My Darling B's Garden

Peas marching along the fence line of My Darling B's garden.

She planted them some weeks ago and already some (not in this photo) are beginning to blossom, which makes B squeal with delight in anticipation of fresh peas for the kitchen.

A Weekend Made For Gardening

Even with the rain we've had, it's been just about the perfect weekend for gardening.

My Darling B's been out in it all day today, weeding, planting, tilling and watering, to say nothing of how much mud she's tracked into the house.

This photo unfortunately can't show you much. You'll simply have to take my word for it that there are legions of onions, tomatoes, peas, lettuce and broccoli marching across these fields. To the left, just in front of B, you can make out a small portion of this year's crop of garlic, almost as high as B's waist and growing higher every day.

First Batch

If the recipe I followed doesn't fail me, it'll be dandelion wine in six to twelve months. We have a lot of dandelions, so we figured we ought to make good use of at least some of them. We had to pick and de-petal probably five hundred dandelion blossoms to make the gallon you see here.

I pitched the yeast into this batch last night and fermentation's already begun, so it's off to a good start. Too bad we have to wait so long to see if it works out. Meantime, we're planning our next batch, so we'll have more than one gallon jug waiting to be sampled come the snows of November.

Not looking forward to plucking all those tiny little petals off again, though.

Weekend visit to the farmer's market

My Darling B hasn't even begun to plant tomatoes in her garden, but there are plenty to be had at the Dane County Farmer's Market.

Flowers around the yard

We have wood violets in our lawn. Not sure how they got there; like the Creeping Charlie and the Begonias, we inherited them when we bought the house. They only last for a week or so in the spring but they sure are pretty.

Sign of Spring: B's in the garden

My Darling B finally got some time to take her roto-tiller into the garden after work today and get almost half the plot turned over, while the dandelions looked on and trembled.

Those guys knew what they were talking about

"The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free."

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #8

Our First Trip To The Market This Season

My Darling B hands over the veggies she's selected for purchase at the Dane County Farmer's Market.

The market had beautiful weather for its first day back on the square. B has been counting the days for its return since about Christmas.

Family Night with the O-Folk

Just so it's not all about plumbing and painting, here's My Darling B making Philly cheese steak sandwiches for dinner. They were awesome!

Adventures In Plumbing

My Darling B caught me seated before the kitchen plumbing as I was putting a new blade in my hacksaw.

"Oh-oh, it's time for the cursing to start!" she observed.

"Can't do it without lots of cursing," I answered, and got to work.

Adventures In Plumbing

Here's what I was finally getting around to fixing: I cobbled together this drain pipe from pieces I had on hand when I discovered that I wouldn't be able to install the sink disposal, as I thought I could when I put in the new sink back in December.

Although the drain worked fine, but My Darling B wanted her disposal once again. My task was to figure out how to give her one.

Adventures In Plumbing

And here's why I was unable to attach the disposal in the first place: The sink's drain ended up directly over the sewer pipe, which sticks out from the wall so far that the butt-end of the disposal would be in the same spot, spatially, that the sewer pipe is now occupying. So I had to cobble together the Rube Goldberg drain pipe while I mustered the motivation to do what had to be done.

Today, I finally had my motivation ready to do the job.

Adventures In Plumbing

I decided the best fix was to saw off the end of the sewer pipe, leaving about two inches still sticking out from the wall.

There's probably a good reason for leaving so much pipe sticking out. If you know anything about plumbing, you're probably wincing right now, thinking, "Don't do it!" Well, it's too late. I know nothing about plumbing and I'm not calling a plumber to fix this thing.

As you can see, I had a bit of a problem finding the room to get in there to do the job. I had to knock out a partition, then ask My Darling B to pull all the mixing bowls out of the cupboard because by this time my hands were covered in muck. Finally, I yanked a shelf out and crawled into the cupboard so I had the reach and the angle I needed to hack away at the pipe.

After working behind a desk for three years, I've gotten flabby and have no stamina for this kind of thing any more. It took me three-quarters of an hour to saw that damned pipe off. The last quarter-inch took at least fifteen minutes. If I ever have to do this again, I'm going to put in a request with the chief financial officer to buy the power tool that does this.

Adventures In Plumbing

I had planned to reuse the old disposal. It seemed to work just fine, but its butt end was so big that the base of it still crowded up against the sewer pipe even after I cut the end of the pipe short.

I would have to either cut some more off the sewer pipe, or I could drive down to the hardware store to see if they had a smaller unit. Hmmm. That's a tough one.

This unit was a little bit smaller, and it was made in the USA. All the rest were made in China. I've heard the Chinese have fallen on hard times over there, but so have we, and I'd rather keep Americans employed, or whoever it is in America that's making these things. Damn, got up on my soap box without even noticing. Sorry about that.

The butt end of this unit still crowded the sewer pipe, but there was enough flex in the rubber adapter to make room for the disposal.

Just FYI: I managed to get through this entire project without cussing, a first for me.

Pedaling Through Monona

On my morning pedal through Monona I spotted this lakeside home. With its second story and guest house on the shore it must've been considered big in its day, but it's receded down the ranks to become a quaint little cottage. Sandwiched on either side by bulked-out lakeside homes, the day when a buyer looking to build his trophy home and sees this as his teardown cannot be too far in the future.

Seth Thomas 1960 mantle clock

The nifty old Seth Thomas mantle clock I picked up this morning at St Vincent de Paul's thrift shop.

For a 40-year-old cheap electric clock it's in remarkably good condition, except that I can't get the motor to run, which has a bit of a negative impact on a clock's usefulness.

With luck I can find a replacement. I don't want to replace the movement because that would mean losing the chimes.

Seth Thomas 1960 mantle clock

This is the balky motor that keeps my nifty old clock from running. It defies all my efforts to break it down. I don't think it's made to be taken apart at all, just thrown out & replaced, but I don't know what to search for as it has no identifying marks other than the legend, "Made in Canada."

I've been promising My Darling B a new shelf for her photos ever since we moved in. She had a pair of store-bought shelves before, but they were just awful so I stuffed them into a corner of the basement where even I can't find them. Then I procrastinated for almost three years.

But I finally bought the lumber for a new set of shelves two weeks ago, cut them, sanded them and fixed the parts together. I'd been waiting for a warm weekend to stain them, so I could open the windows, but weather that's warm enough for that doesn't seem to be forthcoming, so I just went ahead and did it. The fumes weren't as bad as I thought ... or maybe they were, and I'm too brain-damaged to realize it.

Worse Than Useless

A work bench that's cluttered with junk is worse than no bench at all. I don't have places to put a lot of the little junk, though, a problem I dealth with this morning.

I got a few of these at the hardware store months ago, to try them out. They're handy because I can throw stuff in them, I can easily see what's in each one, and they clip to hangers on the wall so I can take them down to use them, or to rearrange them.

Since they worked so well, I went back to the store this morning and bought more. Didn't quite count all my fingers, though, and shorted myself one hanger and two bins.