Spring is here, sort of!

The trees don't seem to have been too badly hurt by the late winter/early spring storm last week, as I've looked closely and most are still starting to leaf out finally. I can hardly wait until it's green around here. As for the week, it's been short at work (Friday off for Good Friday), but busy. Long days at the plant, followed by coming home and doing what I could, scrapping some more junk, and just general fiddling around with various projects, trying to get done whatever I could while I had daylight and some warmth. The weather's finally clearing up, becoming more springlike, with highs in the 70F range, but mornings are still a bit cool in the 40F range, and rain every morning the last few days. The rains have cleared up by lunchtime, leaving me time after work to do things around here till daylight ends or I run out of energy, whichever comes first.

I finally got my "solar clothes dryer," aka the clothesline, strung up. I'm not overly fond of the utility pulleys I'm forced to use, as nobody locally seems to have clothesline pulleys, even the hardware store for nearly everything else, Milller's in Harrison. They have darned near everything else I can think of that even Home Depot and Wal-Mart don't have, or the hardware store in Green Forest (which also has a bigger home store in Harrison), or the several dollar stores. Sometimes, you just can't win for losing. I couldn't get it hung up on the side of the house as high as I wanted; I'm just too short at only a bit over five feet tall, so stuff kind of nearly drags the deck, but in good weather, it'll be better than having to spend money at the laundromat to wash AND dry. It's bad enough having to wash there, as betweenn gas and the cost of the washer, it's a bit ridiculous after a while. Later on, I am going to get a couple of washtubs to use, and a wringer and all, so I can do it at home. It may be old-fashioned, but hot water here is free, more or less, and I figured that once I get to that point, I'll save over US$1000 a year between gas and washer and dryer to do laundry every week. When you can save that much doing it at home "the hard way," which often turns out to be the easier way, I am all for it. "Labor-saving devices" be darned, the old-fashioned ways of doing things can be so much more fun and cheaper.

Same for food - my garden will eventually save me a ton of money on groceries with growing my own. It may cost to get started, but like anything else on a homestead, that investment is a long-term job, something you can't put a real price on, or a time limit. Speaking of food, all those peach pits I saved from last summer and kept frozen in the freezer finally thawed out enough that I could see about getting them planted. I had been saving my little plastic cartons from my juice drink mix that I use for work (it's not the greatest, but it's cheap and reasonably healthy for a commercial product), so I drilled drainage holes in them and planted my peach seeds in there. I know, you're supposed to grow fruit trees on grafted rootstock, or from a scion, or etc., not the seed, but it's something I've wanted to do for a while to see what might happen. So what the heck.

I read something recently about seeds that I found interesting, and I'd never thought of it that way before, geek that I am. What was written was that seeds are nature's own nanotechnology. Each little seed carries within it all the genetic information to grow another plant, from roots to stems to leaves, and even to producing more seeds through whatever method the plant used to reproduce itself. Seeds growing have always amazed me in how they do what they do, but thinking of it that way really brought home to  me in a new way just how utterly amazing Nature is in how She manages to make things reproduce.

Other things that got done this week include a lot of scrapping that brought in a bit of cash, I got a solar shower bag so I can have showers again (and a bathmat for the shower now that it's scrubbed clean enough to use), and the last of that old tool shed is down and out to the trailer. It's kind of breezy right now in spurts, and I don't want pieces flying out of the trailer before I get a big enough load to scrap again, so I grabbed one of the old tires laying around here and tossed it on top of the pile to hold it down. I planned on getting more done this weekend than I did, but errands took up a lot of time, and honestly, Friday I wanted to spend goofing off because I don't often get a whole weekday of no work to do whatever. (Bad girl that I am, I spent it sleeping in because I darned well felt like it lol.)

When I dragged the pieces of the toolshed up to the trailer, I made sure to make the return trips NOT be empty-handed. With all the junk soda cans laying around here, I would take some of the toolshed to the trailer, and on the trip back for more, I'd grab some cans and toss them in the can trashcan up by the deck, so that it cleared up a bit more junk. It doesn't make a whole big dent in things, but everything that makes even a small dent is a big thing. And my solar shower ... well, I grant Coleman isn't the greatest in everything, but if you have to camp out in your house, essentially, Coleman makes some really good camping products. And this thing is amazing. Three hours in the sun and you have five gallons of extremely hot water for a shower, or for doing dishes.

Someone's dumped a cat on my place that's hanging around out back by the Fleetwood and Merlot, and it's not friendly enough or comfortable enough to come up to the house and let me near it. It doesn't look in very good health, so I borrowed a Hav-A-Hart trap to try to catch it. So far, all I've caught is a skunk, who wasn't too happy to be in there, though the DNR was happy to come get it to relocate it to the local woods down the road for me without me getting sprayed. I cannot afford to go to work smelling like stinky skunk, lol!!!

Oh yeah, and I finally got to use my little chainsaw!!!!!!! The weather's been good enough in the afternoon when I get home so that Thursday I got to get out and cut up some wood that has just been laying around and needing cutting to woodstove size, so I got some of that done, too. As you can all tell, I have been pretty busy this week now that weather is clearing up. And every day that it's good weather, I'm out there working even after work. So till next week, Gentle Readers, I'm going to be staying as busy as I can and seeing what other kind of trouble I can get into around here!

ADDENDUM: Just had to try out that solar shower for kicks, and did the water my usual way for the sponge bathing I've had to deal with for the last eight months. Three gallons, half boiling, half room-temp to bring it down to reasonably warm enough to deal with, without scalding myself, hang up the bag, and a hot shower ensued. Oh. My. God. Pure sybaritic delight. Despite doing it as a "Navy shower," where you turn the water on to get wet, off to lather up and on again to rinse, that three gallons on medium lasted me a full ten minutes of hot water delight. If you haven't got running water but you have enough sunshine to warm up the bag, or even if you have to heat up the water yourself first, this is a MUST for survival if you have to camp in your house, lol. Hint the first: To get the thing open for filling, lay it across your lap and pull on the tab for the cover on the filler opening. Hint the second: A funnel works really well for getting the water in without spilling. (Discovered that one without a problem, the funnel was handy and it just sparked the idea.) Hint the second: If you heat up the water in a pot (also discovered without burning myself), use a smaller saucepan to dip the water out of the bigger pot to pour into the bag in panfuls ... much easier than trying to lift the whole freaking stockpot full of nearly two gallons of boiling water by far.