It’s been a busy week so far and it is only Thursday.
Monday I went to get one yard of soil for our flowerbeds and
for filling low spots near the house. I don’t know where that soil goes. Does
it travel to the other side of the Earth? I wonder if they have soil popping up
in China.
We managed to spread most of the soil in the afternoon. It
is backbreaking work. I had to shovel it off the truck into a trailer, which I
then pulled with the lawn tractor to where we wanted the soil. Then we had to
dump it and spread it. One yard is a truck-box full of soil. We planned to
finish on Tuesday, but they forecast rain, so I spread fertilizer onto the
lawn instead. We bought a different fertilizer this year at Wal-Mart (Schultz
27-0-3). Usually, we buy fertilizer at Costco (Scotts 30-0-3), but this stuff
at Wal-Mart was cheaper and you never know when Costco puts theirs on sale. So
I was lucky to have the fertilizer on hand.
I read the instructions later and it says to put it on the
grass 12 to 24 hours before it rains, otherwise you have to water it in.
Fortunately, the weather people were right and it did rain. In fact, I just
managed to finish with my application when it started to drizzle. It took me
about 1 ½ hour to do the job. The grass looks good and so do the dandelions.
Now I have to spray for weeds. It never stops.
I don’t know if I will buy this product again, because the
fertilizer we buy at Costco does not need watering in or rain within 12 hours.
As long as it eventually rains. It does not burn the grass.
Anyway, Tuesday afternoon I bottled a batch of red wine
(Malbec), which I had sitting in the carboy waiting to be bottled. It is the
first time I made Malbec and I found it to be quite a heavy wine. I bottled
this batch a few weeks ago and discovered there was still a lot of residue even
after filtering. So I opened all the bottles (27) and filtered the wine again.
It was better this time but still quite full-bodied. It was a good day to
bottle, because it rained outside. Wednesday morning I bottled another batch
(Merlot) and in the afternoon I made a Carrot/Ginger soup. Hot and spicy and
super-healthy. This morning it still rained, so I filtered a batch of white
wine (Piesporter). I will have to bottle this batch next week and there is
still a carboy filled with Summer-wine waiting to be cleared and filtered and
then bottled. And they say retired people have nothing but time. I don’t.
There is one thing I can’t figure out. I used to do all
these things when I was still working. What happened? Were the days longer?
Does the time go faster now? It is one of those Mysteries of the Universe.
Unfortunately, the government doesn’t give a crap; there is no money for
studies like that; people who work don’t care, and retired people have no time
to waste on research like that. So the mystery will go unsolved, I’m afraid.
The all-knowing weather people forecast frost for tonight
here in our area. It will snow further up north. Right now it is only 6
Celsius. We've gone from the hottest day last week (35.5 C on Thursday) to probably the coldest day of the month. I have my pepper plants in the sun-room. We have heaters running to
keep it warm. A little bit of sunshine would be appreciated. Even our canary,
Eddie, is not happy.
So, stay warm and dry, stay healthy and drink lots of
liquids.
Remember, you can’t buy happiness, but you can buy alcohol and
that is almost the same.
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