the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

yesterday's garden club meeting was four of us with the person who showed up last time coming by again, so perhaps there will be four regulars/semi-regulars.

someone grew some cosmo seeds and was refreshing the seed library. the yellow/orange ones. i can refresh some of my own seed supply but also use some of my older seeds to give a wider genetic base (perhaps) and add some more color as some blends do not have the reddish edges of the flower petals.

i also had time to work on the peas and get them cleaned up a little bit more. i hope some people will adopt more of them as the seeds are going to start getting too old to be as reliable as they should be.

 

[flowerbug]

bad internet connection means not too much fun on-line but keeping busy working on projects and cleaning.

today i get to at least get my hands in some dirt by checking on the worm buckets and making sure they're fed and watered. always fun for me to see how they are doing.

in garden news i hope to be trying out two new melon varieties this season along with the other that i've grown for three years now. just to see how much difference there might be. we just bought a store melon from some place much warmer than we're now, but i could not read the tag as to see where it came from as the tag was worn a bit too much. probably Arizona, Mexico, Peru or Chile. it was a bit crunchy for a melon but the flavor at least was like what a melon should be.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I grew a couple of beautiful cantaloupe type melons last year - or was it the year before? They musta been tasty because as soon as I started thinking about plucking them from the vine - some critter beat me to it... So disappointing!!

 

[flowerbug]

still having fun internet connection moments. today has been the first relatively normal morning so far but i hate to jinx it by mentioning that as it seems as soon as i do an hour or two later it goes back to blah.

TEG and SS were almost unusable. could barely sign in and pages took a half hour to even show up let alone no way to really get a post done. so gave up until a better day came along.

busy still on projects, cooking and cleaning. getting some spring dusting done.

got to feed and check the worms the other day and this week is garden club meeting.

today is a bit of snow and friend's coming over for dinner later.

Mom said months ago something about retiring from doing so much cooking and stuff but i don't think she's changed that much overall because she's sure done plenty this week and last week. i guess she thinks she retired - so that might be good enough.

i am definitely trying to do more here, cooking and dishes as much as i can. simple stuff. cutting up apples so we have them available for snacks. saves a ton of calories i'd otherwise be eating. works. i've held my weight to my goal of not increasing much this winter. good as i do feel better for it. keep on is the continued goal.

project is coming along. i'm wading through old paperwork and writing a program to process the records and that has gone mostly ok, but once in a while i come across a new transaction type to write new code for and so that can slow me down for a day or two. now i also have a few changes i need to think about as i don't like the fact that i have to do math that a computer can do much better so i'll think about that and rewrite it again sometime the next several days.

as they say, situation normal.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Glad you're getting stuff done! Your mom might need to be reminded of the definition of retired, lol. I get it. For me - retired is doing what I want when I want!

 

[flowerbug]

we have some flowers up and blooming. the usual earliest blue and white and a bit of yellow in them small bulb irises.

i'm not going to get any pictures of them this season as it has snowed on them overnight and i also don't feel like fighting my way through the gate anytime soon (we tie it shut with strips of cloth and Mom's usual practice for things like that is to tie them in knots).

but i can post the link to this previously taken picture because i do love the color and habit of these first thing in the season.

internet connection is still not working very well some times, the past few days were so bad i finally got through to the ISP and had an actual response. so at least it did improve that afternoon for a while but as i could sign on i still could not get any page to come up well enough to post any replies. i gave up... again... so this morning first thing while the traffic is light i'm able to get things to post. so hi peoples of SS.

 

[flowerbug]

well, perhaps i can say i'm done with this bout of internet connection woes and can go back to my regular routine.

normal morning start up is to check for e-mail, do software updates, download usenet messages and then reboot because i run what is called a testing distribution for Debian Linux and that means i am running newer versions to help find bugs and report them. this means that their next stable version will be better because of finding problems before it is released (in a few months from now).

a normal update would take perhaps 20 seconds to a few minutes depending upon how much needs to be downloaded. during this bout of internet problems it was taking sometimes up to a few hours to get an update to finish.

i pretty much did not do any youtube, browsing of regular news, checking the water situation out west, etc. so that throws off my whole routine.

what it did mean though was that i was busy working on my getting the old records typed in and checked so i'm up to starting on 2002 today.

it's going well, just takes time and as i come across new transaction types figuring those out. also i'm pondering other changes like scanning the data entered so i can put the expense account names right in the description line and have the program scan that and put it in where it belongs instead of me having to go back and edit them again after processing. which i will have to do anyways, but we'll see.

hmm... looks like curly brackets will work for putting around those... (must avoid doing this right now... )... that is a project for after when i get these files entered (four or five years to go). i do have some other previously entered files that i also can scan and transform to be used by this program to generate yet even more history for other accounts, but that is yet another project, but once i get that done i'll be almost completly caught up. a major goal. i don't expect this to be done until the end of next winter...

it is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but it does keep me busy and out of trouble. haha!

 

[Mini Horses]

reminded of the definition of retired, lol. I get it. For me - retired is doing what I want when I want!

Or IF I want.... She's not working a job, so personal space considerations.

I retired from any "office open from xx-xx" years ago. Now I do have a job but, set my own days and times, within reasonable parameters. Freedom to choose.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Freedom to choose.

That's what it's all about - for sure!

 

[flowerbug]

Or IF I want.... She's not working a job, so personal space considerations.

I retired from any "office open from xx-xx" years ago. Now I do have a job but, set my own days and times, within reasonable parameters. Freedom to choose.

exactly. i did that at age 33 & 1/2 and no regrets at all. i have worked since then, but they were jobs that i wanted and enjoyed and when things changed and they no longer were enjoyable then i quit. i still miss the library job the most.

Mom has definitely a strange idea of retired in the last few weeks she's made: 7 small loaves of bread, 420 cookies, 10 gallon bags of caramel corn, lemon pound cake muffins, cracker crunch, almond bark, stroganoff (without the beef), etc, etc, etc. plus we had people over for dinner and spring cleaned. she also kept up her quilting and got packages of her note-cards ready and all of this stuff mailed out to the people.

since i am on tap for doing a lot of the dishes and helping out in general, she was complaining of not having enough room in boxes for all the stuff and then after getting the boxes packed and sealed up she forgot some things that were supposed to go in, so i said just send another box, but she didn't go there. so that stuff was given away to someone else. i also suggested making a list...

i'm quite ready for a few quiet days...