning the mortar off the bricks. Then Art said he was going for a drive and would I like to go along. SURE! He went off to do a couple things, leaving me to shower and get ready to go. I did a bunch more bricks first though, haha. Then showered and was almost ready when he returned 45 minutes after he left.

We went for a really nice long drive. I've always loved going for drives and with the increasing costs of gasoline I've had to stop driving just for the pleasure of it. I miss that. So today was really nice. We drove from Vernon to near Kamloops, then down to Salmon Arm where we stopped for some gas, then out to Sicamous and back along Mara Lake to Enderby, then out through Trinity Valley to Lumby and back in to Vernon. That, my friends, is a long drive. It was a slow, relaxed drive of the sight seer, not the fast driving of someone needing to get somewhere in a short time... and it took something like 5 1/2 hours.

Once Art dropped me off, it was still light out, so I cleaned a bunch more bricks... almost all there were left in the heaps, but then ran out of light so left the last few for tomorrow. Also, my body told me it had had enough for today. Thank God for the meds I have for pain or I couldn't have done all this work. I don't usually take it as I don't want to depend on it or have my body get to where the meds don't work any more... but there are times when one has to do what one has to do. As well as a pain killer these ones are also anti-inflammatory, so help the body to recuperate from the 'ordeal'. It sure feels good to have gotten so much work done in the last few days.

Tomorrow I hope to get some stuff done around the house. There is a lot to do inside as well as a lot to do outside.

Tuesday, April 29th

Today I spent the morning at home, a good part of it sleeping, and another good part of it on the computer. Then I went to town to song rehearsal with Hannah and Linda. It was great and we had a lot of fun singing together.

I went and picked up a second load of bricks, the used ones I'm getting for free, as I told you yesterday. The poor truck is really weighed down and I think I have more of a load on it today than I did yesterday, and yesterday's load was a lot for it. I still have more bricks there to pick up, so am going to have to get up early in the morning to unload these ones and then go to town and pick up the last load. I hope I can get them all on in this last load as I don't want to have to go back for some tiny little bit that we couldn't fit on. Oh well, so long as the tires don't rub on the box as it sits so low down under the weight of the load, I'll be okay. I must admit though, that the steering is very different when under such a load. The back of the truck sits very low, bringing the front up somewhat, and the front wheels are not as heavily connecting with the road.

Once the load was on the truck, I went to Wal Mart and got a few things, including charcoal brickettes for barbecuing. I don't have a gas barbecue, so will do it the 'old fashioned way' and likely enjoy the taste even more, lol. I also broke down and bought another new plant. Like I really need it, lol. If I was buying plants for outside in the garden that would be different, but I'm not. I won't let myself buy any of those until I get somewhere to plant them. I really do have to quit buying house plants, though, as I have nowhere to put them all. Every possible spot near a window is already taken, and I even have a couple plants in another room where I never even see them and rarely remember to water them. These plants range in size from small (4" pots) to huge (palm tree around 5' or more).

Next stop was a park near The Centre where I sat at a picnic table and did homework for class. One of these days I'm going to have to start getting the homework done before the last minute. It would be so much more effective, lol. Then, of course, I went to Science Of Mind class for the evening.

Now it's time to go to bed. I've had a full day and even done a couple ads on here and earned some doggy cookies for Reba, or some vitamins for me... we'll see, haha.

Yard Project

On Saturday, I went to town early to get in on a sale before it was sold out. It was a One Day Sale, While Quantities Last, and I didn't know how much quantity they were talking about. I've seen good sales like that advertised and it turned out there were only 4 or so items, just enough to be able to put that in the flyer to get people flocking in to the store in hopes they would still buy something else while they are there. In this case, they had lots.

The sale was on Top Soil, 30 liter bag for 99 cents. Now how can you beat that? You can't!! There were a lot of people there, buying up a lot of bags of soil, and I was one of them. I bought 20 bags, though a lot of people were buying a lot more than that. I was going to buy more, but talked to Sherrie, one of the gals working there, and she advised me to get 2 bales of peat moss and mix it in with the top soil for putting into my raised bed gardens. I took her advise as it appears that she knows a lot more than I do about this sort of thing, and right now I don't really have time to do a lot of research on the topic. Once I got that truck load home and cleared out a path in the carport for moving it, my back was so sore I could hardly walk. I wanted to unload at least some of it, but first had to get the bales of Peat Moss out, and that is huge. I ended up tipping one out into the wheelbarrow just to discover that the wheel is flat. I hope it just needs airing up, but it could need some repairs too. I'll have to figure that out soon. Anyway, I ended up having to phone Dan and ask him to come help me. Sunday morning before I had to go to church, he showed up here and unloaded it for me, putting it all into the carport, right where the pellets for the stove go. I have one month to get the dirt out of there so I can start to fill the space with pellets again while they're on sale.

Today I got a call that the used bricks are available now. On Freecycle, this fellow had advertised them, but they were not available for a few days. So today he called to say they were ready. He's doing a reno on a restaurant at a local hotel, and I went in there to get a load. They are used red bricks. I was fortunate, in that a gal that works there helped me do the loading, so that saved a lot of time as well as saving my back a lot of wear and tear. That poor little truck of mine was definitely loaded!! I brought it home and unloaded it into the front yard. I'll have to move it all to the back yard by wheelbarrow once I get the wheel fixed. Tomorrow I will go for a second load and hopefully will get it all in. I don't want to have to go back for a third load unless there is enough to make it worth while, not just a half a load or something like that. With gas prices you have to make it count, lol.

My plans for my yard include a patio in the same area as the raised bed gardens. I'm thinking patio and some walk ways between the gardens with wood chips right around the gardens too. Also some plants in large black pots, maybe old tires stacked up with a pot on top, to make it a bit higher, or the pot planted part way into the ground. I'll see about that as I go along... first things first. I have to decide exactly where the beds are going, prep the spots for them, build them, fill them with soil once the two kinds are mixed together. Then start on the pathways and pots and etc. I'll have to haul wood chips... and haul sand for putting between the bricks. Just thinking of it makes my back wish I had about 5 big strong men to help me. Any one want to volunteer??

I'll soon post some photos. I took some today of the bricks but must get to bed now and will post them ASAP.

Very GROSS and Upsetting!

WARNING: What is about to follow is very gross and you may not want to read it. I feel I must write it, but that doesn't mean you have to read it. It is part of my life's journey, something for me to understand why it would happen in my life. I believe that we create everything in our lives through the Law of Attraction, so therefor I must have somehow created this. How I created it is for me to figure out and to make sure I never create such horror again.

If you are regulars here at my blog, you know I had a roomer/tenant living here for the winter, you know he left suddenly without telling me he was going, and he took some of my keys as well as owing me money. You will also know that I allowed someone else to move onto my property with his own travel trailer. You also will know that I recently had to have a talk to him about his dog. He was letting his dog run free in the yard after I'd told him not to, due to the dangerous highway I live along. I also had to point out how unhappy I was about having to pick up his dog's feces in my yard. I had also previously told him that he was responsible for picking up after his dog. Well, today I discovered several piles of feces in my yard, just out back of his trailer!! I am SO GROSSED OUT!!! No, it is not dog feces, it is human, complete with toilet paper. It was all I could do to not throw up right there and then.

I am going to take a few days to calm down, and to possibly see if I can lay any charges against him for this. Then I will tell him he is to move off my property. There is no excuse or reason good enough for this.

Natural Weed Killing in my yard

For some time now I've been meaning to try out a natural weed killer around this yard of mine. The place is a mess, including 2 or 3 kinds of thistles and some burdock. Yesterday or the day before I finally mixed us some that I wanted to try. In a spray bottle, about 1 liter or 1 quart, I put a few drops of dish washing liquid then filled it up with plain old white vinegar. I sprayed this onto some of the thistles and burdocks. This evening I took a look and sure enough, they appear to be dying. I didn't want to use chemicals so am happy that this works as these things are impossible to get rid of without poisoning them, and if you don't get rid of them they spread terribly. If you don't remove them from your property you can be fined, or they can come and remove them and send you a bill you have to pay. I still want to try out a mixture of vinegar and salt too. My hand gets very tired and sore pumping that handle thing to spray this poison onto the plants, but well worth doing it a bit at a time and getting rid of hoards of these plant pests. A couple years ago there were none of them here, last year there were a few and this year they're all over the place. The war begins.

Sometimes I Don't Know What The Title Should Be

I had to get new glasses. Two years ago I got new ones, with scratch proof coating, etc., etc. They had a guarantee that if they scratched in 2 years they would be replace for 10% the cost of the lenses, and if the frame broke it would be replaced for 20% of its cost. My lenses were quite scratched even though I was very careful with them, so they had to be replaced. The frames were find, but Pearl Vision didn't have any more of these discontinued frames, and I couldn't send mine away to their lab for 2 weeks, so I had to get new frames. I got them for the 20% plus the difference between the cost of my old ones and these new ones. I am not happy that I had to put out $100 for new glasses, but what can you do. I preferred the old frame on me. They don't look much different, as you can see, but the new ones are a heavier looking frame. They "stand out" more than the old ones did. Oh well, life happens. In the picture, the top ones are the old, and the bottom the new.... complete with shadows.



If you remember (or go to My Yard) the pictures of my yard that I posted recently you will see how much snow has melted away. I'm very happy about that. It is muddy here now and will be for awhile, but it won't be all that long until it's dried up.

The other day I bought 2 packages seeds:
Butternut Squash
Buttercup Squash
Well, today I was at Wally World (Wal Mart) getting thread to finish off the table runner I wove for my brother, and I bought more seeds:
Lemon Balm (herb)
Peas - Lincoln Homesteader
Sunflower - Autumn Beauty
Sunflower - Paquito (dwarf)
Nasturtium - Tall Climbing Mix
Spinach - Long Standing Bloomsdale

I just hope this year some of them will survive. Last year was a disaster!

February 2006 vs 2007

The above pictures are of my yard, taken a few days ago, in the early days of February 2007.

Remembering that this time last year we had no snow, I looked back in my 2006 Day Planner and these are some of the entries:

Feb. 5: Yard work: cleaned up broken fish tanks and other stuff from beside chicken run and put into utility trailer to take to the dump. Pulled a bunch of weeds and dug up a fair bit of ground, taking out as much quack grass as possible, just below the manure pit. Felt really good to do this.

Feb. 6: Yard: got some more digging done, but not as much as yesterday.

Feb. 9: dug up more yard while talking on the phone. Beautiful, sunny day to play in the dirt. (It was +6 C and sunny that day. Today is cloudy and currently +6 C, the snow is melting).

And the entries go on like this. February 2007 is very different than February 2006 was.

Snow Pics

While I was in town Friday for a dentist appointment, I took some pictures of the snow. We've been having a lot of it this year and thought I'd show you some of it.

The first two pics are taken right on the "main drag" that runs East to West.

These next two are taken one block over from the main street. I was surprised that the streets hadn't been plowed by this time, but I'm sure they've caught up with it by now.

Today I took some more pics out in my yard...

My driveway... fun to get up and down. Thank God I have a 4 wheel drive truck.

In the background, mountain and lake... in the foreground, my herb garden.

A closer shot of my herb garden, lol. I can't walk out to it even in my high top boots as the snow is deeper than my boots are high.

Now you can see part of the reason I put plastic around my carport. When they built it they didn't leave enough overhanging roof, so when the snow comes down off the roof it really builds up and without the plastic it goes right into the carport. I keep the pellets for my stove in there as well as some other "storage" items, so need to keep out this snow and what would blow through from both ends. As you can see, the snow bank that's building up is getting close to the roof.

Pretty.... and COLD

I figured, having posted some "snow pics" of my place the other day while it was still snowing, that today would be a good day to post some new ones. It was such a beautiful, sunny day... cold as heck, but beautiful and sunny. :o) The high today was -16C (3.2F) and it is currently -21C (-5.8F). Obviously, compared to some other places, this is not all that bad, but around here it's not all that good, LOL. It does get colder sometimes but not for great periods of time.


Soon, with these temperatures, the lake will be frozen. Every winter there are ice fishermen out on the lake and most winters they even drive their vehicles out there. One year for the Winter Carnival there were car races on the lake. The first night of Winter Carnival they have "Balloon Glow" where a bunch of hot air balloonists start up their fires and blow up the balloons, but don't actually fly, they just sit there and... well... glow. This is done after dark and looks pretty incredible. One of the events of the carnival is some kind of hot air balloon contest where they fly to certain spots and land then take off again. One of the spots used each year is this lake and they take their trucks out onto the lake to refuel the balloons (or whatever they do there...lol). Last winter they had to do this somewhere else as the lake was not frozen solid enough to be safe. It was a really nice, mild winter.

Alice is in a Winter Wonderland

This is what I woke up to today. According to the Environment Canada web site, we are under a Heavy Snowfall Warning for all today and tonight. At this time I don't think it's snowing, but it is a bit hard to tell... the wind is blowing so there is lots of snow flying around in the air.

Looking down my unshoveled driveway to the highway that is all compact snow. The 4 wheel drive in my truck is not working (has been waiting for a part to come for some time now) so I don't plan on going out anywhere for now. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the driveway is fairly steep.

A close-up of the spreading junipers laden with snow.

With so much snow in the air you can hardly see the lake or the mountains.

My herb garden, wrapped in a blanket of snow.

The skeleton of my living privacy wall... Virginia Creeper.