My Sense of Direction is Pathetic

 Yesterday I had an errand to run and Papa Pea suggested he go along and afterward, we would go on a short leaf-looking tour as it seems as though the autumnal colors may have reached their peak in our neck o' the woods.

When we're in a vehicle together, he does about 99% of the driving because 1) I have never enjoyed driving, and 2) he says he's more comfortable driving than being a passenger.  Good deal, right?

Yesterday I was feeling generous and offered to drive so he could sit back and enjoy the scenery.  Surprisingly, he readily agreed to the arrangement.

Off we went, made our necessary stop on one of the back roads and then headed off for our color tour.  We did see some lovely scenery.

I drove over some areas of the county we'd not been in for some time.

However, there came a point when I didn't know where we were.  I hadn't passed any of the landmarks I thought we should be passing.  I couldn't figure out when and where I got on the road we were on and off the road I thought we should have been on.

Papa Pea was enjoying being chauffeured around and assumed I knew where I was going.  (Ha.)

As I was about to expose my ignorance (and once again admit my total lack of directional sense), we came out onto the main road.  Arrrgh.  

 

No biggie as we were then in familiar territory, and I was no longer lost.  (Of course, my husband knew where we were all the time.)  But for me, it was oh-so-frustrating as it again proved I truly have no sense of direction.

If I ever had to make a cross-country trip driving by myself, I have no doubt that I know exactly what would happen.  I would be lost forever.

I'm Conducting A Survey . . . Of My Own

When you are doing a somewhat mindless or boring chore, do you listen to music or listen to an audio book or listen to a podcast to keep you going and make the time fly?

 

You know the times I'm thinking of.  While doing those tasks that need to be done but don't require a lot of dedicated brain power in order to successfully accomplish them.

 

Like when you need to put away and straighten all the paraphernalia that accumulates on the workbench top.  Or when you wash the dishes or weed the flower beds or fold the laundry.  Or maybe you have to drive a distance on your own and need some company.

 

What I'm asking is if you regularly use a technological device for entertainment (possibly even enlightenment!) when you don't need total concentration on the job at hand.  (Of course, it could be you savor the time of silence which is fine and sometimes warranted.)

 

Care to share? 

At Least We Didn't Have Company Coming

This afternoon I was in the process of making Barbequed Country Ribs for dinner tonight. 

 

After taking the pan of ribs I had just pre-roasted out of the oven, I was starting to add the BBQ sauce I had simmered on the stove top. 

 

About half the sauce had been poured over the ribs when, POP!  Some pieces of the Pyrex dish went skittering across the counter, some landed on the kitchen floor.

 

No worries, I didn't get any of the hot sauce splattered on me or wasn't cut by any of the glass shards.

 

I sure do feel bad about that 9" x 9" dish I've had since we were first married though.  Maybe that was the problem.  It had just plumb wore itself out with all the casseroles, brownies, crisps, ginger breads and a sundry of other things I've made in it.

 

We had egg sandwiches for dinner. 

Delivery Is So Much Better!

Or . . . 'bout time we wised up.

 

For all the years up until the last couple, we've ordered our wood for heating in 8' long loggers' logs, cut them with chainsaw and much expended time and energy, then split them into manageable pieces either by hand or with our trusty wood splitter.  This small (ha!) chore took the two of us a large part of our summer's time.

 

Then the light dawned (in the dim recesses of our still functioning brain cells) that buying our wood cut and split, even though costing an outlay of dollars that we'd always been trying to save, would be the wiser way to go.  (You've heard the old saying, "We grow too soon old, and too late smart?") 

 

I mean,  let's be realistic about how much time and effort we both spent working up our wood from those 8' long logs which cost money in the first place.

 

So.  This was our first 1-1/2 cord load of cut and split wood delivered this past week.

 

And this is the mighty work force who came to help us stack the wood into this year's make-shift shed.  They were excellent workers.

 

A couple of days later, Papa Pea and I spent some quality time together getting the last of the wood under cover.  Please notice dump truck which our littlest helper decided would be a good way for him to bring the wood from the pile on the ground into the shed.

 

Space cleaned up and ready for the next load.  We guesstimate we'll need three more loads to fill the shed.

 

The wood we're getting now is green and won't be used this year as we have our biggest shed full to the brim of dried, well-seasoned wood for this coming heating season.  We probably won't use all of this wood as our winter temperatures seem to be getting milder and milder.  Where are those old-fashioned, snow-filled, frigid Minnesota winters we so love?

 

I maybe should be careful what I wish for.  

ONE IS BETTER THAN NONE

Who said my Morning Glory vine wasn't going to bloom this year?  I have proof that it has.

 

So what if there has been only one (one as in an individual, single unit) blossom on the whole, entire vine that has climbed up and over the top of a six foot high trellis.

 

I can only assume this is yet another end result of our strange weather this past gardening season.

 

But, sigh.  It's not like we were counting on Morning Glory flowers to supplement our food stash for this coming winter.  Good thing, huh? 

 

P.S.  Great news . . . the forest fires in our general area are now listed as contained and under control.  No more hazy sky or heavy smoke smell.  Days and days of hard work by many to bring the situation to this point. 

Anybody Got A Good Recipe For Fried Grasshoppers?

 I mentioned a while ago that my garden has been supporting a nice crop of whompin', really big grasshoppers.  Well, they're still here although I must admit, not quite in the large numbers as before.

The only real damage I've discovered them doing (to what is left in the garden) is on the leaves of my pepper plants.

Yep, the pesky hoppers definitely like the taste of the leaves.

 (Sorry for the blurry picture.  I got up too close and personal.)

 

After a little research on ye ol' Internet, I'm pleased to find my suspicions are confirmed that they don't bother the peppers themselves.  Whew, that's a relief.  Otherwise, I'd have to get my shotgun out to eradicate the buggers.

So Maybe Onions Don't Like Hot Weather?

I've never had much trouble growing onions.  Even the red ones, that some believe are difficult to grow and keep, usually do well for me.

 

Not so much this year.

 

I devote three of my 4' x 8' raised beds to my onion crop.  One bed of yellow, one bed of red, and a third to half yellow, half red.  That keeps us in onions all the way into spring time when they start to sprout so vigorously that a few end up in the compost bin.

 

For some mysterious reason, this year the half and half bed died down and the stalks turned completely brown much sooner than the other two beds.  So I dug them, brought them in to cure on racks where they've been for about two and a half weeks.   I decided today was time to clean them up for the next several months of storage. 

 

Obviously, I knew when they came out of the ground that they weren't of a size that was going to win any blue ribbons at the county fair.  (Never mind the fact that we haven't had a county fair in a number of years now.)

 

They're all small to medium in size, not a big one in the bunch.  What went wrong this year?  Well, even though I watered with sprinkler or hand-held hose close to daily because of our drought conditions, maybe they simply required the natural rain water that was almost totally lacking.  Or was it too hot for them day after brilliantly sunny, scorching day?

 

I'll probably never know.

 

Maybe the two beds that still have green, green stalks on them will turn out to have all the large onions hiding just beneath the soil.  Or not.  And why was this one bed ready well ahead of the other two when all three beds were in much the same location?  Questions, questions.

 

Whatever the final harvest turns out to be, I'll be grateful to have all the onions our garden gives us this year.  Small little orbs or otherwise!