Simple Pleasures

    As much as I enjoyed babysitting Lance and Luna this past week it was very nice to come home again. I spent most of the day doing pleasant chores such as tending the garden and the animals, splitting wood, and working my bees.  As is often the case, I'm running a bit behind with both the bees and the garden.  I need to get the rest of my honey off, get the bees fed up for winter, and do some fall mite treatments. Its been a very busy summer.

    I also spent a few hours today (Monday 9/5/11) with my friend Quentin retrieving some free carpet from another friend in Woodinville. We're going to replace some of our carpet upstairs and install carpeting downstairs whereever Grandma Cozy would like to have carpet.  Its a real good quality berber carpet and looks brand new.

   My pile of wood to be split is mainly from the Smith Street Mill in Everett.  They are currently milling poplar logs to make pallets for California citrus fruit. For some reason pine and fir pallets are not acceptable for citrus fruits. They have to cut the logs off at certain lengths for them to go through the mill which results in a lot of small pieces that they sell off for firewood.  The current rate is $20.00 for about a half cord of wood. I currently have about one cord split and another cord to be split.  I'm planning to get a fireplace insert for our living room so our firewood usage will hopefully increase this winter.

   My saurkraut is progressing nicely.  I will probably be bottling it while Linda is gone to Maryland.  The only other canning project in the hopper at present is 25 pounds of beets that still need to be pickled.