Inside Christmas Decorations

The closet inside of my bathroom is packed full of decorations

To make room for them I rearranged the boxes of seed in my bedroom which also serves as my office.  The seeds are on a card table in the north east corner of the bedroom.  I set all of the boxes on my bed and moved the card table to the west side of the room.  I arranged the seeds in alphabetical order.  Annuals first, then the vegetables, and then the perennials.  There are two boxes of pepper and tomato seeds that I can't locate.  The native seeds are in the Middle of the table.

That being done, I emptied the closet and put the all the boxes where the card table was. 

I got a large box out of the garage and gathered all the framed photos and put them in the box.  The large box was filled to the top, but there was a little room to put some of the vases and statues.

We cleaned the tops of cabinets which hadn't been dusted since we put the Christmas decorations last January.  Most of the nut crackers were put on the large oak TV cabinet.  A few more were put on the fireplace mantle and small table.  The pie safe was the home of crystal balls and a few other battery operated things.

We put out one nativity  scene.  We usually have several nativity scenes on the piano, but left the Willow carvings. 

The next job was the Christmas tree.  The Christmas trees is in a large box behind the trash can, behind the coolers, behind some totes.  I moved them out of the way and stacked some outside the garage and some by the car. There are three totes in the garage that had our tree decorations.scl

The tree was heavy.  I muscled into the kitchen.  Carol helped me to get it into the front room.  ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

The Warm Before the Storm

We have had cold evenings and somewhat warm days.  There is still a little snow on the lawn in the shady areas. There are a bunch of leaves on the lawn and much more under the trees.  Storm according to the forecast is expected Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.  Today was the last chance to more the lawn and suck up the leaves. 

This morning we drove to Fillmore to get our turkey and a few other things.

After lunch when the lawn has dried out from the night frost, I mowed the lawn and collected all the leaves.  I had to dump three time.  I dumped our by the road just north of the garden as a mulch to help control the annual weeds.

Organizing The Kitchen Drawers

The cabinets under the counter have a double with door.  We open the door and there are two drawers.  Both have glides so the can be extended.  The bottom drawer will not open.  We have tried to pull it open over the years.  This morning I was going to fix it.  I put the contents of the bottom drawer on top of the counter.  The empty drawer should be a easy to pull out.  But it wasn't.  I pulled harder.  I used two flathead screw drivers, one on each side.  I was then able to pull it out.  I put it on the table making it easier to work. The front of the drawer had been pulled so many times that it bowed out and become disconnect to the bottom of the drawer. I put Elmer's glue in the rabbit and pulled it all together with one clamp.

I reinforced the inside bottom of the drawer a 1" x 1 1/2" board almost the width of the drawer.  Then a smaller piece of oak underneath the drawer bottom.   It was trial and error to get the holes in the right place and then put screws in to hold it all together. 

Carol organized everything and made it easy to find what we needed.

I worked in the nursery after lunch.  We went for a drive through town.  We do that almost every day.  The day was cool, but quite nice.  The sun was shinning most of the day.

Cleaning the Kitchen

I worked all morning on washing the doors of the kitchen cabinets. The first thing was to remove everything off the counters.  There wasn't room one the kitchen table for everything.  So I moved some of it to the end of the counter.  As I cleaned the west end of the cabinet doors and counter top I was able to bring some of the things back. 

Above the stove they were particularly dirty.  Over the years grease has accumulated and it took quite a while to get them cleaned. I use soapy water and degreasing solution and finally I got them clean.  The stove top was hard.  Years of pans boiling over and splashing grease was hard to remove.  I used a razor  blade to scrape of the hard grease.

This afternoon I worked in the nursery for an hour. 

Lemons & Pomegranate Jelly

As soon as breakfast was over we began to juice the lemons. Shown is four tubs.  We got five all together.  Carol gave one tub to here DUP friends at the meeting on Monday evening after we came home from Las Vegas.  We juiced two tubs.  We got quite a system going.  Carol cut the stem and blossoms off and then cut the lemon in half.  I would squeeze the juice out.  It took us over and hour.  Carol then filled each cell in an ice cub tray and then put them in the freeze.  Each cell held about two tablespoons of juice.

Over a period of a month we picked the pomegranates from the two bushes in the front yard.  Carol froze the seeds.  We put them in the steamer and got three pints of juice.  We made two batch and which resulted in 11 half pints and one pint.

This afternoon I took the luffa sponges and placed on the benches in house two  I don't think they will work out because they are too green.

We planted some late cabbage and broccoli and both have turned out very well.

To St. George and Back

Yesterday, A Face Book posting showed Anne, Carol's sister, with a lot of lemons.  I posted on her post that we should get together.  A few minutes later we get a phone call from Anne.  Carol and Anne decided that we would meet in the St George Temple parking lot at eleven, to pick up the lemons.

This morning we gathered some of our garden produce, ie, cabbage, sweet potato, celery, and onions, to take with us.  We left about 9:15 and got there just before eleven.  Monday is a day that there are very few cars in the parking lot.  Surprise. The parking lot was full so we drove up and down several of the isles look for an.  We decided to park on the street.  As we had to wait for one car to go by before we exited the parking lot.  Another surprise, The car that we were waiting for was Anne's car.  We then turned on the street and they pulled up behind us.  We gave them our produce and we loaded five big tubs of lemons in our car.


This summer when we took them tomatoes, we ate at the Big Bear Diner.  We at there today and had a nice dinner of fish and chips.  We ordered two dishes and two empty plates.  Anne and Fred shared theirs and Carol and I shared ours.  Lunch was very good and we visited for quite some time. We parted, they headed back to Las Vegas, and we drove back home. 



Last week I bought a 3/8 inch cordless drill at Harbor Freight in Orem.  It didn't work.  There is a Harbor Freight in St George.  I stopped there to exchange it for an other one.  We didn't have a problem changing it.  On the way home I took it out of the box and couldn't get this one to work either.  It would no go in reverse.

We got off the freeway at 200 west, went west and turned to the south on Cove Street.  We drove to the top of it and found the Cedar City Temple.



We stopped in Beaver at the Cheese Plant,  Carol got a cone and I got a small cup.

I called the number for Harbor Freight, and was on hold for a long time.  I tried a little later and was still on hold.  I went to their web page to see if I could get help there.  I tried to put the drill in reverse again and discovered the problem.  There is a switch on the side of the drill.  When the switch is clear out, it will drive in a screw.  I pushed it in a little which felt like the reverse, But the drill still went clock wise.  I pushed it all the way, it locked.  I was messing around with the one from St George and pushed the button a little harder, it went further in.  I pulled the trigger and it went in reverse.  Problem solved.

After we got home I began to remove the annuals an cut the perennials to the ground from the brume west of our driveway.  We had one plant like a decennia that would freeze.  I dug it up and repotted it in a five gallon pot.  It is in house three.

Emi Went Home

Emi, our granddaughter, has been with us since Sunday.

We met Tai in Provo at one.  He will take her back to Layton when he is finished with his class tonight.

Emma

I drove to Fillmore the first thing this morning.  Carol had her hair done.  It really looks good.  This evening Carol, Emi, and watched the play Emma. It was a high school setting where Emma was a match maker. 

Wednesday with Emi

I had a few things that I wanted to do and Carol had a bunch of things that she wanted to do.  I did some watering in house 2.  We started digging the annual flowers in the kidney north of the house.  I hauled all of the plant material out to the no till garden.  It is getting pretty deep out there which is what I want.  We pulled the geraniums in both beds just north of the house.  Emi, our granddaughter was a great help. 

I was going to drain the pipes that grow throughout our yard and nursery.  I walked out the door,  and it looked like it might rain.  I quickly changed my mind started up the lawn mower.  there were a lot of leaves on the lawn and I plugged the blower shoot two times.  I can't lift because the hernia operation I had 2 1/2 weeks ago.  I used a lever two lift the deck.  I was then able to clear the shoot that was packed with leaves.  I dumped about six times.  Most was dumped next to the road where it will cover winter annuals and decay.

I then drained the water lines.  It went quickly.  I opened hose bib at the lower end of our garden.  The water began to flow.  Hooked the compressor to the water line, and turned it on.  Air was blowing out the hose bib. I shut it off and went to the next one. It soon began blow air.  I did the other two the same way.

It was getting time for supper.  We took Emi to Delta and ate at MacDonald's.  We then watched the show, PAN.  It was a fast moving show that lasted nearly two hours. It intense drama.  We then went home.