Hello all you city folks that are dazzlingly jealous of my fresh crisp laundry! No ironing needed, btw!
This is the clothes-line that my sweet lover built for me. I’ve been wanting one for years and have had the wires hung up at different places, just draped here and there. It looked a little like white-trash (BTDT…. lol!) but I don’t care. It is sure nice to let the clothes dry in 45 minutes of clean, fresh, desert air, than it is to let them dry in 45 minutes of either our previous electric or now gas heated dryer. IT’S SO SO MUCH NICER.
So, we’ve been her for a few years without a line and I threatened to wrap the wires around the vinyl posts of the back patio. I threatened more than once or twice but never did it. This set-up with the poles is much nicer and won’t damage the posts. I’m thankful Wes had the time and materials to do some welding. Doesn’t it look great!?
The down-side to not having a manicured lawn is that if the wind blows any clothes off the line they get PRETTY dirty on the dusty, sandy ground. We do get some gusts too. Twice the wind has lifted our trampoline off the ground and set it down somewhere else. Yeah, I know! Unbelievable! I’m totally serious though. And yes it’s a full-sized trampoline.
So! I was thinking today about the things we buy out of convenience, since I don’t need dryer sheets anymore. I wondered how many things we could really do without, make do with what we have, or make ourselves with our already available resources. Such as lotion, shampoo, soap, laundry detergent, paper towels, tissue, and toilet and other paper products for the home. I wondered how difficult it would be to incorporate more cloth items like feminine pads and diapers and baby wipes.
This laundry line is a baby step toward being more efficient with our resources, and more self-sufficient. I have many plans in the works and will share them as I go. Thanks for reading and pop in again.
Here’s the flower bed I put in a few summers ago. The irises are doing well. I’m really pleased with the way it’s turning out. Later in the summer the sage bushes will be flowering the prettiest dusky purple with honey bees buzzing all over it. I love it!
This is the trellis that Wes built for me for Mother’s Day last year. Shame on me! I haven’t sealed it yet. That was the deal: he built it, I was to seal it. I need to get some linseed oil soon!
This is our peach tree blossoming. Last year we had a cold spell that froze all the blossoms and we didn’t get a single peach. I’m hoping that we are past all that for this year. We’ve been watching the forecast just in case. The weather has been so nice, but we had a couple cold nights this week. For a few nights, we covered the trees with tarps and pulled extension cords to dangle a light bulb over a branch beneath the tarp, hoping to avoid the catastrophe of last year. Keeping our fingers crossed.
This is our lettuce bed. The rebar dome is for the plastic we used to create a mini greenhouse type of situation. Since lettuce is a cool weather plant we started it super early. Once it starts warming up in the desert it doesn’t stop. We’ll hit over a hundred degrees way too soon for lettuce to mature if we wait for the last frost date. Behind this box you can see the other boxes with beets, spinich and other misc. good things in the ground waiting to peep out. To the left you can see Wes watering the baby peas. YEAH!
Andrew has always had a wonderful sense of initiative. Just in case anyone thought it was something I did, it isn’t. Perhaps I did encourage it quite heavily when he was little and I had baby after baby that made me depend on his help bit more than I normally would have. And, we used to listen to a story/song cd called Patch the Pirate goes to the Jungle, in which Palumbo Pygmy sings the Initiative Song. We love Patch!
For whatever reason, Andrew really does thrive on being helpful. If ever I have difficulty with an attitude of his, I give him a job and watch the selfishness melt away and the confidence blossom. He likes work.
Here he is, today, cutting the Scotch Thistle sprouts with a shovel… in the neighboring lot no less! No one asked him to, he just knows that they spread like crazy and we don’t want them on our property. Isn’t he thoughtful? What a great kid!
For those of you who have never studied ancient warfare and for those of you who may not have seen The Lord of the Rings, I present before you a wondrous machine with the ability to demonstrate the laws of physics in a very memorable fashion.
Here it is in action, though smaller. The larger picture wouldn’t fit. Wes and the boys have had a blast building this and trying it out. It’s currently for sale on eBay and Craig’s List- UT.
Every time they get it loaded up to shoot I think of the cave trolls in The Return of the King loading up the trebuchets to fire at the White City of Gondor. Ok, so now you know what kind of geek I am. But this truely is a blast, and figuring out velocity and the angle of the projectile, and using projectiles of different mass? Ahhh, the beauty of home schooling!
I don’t know why children don’t like vegetables. Perhaps it is because they’ve never tasted them. Seth has been chewing on fresh veggies since he had teeth poking through his gums.
Here he is drinking some freshly made carrot juice.
Now that is one genuine smile. I don’t think I could have made him happier with a Hershey’s bar. And I’m sure he’s healthier for getting in all those lovely and necessary nutrients.
