Spring break, continued

Spring break is all but over. Back to work in the morning. My most visible accomplishment of the week is a clean china cabinet. The shelves had been dusty for quite a little while. Hard as it is to believe, we moved here five years ago, which would be the last time I did a thorough cleaning. You might think the shelves inside a closed cabinet would not accumulate dust, but you would be wrong. Also, the majority of the glasses had gotten that film that glasses get when they haven’t been used in a while. There are 83 glasses in this photograph. Of those, we used the same two wine glasses every time we imbibe, week in, week out. And they don’t even match. Each is the lone survivor of a different set. The day I cleaned, we used matching glasses. Perhaps it will become the new paradigm.

I took everything out, reduced the inventory of some items (I can’t imagine that we will ever need 8 margarita glasses again), washed and dried everything, wiped the shelves, and put everything back in a more organized manner. I am still admiring the shiny, organized presentation.

My clean china cabinet

Thursday was a good day for cleaning. It rained and rained and rained. We got two inches, which caused considerable flooding. It made new habitat for the chorus frogs, which started singing on Tuesday.

The flood around the maple trees and in the field

The flood by the willows, full of chorus frogs.

On Friday, I went down to Elgin for a sleepover at Jane’s house. We spent the day shopping, and I constantly reminded myself that I had an appointment for my mammogram at 4:45. I am so easily distracted that I would not put it past me to forget. I walked out of the hospital shortly after 5:00 into a brisk wind and spitting rain. It wasn’t the soul-sucking frigidity of winter in North Dakota but the bone-chilling damp of early spring in northern Illinois. “I should have gone somewhere warm for break,” I muttered bitterly to myself.

Yet it was warm and dry in Jane’s house. After a couple of grapefruit margaritas, I was feeling better. We had a nice dinner of shrimp fajitas. Jane taught me how to play Farkel Flip.

The sun finally came out Saturday. It even got warm. After grocery shopping and lunch with Jane, I went home to continue crossing things off my list. One item was splitting and moving an out-of-control clump of New England aster. It didn’t take long before I felt a trickle of sweat down my back. These are the first official muddy knees of spring.

The first muddy knees of spring

I also took what was left of the row cover off the garlic. It had been whipped to shreds by the winter winds. The garlic is off to a good start.

Garlic sprouts

I worked for half an hour, and my butt was sore. How will I make it through a real day of gardening?

The rhubarb is up.

Rapidly growing rhubarb

Ruthie was dust bathing in the wood chips that had accumulated outside the coop door.

Ruthie in her dust bath

It makes her look a bit unsightly with wood chips stuck all over her.

A fashion risk--wood chips in your feathers

For reasons that are clear only to the chickens, they pile up the chips against the door during the night and in the early morning. When we open the coop for the day, a pile of chips comes out with the rush of hens. By the end of winter, the chips get so deep that it’s hard to get the door closed. I shoveled out two muck buckets of chips this morning and transferred them to one of the formerly raised beds that the chicken had emptied of soil. Hilda got the spading fork and worked the chips in later in the day. We are getting ready for summer one step at a time.