Busy Weekend, You?

As usual here at Vicktory Farm & Gardens we have been cramming a lot into our days. This week I went to town twice, once to do our regular shopping-Thursday thing adding Anna's first try at the written test for her permit, and then back on Friday for the second try at her test.

All that while trying to get the hall painted, so that I can put up a bookshelf around the top of the hall for all my children's books, so that I can get the book issue dwindled upstairs, so that I can....

Final look around here depends on so many steps we would need the help of a map.

We were also preparing for another Vicktory F & G style weekend party, celebrating February birthdays and gun enthusiasts on Saturday and then Bowlerama-mama on Sunday (today).


so in between reading the driver book from cover to cover Anna diligently did prep work (I hate painting prep work! Thanks Anna!) and did the undercoat of white on the hallway.

Given strict instructions to do a good job, she tackled it with due diligence and a good mood. Something I sure as heck have been lacking lately! She wants me to be sure and tell you that those are sunglasses. And that she has them on so

she doesn't get splatters of paint in her eyes. Smart girl, I just always let my contacts catch the splatters, not so nice feeling.

She is demonstrating how she rolled the walls, for the walls you don't need the sunglasses so much.

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And yes, what you see is us, well Anna actually, but I instigate, painting what used to be wood paneling. When we first moved to this house Dale nicely didn't complain too much when I painted the walls. Every wall in this house was covered by dark wood, light-absorbing, depression causing panelling. Hey, I like wood products, don't get me wrong but as a mood enhancer, dark wood walls fail miserably! (I just noticed that I spelled panelling two different ways and spell check didn't say one was wrong, that can't be right, but I'm skipping research on which is what and so there you have it, two ways to spell paneling, one probably has to do with doing it and the other with being it) (Nope, that isn't it. ((couldn't stand it, had to look it up)) Both are acceptable the double "l" second and mostly British, so there you go, in the future I'll use both interchangeably and drive you just a little nuttier with my writing Dear Reader. Aren't you excited!)

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When I first started painting I thought I was too poor to do anything but paint the surface, already people told me that that wouldn't work, let alone trying to change it. But then I got brave.

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Surface experiments and color (mis-mixes!) all began to happen at the same time. My beige mother (she was married to you-know-who Mike) had passed away and I felt like I could face the disapproval of just one face and so I began to experiment. A lot of interesting things have been done in those fifteen years.

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But here we are in the hallway and I'm not really into either putting on a smooth coat, filling in the panel grooves, like in the living room. Or taking down the paneling and dealing with the old board underneath like in the kitchen (I don't think the same walls are behind this panelling) or doing my messy crazy plaster smear like in the dining room and my new bedroom.

We have something slightly simpler (well that was the idea anyway, I'll let you know when I am done just how simple it really is) in mind for the hallway. So Anna is getting the base coat on and then on Saturday just before company arrived I began an interesting paint job.

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For now I'll just call it "a study in green". And it incorporates the "stripes" of the paneling. My company arrive before I got far enough to share with you how it is coming together and I put all my toys away. So hopefully we will be all over the rest of it in the morning. Dirt has the day off, yay Presidents' Day! and so we can get a lot done tomorrow and hopefully even finish!

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So have a good night Dear Reader hope you wake to a wonderful view of the world and God's heart in the morning.

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I'm working on improving my mood, really struggled this week and weekend even though I was totally in my element, so I have a call into the neurologist to get see about getting this stupid-nothing-pain under control. Wouldn't mind so much if the pain had a legit origin, like my bad bowling form (I'll tell you about Bowlerama-mama later this week, what a blast!) but this stupid numbness and pain without a known source?! It doesn't make it better just 'cause it has a cool name that Mike likes to say. It doesn't make keeping a nice spirit a very easy thing, but then I guess that keeping a nice spirit wouldn't be a spiritual discipline if it was easy eh?

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Okay, whining over. I'll try and keep you posted on all those loose strings I just threw out there not to mention update you on all the garden stuff that I haven't told you about. Oops another loose string, my favorite thing I guess.

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Too-tells.

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

Conversation on the phone yesterday morning at five after eight, five minutes after I should have left to go "exercise" with my good friend and across-the-highway neighbor:

"Hey, I'm going to be a bit late."

"How come?"

"Went out to my car and there was this weird white stuff stuck to my windshield."

"Really? What is it?"

"Well, I hear tell from other parts of the world that it is called frost."


The weather here since, oh say, Christmas, has been mild to say the least. I have not gone out to windshield-blanketing frost for nearly a month.

The tulip festival will be done before the Tulip Festival begins. The feed store may run out of wormer for livestock and the coat industry is crashing because of our mild weather.


Just barely enough snow to cover our majestic Rainier. Hardly enough snow for the Olympic Games a few hours to the north of us.

Ya know, I get the whole weather pattern stuff but we should have been able to predict this based not on El Nino, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), or whatever pattern it is that we are having, but the fact that the PNW is hosting the Winter Olympics.

This is more typical of our weather for the last of January and the first of February this year: sun shining, windows cracked open a bit, buds bursting open. But just enough of these to keep warm and cheerfully tanked up on vitamin D.

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Our cold normally comes in when it is clear, especially at night. The clouds and blustery weather bring in warmth from the Pacific. So we have had just enough beautiful clear skies in the day time to be warm and happy but just as it gets a little chilly the rain comes to "save" us.

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Like this week for instance, a few nearly clear days and a clear night, wake up to frost finally and hours later it begins to rain and now this morning we are in the lovely warm greys. Yes, interior decorators you heard me correctly, warm greys. I know! an oxymoronic statement eh? But that's the PNW for ya.

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So why my title? Because here in the PNW we are all holding our breath hoping that we don't all of a sudden get winter in the middle of March, or worse April. We have had snow and ice that late in the year many times and on top of somewhat mild years, but rarely on top of a year this mild, but it has happened. And when it does we lose our fruit crops and other produce is set back quite a bit.

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Right now, with the way the temperatures are, I can't imagine that we would get much more than some frosty mornings but things don't always go as they usually do and definitely not as you'd like 'em to. That is why folks are fascinated with statistics, not to see how things always stay the same, but how every once in a while things bust out of the norm.

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So this could be a year to grow things PNWeners usually can't without the expenditure of significant amounts of energy. Or, it could be the year we get no fruit. Frightfully exciting, wouldn't you say?!

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It has definitely brought out the gambler in me. Oh wait, what is it that you say Dear Reader who knows me well? I'm always gambling? I guess that is true, very true to my nature for sure. Random change and risk taking keeps the blood flowin'. But really, I don't gamble with the stuff that is important, like my very soul or the souls of those I am responsible for, that would be idiocy, not exciting and fun, not even exhilarating.

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But no matter what, we fear not, you and I, Dear Reader, because God has us in the palm of His hand. That I do know and know well. I am beyond grateful that my fate does not lie in the hands of karma, ground hogs, money, or myself, but in the hands of a loving and just God.

Can We Time This Better?

Some friends of ours are slowly sharing their family photos with us and got to a great grandfather, still alive, that has lived around thirty years without his beloved.

Our friends say that they want to check out closer in time to one another. That's sweet but I wanted to know how they were going to arrange that? I wasn't being snarky, I really need to know, cause I have my own arrangement to pull off.

I intend to go well ahead of Dirt. Dirt who sings, anything and everything and changes lyrics to fit the day. And my daughters think it is so cute. Okie Doke.

How 'bout somethin' like this:




Or how 'bout this clip.






Just sayin'. I'd like this way better than me driving my girls nutz.

But then maybe Mark and Becky do have the better idea, like Ford. Stick around together for a long time, bug the kids in tandem. Bwahahahahah.

Have a great day Dear Reader. I'm sorta swamped and feeling grouchy to boot, you really don't want me singin' to you right now. Maybe later when I get caught up and my People Palsy goes into remission.

So No Real Work Today!

The sun is shining, the earth is warm, I have a deadline looming and a ton of work today. There is no earthly good reason for me to be in here writing to you Dear Reader, but I just have to share with you what I discovered today.

I'm a bit slow on the uptake, you most likely know this tid-bit of wisdom already. And I have a vague notion that I knew this all before. But doncha know that when the Holy Spirit really wants you to learn some concept he will have you learn it in a serious and deeply philosophical mode and then just to make sure it is good and sunk in He'll give you a nuther chance to see it in another way that becomes rather a laughing point.

So now I gotta share.

One of my daughters has been bringing me, or spreading herself, the lime I requested be spread on all of the garden beds. We've been spreading it for the last two and a half months on beds as we work along getting them ready for spring.

When we started I happened to be out in a garden and the fertilizers and lime are up at my current hot house/laundry room/pet food station/storage shed shed. So I asked my daughter to go up to the "shop" and get a scoop of the Sea 90 and an equal scoop of the lime. She and her sister had spread the Sea 90 on the pastures this fall so she knew what that was, the lime she wasn't so sure about. I told her it was up there in a can.

I knew it was in a garbage can because I had just transferred it from the bags into a lined garbage can because the bags had been compromised and were taking on moisture, one hadn't so I had set the un-moist bag on the top of the lime that I had opened and poured into the garbage can, mostly so that I would have a reminder of what it was that was in the can. Trust me I have stood over plenty of interesting looking material that I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was, the bag was very necessary. So I knew that the lime was in the can with one of the original white bags on top.

My daughter came back from the shop looking confused, I had expected her to come with fertilizer and lime in hand and was slightly put out that it wasn't the case and instead she had more questions for me.

"You mean the stuff in the white bag?" she asked, not mentioning the garbage can.

"Yes," I quipped impatiently, wonder who in their right mind would think that the potting soil might be lime. The can that held the lime was right there with the cans that held various types of potting soil for starting seeds and setting cuttings.

So in a bit, back she came with equal amounts of Sea 90 and lime. And we spread it on the beds we were working. The next week, more beds, and more lime and Sea 90 fetched by the same daughter. Now she has become my fertilizer fetcher and she is great at it. And we have worked our way through most of the garden beds in the Barn Garden and are up at the North Garden now. And day before yesterday and yesterday we finished dusting the beds in the North Garden with Sea 90 and lime. All except one. It has a hoops on it ready for plastic and remay is on the bed keeping in the warmth.

Today I went to the North Garden all on my own, looking to plant some beet and carrot seeds under the remay and put the plastic on the hoops. After I was down there, I realized that because of the remay this bed had been skipped with the Sea 90 and the lime. So I headed back down to the multi-purpose shop to get the fertilizer and lime.

Huh, that's odd. The lime is not as dry as the stuff my daughter brought to me.

Remember, the reason I dumped all of the bags of lime into the garbage can was because they were torn a bit and getting moist. But when my daughter brought me the "lime" I just assumed that it had dried out a bit.

"Hey, sweetie, you want to come out and show me where you have been getting the lime?"

"Yes", as we walk together into the shop. Ah hah. Yep it is a white bag alright but not the white bag in the garbage can. It in fact is a white bag that sits inside the shop on the floor right next to the bag of Sea 90.

"So that wasn't the lime mom?"

"Uh nope. It is a bag of either organic fertilizer from Azure Standard or the livestock mineral salt that they sell, I was waiting to test it to figure out what it was as the label had been ripped off. "

Ooops.

So none of the beds have been limed. They have been fertilized or mineral salted, but they haven't been limed.

Ah what a good chuckle we have had this afternoon. I'm up in the North Garden spreading lime or re-spreading lime or however I ought to look at that, and I can't stop smiling and chuckling to myself. Daughter passes by me on her way to the dumpster with a load of garbage from the kitchen.

"Why you smilin' mom?"

"'Cause everything just always seems to tie together to get a message through. There just always seems to be a "theme of the week" going on around here."

"What's the message? What's the theme?"


"Make sure that when you are talking to someone about something, that you and they are indeed talking about the same thing, there are lots of "white bags" in the world."

I had been thinking up in the North Garden that it can work in either direction. How many times have Dirt and I really been talking about the same thing but we thought we were talking about different things.

"Honey, can you go get the ratchet out of the bottom of my red tool box? "

"Sure." But because I am already in sort of a snit that day towards my beloved I don't see the ratchet in the only tool box in the location he sent me to and I come back in what can only be described as a foul mood because I've had to go on a wild goose chase.

"There isn't a red tool box out there, only an orange metal one and I took all the stuff off the top of it so that I could get in it and there isn't a ratchet!"

"Yes, that is the one and there are little drawers on the bottom of it, you don't have to go into it through the top. "

"Oh"

That is sort of what we have going on around us, some one who has their nose out of joint about things of our framily, takes exception to a word we use to describe what we do with those we love to keep them safe and undefiled. They want us to change our ways to their ways. But what they don't realize is that they say red and not orange but really it is orange, it is just that we work off of more colors that just the primary set, we like to paint more detailed pictures.

But the opposite can also be true, we can be seemingly talking about the same thing and yet not talking about the same thing at all. I can say fetch me some fertilizer and my dear spouse brings me a wheel barrow full of barn yard shit when really what I wanted was the bag of organic fertilizer blend that is sitting in the shed.

If we are not careful and specific, those we speak with can nod their heads and say yes yes. We can in turn get all excited that they understand us and are traveling the same road but in reality they are heading in the opposite direction.

Just on the west side of Washington there is a Silver lake in Pierce county, Cowlitz county and Watcom county and those are the three that I know of. And each has a "resort" on them. So if I told my brother to meet us at Silver lake at the resort, he could be a hundred or so miles from where we are but in the right place in his mind.

Often Dirt and I talk about how we are attempting to raise our daughters to be pure. We are coming to the realization that we often are speaking a different language than those who hear us. When we speak of purity we are not just saying that no one can touch our daughters where the bathing suit goes until they are married. But often that is all the farther folks get when you speak of purity and daughters.

We are looking for daughters with a purity that goes beyond the wedding night. A purity of heart, a cleanliness not a prudishness.

Wadding Waddles

What happens when your panties get in too tight of a wad? You have a tendency to waddle and not get anything done correctly. But I managed to buck up, concentrate, ah the source of my migraine perhaps, and figure out the best way to address some bites made by our perennial pest, Satan.

So day before yesterday I posted a title, three times in a row. Without the snarky quips that went with it. And I have such dedicated and sweet Dear Readers that two of them went above the call of duty and came up with comments for my nonsensical title. So to honor their diligence as Dear Readers, even though I deleted my three posts of utter ridiculous proportions (no words from Lanny!) I retained their comments and am republishing them here.

The title? What No Blogging?


The diligent commenters and their awesome and meaningful comments:

LindaSueBuhl just sometimes - not blogging means doing life so que sera sera

KathyB. You're NOT blogging? If the rest of your blog is any example of what is goin' on at Vicktory Farm I am amazed you're blogging at all! You are getting a LOT done outside in the mud there.

Thanks ladies, for reaching deep and coming up with great comments to my nonsense, you are second to no one, not even Blue Tarp Camper.

How's the Weather?

So last month the weather was amazingly conducive to thinking the calendar was on the wrong page, or that new months had been invented, because even though there have been plenty of cloudy days and rainy ones too (otherwise there would not have been any mud to deal with)

there have been a fair share of incredibly beautiful days like this,

and this, where even though there is not a cloud in the sky, the temperatures have not plummeted like they usually do on cloudless days. Most likely because by evening the clouds return and give a nice blanket of warmth to the region.

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New months? Well lets just say that pretty much everyday last month I thought we were in Janpril and sometimes jumping to Januly. So I'm thinking that in spite of the predictions of the local hedgehoggy things that instead of more winter (would that be a bad thing considering what winter in the PNW has been so far) we are now in the month of Febray, well, we might get more rain than that so perhaps we'll have to call in Februne. What after that? Perhaps Margust. Hopefully Mr. Winter will not swing back up this way when he leaves the midwest and turn it into Maranuary.

PS. Sorry 'bout that weird post-not-post yesterday, I actually had a post that went with that title, it was going to be another one of my humorous rants but I was being sidetracked (imagine that Dear Reader) and really messed up big time on the whole, can you get your thumb off of the "publish" button, write your post and then remember to hit the "publish" button, brain wave. I'm sure I have a brain disease that causes this sort of thing, I just don't want to go to the doctor, 'cause I think he suffers from it too.

Something on My Side Board for a While

The following was on my side board for a while recently I decided to take it off but I wanted to save the thoughts. Now however, I am cleaning up my drafts and eliminating them so I've turned this into a post where it was just a draft. I wish there was a way to save what your whole blog looks like from time to time. Oh well.....



Start looking at and reading the Bible differently. Perhaps it was never meant to be turned into a "word for the day" calendar.

The "letters" were meant to be read as such, not sliced and diced.

Think of yourself discovering a pack of letters written between your grandparents when they were courting and first married. You untie the ribbon, open the fourth letter in the stack, read the third line of the fourth paragraph because you see that it has an explaination mark behind it?
Or do you untie the packet and read all the letters completely, trying to figure out the order from the post mark, reading each one, sometimes over and over. Comparing how they spoke in the first one and the later ones. Essentially blowing a whole day in the attic; crying, weeping, laughing, gaining a sense of who your grandparents really were in those days.

Would you know that from picking out all the sentences that cousin Judy told you you should focus on and memorizing them so you could recite them at the next family picnic?