Nine's Bootcamp Experience (BRK)

#108

Today we went into town to visit with urgent care and run errands.

Urgent care went really quickly. The aide was stoked I'd prepped my ears from my attempts yesterday, and it made her job of flushing them easy. In and out of there in about 30 minutes. Positively unheard of. I'll take it. Now I can hear properly again.

After that we went to Ace Hardware and picked up the battery for the chainsaw. FINALLY. It's not the extra AH battery we wanted, but it'll do. Ate lunch at a park, then headed over to the other store where we bought the chainsaw originally to get a gift card for 20% off the cost of the battery. It's a long story. Anyways, got a gift card, bought a bow saw and Chris got a new hat. He's achieving his Coyote Peterson-look a little more every day.

That done, got some groceries and headed out of town. Whew. Today's visit ended on a positive note. The last store we went to was not teeming with people. It was relatively painless to do all the things. Solid day so far.

Got home and I got a hankering to go lop up the currant plant and see about makin' some babies. One of the branches was relatively light on berries and already crooked-looking, so I dug a shallow indent under it, laid it in, and buried that section of the branch, allowing the rest of it to continue out of the soil and onto doing its thing. I'll need to point it out to Kyle so we can both remember to water it a bit more judiciously at that point to encourage rooting. Might also add a bit more soil media to it on Monday just to ensure it stays down and is adequately covered.

Then I decided to try some green cuttings. Some of the branches are more vertical than horizontal and aren't producing berries at the moment. I lopped two of those and put those babies in some honey/cinnamon water to see if they'll root. A couple got placed with a houseplant or two to try a couple different methods all at the same time. 4 got planted in my garden patch after being in honey water, 2 potted inside, and the rest (6?) in honey/cinnamon water inside FPH/Library. I'll let you know if/how they develop.

After that and in between laundry, I tried out my new macro lens! It's pretty dang cool. I'm able to see so much inside the small flowers here. I took a walk to try to see how many flowers I could find and take pictures. I think at some point I'll do a garden video to show y'all how nice the garden is shaping up. Is that something you'd be interested in seeing?

Whoa! Those are some really nice pictures you took. Would love to hear about what kind of lenses you got to do that with?

So glad to read you got the proper care for your ears. Sending good thoughts and vibes your way!

Jen Tuuli wrote: I think at some point I'll do a garden video to show y'all how nice the garden is shaping up. Is that something you'd be interested in seeing?

YES!  Great pics Jen.  Someday I'll have to learn how to use a camera...I take great bigfoot quality pics though

Liv Smith wrote:Whoa! Those are some really nice pictures you took. Would love to hear about what kind of lenses you got to do that with?

So glad to read you got the proper care for your ears. Sending good thoughts and vibes your way!

Here is the lens kit that I got. It's surprisingly inexpensive but gives good pictures. The plant and I have to stand really still to get a non-blurry picture. 😂 The focal range is really short, so if either of us waver it's a little out of focus.

And thank you! 😊

#109

Cleaning this morning then out to the plot.

We were going to go out and cut down some small, dead-standing trees for bed slats, but instead we found some old logs on the plot that worked well enough and they've been off the ground so they're not rotted through. Neat. We took turns splitting logs - got five logs split. Our new wedges worked pretty dang well! It would be nice to have a couple more, so next time I'm in town I may pick them up.

Then I used a draw knife to smooth out the flat split side. I really need to set up those bodgering poles. Got tired of that, so I grabbed my hatchet and whacked away at it for a while. We got them kinda flat and smooth-ish. Placed them on the bed rails, then awkwardly laid down. Yeah, we're gonna need to flatten these more. I think we may try to make a straw mattress of sorts to go down on top of the logs, then put a regular mattress on top of that until we figure out a better mattress to sleep on.

Took a break from lying uncomfortably on the bed frame to go over to Cooper and have dinner with Kyle and J&J. Kyle showed me where they'd been harvesting mushrooms, which is pretty rad. I checked on the raspberry over there to see how it was doing. It needs some love. A couple old branches need lopping and I'd like to prop it as well to make more raspberry babies, so I'll probably be coming back to it to tend it and bend it.

Went back to our plot after dinner. Chris continued to work on flattening the ends of the slats so they'd sit more evenly on the rails. I went around with my sickle and sliced up a bunch of grass for mulch. I have quite a few seedlings coming up from when I did little rows down the hillside on the random mound by my stone stairs. At some point I'll need to restructure that mound and plant things in the middle I don't care about or won't need to harvest, then can use the edges as the garden. As it is, it's too wide for me to reach far into it to harvest anything (fingers crossed I have to struggle to harvest things this year because there's so much in the way!). Maybe one of my apple babies will be viable and can go in the middle and be the centerpiece. Who knows. If you have ideas, let's hear it. Could just be pollinator bushes/plants. I'm into that. I'd like it to be something with some height because it just seems like it needs that in there.

Anyways, I'm tuckered and tomorrow's gonna come really quickly. Hope y'all had a good weekend!