The Garden Rests — Janet Szabo

I had forgotten that the husband read Kristin Kimball’s The Dirty Life, too. He knew exactly who I was talking about when I mentioned that I had finished Good Husbandry.

I spent an hour and a half at the county blue building yesterday. (It’s no longer blue, but it was when we moved here, and that’s how I think of it.) That’s where we go to do title transfers for new vehicles and to renew the plates on our current vehicles. By some stroke of luck, I simultaneously had the paperwork to renew the plates for the BMW and DD#2’s car—we’re keeping hers registered here until she lands somewhere permanently—and to get the plates for the new trailer the husband bought two weeks ago.

Renewing plates only takes a few minutes depending on the length of the line. The other paperwork takes much longer and requires a number, so I grabbed one when I came in. They were on #30. I was #56. There are three clerks. I find this whole system baffling. Why does it take 15-20 minutes per transaction? Surely that could be speeded up, no? They have instituted a rule that they will do a maximum of five transactions per number; I’ve been there when dealers have come in with a dozen vehicles and held up the line for hours. I think this is their response to that problem.

It could be worse, I know. I made FIVE trips to the DMV, when we moved to Pennsylvania after college, just to get my driver’s license changed. That was a nightmare.

The clerk who helped me was cheerful and pleasant (she must be new) and I got everything taken care of and moved on to getting chicken feed at the farm store.

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The husband is going to take a dump trailer load of stuff to the landfill this week, so he suggested I go through the house and make a pile of the stuff that we can’t donate or recycle. I also collected the things that needed to go back out to the greenhouse for storage. While I was out that way, I took a peek at the lettuce, just for curiosity’s sake. It’s under a row cover, but we’ve had snow and a couple of nights of -1 degree temps, so I wasn’t optimistic:

The row cover was pretty well soaked with moisture. When I pulled it back, though, I found this:

The lettuce is still alive. The quality isn’t that great—it’s kind of rubbery and we’d have to be pretty hungry to eat it—but I am amazed it’s still going.

I really have to use my imagination to picture the garden as I want it to look next summer:

I know what I want to do, and I have to remind myself that the purpose of winter is to let the soil rest (and to let all that straw decompose), but it’s hard to hold that vision when things look so dead. I am keeping a running list of potential vegetable varieties as I hear about them. I’ll stick with most of my tried-and-true favorites, like Cherokee Purple tomatoes, but it’s good to add a few new things once in a while.

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I opened up the little treadle machine I keep in the living room and brought a pile of 5” squares down to sew a comforter top together on it. Sometimes I don’t want to sit and do handwork, but neither do I want to go upstairs to work. This way I can sew and listen to or watch TV with the husband at the same time. This treadle is also incredibly smooth and quiet. It won’t take much longer to do a comforter top on this machine than it would on an electrified machine, as I can sit down and sew a couple of squares together at odd moments.

I’m going to work on cider syrup today, but I also need to have a marathon cutting session for some new sewing projects. It’s time to start thinking about making Christmas presents. I don’t go overboard—I don’t want to be putting the finishing touches on things at the last minute—but I do make some gifts to give.

I still haven’t decided if I want to do a quilt for next year’s Ritzville sale. They didn’t have as many donated this year and I know they would be happy to have some. I definitely don’t want to do a king-sized quilt again, though. I’ve been adding some ideas to my Pinterest board and once the holidays are over, I’ll look at what I have time to work on.

All of the patterns have been added to the BSKD store. At this point, I am getting some domain issues straightened out and making sure that PayPal works properly. I don’t want any surprises.