Escaping Suburbia

My beautiful boy!

Things have been really hectic here… new post coming soon. I mean, I’ll try.

We’ve got some grody little mushrooms growing out of one of our straw bales. The straw is for winter mulching in the yard.

I realize that taking this photo and posting it online is supremely geeky of me, but look at that bottle! It’s just so cute! And it was delivered to my door by a bonafide milk-man! Glass bottle, non-homogenized, organic… sure I’ll own my geekiness.

(See my posts at MWV Local about dairy delivery from Noris Dairy in Crabtree.)

I’ve been neglecting the spinning for a while in favor of a couple of crocheted afghans. Two afghans at a time? What was I thinking?

The first pattern I started is the Hobo Blanket, using 17 different colors of Knitpicks Palette yarn. Here’s where I was with that one a little over a month ago:

Further along now. It’s a pretty mindless pattern, easy to work on while riding in the car or watching TV. There are lots of color changes, though, because I’ve only been doing one or two rows of each color. I think I’m going to try to slip in a couple of wider stripes from here on out.

I’d gotten those yarns to start the Babette Blanket, but got a few squares into it and got distracted & gave up. But then again, I really wanted to make a Babette, so I got more yarn and am going to try again. So there! Take that, short attention span!

These are my colors this time around:

I love them all, but I’m hoping the combination of these colors into the squares doesn’t end up looking like a 1970’s kitchen. I have a few squares done so far — need to take some photos soon.

Now that I’ve started these two big projects, I will probably go back to spinning and do nothing but that for a month or two. Or maybe I’ll take up a new hobby altogether, like soap making. I learned how to make goat’s milk soap yesterday…

Ugh. I’m trying to make both my blogs look nicer & it’s not going very well. I love all the free templates available from Wordpress, but my lack of coding ability is catching up with me. There’s something not quite right about each one I try.

I want MWV Local to look more professional – with more of a magazine or news-site feel. This one… I don’t know what the heck I want out of this one.

Grumble, grumble. Please bear with me if it looks stupid here for a while.

The other day I was at Costco and, as usual, made a run through the book section. What I saw there had me cracking up for the rest of the day:

Classics. Right on. Why so amused, then?

Because the books were all neatly displayed at the young-adult end of the table, next to the Twilight series. Sorry, “saga”:

I’m all for encouraging folks to read the classics, I just think it’s kind of… amusingly sad I guess?… that publishers are resorting to this sort of transparent pandering.

What really gets me rolling, though, is the idea of a sparkly Heathcliff.

Sparklecliff!

::giggle::snort::

I wonder how effective these covers will be in selling these books, and I wonder how the people who might never have given them a chance otherwise will feel about them. I fervently hope that at least a few 13-year-olds will have their reading horizons broadened in a way that will instill a love of books in them forever. Meanwhile, OMG, go to the store and get one of the classics in a cover that isn’t so horrifying to carry around.

Sparklecliff!

The Democrat Herald ran a story yesterday about a local apartment complex attempting to ban any kind of flag from being displayed on vehicles parked on the property. Somehow I doubt the apartment manager is going to win this one in the long run, but anyway, it’s the headline I have a problem with…

Apartment bans U.S. flags

Technically correct, though oddly specific, considering that the ban includes flags from other countries, sports teams flags… ALL FLAGS.

So, what is the DH trying to do here by calling attention to the U.S. flags in the headline? Are they being intentionally inflammatory in this relatively conservative city? Judging by the comments already left on the article, they succeeded. Liberals have been blamed. One commenter has “a feeling there is a nice group of veterans who will be visiting this place soon“, himself included. (Is that a threat? What does that mean?) Someone else thinks the manager should be fired for being unpatriotic.

Wait, I thought it was ALL FLAGS. An across the board policy. Can we get a little outrage for the Beavers and Ducks?

Anyway. Thanks, DH, for giving that wedge just another little tap.

P.S. For the record, I tweeted my dismay at the DH yesterday (where way fewer people would see it), but they didn’t reply and it’s still bugging me. So they get a blog post.

It’s been slightly less than forever since I did an update on the yard and house. We’re starting to think about how to prepare for winter, and seeing what we can get out of the garden for fall and winter. We also need to make sure the chicken coop is well-insulated, and we’ve already gotten a remote-controlled lamp set up so that we can let them have light a little longer in the evenings and first thing in the morning.

The chickens will be 29 weeks old tomorrow. We discovered that they purr when they are content. It’s adorable!

We’ve finally managed to fence in a good-sized portion of the yard so that they can run around free & they won’t damage the garden. They may be locally famous, soon, too, as we were recently interviewed for a story about people who are doing a bit more than vegetable gardening — such as keeping chickens for eggs, or raising bees or their own livestock. I can’t wait to read it! Look for it in the Home & Garden section of the DH or GT… oh, who am I kidding, I’m sure I’ll link to it. Please keep your fingers crossed for me that I don’t come across sounding like a complete blathering idiot. No more than usual, I mean.

The gang currently provides us with 4 to 5 eggs a day. We’ve given several dozen away and I’m always on the lookout for good recipes to use ‘em up. This weekend I made a 10-grain bread from a Bob’s Red Mill mix (yummy, but no eggs needed),  so tonight I think I’ll make mayonnaise and have sandwiches for lunch the rest of the week!

Inventory! We’ve been getting fruit trees from the clearance section over at Garland Nursery. If you don’t mind waiting a season or two to start seeing yield, this is a great way to get young trees for a good price. We go for the dwarf varieties so that we can fit more into the yard, and the yields will probably be more than enough for the two of us. We’ve got 1 peach, 1 fig, 2 pears, 2 cherry, and 2 apple.

The strawberry plants are putting out an insane amount of runners. We’re thinking we’re going to have to move everything out of that area and let them take over the whole patch. We’re getting a few concord grapes from our vines — these must be the few that were able to hang on after the rooster decimated them the day he got loose. Er. The day I forgot to secure the door to the run, so he got loose. Whoops.

We also didn’t get any blueberries this year — partly because of the chickens and partly, they just didn’t do too well. Don’t know if it was location or some other cause, but I think we have five or six blueberry bushes now, so we’ll see what happens next year.

Dennis has removed a huge row of box hedges along the street-side of the yard and we’re going to fill that space in with lavender plants.  We’ll probably be putting up some kind of fencing — just for looks.

We’ve planted pole beans and pumpkins, the broccoli is making a second showing (and now that we’re keeping the chickens out of there, we might actually get to eat some…), and I think there is still some corn growing. Next summer we’re going to be more methodical about the corn & I need to make sure we’re growing an open-pollinated heirloom variety. I think we are now, but I’ve forgotten what kinds of seeds we bought.

The tomato plants, a gift from my friend Erica, are going like gangbusters. Dennis made a sauce with stuff from the garden (tomatoes, onion, garlic & some herbs) which cooked for two days in the crockpot and drove me crazy from how good it smelled. I also dried some tomatoes that I got from a co-worker (pictured). Nom! Quite tasty. We picked two more batches yesterday and I think I’ll make some salsa. I hate handling tomatoes, though, blech.

And, finally, it’s hazelnut harvesting time. I gathered a big basketful yesterday and there are still more out there.

Well, that’s it for now. That’s sort of a lot to have going on out there, isn’t it? And I didn’t even mention the weeds.