It froze last night – a bowl of water I placed on the deck was solid ice. Maybe not as cold as early last month but still cold enough to do serious damage to unprotected stuff. As soon as it was warm enough for human life, I went out and checked the tomatoes hidden under the water walls. Sure enough, they looked perfect – probably never even knew they were in danger. I’ve got another half dozen ready to plant in the garden but I held back to see how well (or not) the protection worked. I’ll plant those in a few days when it’s supposed to be back to 80. If I remember correctly I have 12 of those walls so I should have this season covered.
Nancy and I did a job that I have been dreading for a couple of years. She’s been haunting me that we needed to pull down the curtains throughout the house to wash them. They looked just fine to me and my experience with taking down curtains is on a par with my experience in tackling a plumbing job. It sounds simple but when you actually start messing around with the hangers, bad things happen. They pull out of the wall, are rusted together, break off – all kinds of things that just make the job way more than a simple cleaning job. With that said, for whatever reason she decided to do it herself and I knew that would be disaster piled on disaster. At least I appreciate just how delicate the process was with respect to the hardware whereas her primary concern was with the curtains. Turned out that I had installed all the hardware very well the first time and the design of the brackets was beautiful – actually came apart and went back together with not a hitch in the getalong. I will say that when all was said and done – the curtains washed, ironed and back up on the windows – I don’t see a bit of difference. Nancy does so I guess that’s all that matters. Now if I can just hold this job off another 10 years. Could this count as a Valentine day present? Can’t hurt to try.
When I picked the sweet potatoes in October, there were a couple that were way too big whole and we set them aside with plans to cook and mash sometime in the future. Then we totally forgot about them. Nancy came across them this week and they were sprouting. I hadn’t planned on putting in any sweets this year but this seemed like a sign so I took three of them, set them in a container and added water. Assuming the sprouts r
eally take off and leaf, I guess I’ll be planting sweets in late March or early April. I’m fairly sure I know why the roots didn’t develop as well as I’d expected last year so this could be a break through.
Nancy has cataract surgery Wednesday. Seems like everybody we know either has had it done or knows plenty of people who have and they seem to survive just fine. I guess it’s one of those surgeries that used to be scary 50 years ago but is routine now. Still scares me a little
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