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32°f, 0°C. Snowing all day.

We are back to winter here, after a few days that offered a peek at Spring. After a (rainy) day out Thursday for my doctor visit and booth work, we were home all day Friday, then out Saturday to pick up groceries--mainly fresh produce and dairy--and to restock sanding supplies, as I am finally getting back to work on furniture.

These tulips were a gift to myself on Saturday, too pretty to pass up:

Finishing up this piece:

What attracted me to it was the horse. So unique.  This is intricate scroll saw work on laminated wood, and was dark stained but we had some repair to do, and honestly I think it looks better in white.

The doctor visit on Thursday was my "well baby" routine 6-month checkup, but I had the opportunity to talk to her about knee. She confirmed that my experience with the pinching and the ongoing pain is not typical of knee replacement surgery. The pinching is unlikely to be scar tissue since it began immediately after surgery and has never really gone away, although it occasionally abates a bit. I told her what my pharmacist daughter-in-law suggested, that inflammation might be bad enough to hamper healing, and my doc prescribed a short course of steroids to see if that might be the issue. I am on day 4, since we didn't pickup the scrip until Saturday, and I believe I can tell a difference. We shall see. The knee does seem to be bending a bit better, with a little less pain.

The past few days I have mostly just been domestic, cleaning and sorting and cooking. I've been tidying up the workroom, discarding old paint and trying to clean up after Larry, who is absolutely the worst scattered and mess-maker i have ever had to work with. Drives me nuts. I want tools put back in the same place, hardware put back in containers, etc, but Larry? Everything everywhere, and quite often on the floor. He seems to get stuff done somehow, although I see much wasted time and materials as he hunts for things, loses and breaks things, trips over cords and generally just gets in his own way.   But at 73, I reckon it's too late for the old fog to learn new tricks, so I grudgingly try to keep some order in his disorder. Without noticeable success,  I should add! Still, somehow we muddle along.

Today was fridge clean-out day, which meant soup-making day. I started with the fridge freezer and worked my way down. Into the soup pot went a half cup of frozen chili, a bit of saved pot roast, cabbage, leftover quinoa and venison in mushroom gravy from last night, leftover fried potatoes from this morning, a cup of leftover pasta sauce from when I was canning the last of the big cans on Sunday, a pint of kidney beans, carrots, celery, onions, garlic...not sure what else, but y'all, I ended up with the best stew I have tasted in a long, long time. And a much cleaner fridge too.

While canning the pasta sauce, I went ahead and dealt with another half bushel of butternut squash, cooking and mashing it and bagging for the freezer. Then yesterday I fried about 2/3 of a bushel of apples, the last of the free apples from last fall that needed to be dealt with before they went bad. Those were also bagged for the freezer, so they will be a nice addition to meals in the coming months.

And now I am just about done with the winter food preservation, except for one more half-bushel of butternut squash, which I hope to finish up soon. Thank goodness! Within the next month we may be planting lettuce and such, and the cycle continues. 

I have also been talking to my sisters on the phone, catching up and grieving our cousin together. John and Les and Julie were the English cousins we knew best, and we will miss John very much. We have other cousins in England and in Canada too--my mother' sister Dorothy was married to Dan McNeil of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and I have tried to keep those connections via Facebook, email and Christmas cards. It helps that miles are not quite as big an obstacle these days as they once were. How my mother would have loved being able to FaceTime with her sisters in England and Canada!

In thinking about John and his blog, I have decided that I will post a link to a post a day from his blog, starting from its beginning. I have not spoken with Les again yet but I am sure he has many other pressing things to deal with so it may be some time before he thinks about what to do about the blog. In the meantime, I hope my links will give those who are interested an easy route to John's words and photos. That said, here is the very first post John wrote, on April 18, 2011 (April 18th was our Granny Hagger's birthday. She was born in 1893, and died in 1992, just 6 months short of her 100th birthday):

Spring Gardens (1) A visit to gardens in Meldreth, where John lived.

Until next time, friends.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.