stubbed toes and mud pies

[Marie2020]

Does anyone know what spider this is. I've never seen one like it before it's got a Web outside attached to my washing line

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

Maybe the spotted orb spider they usually come out this time of year.

 

[Marie2020]

Maybe the spotted orb spider they usually come out this time of year.

Do they bite?
I couldn't get over that cross on it's body

Thanks for your reply

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

More orb info to help answer your question.

 

[flowerbug]

went out today to pick beans still not dried down but wanted to get them harvested before they got frosted. i had a full five gallon bucket for each of two rows in that garden and said it was enough and left the rest (two more rows) out there to fend for themselves against tonight's frost. i came inside and took a break and then started shelling them thinking i was going to shell out both buckets tonight and then cook them tomorrow morning.

i got part way through filling a bowl and figured perhaps i should check the freezer to see if there was any room for all these cooked beans. um, nope, no room at all in there.

change of plans. cook bowl of beans i have done shelling tomorrow morning and eat them in the next week and then take all the rest of them and spread them out to finish drying. i'm not sure the quality of the beans will be good or not, but we'll try. it's not what i want to do but i also don't like wasting good food so... this is one time when a pressure canner would come in handy. no i still won't get one...

i also picked a bucket and a half of peppers. there were quite a few (a hundred or more) smaller peppers on the plants left over - they get to be worm food as tonight will probably finish off the plants.

 

[flowerbug]

some nice things came to me this past week and today too.

i steel and a sharpening stone for knives. both things i've wanted for a long time and was looking for. a friend was having a yard sale and hardly anything moved so he was going to donate it to the resell shops. i asked him if he had anything for sharpening knives and he said he had a handheld hard wheel steel type of sharpener and i already have one of those but then later on he called back and said he had the steel and i gladly accepted that and in the meantime before Mom picked it up from him he found the sharpening stone. i told him i would remember him and his father (who's they were) and think of them each time i used them. yippee!

then today Mom came home with a few things and included in those were a pair of heat resistant oven gloves (not mittens!). i've wanted this sort of thing for so long and have burned myself enough that it keeps coming up during canning season most of the time and then i forget about it until next year. but also Mom could also probably benefit from using them for her baking. not sure she'll use them but we'll try... they feel fantastic to my touch (an important thing to me is texture and feel of fabrics).

so now the only thing remaining on my want and shopping list is a pair of good binoculars since my previous ones broke (they weren't that good to begin with).

simple things that make me happy.

 

[flowerbug]

did some more cleaning up of gardens today, just enough to get me some exercise but not too much. cleared out some dry bean pods shells, and other food scraps and garden debris i'd set aside to bury. glad to have more space back in my room and in the garage and the fridge.

 

[flowerbug]

Friday i was finally able to get the bare boards stained to match the rest of the house and restained the cover for the crawlspace entrance. they weren't too bad looking as they were but they'd needed to be done since we put them up and the crawlspace entrance was peeling some and Mom used some old stain to go over it and it didn't match so it looked wrong.

it wasn't too bad of a job to do, it took me more time to get the ladder and stuff out and cleanup afterwards to put it back than it did to do the job at hand. now it is nice to finally have it done.

the afternoon was warm and i got a few more gardens mostly done to be ready for w*nt*r i just have to go back and look for weeds that need to be removed and they aren't too bad so that should only take me about an hour today.

that may have been the warmest day we'll have for quite some time. rains in the forecast for tonight and the next day at least. i hope we get a good soaking rain, we really need it.

 

[Dahlia]

We have a lot of raccoons too. Last week during the day I was walking past my sliding glass door and there was the mom raccoon and 2 babies lined up side by side lookin in my glass door.

We get racoon visits occasionally too! They are such interesting creatures to watch. Their movements are so graceful when they go along, it's almost like they are halfway floating!

 

[flowerbug]

with all the activity out back i wondered if i'd hear from the neighbors and then the other day they mowed the field again to the south.

heard from them today about what is coming up this week and plans sound ok to me. *whew!* hopefully i've headed off a further disaster, but i'm not sure the guy who will be plowing the field will listen to me at all if i can catch him when he's doing it. markers are out there and i was told it is ok if i move them. if they can turn it all under and get some better cover growing then it will be better and plus i won't have to mow it any more but i'm sure there will be some selective weeding and thistles to deal with (we talked about those).

also talked about how their pond redig went, ditches, drainage, water flows, erosion and some drone pictures.

a good conversation and i'll try to be hopeful...