Those pesky problem areas...

And I am not talking about cottage cheese thighs.   Although I could. 

These are areas in the house that never stay organized.  I have - ahem - more than one, but there are a few that are chronic problems.

Case in point:

The biggest cause of the endless clutter is that I have no between-space (between the outside and inside), no garage, and very little storage space.  When I need to grab my stirrup hoe, I tend to leave it where I can get my hands on it quickly - because I will, unfailingly, forget that I need it within a nanosecond.  So it goes just inside the deck door.  Ditto with the deck broom, the pellet gun, bits of lumber, the string trimmer, towels for the dog, clothespin holder, halters, leads, rain jacket, egg basket, binoculars, pellets, empty pots, Yaktraks (eek) from winter, etc.

I'll get a bee in my bonnet and put everything back where it's supposed to be, leaving only my pellet gun, pellets, egg basket and binoculars.  Within a couple of days, it's all back.

Do you have a system that works?  Will you share?

New Obsessions.

Just what I need, right?  I have been listening to Jacques Pepin's autobiography, "The Apprentice", on cds for a week.  I end up ravenous at each end of the journey - and last Friday, I landed at home with an overwhelming urge to go foraging in the woods, take a net and catch fish, make the ultimate consume', honestly, I would have chewed rocks...

Fortunately, there are immediate chores to be done and I was able to divert my mind to letting the dogs out.  Then I changed into barn clothes, sorted the mail, gathered eggs, fed the dogs, gave the cats treats, fed the sheep.  By then I had calmed down.  I mean to say, however, Jacques SPOKE TO ME. 

So I made red lentil baked falafels.  And discovered a new obsession.  Since these particular falafels take two days (an overnight soaking of the red lentils), I didn't discover this obsession until breakfast Saturday morning.  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  I had six for breakfast and forced myself to package the rest and freeze them.  (Updated to include the link to BOTH recipes!)

 

Finally!  A falafel that is not deep-fried!

Holey Cast Iron Goodness, Batman!

Sunday morning I stumbled across another soon-to-be-obsession - Blueberry Cornbread.  As a friend recently noted, I tend to put blueberries in the strangest things (remember blueberry sauerkraut?  which was delicious, by the way)  I am sure that the stick of butter contained in this cornbread had nothing whatsoever to do with how amazingly, completely, overwhelmingly spectacular this was.  When I find myself going, "ooooh, num, num, num," every time I take a bite of something, I know I will make it many times again.  The cornbread is very healthy (except for the butter and a scant quarter cup of brown sugar) so I was easily coerced into eating three pieces.  Then I quickly trotted off to the dairy barn with most of the rest of it - while some when into the freezer as well.  It was met with raves at the barn - always a plus.

Harvest - Present and Future.

Thanks to the completion of my currant bush frame and nifty cover of well-used tobacco cloth , I was able to keep the birds from harvesting my currants for me this year.  I have both red and black bushes - the birds will clean the fruit from the red currant bushes faster than you can spit backwards over your shoulder.   They are not as fast at cleaning the black currants, but they are usually faster than I am.  On Tuesday after work, just barely before the daily thunderstorm dropped in on us, I made quick work of the bushes, thanks to my handy garden scissors.  The black currants are next - in between raindrops this weekend.

Just over two quarts!

A very lovely color for currants,
don't you think?
 

Also new to me are Marianne's Champagne Currants.  Leave it to M to have champagne colored currants.  Both were cleaned, rinsed and put into the freezer for processing on a non-humid day when I have more than two hours to work with them.  Say, November.

I am looking forward to the future harvest of my Meyer Lemon Tree and -- new to the LLF -- figs from Nigel, my fig tree!  (All two of them...)

 

Not the bumper crop of last year, but
I'll take it.

Isn't it cute!

PEEP, PEEP, PEEP, PEEP!!!!

I almost couldn't hear the postmaster over the din in the background.  "Your chicks are here," he said.  "If you could hurry, it would be greatly appreciated."

My annual order of meat chicks - plus a few egg layers to bulk up the geriatric flock - was expected this week.  I had hoped that they would ship out later in the week so that I would have a bit of down time.  Ha.  I had taken advantage of a lull on Sunday to get the brooders ready, just in case. 

After plucking each ball of fluff out of their shipping container, I dipped their beaks in the waterer and set them loose.  30 times, dividing them into two brooders.  Then I rapidly got ready for work, managing to find two articles of work-ish clothing that didn't clash.  Too much.  I am beyond caring, which is starting to worry me...

I usually start them earlier in the year - early to late spring.  But too many other things were going on, then I decided to order black Langshans - which they did not have right away - and before you know it, it's mid-summer.  The biggest problem with that is that I have to brood them in the laundry room.  Those of you who have brooded (?) chicks know that, not only are they loud, they stink!  When I walk into the laundry room, it's like stepping into a smelly blast furnace.  And, since the laundry room door is vented to the house, we are surrounded by the faint scent of Eau d' Stinky Poo.  And I have company coming in a week and a half.  I am hoping that they feather up quickly so that I can move them to the mid-brooder coop outside before my guests arrive.

I am raising chickens for neighbors, as well - but they are not allowed to see them until they have lost their cuteness.  Farm rules.

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It's been a bad weekend for rodents on the LLF...

Every day since the snow melted, I've been battling squirrels, rabbits and chipmunks - especially, chipmunks.  There are hundreds of them!  They've eaten my strawberries, sunflower shoots. They have holes everywhere.  They are consuming quantities of chicken feed.  And they are hard to catch!

No more.

The Chipmunkinator arrived Thursday. My money has never been better-spent.

Since Friday night, the score stands at:  Chipmunks - 0  LLF - 7.  The worst offender in the stealing-chicken-feed category is the grey squirrel.  They go in the coop, stand on their hind legs and shovel the *expensive* feed in with both paws.  The chickens come in, get freaked out, everyone goes shooting up everywhere, more feed is spilled on the ground, the Chipmunk Clean-Up Crew comes in and I feed the World's Rodents.  I cannot get a clear shot at the squirrels because the chickens crisscross in front of the opening.  It is very frustrating.  Too bad they don't make a Squirrelinator....

Pedis all around.

It's been a busy holiday weekend - and it's only half over!  My DS, just in from LA, spent two nights with me (a miracle!), we met up with our parents and aunt at the town's annual parade - a family tradition - then everyone, plus some, headed over to the LLF for a casual meal.  Fun!  That night, taking pity on me, DS Cynthia gave me a much needed (OMG) pedicure.  And she likes to weed, too.  (She's all mine and I am not going to share her, so don't even ask...)

I took her up to VT to spend a couple days with our parents, came home and decided to share the love.  Matching pedis!

I'm the only one with pink toes.
(Notice the difference between broken ankle -left - and
regular one...)

Scrappy wanted French Nails, but I was all out of white
polish.

Lovey was having none of the pink girlie stuff.

Lovey is a dream when it comes to cutting her nails.  She sits quietly and waits until I finish.  No flinching, no jerking.  Scrappy, on the other hand, goes into full tremble.  But all is forgiven after a crunchy treat.

July....sigh.

In spite of wanting June to JUST HURRY UP, I am at the point of the year when I think that summer is getting away from me.  When I think about being a kid spending summers up in northern Ontario, plunging without a care (except for the occasional blood sucker...erk), into the cold lake.  Taking a bath in the very early morning with our floating bars of Ivory soap.  Playing along the coastline in hidey holes with our Troll dolls.  Remember those?  We'd take the canoe out and search for loons, or get as close as we dared to Ghost Island (named for the white birch trees that glowed eerily at night).  Summer seemed like a long, magical time.

Participating in the Post-A-Day-Every-Day Challenge last month was both fun and frustrating.  I did realize, however, that what I think of as mundane, might be interesting to someone else - who thinks of their everyday as mundane - which I find fascinating.  Etcetera.  I guess we all like to take peeks into other lives.  The Internet has opened up the possibility of friendships where they would never have been before while, at the same time, making it frustrating because these friendships are, in no small part, virtual.  We never get to sit down at the kitchen table and talk to our blog buddies (with some exceptions, of course).  So these little vignettes of home life will have to suffice.  I am already slacking off, however, as I have no photo for today's post.  I'm sure most of your can conjure up "hot and sticky".  Right, Carolyn??

Speaking of same, thank you Carolyn of Krazo Acres, for goading me into participating.  It was fun.  While I doubt very much that I will keep up the pace, I will be more diligent at posting on a regular basis.  AND I am going to pull out my beautiful birthday camera of a couple years back and learn how to use it.