The boys have bulb crates where they keep their special things. Abraham's crate had started to overflow, so we worked together to clear it out.
Actually, he had few toys and gifts in the crate. Mostly he had drawings he's worked on over the last four or five months. A lot of drawings. A whole stack of drawings. I had expected to be able to easily eliminate massive amounts of the papers, but as I started to look, I found myself captivated again by the little Buzz Lightyears and stuffed monkeys and sharks; the little characters, drawn carefully (and repeatedly) in pen and pencil. Thousands of little figures. In the end, I just put them all in a box, labeled it with the year, and put it in the storage trailer. Paying it forward.
Phil returned from a trip to town last week with a startling announcement: "I've returned with urinals!" He remembered reading about gardens that have straw bales for the male workers to use to start the recycling process of nutrients to garden fertility. Great idea.
But the dog, aided and abetted by the chicken and guinea, made short work of that "urinal."
Phil spent Saturday chipping, once Jadon and Isaiah shoveled out the back of the truck from the chips on Friday. Jadon helped him then, until they grew hungry for lunch. The truck got stuck. Phil got the truck free. It was a day of chipping. I was feeling pleased with the quantity of chips we're getting, until I reread in Gaia's Garden that a truck load of wood chips will cover about 50 square feet of garden. At a truck load a day, we're not getting a huge amount of new garden fertility. Hmm.
Sunday I went back through my underlined notes, trying to list the various plants the author recommends for various purposes. After several hours, and with a hundred dense pages yet to go, I gave up: it's overwhelming, how many interesting and enticing plants there are! I've ordered my vegetable seeds: now it's time to find some less usual seeds.
We woke today to rain, which effectively ruled out any lower pasture work: too slippery. So Phil and Jadon headed up to the barn to design and build a workbench.
It turned out well, and Phil is loving the extra work space. I suppose a his workroom is like my kitchen: the more counter space, the better.
Isaiah and Jadon have been playing on a pulley system that sends them up to the roof and back down. It reminds me of the hayloft games of the last century.
A few daffodils have started to poke out in the apple orchard. The photo shows a tree I weeded last year, and I'm hoping that I can weed and put peastone down in the center of the daffodils at some point this spring.
After so many days of cold, the thaw came today. Phil was glad to shower. As for me, my hair still is looking cute after nine days of no maintenance. How was I surviving with the longer hair before? Ouch!
And I was glad, too, to see a cheery golden sunset.
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