Saving Up For Spring

The weekend roundup is fairly farmy from here. We stewed the last of the tomatoes and read a lot of homesteading literature. I learned a new homemade yogurt recipe -- and the bonus is that I get to use my vintage thermos collection in making the yogurt. Little things like using my collections and rolling up my aprons in a bushel basket make me happy. What can I say to defend myself in the face of this confession?



I can say this: The EGE worked a lot harder than I did this weekend. We started our orchard. It was all pretty much like manna from heaven, what with the fruit trees being available for one-tenth of the nursery price thanks to a woman I grew up with who just purchased a nursery down the road.

Fall is a great time to plant trees and shrubs in our area. It gives the root systems lots of time to develop before the tree has to do any other work. Because we lucked into dwarf trees that are already three to five years old, we may even have apples, pears and cherries next spring and summer.

The dog didn't help at all.

The sunflowers are all done.
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Except they're not.
Madeleine decided to spend her weekend saving and sorting seeds. Cosmos, nasturtiums, sunflowers, marigolds. Then there are the herbs: parsley, cilantro, sage, thyme. She's sortingthem in tidy little bags and pricing them for sale. Little packages of springtime.

The EGE gave her, albeit temporarily, a corner of the "mancave." Every father of four girls needs a mancave, and his is sufficiently manly except when it's invaded by my extra oven/range at Thanksgiving. In his mancave (which is a finished corner of the shop building) he keeps a television for sports (no Angelina Ballerina shall defile the manliness factor), a radio for more sports, his tools and paints and stacks of rolled plat maps and, oh, man-type stuff. I think it is pretty fantastic of him to invite the fledgling seed business in for a season.

And here's a nonsequitur I couldn't resist:


She made that sign for Seven's stall door. Isn't it sweet?