stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

cleaning some stuff up, getting rid of old things i don't need any more, just a lot of things that should have been gone through and thrown out before. i had it all stuffed back in the corner and boxes stacked on a directors folding chair including paperwork and pictures that i need to sort through from when the house was built. none of that was being dealt with being crammed back there in the corner and i needed to dust the floor back there anyways.

Mom has been working on her quilts and using a chair that is a bit wobbly and creaky. she tried the directors chair and says she can use that instead. it's more comfy IMO and should also be more stable. we'll see how it goes.

dusted and reorganized the top of the bookshelf and put box flats back up there and have quite a few in a small space so that is a good use of that area, it's up and away and i only need those flats during bean drying and sorting season when i start picking. the rest of the time they can hang out up there.

the bulk eating beans are stored up there too so they also were reorganized and now i have some to finish going through and then i can get those put up there too. nice to have more floor space back where those flats were drying.

dusting and getting some stuff off shelves and a lot of it belongs in the trash or recycling but i can't quite part with it yet. however at least i freed up two more shelves of more easy to reach space that i will use frequently than the shelves down further and back in the corner. so yay to getting more useful space back.

one of the challenges of a smaller room is that in order to have space to organize things i have to move other things out of the way. now i have empty space it will make my next round of bean sorting and organizing much easier. i now have about five shelves total that are bare or nearly bare and for me that's almost half a bookshelf of space. i've not had that much space free in here since i put those book shelves up. yes, it is still a mess in here but progress is happening.

 

[flowerbug]

finished processing the squash and got it packaged up and put in the freezer or the fridge plus we also had a bowl for brunch. i took a nap then finished picking some seeds from the pulp so those could start drying.

tomorrow morning i give the worm farm a Christmas snack of all the squash skins and innards that did not get buried.

the snow was gone because it has rained but the ground was still frozen so i had to bust through that layer to get the hole dug, but it worked out eventually. very slippery walking on a very thin layer of unfrozen clay on top of frozen clay. it was very close to ice-skating level slippery and also a mess with that sticking to my mud shoes. it took me more time to clean up than to do the task. all set now.

feels good to take a break for a bit and catch up on-line.

 

[digitS']

Made pumpkin pies for tomorrow!

Using Kabocha squash, of course .

They are in the oven now and the house is beginning to fill with the fragrance of the holiday,

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

sad today to hear about E. O. Wilson passing away, an interesting entomologist and someone who understood nature. a proponent for preserving diversity and wild spaces that are left in the world before things get even worse.

the first time i came across him in writing was by finding a book called _The Ants_ which i stil read at times, he was a co-author.

92 is a long life yet he surely will be missed.

 

[flowerbug]

i've been working on getting the squash seeds cleaned up. as they are they can be planted without any further efforts, but for giving away to others they do look better cleaned up more. i finished the last of the seeds from a few weeks ago this morning and i thought i would give the more recent seeds a try to see if they were dry enough. yes they were so i finished another tray of seeds from those and so now i only have three more trays to do and i will be done with this seed saving task. it's a break from doing other things (aka procrastination ).

 

[flowerbug]

all squash seeds done yesterday.

 

[flowerbug]

i had fun today, i meant to get my squash project page done for the website, but first i had some snow to shovel and then before that Mom said "Hey look at these tracks outside my patio door in the snow!" they were mousie tracks. so...

i get out to shovel and first have to check out the mouse situation. i know there is a good chance they've put a nest someplace i don't want it but when i opened up the crawlspace cover there were four mice in there that weren't even in the nest, running around, and i'm not sure that was all of them but some ran over to where the air conditioner is at (right next to the crawlspace cover). so i went and got a shovel and tried to catch or kill as many as i could and also removed the large nest they'd put down there. next to it laying on the cement was a dead shrew. for some reason they didn't eat it. perhaps they were waiting for a different day but it all got scooped into a bucket and at the same time i'm trying to get any mice that are running around and get them in the bucket.

so i pound on the AC unit to see if i can shake any out of there and one comes running out and jumps into the crawlspace entrance and i happen to have the bucket there so it jumped right into the bucket.

after a few more moments of trying to make sure i've got them all killed before i go dump the bucket back out on the far corner weed pile then i tromp over and get that dumped back out.

ok, so back to shovelling, i also make sure to shovel around that back crawlspace entrance so i can set some traps later. and then i shovel.

a nice day really, not too windy and the sun shine is out. cold, but that's ok. i'm getting it all shovelled. hoping the sun will melt off any remaining snow that is still left on there. no, it was too cold out today for that, but perhaps tomorrow will get more of it to melt off there. tonight it is all sublimating directly into the air. it's cold out there... 19F and heading down to 10F at some point tonight.

after getting back inside and starting back in on where i was at before i was told about the mouse tracks in the snow. i got some pictures edited and then realized that i should write a program to do some of the coding that i've in the past been doing by hand. off down that rabbit hole i go for an hour or two and it's done and working so then i'm back to finishing up the first round of the squash page.

i'll add more to it eventually but for now this is good enough:

Squash | Anthive

My adventures in the squash patches...

www.anthive.com

if it weren't so late i'd want a nap...

 

[flowerbug]

checked traps this morning. brr! no action for any of the six mouse traps i set so perhaps the mice all went back to their original home which is on the berm. if they stay there and away from the AC and the crawlspace entrance that's fine with me. when it warms up later or later this week i'll have to pop the control panel cover off to make sure there's no nest in there.

 

[flowerbug]

again no disturbance in the traps i set. still haven't opened up the AC unit panel to see if there's a nest in there or not.

instead i'm being a wimp today and playing with my new toy which replaces my previous toy that lasted over 23 years. it's a battery backup and power surge protector which keeps things running smoother here during power outages or fluctuations.

i've wanted a watt meter for years but just not ever remembering to buy one when i'm out and about. so this new unit does tell me how many watts something is drawing. so i've saved myself a few $ by not having to buy one of those now too.

all told my current desktop system draws 49 watts for normal internet browsing (that includes the internet connection, display, cpu, memory, keyboard and one tiny fan which sits on the heat sink for the cpu). if i want to play music that runs me another 10 watts. pretty amazing to me considering how much sound i get out of these speakers but also what i can do in general. the power draw will go up if i'm watching videos but that's not too often i'm doing a lot of that.

i have another gadget on the way which may mean that we can get rid of another gadget that is showing signs of age. a turn table for CDs that holds 300 disks. it has worked for many years and i can probably find parts and maybe even fix it to run another so many years, but for all of a few $ i can get this Bluetooth transmitter that will let me connect to the main stereo unit and then i can pipe music to that system from this one and we can free up the space the disk changer is taking up. i hope it works.

winter is a good time to do things like this and better yet are the days after Christmas when some things go on sale.

 

[Ridgerunner]

i have another gadget on the way which may mean that we can get rid of another gadget that is showing signs of age. a turn table for CDs that holds 300 disks. it has worked for many years and i can probably find parts and maybe even fix it to run another so many years, but for all of a few $ i can get this Bluetooth transmitter that will let me connect to the main stereo unit and then i can pipe music to that system from this one and we can free up the space the disk changer is taking up. i hope it works.

We were faced with that kind of decision lately. The new technology is wireless, using wires for many things is dated, it's so last week. I don't know how long current technology will be "the" technology but we are going with wireless speakers. We haven't got them yet by but the replacements will be wireless.