Another tree, another edit

Song of the day: “I will survive” by Gloria Gaynor. It was rather suited for today, seeing as we were ridiculously busy.

Tenant’s getting visitors, and she’s ecstatic. Yep, the visit of tenant’s daughter is a go, so the way we figure we might as well shift some work stuff around and move tiling tenant’s kitchen floor up to the top of the list. Sure, she said that it wasn’t necessary, but sometimes there’s just no such thing like the present for stuff like that.
This means that cousin Ed and I were hauling, measuring and cutting tiles most of the day, laying at least the first section of the floor. It took some figuring, the colors the pattern, but in the end we did agree on one and stuck to it.

Of course this wasn’t the best day to start tiling. The sky was overcast, and we actually had some rain, which meant that the poor doggies got wet, and got in the way while we were working with the tiles. Then Grandpa stood on one of the tiles we’d just stuck to the floor, then my big toe hit the same spot half an hour later, forcing me to fix the dratted thing again. Then, because it was located on such an unhandy spot, cousin Ed also hit it, leaving us with a little tile that is just slightly off. Hah. No matter, though, no one is likely to notice.
Got half the floor done, meaning that we have one more session to do on Monday, or the day after, to finish the floor. It will be very cute. Yellow tiles with a nice flowery border to break the monotony a bit. Tenant likes it, and nor does Grandpa hate it…a good thing since it is their shared kitchen.

No time for supper, regretfully, so we ate fried potatoes, a salad, and some other fry stuff. Not bad, and it filled the gaps, of course, but still, I had been looking forward to beets, darn it

Tiling was preceded by blanching cauliflowers for freezing. We’re having way too many in the yard, so rather than eat ourselves sick on them, we decided to use this technique for preservation. Didn’t take all that long, really, less than a couple of hours since tenant assisted, of course, by cutting most of the cauliflowers into manageable flowers.

But okay, there was the dog feeding bit in the morning. They really do like the mixes, so if we can, we’re definitely sticking with those. Cabbage leftovers, pumpkin and in this case the plant side of beets. They dove into the mess as if we’d been starving them for the last week, while they had the same kind of meal yesterday morning (they ate that with just as much gusto, thank you very much). They went through their within no time whatsoever, and Knight II was once again making his way through the masses as if he just couldn’t eat anything unless he ate every single bit from a different bowl.

The dog feeding was preceded by a quick trip to the veggie garden where everything that needed watering got watered, and where I harvested four more cauliflowers to add to the four we already had in the kitchen. Also more broccoli to gather, along with a red cabbage and some Alfa Alfa and fennel to add to the dog food the first for omega 3 and the latter for their eyes. I wanna see if perhaps it will prevent cataract from getting the overhand.

The yard was preceded in turn by laundry and such chores, naturally. And before that I woke too late to do a workout, darn it. Well, luckily I did manage one yesterday morning, which went far better than I’d expected. Seriously, I went through the routines at top speed, meaning that I did the entire session in lest that fifty minutes. Gawd, that’ll wake you up without a doubt.

The usual morning stuff followed (talking yesterday here, and yes, I know I’m messing this recount up completely and utterly. *sigh*) in a bit of a rush because I received a letter and a quartet of pictures for tenant which needed to be printed. Worth the effort, considering she got all choked up again seeing pictures of daughter and grand daughter. When she heard that they wanted to come visit, her week, month, or even year was made. Hah.

Which reminds me, this afternoon big brother and I checked out a small apartment in the village to see if it would be suitable to rent for the coming visitors. It was tiny, cozy and with a wonderful balcony, so it worked out well, I think. We’ll see how it goes.

But back to yesterday, Tenant happy, breakfast eaten and everything sorted out, our order of two 3000 liter tanks arrived, along with one of the two gates that we still need to set at the jobsite in the mountains. The delivery arrived right on time, and we had to come up from all the way down in the yard, but the tanks got unloaded, carried over to where they will be safe from the wind, and tied up, and then the same with the gates.

That done, we headed down into the yard to cut down one of the 30-foot eucalypti trees. It’s been getting to be too big, obstructing sunlight in the greenhouse, so we decided to make the Y shaped mammoth into an I. Big brother wielded the chainsaw, while grandpa and I stood by with the axes. Three minutes after starting the tree gave a noisy snapping sound and tumbled down right where we’d planned it…well, almost. It hit a couple of branches of the poplar, and it ruined a branch of the eucalyptus below it. Other than that the beets survived the ordeal, or so we found while grandpa and I tackled the branches and worked our way down the terraces until the big trunk was completely stripped. It’s still down there, seeing as we haven’t managed yet to clean the entire mess up, but all in all it went rather well. Yay. I have pictures, of course, but I am way too lazy to post them now. Hah.

That particular adventure (we had to lock up the dogs until we were done, because we just didn’t know how things would go) was followed by the released dogs dashing down to the fence where they keep an eye on us as we took to watering the younger plants and harvested what needed to be harvested for ourselves and the dogs.

Highlight of my day was finishing the paper edit of V.L. Seriously, it took forever, but there you have it, second edit is over and done with, and with one more proof reading session ahead of us, I will be able to send it out to beta readers soon. Such an exciting stage, that, getting the outside input on the story. *sigh*

Since we need a short break before we start reading the story again, we are now working on adding a scene to A.I.L. because we have decided that 65K words is nicer than the 60K it now is. Hah.

Well, I’ve got to go. It is well past midnight and I need some serious shuteye before I fall asleep working on this very blog.

Some good news

Song of the day: “Oh happy day” by Edwin Hawkin singers…or something along those lines. I know the song better than I do the folks who sang it.

So, good news first. Remember that letter I helped tenant write several months ago? Well, turns out her daughter did indeed want contact and has been trying to write to her for a long while already. Now, we haven’t figured out what went wrong yet, but clearly several letters got lost somewhere. But anyway, said daughter searched the Net and by some miracle came across my blog, read a bunch of inane posts (I mean, you guys know how I can prattle about useless stuff sometimes, right?) and finally found the posts where I talked about tenant writing the letters. Having ascertained (some serious professional sleuthing going on there, she’s got my compliments for perseverance) that I was the Sam tenant mentioned, she got my mail through the connection on blogger, and voila.

Was a close call there for a minute because the mail ended up in my Spam section which I hardly ever check before throwing everything that’s in there out. *sigh* Luckily it all worked out, and I communicated with her a bit, which I then printed this morning and gave to tenant. Oh man, you should have seen her face. I came in, told I had a grand present for her, and then put the printed papers in front of her.
It took her a moment to figure it out, did in fact ask me what it was. So I pointed down at the name and greetings at the bottom. She was all confused, looked up at me uncomprehendingly as I said that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her and that by some miracle her daughter had tracked me down.

What followed was lots of tears, incoherent speech and more tears, which I waited out just to make sure was okay before I started on the forest fruit cheesecake tenant had asked for for her birthday. Every time I looked in on her she would be reading, so the way I figured she was all good.
With big brother’s help, making the pie was easy as…well, pie. Hah. It took about an hour, at which time I supplied tenant with a blocknote and a pen so she could start on her letter prior to going out with mom for a b-day coffee in town. For a moment I thought she was going to say no to that, but then she decided to go for two good things in a row (taking her blocknote and pen along) and changed into something more suitable for going out.

Well drat. I was interrupted just now. Apparently Ama (Viscla pointer) got her teeth into a toad and is suffering from poisoning. Mom and middle sister are on their way to the vet as we speak. She already had this once, getting into some sort of seizure, so speedy treatment is essential. Dontcha just hate the poisonous ones. Grrr. I just found the dratted beast lying dead on my terrace for crying out loud. 8 inches long four inches wide. Big brother got rid of it.

Where was I?
With tenant settled in the car and off with mom and middle sister for a cuppa, big brother and I were free to head on down to feed the dogs, and then head on down into the yard…which reminds me, I haven’t even described yesterday yet. *sigh*

I wasn’t in the best of moods yesterday, FYI. In fact, I was downright grumpy…so it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to make fondue from scratch. Hah. On the other hand, I got completely giddy (I haven’t had booze in more than a year, so by now I get buzzed from a cherry bonbon) and floated about half a foot over my bad mood, so maybe it wasn’t a bad thing after all. Yep. Making fondue from scratch involves a full bottle of wine, lotsa cheese, some cherry liqueur, garlic and nutmeg, and then you’re all set. You shouldn’t drive afterwards, by the way, I tried, and it just wasn’t smart so I let big brother do the honors. Hah.

As to what kept us busy: The usual, I guess. Yard stuff on the most part. Watering, weeding and harvesting. At the moment we’ve got cauliflowers coming out of our ears, so come tomorrow (if I find the time) I’ll be blanching some of those so we can freeze the majority.

Also lotsa chard to harvest, another load of beets, broccoli of course, and taking out the rapidly growing kale for the dog food. Did some serious chopping for that reason, getting enough veggies to get the doggies through two days of feeding, almost.

There was of course the edit yesterday and reading through the last pages today. Yep. Almost through with the paper edit, and I for one am psyched. We’re going to take a short break and focus on some other stuff the next few days, but then it will be reading V.L. one last time before we start sending it out to the publishers.

Tomorrow our 3000 liter water supply tanks should be arriving. Yay. We went to the construction company today to work out the particulars, and heard that the gate we ordered last week for the job arrived as well, so both will be delivered to us tomorrow in the late morning. Yay. First instance we’ll be storing them up in the old horse paddock, so we can take our time setting up their permanent spots in the yard.

But anyway, in regard to the job, as soon as we got the second gate, I’m going to contact the boss lady and inform her that we’ll be heading out to her place to finish the fence. We’re hoping to manage it in two days, but it could turn out that we’ll need three. Luckily she was generous in paying us, so worst case scenario we’ll lose ten bucks on that one extra trip.

If we can manage it, we’ll also be cutting down one of the big eucalypti down in the yard, rather than risk it later on when it’s even bigger and we’ve got more veggies growing in the yard.

Well, I’ve got to go. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but since, for the life of me, I can’t remember what else it was.

Not much to tell

Song of the day: “A happy place” by Katie Melua. I know, it’s a bit harried, but that’s how I felt today, so it was rather appropriate.
Yes, I’m sure your guessing the cause of my mood, it is that time of the month again…no, not THAT time. I mean grocery shopping time. *sigh* I could talk about it endlessly, of course. I could go into detail of going into this shop, and then into that, guessing up ahead which one would have the cheapest sugar, or the best fruit; I could supply a step by step recount of how we loaded the carts full, packaged everything up and stacked it into the car and went from one side of town to the other, but…I won’t. Because let’s face it, who cares? It’s groceries, for crying out loud. We bought the necessities, and some extras…heck I even found some jeans (yay) that fit me and we actually got home in time before dusk so we could go into the yard to check everything and to close down the greenhouse and seedbeds.
Nothing like relaxing in the yard after a day like that, I tell ya.

The doggies weren’t happy with us, of course, but according to cousin Ed and grandpa they behaved well enough. Mine were staring at me angrily…or that is what it looked like when I opened the door to my cabin and let them out. Poor darling.

Luckily there was a workout this morning. It’s been a while, I know, but the pounding, the kicking and the weight lifting was rather splendid, thank you very much. Managed serious heart beat of 120 during the five jab session, and though my shoulder played up several times, I did manage the full workout without little to no problem. It was definitely the highlight of today…along with the morning trip to the yard, (harvested some serious kale for tomorrow’s dog food) and feeding the dogs the food we prepared last night. I don’t know how long we’re going to keep this feeding them healthy stuff up, but they’re enjoying it while it lasts.

That done, I went up to help tenant for a bit. Caregiver was at her other job again, so there was plenty to do before it was time to head on out.

So let me regale on yesterday (yes, that is sarcasm. How could you tell?) by saying that after waking fifteen minutes late, doing laundry and rearranging the grocery shopping list on the computer, it was time for opening the greenhouse (before it got to be too hot) and having breakfast.

The majority of the afternoon was spent in the yard, watering plants, harvesting veggies and on the overall just having a bit of relaxing time in the sunshine. I could continue telling about the marvels of the weather, of course, but there really isn’t a point. It is just the usual yard stuff, and I won’t bore you with that either. Then an edit, but okay, that's not new either, is it. Hah.

Since I’m not in the best of moods anyway, I figure I might as well keep this short. Heck, I managed to keep it under one page for a change.

Feeding time

Song of the day: “Never no more” by Patsty Kline. Boy, do I have a lot of Patsy in my head. It should drive me bonkers…and yet it doesn’t. Hah.

First off, I spent yesterday morning messing around in the kitchen (I soooo want my outside kitchen. Seriously, I’m going to start building that soon) and making a couple of cream/rice/vanilla tart. It turned out slightly different than the last one, but that’s what makes experimenting so much fun, doesn’t it? Decided to top this one off with raspberry jelly, and I can assure you that it works just fine. The next time I’ll skip the coconut shavings in the crumble bottom, though. It’s not that it was bad, or anything, just a tad prominent, which didn’t go as well with the raspberry, in my opinion.

The weather was nothing if not wishy washy yesterday. Grandpa called it real Easter weather. One moment it was hot as heck, and the next a cloud would slip in front of the sun and it would be downright chilly. Had him swear on several occasions while he was turning earth in the upper terrace. Hah.

What with the large batch of bread we managed to get our hands on, we’ve been making dogfood ourselves for the past few days. That meant that both yesterday and today was spent on mixing up foodstuffs (boiled veggies from the yard, leftover food from the fridge, old bread and kibble) and then feeding it to the lot. They love it, I assure you. In particular the oldies who clearly remember the old days when they would only get home made food. *sigh* If only.

Next we fixed the home trainer bike the lady of the fence gave us for tenant. She wasn’t using it, so we took it home, took it apart and fixed it up. Works just fine…maybe even better, seeing as tenant sits straighter on it and is able to stay on longer than she can on the other one. She’s most pleased with it. Hah. In fact, she used it for a full seven minutes after I helped her climb on.

Tenant settled, we headed down the yard where I spent about an hour watering the terraces. Everything is doing pretty well, and since there was some food of the dogs left (enough for this morning) I didn’t need to get anything from the yard except two cauliflowers which we ate for our own supper

Next it was back up to the kitchen to make supper and following that up by an edit, the day quickly came to an end. *sigh*

We had a short scare that Cousin Ed’s dog might have killed the wild cat that we have wandering about these parts, but late last night we saw it moving around outside the gate and it looked perfectly fine. In fact it was chasing after something, so it really was alright. *phew* Vastly reassured.

Regretfully I woke from a nightmare this morning. I would elaborate but it was just whacky, so there really is no point to it. Let’s just say that it had some basis in an old movie I saw once. It involved Liz Hurley (I know, weird, right?) hunting dogs, some crazy dude with a godly hunter complex and…well, let’s just say I was breathless when I woke up. So weird.

Another feeding session with the dogs, which went just fine. They’re loving it, the attention as much as the food. Hah. That done, and with tenant joining us down by the basin (she offered to cut veggies for the dog food tomorrow) cousin Ed and I got rid of our shoes and planted about thirty of forty cauliflower and broccoli seedlings. Since there was some space left afterward, I also put in a handful of onions. All in all that was a splendid day, in particular since afterward I headed down into the yard (very carefully due to the bare feet, of course, hah) for some harvesting. Got another small cauliflower. Some broccoli, a whole batch of Kale, which the dogs are going to enjoy tomorrow, some chickweed, alfa alfa and two big nopales which are all part of the big pans of veggie mixes that are boiling even now on the stove. Boy are they going to enjoy that tomorrow. We added some pumpkin too, for protein, you know. Did most of the cutting and dicing with tenant, who likes being useful, and listened to the racket when the owners of our visiting dogs arrived and took their lot along.

By the way, it is weird to see how some dogs despise the fresh veggies and go for the kibble with broth, while others sort through the mess in search for pieces of vegetable as much as they can. I mean it, Abacara loves boiled cabbage, she will literally fight for it. Heck, even Knight II is eating well at the moment. Though I put his bowl in the standard for him, he will eat a bite or ten there, and then spent the rest of the half hour eating a bit here, there, and then the next. For the Knight the grass is always greener on the other side. Hah.
As for my fat boys and girls…Labhana, Gada and Chaos, along with some others like Indigo, Ama and Tadaika, those we have to put out in the carport lest they eat ‘till the bursting point. Hah

It was not a good market day, apparently, but that probably had something to do with a massive fire going on at some sort of wood factory near to where the market is located. All in all, it wasn’t all that bad, but they’ve done better.

Other than that…well, what with the watering, cooking supper and picking up a small donation in town, the day quickly came to an end. Did eat more pie, though. Hah.

Well, gotta go. I’m running way behind.