Unexpected Blessings

DD#2 has been here since last Thursday. She had been planning to come home for a visit anyway, but given that our lives lately seem to involve nonstop contingency planning, she arrived ready for the possibility that she would have to stay longer than a few days. Her original plan was to drive home today, but last evening, she got an e-mail from her boss letting her know that Nordstrom was closing its stores for two weeks.

You have never seen a more relieved mother (and father) in your life.

We are happy to have her here with us as long as she needs to be. DD#1 is still in Seattle with her fiancé. She is working from home starting tomorrow. They know that they can come here, too, if necessary, but for now they seem to be coping well where they are.

DD#2 has been helping with last-minute preps, and now that we have sufficient supplies for us and the chickens, she is helping out with homesteading tasks. This afternoon, we went out to the (very toasty) greenhouse and finished shelling the last of the dry beans. We need to clean off the benches so we can get the seed trays set up.

She is the most stylish homesteader I know (the Montucky hat is a nice touch):

We aren’t going to run out of beans. I have plenty to use as seed for this season’s crop as well as to can up for future eating. The pods are so dry now that just touching them makes them pop open. It didn’t take long to finish cleaning up what was left. We’ll get the trays set up and the seeds planted some time this week.

I finally got to begin pruning my fruit trees, too. I have to keep reminding myself to be ruthless. Apparently, I pruned just enough last year to encourage the trees to put out even more branches. Duh. This year, I am cutting way back. The goal is fewer apples and pears, but larger fruit. While I was pruning, DD#2 helped by raking up branches and debris. We were serenaded by the sound of chainsaws to the left and right because all of our neighbors are still busy cleaning up from the storm.

I am waiting for the last little bit of snow to melt in the garden and then I am going to put up a hoop over the perpetual lettuce bed in hopes of goosing the lettuce into growing a bit faster. The weather is supposed to be nice this week and cold and rainy next week. I’d rather get the outside tasks done while the sun is shining.

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While we do have a lot of food put by—plenty of beans, for sure—I wanted to stock up on the perishables that I get weekly. We shopped yesterday and got a couple of cases of beer and a case of apples for the husband. I bought dog food last week. Lila will not starve. The chickens have a two-week supply of feed. And I stocked up on whiskey:

I go through about a bottle a month making my daily whiskey sour. Dry Fly is a distillery in Spokane, but this particular batch is whiskey finished in Cold Smoke beer barrels from Kettlehouse Brewing in Missoula. It’s available locally. I love all the Dry Fly whiskeys, but this one is a special favorite.

We should not have to go to town for supplies for at least a couple of weeks.

I may not do any sewing this week while the weather is nice, but we’ll see. I have all the supplies to put together another couple of quilts. Even in quarantine, I won’t be lacking for things to keep me busy.