This N' That

Did anyone else participate in TV Turn Off Week? I had heard about it previously, but never participated, because I didn't know when it was (or wasn't paying attention whenever it came up, that sort of thing). But having a kid in school brings that information home, so we participated this year. Surprisingly, it went very well. My kids don't watch a lot of TV, but they do like their PBS kids, so I figured it would be a bit of an argument every day when they couldn't watch. However, it almost never came up. My 4 year old son did ask yesterday morning, but I told him no, and he didn't ask again. They are troopers about it. Because they haven't watched TV since last Friday, I am letting them watch Word Girl today. They are thrilled and sitting quietly to watch it. It's really nice.

This week has taught me two things: one, that the kids aren't that hooked to the "tube", though I had thought they were, and two, that I wanted to watch TV more than they did. I held off until last night, when I watched Scrubs. Normally I don't watch TV during the week except on Wednesdays--after I put the kids to bed, I head to the gym and work out, go home, take a shower, and go to bed. On Wednesday I stay home to watch Mythbusters. Luuuurve that show! But this week I moved 12 yards of mulch, so needless to say, I didn't go to the gym. The couple of days I wasn't passing out from exhaustion at 8 o'clock, I really could have used some quiet time with some MASH reruns or something. I don't know what that says about me, except that I was too tired to find another way to amuse myself and could have used some mindless entertainment. I am hoping that this week will help us all to find a better way to "ration" our time with the TV. We'll have to work it out, I guess.

Did you all hear about the rice rationing?? http://www2.nysun.com/article/74994?page_no=1

They are also rationing flour too. I heard about it this morning in our local paper, and then again in some forums I belong to. Scary, no? And interesting.

America, time to wake up, stop building freaking McMansions, and start farming again. You're crapping all over the planet with all the manufactured garbage you buy from everyone. Knock it off, and let's all concentrate on survival and making things better for a while. I think the problem here is that we haven't had to concentrate on survival for a long time. Things are handed to us, food is easy and cheap, so we go and concentrate on the newest plastic crap toy, and what car we want to drive so it impresses the neighbors. If this is the wake up call we need, then so be it. I would love to see us all go back to a world where we can sustain ourselves, and not count solely on other countries. It's gotten beyond ridiculous.

I could rant about that for a long, long time, believe me. I will restrain myself for the time being.

The pics in this post are of the farm and "greenspace" behind my house. So, in the backyard, sorta. It's so pretty in the Spring. And Summer. And Fall. And Winter. Ok, all the time really. There's a bat house in this pic that is going to be hung up this weekend, hopefully to draw some visitors. They fly around here in the Summer, so I'm hoping we'll get more. They are so helpful, those little guys!!

On the same track, one of the projects I did in the past three weeks was to clean up that back wall. One of the most charming things about this area are the stone walls all over the place. Because we back up to a farm, we have one, but there are stone walls here everywhere. Behind houses, farms, even in the woods where they seem to belong to no one anymore, but at one time they did. Our wall was partially absconded by crap left by the previous owners. There are lots of bits of wood, some rotted, some not, from buildings I guess someone took down, bricks from something, possibly when they built the chimney for the house (those are what my son used for his cool village), an old wheelbarrow (that I'm going to use as a planter) and, believe it or not, an entire metal swingset, minus the swings and slide. All the metal bars, rusted and gross, tossed back in that pile. Of course, tossing all that crap back there meant that the wall got a bit knocked down at some point. So I cleared all the leaves laying on it (with my son's help), and found a number of the stones that had fallen and put them back. There are still a lot missing--that portion of the wall is much lower than the rest. There is a large slope behind the wall--most likely they tumbled down and are somewhere at the bottom. I did the best I could. I would like to think that the person who built that wall would appreciate that I helped to put it back together somewhat.

The bricks were piled up nicely (after dismantling my son's cool village--boy did I get a talking to about that!!), and the good wood was stacked. The rotted wood I put under the rest of the wood pile, on top of the swingset parts. I figure that the metal pieces will serve to keep the wood off the ground, so it won't rot, and any moisture that gets through will hit the wood that's mostly rotted first anyway. Some of the good wood I took and framed out the beds in the vegetable garden. I am going to use more to go all the way around the perimeter. I will find uses for all of it-I'm not going to throw it away. You never know when you need a piece of 2x4, right? Plus, what a waste that is. I'm sure I'll find something.

The kids and I also bought a cherry tree this week for our new garden bed. It's a sweet Danube cherry. My daughter named her Carol. She's a self-pollinator, so we only need one. I am very excited about her, but not as excited as my kids!! I think it is because not only is she beautiful (and she is), but she will give us fruit. I am hoping they will be as excited when the raspberries and blueberries and strawberries arrive for us to plant. I think they will be.

I will take some more pictures of all the finished beds, I promise. I will especially take a picture of Carol, who's a beauty. But that's it for me today. I am pretty tired. I hope you all have a great day!!