Weekend update
Apr. 27th, 2009 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieI had a very busy weekend. It wasn't quite as productive as I hoped, but that's pretty much par for the course; I always think I can get more done than is actually possible to get done.
Friday night was the annual pre-sale event for the Arboretum Foundation plant sale. As has become our tradition, I went with my Mom and some of the other women from her neighborhood. We had a great time, as usual, and I bought Mom a number of plants as a birthday present. The crowds were much lighter than last year, which was good for us but probably a bad sign for the foundation. I hope the crowds were better on Saturday and Sunday, the open-to-all days. I got home at a reasonable hour, and baked yet another pound cake recipe in the ongoing experiment to make a pound cake that Grandma J. will find an acceptable substitute for Entemann's. (If you're reading this and have a good pound cake recipe to share, do send it along to me, okay? Thanks!) This one was Grandma J's own recipe for a buttermilk pound cake. The flavor is extremely good, light and not too sweet, but it's rather dry for a pound cake, and the 'crust' is tougher than is ideal - and it was definitely wanting to underbake in the very center while get overdone on the edges. I know a few tricks to adjust for that, but I'm probably going to try one of the other recipes I have for the next experiment.
Saturday was Mom's actual birthday. I started out the day early in my yard, hoping to get some gardening done and maybe even get some of my newly-acquired plants into the ground. No dice on that last bit, but I did get half of my potatoes planted, as well as the onion sets Jake gave me, the beets I bought at the plant sale (okay, so I did get one container's worth into the ground), and some carrot seed. I've never yet had any luck growing carrots, but I keep trying. Maybe I'll try some in the new backyard vegetable plot as well, as the soil there is much lighter. More on that in a bit. I got that done, then went out for coffee with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fisherbear. We went from there to my parents' house, to wish Mom happy birthday and to drop off the pound cake (and get Mom and Dad's opinion on whether it was good enough for Grandma. Survey says: yes, but still not perfect, keep trying). We then zoomed home to find the yard crew I hired to trim the monster laurel-by-the-chimney and the ginormous camellias-by-the-alley hard at work. (I don't mind trimming bushes normally, but anything that requires a ten-to-twenty foot ladder on a slope is something I'm glad to leave to the professionals.) I ran inside, quickly assembled all the pieces of the fountain I built for Shelagh, and ran out the door to meet up with her.
I got back from Shelagh's just in time to run fisherbear over to the "impending fatherhood" party for one of our friends. I have no idea why traffic was as awful as it was coming back, but it was just as bad as if it were the evening rush hour commute, instead of early afternoon on a Saturday. (And no, it wasn't game traffic.) I also got caught by the bridge going up, joy. So I was a little later than I had planned for picking up Mom for her birthday trip to the Korean ladies-only spa. She'd never been and wanted to go - and you get in for free on your birthday. What's not to love? On the way we stopped by Grandma's to make her salad for her and drop off the pound cake. She was out for her daily walk when we got there, but came in just as we were finishing the chopping. We had a nice quick visit, and then off we went to the spa. Mom loved it, and we had a great time. We stayed until 9:30. I dropped Mom off at home and returned to my house, to find that fisherbear was still out partying. (Not a surprise.) I hadn't been home for very long before he called, saying he was on his way to the bus transit center to make his way home. (Yes, there was much drinking involved, hence his wise decision not to take the car.) Unfortunately he missed the last bus home by about five minutes, so I had to drive out to pick him up. Not the most relaxing end to the day, but oh well.
Sunday morning started out a little more lesiurely, as I was a bit stuffy. Fortunately coffee and decongestants worked their wonders, and we got going on tidying up the house and starting laundry loads (it was definitely laundry day) before I went outside to continue the yard work party. I harvested my first batch of worm compost from the bins in the garage...
...what? I haven't mentioned that I'm keeping worms in the garage?...
Well, yes. Jake gave me her old worm composting kit, which is a stacked series of plastic trays designed to encourage "upward composting" and easy harvest of the finished stuff. She wasn't using it, as she has the HUGE worm composting bin outside in her yard (no sissy trays needed!). I decided to give it a go, and after one false start and an infusion of worms from my yard (and a few Nuclear Caffeinated Worms From Hell from Jake's own bin), things appear to be progressing quite well. It's rather fascinating, in its own quiet way. Kind of like keeping goldfish in an aquarium, but more productive.
...anyway, I deemed the oldest tray thoroughly composted, and removed it for mixing with vermiculite, a little organic veggie fertilizer, and turning into potting soil. I used it to fill my starter trays and plant a bunch of vegetable and flower seeds for starting under the grow light. Yes, I should have done this weeks ago. But it's done now, and hopefully the nifty worm/vermiculite potting soil will be so super-duper the little plantlings will be able to make up for lost time. We'll see.
MamaBear came over in the middle of this, and after duly admiring the new potting soil, she kidnapped fisherbear to go look at a few things in Fremont. The plan was that they would run over to Fremont and then come back and we'd all go out to lunch together. In the meantime, I turned over the backyard veggie bed again, this time with the addition of three more bags of compost, removed yet more trying-to-regrow-back-from-where-they'd-been-buried clumps of not-quite-dead-weeds, and declared the new veggie bed Open for Business. I was in the middle of planting the last of the seed potatoes when MamaBear and fisherbear finally made it back from Fremont. It was quite a bit later than they had originally intended, and by this time I was stupid-hungry and stubbornly determined to finish planting the last of the potatoes. I did, and eventually we did get lunch, much to the relief of all (I'm cranky when I get that hungry). We had a nice lunch and a good visit with MamaBear before she headed back home late in the afternoon. The rest of the day was spent finishing up laundry loads, folding clean clothes, and other domestic chores, as well as snuggling on the couch watching a special on KV63. Nothing dramatic, but most welcome.
Okay, so maybe the weekend was a little more productive than I thought. I still wish I had another day or two, though; there's so much more to get done!
Friday night was the annual pre-sale event for the Arboretum Foundation plant sale. As has become our tradition, I went with my Mom and some of the other women from her neighborhood. We had a great time, as usual, and I bought Mom a number of plants as a birthday present. The crowds were much lighter than last year, which was good for us but probably a bad sign for the foundation. I hope the crowds were better on Saturday and Sunday, the open-to-all days. I got home at a reasonable hour, and baked yet another pound cake recipe in the ongoing experiment to make a pound cake that Grandma J. will find an acceptable substitute for Entemann's. (If you're reading this and have a good pound cake recipe to share, do send it along to me, okay? Thanks!) This one was Grandma J's own recipe for a buttermilk pound cake. The flavor is extremely good, light and not too sweet, but it's rather dry for a pound cake, and the 'crust' is tougher than is ideal - and it was definitely wanting to underbake in the very center while get overdone on the edges. I know a few tricks to adjust for that, but I'm probably going to try one of the other recipes I have for the next experiment.
Saturday was Mom's actual birthday. I started out the day early in my yard, hoping to get some gardening done and maybe even get some of my newly-acquired plants into the ground. No dice on that last bit, but I did get half of my potatoes planted, as well as the onion sets Jake gave me, the beets I bought at the plant sale (okay, so I did get one container's worth into the ground), and some carrot seed. I've never yet had any luck growing carrots, but I keep trying. Maybe I'll try some in the new backyard vegetable plot as well, as the soil there is much lighter. More on that in a bit. I got that done, then went out for coffee with
fisherbear. We went from there to my parents' house, to wish Mom happy birthday and to drop off the pound cake (and get Mom and Dad's opinion on whether it was good enough for Grandma. Survey says: yes, but still not perfect, keep trying). We then zoomed home to find the yard crew I hired to trim the monster laurel-by-the-chimney and the ginormous camellias-by-the-alley hard at work. (I don't mind trimming bushes normally, but anything that requires a ten-to-twenty foot ladder on a slope is something I'm glad to leave to the professionals.) I ran inside, quickly assembled all the pieces of the fountain I built for Shelagh, and ran out the door to meet up with her.I got back from Shelagh's just in time to run fisherbear over to the "impending fatherhood" party for one of our friends. I have no idea why traffic was as awful as it was coming back, but it was just as bad as if it were the evening rush hour commute, instead of early afternoon on a Saturday. (And no, it wasn't game traffic.) I also got caught by the bridge going up, joy. So I was a little later than I had planned for picking up Mom for her birthday trip to the Korean ladies-only spa. She'd never been and wanted to go - and you get in for free on your birthday. What's not to love? On the way we stopped by Grandma's to make her salad for her and drop off the pound cake. She was out for her daily walk when we got there, but came in just as we were finishing the chopping. We had a nice quick visit, and then off we went to the spa. Mom loved it, and we had a great time. We stayed until 9:30. I dropped Mom off at home and returned to my house, to find that fisherbear was still out partying. (Not a surprise.) I hadn't been home for very long before he called, saying he was on his way to the bus transit center to make his way home. (Yes, there was much drinking involved, hence his wise decision not to take the car.) Unfortunately he missed the last bus home by about five minutes, so I had to drive out to pick him up. Not the most relaxing end to the day, but oh well.
Sunday morning started out a little more lesiurely, as I was a bit stuffy. Fortunately coffee and decongestants worked their wonders, and we got going on tidying up the house and starting laundry loads (it was definitely laundry day) before I went outside to continue the yard work party. I harvested my first batch of worm compost from the bins in the garage...
...what? I haven't mentioned that I'm keeping worms in the garage?...
Well, yes. Jake gave me her old worm composting kit, which is a stacked series of plastic trays designed to encourage "upward composting" and easy harvest of the finished stuff. She wasn't using it, as she has the HUGE worm composting bin outside in her yard (no sissy trays needed!). I decided to give it a go, and after one false start and an infusion of worms from my yard (and a few Nuclear Caffeinated Worms From Hell from Jake's own bin), things appear to be progressing quite well. It's rather fascinating, in its own quiet way. Kind of like keeping goldfish in an aquarium, but more productive.
...anyway, I deemed the oldest tray thoroughly composted, and removed it for mixing with vermiculite, a little organic veggie fertilizer, and turning into potting soil. I used it to fill my starter trays and plant a bunch of vegetable and flower seeds for starting under the grow light. Yes, I should have done this weeks ago. But it's done now, and hopefully the nifty worm/vermiculite potting soil will be so super-duper the little plantlings will be able to make up for lost time. We'll see.
MamaBear came over in the middle of this, and after duly admiring the new potting soil, she kidnapped fisherbear to go look at a few things in Fremont. The plan was that they would run over to Fremont and then come back and we'd all go out to lunch together. In the meantime, I turned over the backyard veggie bed again, this time with the addition of three more bags of compost, removed yet more trying-to-regrow-back-from-where-they'd-been-buried clumps of not-quite-dead-weeds, and declared the new veggie bed Open for Business. I was in the middle of planting the last of the seed potatoes when MamaBear and fisherbear finally made it back from Fremont. It was quite a bit later than they had originally intended, and by this time I was stupid-hungry and stubbornly determined to finish planting the last of the potatoes. I did, and eventually we did get lunch, much to the relief of all (I'm cranky when I get that hungry). We had a nice lunch and a good visit with MamaBear before she headed back home late in the afternoon. The rest of the day was spent finishing up laundry loads, folding clean clothes, and other domestic chores, as well as snuggling on the couch watching a special on KV63. Nothing dramatic, but most welcome.
Okay, so maybe the weekend was a little more productive than I thought. I still wish I had another day or two, though; there's so much more to get done!
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Date: 2009-04-28 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-28 02:14 am (UTC)