No Pics Today

I can't believe how busy I've been. This is a good thing, I think. First of all, we're still in the process of "Mission Organization." If any of you are not familiar with the show on HGTV, a professional organizer comes in and "does" a particularly chaotic/messy/unusable room. Well, to be honest, if feels like my whole house is a collection of chaotic/messy/unusable rooms. Or should I put that in the past-tense.

Friday night, Tim and I spent 3 hours in the basement, moving things around, throwing stuff out and transferring things from cardboard boxes to clear, plastic storage bins. Now, I'm probably more green conscious than most folks, and hate using a lot of plastics, but sometimes...ya just have to bite the bullet. Or, at least I did. Sorting, organizing and labeling is going to make my life much easier down the road, and I'm all for that.

Riding on the wave of accomplishment from the basement work on Friday, we tackled the kitchen and hall closet on Saturday. This was really enlightening. We realized that when we moved into this place we never intended to stay this long. In fact, we only intended to stay one year, and it's already been two, and we've decided to stay for a third. But because of that intention, we never really unpacked. We, sort of, set up camp; unpacking only essentials, but leaving many things packed away.

This has been good and bad. There are things I've missed (like my mother's fruit bowl, which has been found and upacked) and things I haven't. A HUGE bag of stuff went to Goodwill. Another bag of stuff is in Tim's car, going to Goodwill.

I discovered many plastic containers that had no lids, as well as many lids that had no containers. They do not match. I do not know how this happened. It has been fixed.

The other issue was canning jars. We do a lot of canning, and use stuff up throughout the year. Unfortunately our current kitchen doesn't have a lot of storage, and clean canning jars tend not to have a place. We now have a "canning jar depot" (read plastic bin) in the hall closet that can hold clean canning jars before a load of them can get downstairs sorted and stored.


It's all been pretty amazing. I know all of this attention to home means something, but I'm not sure what.


The other big issue is the neighbor's dog. Don't get me wrong. I like dogs...to a point. Really, I'm a cat person, but I'm okay with dogs. In fact, I'm pretty sure my problem is with the neighbor, not the dog...because these people insist on letting their dog pee in my garden. Fortunately not on the veggies, but in the front on the impatiens. Impatiens do not like dog urine. I have big holes of rotted impatien stems.

So, this morning, I went out and purchased replacement impatiens. I also purchased one of those hose attachments that you can use for plant food. I filled this with a small amount of peppermint soap, as the basic nature of soap should dilute some of the acid in the urine. Next, I'm going to sprinkle a mixture of cayenne pepper and flour. The next time someone comes sniffing around, he will get a snootful of cayenne. That should solve the problem without doing harm to the dog...annoying yes...harmful, no.

There are 8 lbs of cucumbers and 4 lbs of onions being salted in the kitchen in preparation for bread and butter pickles, which will get up up tonight. Canning season is definitely underway!!! Next come the peaches, then tomatoes. I adore this time of year. Unfortunately all this canning and organization doesn't leave that much time for fiber, but, well, such is life.

Well, I think that's all the news that's fit to print. Off to poke at the cucumbers.