Wildflower area in September
On Tuesday morning I was up around 6AM and got the post up. Then I cleaned up the kitchen.
I hadn’t cleaned up from dehydrating the Walla onions, so I got all the trays and mats washed up. The Wallas have a lot of sugar, and if things aren’t washed after using, bacteria and mold will grow, especially in this humidity.
Once I finished that I went in and started folding laundry. My brother came downstairs at 8AM and reminded me he was going to CT to stay with my mom for a couple days.
I had asked him to help me with making and hanging the hangers in the pantry for the onions. So he got the board cut lengthwise for me and we were trying to find the ceiling joists to screw it into. We thought we’d more or less found them and he headed out.
So I collected all the tools I’d need, and started making sure the joists were where we thought. I took a finish nail and poked holes in the area. I found the 2 end ones no problem.
But the center one was a problem. I went to the computer and looked through all the photos I had taken during construction.
It clearly showed the joist running through the center of the window overhead. The stud finder said it was there. Knocking said it was there.
But each one of this 6” line of holes did not find it. So I gave up. I contacted my contractor, who was now back from Maine, and asked if he had time to come sort this problem.
I had just enough time to get ready for the day when my helper friend arrived at 9:30AM. He went out and picked the cabbage that had split on Friday. (On Tuesday last week, all 3 cabbages were fine.) He said a second one had split also, so we decided to do both of them.
I got the batch from last week and started decanting it into quart jars. I had to stop every so often to QC the parts he’d pulled off the cabbages. Once we filled the bowl with one I weighed it. It was 6.30 lbs. The second cabbage hadn’t split as badly and it came in at 7.70 lbs. So we had 14 lbs of cabbage to process.
New Herb garden in mid September
He started chopping and I had tared a bowl to weigh the chopped cabbage. We did 2 batches of 5 lbs and got them each into a gallon jar. The remaining cabbage came in at 3.75 lbs so I figured out the salt for that amount and he got that into a ½ gallon jar and the leftover into a pint jar.
When he cut one of the cabbages, he found 2 tiny new cabbages growing on the stem, so he brought them in. They made a pretty green area on one of the bowls.
I got the decanted batch into the fridge and then cleaned up the kitchen again. My helper friend had to leave.
I was so worn out by then. I just sat and rested until the contractor showed up at 3:30PM.
He had brought a very strong magnet and was able to find the screwheads on the strapping that crossed the joists. We drew a line between them and with a long ice pick, he finally found the stud. It was a good 3” to the right of my line of holes, not where either the photo or anything put it.
So in the end the hangers were up much more neatly than I could have done it and good and solid.
But I was far too tired to deal with the onions. That would be done on Wednesday. I just got the mess cleaned up.
Also on Wednesday I hope to finish folding the laundry and get it put away. I have phone calls I must make and I have an extensive health insurance application to start filling out. That ought to do me in.