Bogieblog

Fridge Magnets

Cop Car was writing about how she only had one magnet on her refrigerator. One? Only one? How can a fridge survive with only one magnet? Everyone knows that fridges need magnets to socialize with. I call that refrigerator abuse!

The Refrigerator at the Bogie household will never, ever complain about being deprived of magnets (or other stuff to mingle with):

    

 

 

And just think. This refrigerator is under one year old and we did not put any pictures/articles from the previous fridge on there. I believe it is obvious from the pictures that our refrigerator is well loved and we pay proper attention to its needs!

Definition of Fall

Last weekend, Fall began to live up to its name. Not temperature-wise mind you (although it was characteristically cool), but in as much as all the leaves fell - almost at once. In about a 36 hour time-span, the trees became bare.

The whole yard pretty much looked like the picture above. So Sunday, WS started raking.

   

Although he got a good portion of it done, a lot is still left to do. It has been rainy all this weekend (why is it always warm when it rains and cold on the other days - the days that we could ride? [/end whining])

Fuzzy wanted absolutely no part of any exertions, but did manage to capture one leaf.

 

We need another dry weekend to get the rest of the leaves up and bring in the patio and deck furniture. After that, bring on the snow - WS is antsy to get the sled out!

Thanks are in Order

I would like to take this opportunity, on Veteran's Day, to say a heartfelt THANK YOU to all active military personnel and veterans.

Shocking

Everybody sit down before you read what I am about to write. It will blow your mind and make you question if the world is still spinning the correct way on its axis. Also, have your heart medication handy, because this just might give you a jolt big enough to cause arrhythmia.

WS has been using my laptop computer at home. Never mind that it is MY birthday present (that is not the point at all), but that he voluntarily put himself in the position of using a computer - and it is not work related!

WS's birthday was a couple of weeks ago. Cop Car and HH got him an Ipod for the occasion (no, they don't know what they got him - well, after reading this they do). WS has wanted one so that he can put it in the stereo on his bike. Sure, he has a CD player, but carrying around all those CDs takes room (and it is a pain on long rides to have to stop because the music is repeating).

The Ipod came in on Monday. Tuesday, WS sat down and downloaded the software onto the laptop (with some coaching from me). Last night, while I was preparing tomato sauce, he got the laptop out and started downloading CDs into his playlists.

Since I have never done this before, I told him he was on his own. I did help out a couple of times with some educated guesses (massive computer experience will trump blind guessing almost every time), but for the most part he did it himself.

Oh, he also signed up for an Introduction to Computers community education class at the Concord High School, which he will be attending Monday night thru Thursday night next week. That should give him a more solid foundation for computer skills he needs at work.

Hmm, who knew that such massive changes could come in such a short time?

Fall Endeavors

The gardens held up well thru the storms on Saturday and Sunday. It didn't hurt at all that there was little wind involved.

The first frost warning came out for Thursday morning, so once again I went out and stripped tomatoes and cut buds from roses (what few there were - Japanese Beetles are still feasting). Last night I made 2 quarts of tomato sauce and used half of it for chii. Tonight there will be spaghetti made from the other half. MMM-mmm-mmm, nothing quite like home made sauce as a base!

Today I will make some Italian bread to go with the sketti, and while the machine (what, you thought I actually made bread by hand?) is doing it's thing, WS and I will head out to stack wood. We had started earlier in the year, then got sidetracked by other projects so we only have enough in the lean-to for a couple of months. Now we are getting down to the wire and it has to get done. First, about half of the pre-stacked wood has to be restacked. This is because of the assumption that we made that we would get back to stacking wood shortly after our first efforts (silly us). So, I started 2 banks of wood instead of filling up just one bank. The second bank of wood will have to be restacked to the front of the first bank, since it will be much drier than what is in the pile out behind the dog pen.

WS will load the split wood into the cart and bring it down with the 4-wheeler. I get the dubious honor of stacking the stuff after helping to unload it; it goes faster to get it out of the cart so WS can go re-load while I'm stacking.

We won't get all the wood stacked, but we should be able to finish up this year's supply and get a good start on next year's. We are hoping to get 3 year's supply in the lean-to so next year we can loaf around.

After the Storms

Total score for yesterday:

In the vegetable cooking category:

• 18 pints of salsa (14 hot and 4 x-hot)
• 7 quarts of Italian tomato sause
• Green bean and pea mixture for dinner vegetables (yum)

In the rain category:

• 3/8" rain in the morning
• just under an inch of rain from another system that came in from the West in the afternoon
• 3.5" of rain from Hannah last night

It is still dark so I don't know how everything held up last night under the downpour. WS did some work on the driveway (filling in low spots that might encourage erosion) yesterday afternoon, so hopefully it came out okay.

Daylight will tell the story.

Saturday Chores

We got none of the promised rain yesterday. Actually, we did get some - just enough that one could play connect-the-dots on the deck. At least it was cloudy, so it gave my transplanted veggies some relief from the sun.

I got green beans planted, but spent most time inside doing chores (housework, laundry, cleaning Birdie's cage etc.). WS spent time replacing part of the shed floor as it was getting a bit spongy and he figured it would not be a good thing if one of the bike tires or kickstands went thru. It was only a minor project - he only had to get the plywood twice. Yes, he did measure the thickness, but managed to measure at a knot so didn't get a true reading the first time (only at our place).

I tempted Mother Nature to rain by washing my truck and watering all the veggies after I planted the beans. Alas, although we got a couple rumbles of thunder, she just wasn't taking the bait.

While scrubbing Birdie's cage in the bathtub, I spent some quality time watching birds out the window:

  A Rose-breasted Grosbeak played peek-a-boo with me.

  Mr. and Mrs. Evening Grosbeak

  And again.

Fuzzy kept a constant pace with me when I was outside, obviously I wore him out:

  He thinks I put the pad on the glider just for his comfort!

It is supposed to be dry and windy today, so I will be out watering the vegies and all the potted plants. Perhaps I will also be planting some of those potted plants, or we may go for a ride with Jimmy. Decisions, decisions!

Could Spring Finally Be Here?

Last Saturday evenening,after I got home from work, WS was painting the ceiling to the living room and hallway. This is something he had promised to do when I painted the walls of those areas while I was laid off in 2001. It took him a little time, but he got it done. You should be able to see the difference in color in this pic (the ceiling was originally white when it was painted eons ago):

Anyway, it was really nice out so I went out and cleaned up some of the flower beds. Several of the beds still had good-sized piles of snow so I couldn't do anything with them, but I cleaned up what I could. The clean up included cutting back the roses in front of the house and pulling up all the old stalks and leaves from the humongous hosta. Then I pulled stalks and dead leaves from the lillies around the fence (thank goodness I had pulled most of the stalks last fall, otherwise I would still be out there). I also cleaned up the flower boxes below the fence, whcih mainly consisted of cutting back most stuff.

I couldn't clean up any more because of the snow. Sunday iwe had a mix of snow and rain (mostly rain), but none of the snow stuck. During the week, the temps warmed up in a nice graduation; 40's, 50's, 60's then 70's. Yesterday it was actually 82 at 1:30 in Manchester (don't think it got nearly that warm here - but it did get in the mid 70's).

As a consequence, most of the snow is gone (still a couple of small piles in the front yard and by the deck, and the shade garden is still completely covered, but the trend has been et and I think there will be nothing but meltage from now on.

Yesterday, before I left to do a whole bunch of running around in the city, I pulled the straw away from the potted plants that wintered over in the rugosa bed and at the side of the house by the oil tank. Everything seems to be in good shape and still frozen (good - means I didn't wait too long before pulling the straw away).

Tuesday (or Wednesday) evening, WS set up the greenhouse. Sunday I will transfer everything that has taken over the house out there. "Why Sunday?" you ask. Glad you popped the question, because I was going to tell you anyway - Sunday it is supposed to cool off a bit and be cloudy. If I wait until then, there is less risk of sunburning and baking the poor plants before they get used to full strenght sun instead of grow lights.

Today WS and Jimmy will be taking down a couple of dead trees. I will be out cleaning up a couple more of the exposed flower gardens.

Spring seems to be officially here. And under the fold are a couple of pics to prove it:

Forsythia bud - taken 4/18/08:

Lilac bud taken this morning (4/19/08)

If I don't post tomorrow, this will probably be my last post for a couple of weeks. I'll be in class next weekend from Friday night until Sunday evening. Then another class is the next Saturday, all day.

Until then, be good!

Sighting

OMG - I can't believe what I saw yesterday at the birdfeeder. This is definitely a rare sighting, if it what I thought it was. I'm ambivalent about the sighting. I hear you don't want these at your feeders as they won't let any birds feed (and none were able to while it was there).

I need some of the birder's help out there for a positive ID; I got pics from a couple of different angles. Tell me if you think it is a yellow bellied catbird.

Okay, so maybe I over-reacted a bit, it seems to be the rather common Cat named Sammy.

Just an innocent mix-up. LOL!

#2 on the Books

Concord only got 2.8" of snow yesterday. It was enough to propel us into the #2 spot for snowiest season on record at 115.2 inches. To break the record, we need another 7" of the white stuff - not unheard of at this point in the season. Here at the Bogie manse, we most likely got more snow than what is used as the official record; the official measurements are taken at the Concord airport (becasue those are the records tha go back the farthest - into the 1800) and we usually see more snow than they do (WS works in Concord, so can attest to that fact).

After the 6" of snow we got in Deering yesterday, here is what the front yard looks like:

Not much different from previous pics I've posted - we don't get nearly as warm as the cities, so we haven't seen the melting that they have. At work, which is in the far south of the state, they had green grass growing most places. The only snow (before the storm yesterday) was from where the snow was mounded up by plows.

We actually do have some green at our house, under the overhang of the upper floor:

These iris will bloom way ahead of its brethren next to the driveway!