Down in the Doldrums

I get pretty hard on myself when I feel a little depressed, lack the energy I want to have and can't seem to accomplish anything that makes me feel good. I've been in such a period lately and can't seem to talk myself out of acting and feeling so poopy.

There's no good reason for my malaise. I live such a good life with so many choices (too many choices?) compared to other folks who are having a truly rough time these difficult days. Sure there are those irritating few things to deal with that I'd rather weren't part of my life at all, but who doesn't at certain times have to struggle a bit to find a bridge over the troubled waters?

So in an attempt to get a jump start back to my more normal, eager-beaver, hard-working, goal oriented, content self, I am hereby holding myself accountable to you, dear readers, by setting forth in this blog post my list of tasks I need and/or want to get done tomorrow.

At the end of the day, I'll report back to you and be honest about what I did/didn't do and decide whether using you as an impetus helped to bring my lagging, flagging, drooping energy level back up to paar. (Yes, I am heaping a LOT of responsibility on you but somebody's gotta be big and strong for me.)

Here's my list for tomorrow:

MAKE BLOG POST - Duh, I think this is gonna be easy. I'm doing that right here and now if you'll be generous enough to consider it my post for tomorrow morning.

GET INFO TO CHICKEN MAMA - There have been several changes I've been wanting to make on my blog sidebars, etc., and my dear daughter, being my Computer/Blog/Website Guru, needs to have a list of the work I'd like her to do. She may not have time to do it immediately, but she sure can't get it done until I get my wants and desires to her. (I've been going to do this for at least a month now.)

MAKE A COUPLE PHONE CALLS - These are time-sensitive phone calls and won't take that much time (I hope), but I dislike talking on the phone so have, again, been putting them off. Too long.

ORDER SUPPLEMENTS - We take some vitamin/mineral supplements and I need to put in about three orders to three different companies. Something tells me they are never going to ship the products unless I order them.

GO THRU TWO MAGAZINES AND ONE CATALOG - I have a baaad habit of letting magazines and catalogs (that I say I'm interested in - do I need to re-evaluate here?) collect on a corner of my desk and avoid going through them until the stack reaches epic proportions. The couple/few nights I've been awake in the middle of the night lately have been put to good use. I'm down to the last couple of magazines and one catalog. Geesh, just sit down and look through them, for heaven's sake, and be done with it! (And don't pick up anymore mail for a month or so.)

VACUUM - I can see the dust bunnies are breeding up a storm under the kitchen table and behind doors again. I blame the dog on bringing in so many leaves this time of year, but in reality I think anybody who comes through a door drags some in. (If I kept the front deck and back porch swept free and clean that would no doubt help, too.)

CLEAN BATHROOM - We have only one, but it's always in need of cleaning. Ugh.

REPOT ALOE PLANTS - We have two huge, over-crowded, over-grown aloe vera plants upstairs in hubby's office. I've been going to replant them for months. (Years? Nah, couldn't be that long. Could it?) The other day dear husband asked me how to do it so he could do the job himself. Now that's an indication of how badly it needs to be done. (He's never repotted a plant in his life.) I need to do it now while the weather is still decent so it can be done on the table outside on the deck. (Anybody want an aloe vera? I will have somewhere around 2,108 of them if I save them all.)

MAKE EGG SALAD - I got the eggs boiled today, but that was it.

HANG FALL SHOWER CURTAIN - No wonder I feel so wonky. Here it is mid-October and I still have the "summer" shower curtain up. (How many days has this task been on my daily list?)

CHARGE CAMERA BATTERY - Now there's one that shouldn't be too hard or time-consuming.

MANICURE - Well, not a real manicure. I just have to cut and file my fingernails. They grow so fast that they soon have a talon-like appearance if I don't take the time to cut them. (I used to have lovely, always painted fingernails. I will someday again. When I find the time. Sigh.)

HAIRCUT AND BEARD TRIM FOR HUBBY - There is an old, scruffy looking gentlemen who is well-known in our town and whenever hubby's beard and hair get too long, I start calling him by that old guy's name. It's definitely time for a salon appointment for hubby. The whole operation takes only about 30 minutes and I've cut his hair all the years we've been married . . . but I hate the job. (How's that for being negative? Bad, Mama Pea, bad.)

WORK ON WALL HANGING - Shortly after our daughter took her small office in town, she asked me if I would make quilted seasonal wall hangings to go on her outer door. Hers is a very, very nice office space but kinda tucked in a dark corner off a large lobby so she thought having a colorful wall hanging on the door would make it more noticeable. I've been working on the one for fall that will be appropriate right up through Thanksgiving. I just haven't found what I consider enough time to put in on it. If I had a whole day, I could get it done. Can't devote the day to it right now, but by working on it a little each day, I'll get it done that much sooner.

PAINT SIDING - This week we got the exterior siding up on the pantry addition to the house. Now I need to find a warm enough day to caulk the seams and then get at least one coat of paint on it before winter. If it doesn't rain (possible precipitation predicted), the temps look favorable for the job tomorrow.

HARVEST SQUASH - The Red Kuri squash is still out in the garden. I need to harvest it and get it inside in a 50-55 degree storage space (somewhere - where?) until I can give some away and cook and freeze a lot for winter usage. We've had no hard frost yet but I don't want to be unpleasantly surprised when it does hit and I have failed to get the squash in. I know I'm pushing my luck here already.

Okay, that's it. These are (nearly) all tasks that have been on my list day after day for waaay too many days. They're not getting done and they're dragging me down.

Tomorrow is a new day. A new, wonderful day. I'm gonna put on my big girl panties and hit it. Are y'all watchin' me?

Do We Have Any Volunteers?

One of my favorite flowers is the nasturtium. I always plant some in my garden, in flower boxes, in pots, here-there-and-everywhere. I didn't plant even one this year. (I guess that makes a sham of my previous sentence, doesn't it?) Why didn't I? (Please don't ask me any hard questions, I didn't sleep well at all last night.)

When I pulled the pea vines off their trellises this year (gosh, that seems like a loooong time ago), I noticed one little nasturtium plant poking through the soil at the end of one of the trellises. Could it have been mixed in with the pea seeds? Or was it a volunteer left over from last year's garden?

I took this picture yesterday when I was in the garden taking down the trellises (finally) and putting them away for the winter. This gorgeous plant has grown HUGE. It measures about four feet across.

It's loaded with red/orange (my fave) perfect blossoms

When hubby comes down from his upstairs office, he has commented several times on how much he enjoys looking down on it.

Now why can't I get my purposefully planted nasturtiums to grow so big, beautiful and luxuriant? Huh? HUH?

Only Because You Made Me Do It . . .

APPLE SLICES

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup butter
1 beaten egg yolk
1/2 cup milk
8-10 (depends on size) apples peeled, cored and sliced (I don't count, but rather just fill a medium sized bowl)
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Pats of butter
1 beaten egg white
Sugar/Cinnamon mixture

Mix flour and salt; cut in butter with a pastry blender. Add egg yolk and milk and mix with a fork until blended and mixture sticks together.

Divide dough in half and roll one half out on a floured surface to fit the bottom and up the sides of a cookie sheet with a lip. (My baking sheet/pan is 16-1/2" x 10-1/2".)

Add the sliced apples which have been mixed with the sugar and cinnamon. Spread out evenly on bottom crust. Add small pats of butter distributed evenly over apples.

Roll out remaining crust and lay over top of apples. Crimp edges. Spread egg white over top. Slit and sprinkle with sugar/cinnamon mixture.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40-45 minutes. After Apples Slices have cooled, drizzle with powdered sugar frosting.

Warning: Dough is very tender and tears easily. Also sticks to surface you're working on so as I'm rolling it out, I have to keep picking it up and dusting with more flour on surface and on rolling pin. Be prepared to utter some bad words, if only in your head. A pain in the patoot . . . but worth it.

Heaven in a Pan

I just love Apple Slices. No, not an apple you take a knife to and cut into slices. A pan of lusciously seasoned chunked up apple pieces baked between two flaky, buttery crusts with a drizzle of white frosting on top.

This, my dear children, is the first apple dessert I baked with the apples we've harvested from our trees this year. We've eaten a couple of the apples as slices (the raw, naked kind) with peanut butter for lunch once or twice, but this is the first baked confection I've made with them.

And, oh-oh, mmm-mmm, it is good! I made it last night after dinner and as you can see, it took a serious hit before I could get the white frosting on it this morning.

I've always liked Apple Slices even better than apple pie. I think it's because of a childhood memory I have of them from a bakery my mom used to visit on special occasions. Those were the days when bakeries actually BAKED their goodies with REAL ingredients rather than ordering in the frozen (tasteless) dough from a food service company as many of them do now.

No, I'm not going to include the recipe here because the dough for the crust (all butter) has always been so dang near impossible to roll out that I would just end up getting hate mail from any of you who tried to make it. As much as I LOVE the Apple Slices, I think the hassle with the crust is why I don't make it any more often than I do. Well, that and the fact that I tend to eat about three-quarters of it myself. When my husband asks where it all went, I'm getting really good at feigning innocence and saying I have Absolutely. No. Idea. ;o)

After A Slight Lapse, I've Regained My Senses

What was I thinking? Trying to process all those worm damaged potatoes and putting them in the freezer in the form of mashed potatoes or cubed potatoes or shredded potatoes?

I've got better things to do here, people. (Lots and lots of things to do!) Especially since the good, sound potatoes we've got in storage will be more than the quantity we'll need for the whole year to come.

But fear thee not, they are not going to go to waste. Dear husband remembered reading something in an old book we have in our library on poultry raising. We found the book on a high shelf, pulled it down, and blew the dust off of it.

The book Is "The Right Way to Keep Hens, Ducks, Geese & Turkeys" by British author Robert H. Holmes, copyright 1958. In the book the author talks of feeding cooked potatoes to chickens . . . even saying that they can provide a hot mash (not too hot, I would hope, as we don't want any burnt beaks, for goodness sake) which the hens appreciate in winter. Apparently during World War II, feeding cooked potatoes to chickens was popular not only in England but in our country as well.

So to assure that I suffer no guilt pains because of "wasting" all those potatoes with worm holes, we are going to start cooking up a bunch of potatoes each day to serve to our poultry.

I just hope they don't insist on having them mashed with milk and butter and seasonings. Maybe a sprig of fresh parsley for decoration?

You Just Never Know . . .

. . . what you might find on your camera.

My daughter worked as a nanny both days this weekend. Today I made a brief stop where she was working to drop something off for her.

This sweet little girl cherub wanted a story read to her before I left so, of course, I had to oblige. I knew Chicken Mama had snapped a couple of pictures but I assumed they were with her camera.

I was surprised to find the pictures on my camera (snuck it right outa my purse, she did) when I sat down at my desk tonight.

This little babe is just shy of two years old and didn't have any hair (other than peach fuzz) until very recently. You can't see it by the pictures but the whole back of her head is now full of beautiful blond curls. I think the long wait was worth it.

Most of my weekend was spent working outside. Isn't it funny how you can work and work and work on a project and not see much of any progress for the longest time?

Today (hooray and finally) it looks as if I'm getting the raised beds under control. (Although I am having trouble ripping out that one flower bed on the left and my herb bed on the right is still going strong.) The majority of the beds are now ready for an application of compost which we'll let sit for the winter and then till in in the spring.

Have to say the soil in the raised beds is really good. The soil is FULL of earthworms. Despite my phobia regarding worms (how the heck can I be a gardener with this irrational fear?), over the years I've come to terms with earthworms. Earthworms are good. Earthworms are our friends. But I gotta say today when I was removing weeds and spading up the beds, I came across some that were so big they bordered on being classified as snakes. Now that bothers me! (Don't worry. A little more therapy and I'll be fine.)

Tomorrow's Monday again; the start of another week. Laundry day for me, but I'm also meeting a friend in town for coffee and conversation in the morning.

Then back out into the yard/garden. Although it seems as if this gorgeous, warm weather will last indefinitely, one of these mornings there will be heavy frost covering everything and finishing up outside won't be nearly so easy.

So watch out blueberry and raspberry patches, it's your turn tomorrow!