Sunday Is A Day Of Rest, Right?

Yesterday was one of those days . . . one of those days that left me so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open past nine o'clock. But I wouldn't have traded it for any other one. No complaints because I'm doing what I want to be doing and I'm never bored. Life is good, as they say.

First thing in the morning, Roy and I split some honkin' big pieces of wood he had already cut into stove sized lengths. Got it all stacked in the wood shed.

I'm still working at getting started plants out into the garden soil where they desperately want to be. I plant, then cover them with whatever I can: cold frames, hot caps, plastic milk jugs, anything to protect them from the wind and cold temps. Today the squash and pumpkins go out. I don't have as many of them started inside as I might like, but it's too late to plant seeds outside so I'll have to make do with the few started plants.

So yesterday I had "must dos" I was working on in the garden. As per usual, we had rain showers on and off all day. Roy was trying to cut the lawn but the rain would make the grass just wet enough that he had to stop and wait for it to dry out several times. I think it took him three stop-and-go attempts but he finally finished it after dinner.

Besides lawn mowing, dear husband changed the oil in the wood splitter and Toyota Tercel. He had to warm up the car before draining the oil so was preparing to take it for a short run. I said I'd go along if I could make a quick stop at the hardware store in town. Off we went, mailed some paid bills, put a deposit in the Credit Union, quick stop at the hardware store and then got the heck out of Dodge. Town was full of tourists and made us so, so grateful we're not involved in the restaurant business anymore. We happily scurried back home again.

I worked in the garden all the time that I could for the rest of the day. At one point, I sat down in the (damp) dirt and said aloud, "Why am I working so hard? I could be reading in the hammock.”

Except I couldn't have been reading in the hammock because of the intermittent rain and the two sets of drop-in visitors we had during the day. Knowing of the possibility of those visitors, I had made an apple pie early in the morning.

Here it's cooling on a shelf on the back porch by an open screened window. (Glad no hungry black bear meandered by.) Remember last fall (having a surplus of pie apples), I made a bunch of apple pie fillings for the freezer? Well, I apparently was a little over zealous (blog entry Peeling, Paring and Slicing, October 14, 2008), because I still have several of those bags of frozen filling in my freezer. But, hey, I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, because one of the bags came in mighty handy yesterday morning. Last week I made eighteen pie crust balls and froze them. This was something I learned to do when we had the restaurant. I could make a big batch of pie crust dough when I had the time, freeze it in individual crust portions, then defrost as many as I needed for a day's baking. So night before last, I pulled the frozen apple filling and two balls of frozen crust out of the freezer which made making the pie yesterday a snap. Soooo much faster than starting with the whole apples and having to make the crusts from scratch.

But here we are at the start of a new day after a long, sound sleep last night. The sun is shining (for the moment at least) and we have the day to do what we want. Me? I want to grab a quilt, pillow and book and read in the hammock.

Heck, who am I fooling? I really want to go plant squash and pumpkins, thin the beets, replant a few spots where the Swiss chard didn't come up, succession plant some more scallions and radishes, get the lemon cucumbers planted under a cold frame and . . . I wonder if the soil is warm enough yet to put the beans in?