A week of fun

Ok, so Mary and I have really strange definitions of "fun." Moving manure around the house to build topsoil for the garden beds, in January, even when the warm weather goes away, could be considered "strange" by some people's standards. Not us! No, we enjoy that kind of thing! Which really must confound my parents, who had to practically threaten me with bodily harm to get me to do chores when I was still living at their house!

But since it has turned colder, Mary has the painting going in the living room and dining room. She is really good at it, and is flying around the room, prepping, cutting-in, and rolling. She has the same "painting clothes" that she has been using for all the other painting projects, and they have served her well. You can really tell what those are used for! Anyway, the painting should be done soon, and we will have our living room back and our dining room. That will be a good thing.

I was outside this morning, not with any real projects to accomplish, but with just pre-snowstorm cleaning up. Stuff like, bringing the snow shovels down from the shed, getting the wood chips ready for the sidewalk, and general tidying up of the gardens that I hadn't had a chance to do with other projects taking priority.

On the wood chips for the sidewalk. We use wood chips instead of salt, or ice-melt, because we can reuse wood chips, wood chips don't contaminate the garden like salt does, salt hurts the Chesapeake Bay, and wood chips float to the top of the ice and refreeze, leaving a non-skid surface to walk on. Also wood chips when frozen into the snow, allow for slip-free walking. A much better environmental choice. Oh, and did I mention that wood chips were cheaper!

I don't envy Kyle and his scout troop this weekend. Seems they had a camping trip out at Quantico Marine Base both Friday and Saturday nights. I don't know if they managed to stay warm or not, but I'm sure they had an interesting time of it!

Today's hot January 22nd meal is Vegetable soup. This is an easy favorite of mine, because I clean out the fridge and the freezer and toss things into a pot, then open a few cans to round out what I have. This kind of soup is never the same twice. Today's soup has leftover greens from the garden, carrots, half a container of frozen onion gravy, a tubby of rice, some cooked wheat berries from last week, a can of corn, a can of kidney beans, a can of tomatoes that I puree to make the soup creamier, and some squash from the big freezer downstairs. I spice it up and add some vegetable bullion to it to give it some more body. Who says there isn't anything for vegetarians to eat? Yummy!