On Tuesday morning, after I’d finished the week’s laundry and washing the winter clothes, and put the laundry away, I headed outside at 7:30AM. The first thing I noticed was it looked like the directional on the passenger side of the car was on. That was weird.
On closer examination, I realized it was reflecting something. I finally looked up in the sky and saw the sun a glowing orange, very weird. We’d had fog earlier but this didn’t look right. Off and on during the day, I noticed these odd reflections on things.
It wasn’t until late afternoon I found out the smoke, now from Quebec, had covered the area. We were on the very eastern edge of it, which may be why I didn’t smell smoke and it didn’t seem to bother my breathing any.
The goal on Tuesday was to finish mulching the ⅓ of the Big garden we’d gotten planted. My new helper showed up at 8AM and we mulched. She planted the parsley my general helper had found for me. We found some of the carrots up and more of the peas.
My helper friend arrived at 9:30AM and all of us mulched until it ran out. My new helper can’t be in the sun after 10AM and as I was going to set her to work in the barn, she wanted to get a respirator for working in dusty areas. So she went off in search of a respirator and came back with one an hour later.
I got her started in the barn and went back to mulching. My helper friend and I went to the barn and loaded another truckload of hay and finished the mulching of the ⅓ area.
Then we started to lay out the rest of the garden. I quickly found I couldn’t do the middle part because of the discrepancy of where the hollyhocks actually are vs where the map said. It would have to be redrawn. So we started from the south (driveway) end and worked north as far as we could go.
He cleaned up the tools, etc while I went up to check on the new helper.
Her first big job was to clean out the dead freezer. There’s still no water so it couldn’t be washed out, but she shop vac’d it really well. She asked if she could have all the very old grain for her chickens. I warned her that feeding nutrient deficient food to chickens could impair their health and production but she wanted it to feed as “snacks”. (serious brainfog, can’t remember the right word…) (later remembered: scratch)
She had also used a broom and the shop vacs to get the dust and cobwebs off the walls and beams. That made 4 sections of 7 finished.
I went up to the house to get a shower as we would be heading to the Registry for the 3rd time. She had finished up and we brought the grain to her car and put it in as there were threats of rain. (Didn’t happen.)
East Shed peony
I’d forgotten to plan lunch so we stopped at the market and I grabbed food and ate in the car. The Registry had 1 person ahead of me when I got there but then there was an hour wait to see a person. It almost seemed as though there was going to be another problem but it was solved and I walked out with the plates and a sticker good for 2 years.
East Shed peony has seldom flowered but now there are 3 open…
I put the new plates on and we went home. It was 2:30PM and I was exhausted. I tried to nap but there was one thing or another. My brother called and we decided to splurge on Chinese food as I was too tired to cook.
I was in bed by 7:30PM, too tired to wait until 8PM.
On Wednesday, I should be out working in the garden but it will depend on how I am doing when I get up. I might just finish up the bills/budget mess in my office. Tom will be by in the evening with the milk order and our cream for butter, before he heads out on Thursday for his 2 week vacation.