Oh, i am so tired of rain. It rained all last week, yesterday we had a nice sunny day- but cold. Now we are back to rain again. If it isn't raining its cloudy, which isn't much nicer. Wednesday we had high wind, and it almost blew down the fence! The ground out there is so rocky that when my hubby and dad were using the auger to bore out the post holes, the auger would get kicked down at an angle, making the holes bigger than they needed to be, and any rocks down there had to be removed- so we ended up with loose soil around the posts with a good deal of void space. This is normal when using an auger and not much of a big deal... until you get so much rain in one season that the ground is so soggy it can hardly hold its own weight. So, hubby had to go out in the cold wind and refill the voids around the posts.... took a couple wheel barrows full he said. I was busy with the baby who is now crawling at lightening speed and is pulling up onto furniture and cruising around, so i didn't have time to snap my compulsory photos or to even see what the mess looked like and how bad it was.
Good thing is even with the steady rain and high wind, there was little road flooding due to the town finally getting off their can and sending out that crew to clean out the street drains! Yay! This is a serious accomplishment.
Its also a big help that Justin has managed to get the basement well cleared out and has had time to begin painting the basement walls with a dry-loc waterproof paint. Its looking really nice down there actually... Its already a storage area, but since its beginning to look neater and stay dryer, its possible that more things will be stored down there and kept in much better condition. The toughest part, now that the water issue may be on its way to being eradicated is the dust. This house is so dusty it is driving me batty. I remember dusting daily as a kid and remembering that it was more of an exercise in obedience more than a necessity... but this house- its a never ending ordeal. No, i don't dust every day- but if i did it wouldn't be overdoing it. Even without the birds, it is dusty. I had assumed before that it was mostly feather dust, but now it seems that was not the case. I have a Dyson and i thought having that would help a lot since it really hauls a lot out of the carpet, but even that is not enough and i vacuum daily. I think it has to do with the likelihood that this house is made up mostly of horsehair plaster and blown-in cellulose insulation and i suspect the lady who owned the house before us used her carpet sweeper rather than a vacuum judging by the condition of the carpet. Not sure what can be done to eliminate that as a source without gutting and redoing everything.
Maybe i will have to dust daily. Air filtration is expensive.
So...while i'm trying to type here i am making some turkey stock on the stove. Gets the house smelling nice and cozy and the hot pot makes the kitchen just a little warmer. I like making stock with the scrappy ends of whatever other veggies i have, usually carrots and other root veggies, celery leaves, onion ends... I also have a crock pot of beans going. I made a gingersnap crusted ham for Thanksgiving as well as the turkey and i thought the ham bone would be nice to flavor the beans with. I used applewood smoked bacon in there as well.. i don't use salt pork much, it doesn't add any real flavor in my opinion. Why use salt pork when you can add bacon? Its harder to find anyway.
Oh, for my mushroom research... i found a kit called TeePee.... you can grow Oyster Mushrooms in a roll of toilet paper! It is unreal, and i think i just might try it out. Fairly inexpensive, considering they send you the supplies (except the paper) for 15 rolls- which can fruit as many as 3 times for $36. I like that it gives me material for 15 attempts. I just need to figure out how long the spores can be stored because i don't know what i think of having all 15 rolls going at once. I guess if they produce famously, i could dehydrate the stuff.
I wish i could grow wood ear mushrooms, the closest Chinese Food restaurant makes their Hot and Sour soup with those in it and edible lily buds... it is very good. I need to find what type of lily buds they are and if they buy them in a tin, dried or fresh. I love Hot and Sour Soup.
Farmer's Almanac is dismally off so far...calling for less-than-usual precipitation and a snow storm around Thanksgiving. If you want to play the game, you could substitute "wind storm" for "snow storm" and say they were right on the money. We only had one slush storm so far and wet flurries before the last day of October. So, i don't know how reliable they will be this coming spring for planting planning.
