Covid Journal, Day 108: How One Thing Leads to Another, and Cellar Work

65 this morning, blessedly cooler. The morning was glorious, cool and clear, with a good heavy dew. We've started watering the gardens as it looks like there is no rain in the forecast for the next week. Don't want to lose the growing momentum now that plants are really beginning to take off. Small tomatoes on the plants, and we should be eating zucchini in a day or two.

I had three plants that I needed to put in this morning. I've been putting it off for no real reason, just procrastinating. This morning I got to it. And that led to a chain reaction.

First, I dug a hole for the first plant, a vinca, and planted it with no trouble. Next I dug the hole for the second vinca but this one meant that I had to dig out some spreading oregano. I set aside the oregano and got the vinca settled in. Then took the oregano--two chunks, actually--and planted those in a couple different places. I went ahead and cut back the rest of the oregano and took it inside to be dried and stored.

The flowerbed I was working on this morning. This is not my favorite garden. For some reason I never seem to have the bloom in there like I want. I keep trying! I added some white phlox this year; there is a pink peony in here that I planted last year, but it didn't bloom. Also some iris I planted last year that had one bloom this spring, and a rose bush from last year that hasn't bloomed. I moved some coral bells and a columbine in here last month, no blooms yet. Then there's thyme, oregano and in spring lots of daffodils and a few crocus. Oh, and bee balm, which I love, that self-seeds every year.

 The third plant was a nice sized rosemary. I wanted it to go into a large flowerpot, but I was out of pots. Then I noticed that I had a large geranium in a nice big clay pot. I could move the geranium to the garden and use that pot for the rosemary, so that's what I did. Then I hoed a few weeds out of the flowerbed, and hauled a few watering cans full of water to water everything I'd just moved. 

I finished--I thought--by picking up and cleaning up odds and ends in the yard, then saw a small metal dressing-table chair I'd been meaning to spray paint and put in a garden. There was another chair I wanted to paint too. I fetched the paints and got them done pretty quickly. As I put away tools I saw that bindweed and gill-over-the-ground was taking over the daylilies in one spot, so I pulled those vines.  Then did a tidy-up of the porch of the root cellar, where I have a potting bench, and lots of garden tools and organic fertilizers. 

The cellar porch. Tools hang on the left in the photo, and there's an old corn sheller that could still work with a little repair done. On the right is my potting bench, with fertilizers, flower pots, etc etc. 

About this time Larry showed up with a bench I'd said I wanted in the cellar, to have a place to put things down when we took them in the cellar to store. Often we carry in large numbers of jars at once and have no place to put them down before we stash them on the shelves. Larry had put new, small gravel on the cellar floor, over top of the big gravel we'd had in there, and it makes it so much nicer to walk in the cellar. He also finished those shelves he'd been building the other day, so it's looking really nice in there.

The bench looked too small and it was too low. So we hauled it out and put a porcelain-topped table in there. Perfect. Well, a little too big, but it will work fine.

This table will really be handy, if we don't just park stuff there and not put it away. You know, a flat, blank surface seems to attract stuff. On the left are jars of old food that need to be dumped. These and the ones to the left in the back are the new shelves. They're very deep, honestly deeper than I wanted but that's okay. The plastic jugs are for when we make cider, and after I process the cider into jars, the jugs will be filled with emergency water for when the power goes off in the winter.

All of that, just because I went out to plant a few plants. I'm glad to have all those miscellaneous things done, though, and it does look nice.

I spent several hours in here the other day, sorting out jars of old food and cleaning the shelves. We have lots of space now, with plenty of room to store the empty jars. Top shelf is vegetable soup, next is jams, jellies and mincemeat, then applesauce, a little pepper mustard, and black beans, next is salsa and pasta sauce, bottom shelf is whole tomatoes. The further back shelves hold peaches, apple cider, LOTS of pickles, pickled beets, more tomatoes and green beans on the bottom shelf.  Apple butter is on a shelf on the back wall. I was surprised to find only about 5 pints of apple butter, but we didn't keep any of last year's batch, letting our sons take it all home with them. 

Meals: breakfast--eggs over easy, homemade sausage patty, sliced tomatoes, homemade bread and jam. Snack--banana. No lunch. Dinner: leftover mac & cheese (three-cheese), broccoli, sliced tomatoes, and peaches from the cellar.

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