The inflatable cones that I ordered arrived at lunchtime yesterday, after the initial 10 minutes of refusing to move, they have both been doing excellent with them. The vet warned us that they could get them off easily, Belle's did twice - she's got a smaller head than Beau. But we just popped it back on. Beau was able to get the cone of shame off, so I am not going to say that is much better. They are both moving around, they can eat and comfortably sleep with these ones. I don't think the next eight days will be nearly so rough. These are brilliant! They can see, they can move easily and they are absolutely much happier now.
On the flip side when I do finally get her asleep, she rests long and hard. They do the best when I am in the puppy recovery room with them, so I have spent lots of hours knitting and catching up on podcasts. When they are deeply asleep I scurry back to the kitchen to work on my canning and such.
Yesterday, Hubs kept an eye on them so that I could run over to my friends' house - the one that gifted me the wonderful additions to my garden. I also stopped by the fruit stand as they had a special on blueberries and I wanted more tomatoes, I was bound and determined that I was going to try a few more recipes. I am having a great time creating all these yummy treats and canning them up. The bonus, I know what is in every single jar.
I managed to get them all planted yesterday except the tomatoes. I need to harvest a few of the radishes so that I can get the three I have currently planted. I also have 4 that I am growing from seeds, they aren't ready to go out yet. After all of those are in their planters I will figure out what else I want to plant. I know I definitely want at least a few of the red pepper plants to dry for crushed red pepper flakes, the store bought ones absolutely do not compare. After that... who knows.
I'm going to go out and harvest some lettuce and radishes for a side to our dinner tonight. That and some mashed cauliflower will be perfect sides.
Right now I have the pressure canner, water bath canner and the dehydrator running. I now understood the value of a "spring kitchen" - my house might smell delicious, but dang it's toasty in the kitchen. I just pulled the 5 quarts and one pint of tomato juice out of the water bath, it will need to cool for at least 24 hours before storage. Then at least two of those quarts are going to become Bloody Mary Mix. I turned off the pressure canner, it has to lose all pressure before I can open it. I hated running it for the 2 quarts and half pint of turkey broth, but I didn't have anything else ready to pop in there. It's all good, I just wish I'd had time to fill it.
I get that it might seem a bit obsessive on my part. But when you have the problems going on that we have in this country and globally. When the same big name agencies that were all active with the pandemic, as well as the President stating there is going to be a food shortage, well... frankly I need to keep busy to keep myself calm and stress-free. Maybe all of these groups will be 100% wrong and the shortages they are predicting will never happen. Okay. That's just fine. I have always wanted to go back to the healthier ways of feeding my family, so... I am. And if they are right... well... okay, I will still be able to feed my family. Additionally, even the $1 store doesn't sell oven roasted marinara as inexpensive and tasty as I made it, and I don't shop at the $1 store, yet.
I don't trust our government to do what is best for us. I don't trust things to get better. I mean, gas is back up to $3.99 again and it was only $3.79 on Tuesday. How high is it planning to go? I frankly don't have any idea. I just got notification that my vehicle insurance is going up, no reason, just up $20 a month. The electric and gas utilities are going up. I might not excel at math, not my favorite subject, but it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out how fast things are rising.
In order to keep myself in a good place, to feel some semblance of control in an out of control world, I am choosing to stay very busy with productive things. Even my hobbies are doing things that have value to us.
Hubs and I were looking at designs for raised beds. I can't do an actual garden, too many rocks, too sharp of an incline and too many critters to deal with, but I can do raised beds. Hopefully we will be able to look at putting at least one or two up this growing season. We'll see, the price of wood is still pretty darn cost prohibitive.
Well Hubs is going to be home in a few, so I need to start dinner. Hope that everyone is having a fulfilling day! Make it count!!
love and peace...
Good one! 381+
ReplyDelete