Cleanhouse

If you're here for the January linky party, click right here.

No, not a "clean house".  That would be too much to ask for.  Actually, a clean greenhouse = "Cleanhouse".  As opposed to the rotten house of tomato death that it was earlier this morning.

It was a lovely day today.  There was no wind, which can put a chill on even the sunniest of days where we live.  The temperature outdoors was 51°F, which was 30° warmer than it has been for pretty much the entire month of January.  Mike and I decided it was the day we would bite the bullet and clean out our greenhouse, and it was a very nice way to spend the day despite the work involved.  Here are all the dead tomato vines we pulled out of the greenhouse.  They are headed for the burn pile.

Here is the spent potting soil that is headed to the garden to be tilled in with the compost.  

The garden was such an utter failure last year that we aren't planting one this year.  When even zucchini won't grow in your garden, you know you've got problems.  We're going to have the soil tested and do some soil amendments.  Besides, I've had one too many years of spending days planting it only to have it be a major disappointment.  I'm taking this year off just to show it who's boss.  (I believe that would be the garden.)

And here's how the greenhouse looked after all the pots were removed.  Oy.  What a mess.  We ended up doing a combination of raking, sweeping, and hand-picking to get all the crap up off the floor.

An hour later, it looked like this:

I only added back the slats on one side toward the rear on the left.  That's where I'll put my tomato starts once it's warm enough to bring them outside.  When the plants are tall enough, we'll remove the slats and set them on the ground.  If you haven't seen what the greenhouse looks like when it's full of tomatoes, here's a picture from last year:

This picture was taken in July of last year.  Eventually, they were touching the ceiling.  Lovely.

I have to say that I'm proud of my little rosemary plant.  It was in the greenhouse, and I forgot to bring it in this winter.  We can't grow rosemary in the herb garden because it is always killed off during the winter.  When we lived at lower elevations, it was a perennial.  Here on the mountain, it's an annual, and so I've been keeping it in a pot so that I have it year round.  Anyway . . . I forgot to bring the poor thing in, and then I never checked on it.  After so much time had passed, I just figured it was dead.  But look at this!

It's still alive and kicking, which is a testament to how much moisture is in the air in the greenhouse in the winter.  It literally drips from the ceiling when it is wet for days on end.  It's dry in the summer.  We gave it some water, and then put it back in the greenhouse since it seems to like it so much in there.  I'll check in on the poor thing every once in a while and give it a drink.

Since you seem to like it when I post pictures of the mountains, I thought I'd show you Mt. Adams, which doesn't often make it into the mountain views.  This is what it looks like when I stand next to the door of the greenhouse.

When I walk past that tree on the left and down to the edge of the grass, you can see all three mountains.  And now you know what I mean when I say it is a Three Mountain Day.

That's Mt. Rainier on the left, Mt. St. Helens in the middle, and Mt. Adams on the right.  If we drive a little ways down the hill, Mt. Hood will come into view on the extreme right side.  Someday when I have time, I'll try to get a picture of all four mountains in one frame.  Actually, I'm not sure it can be done.

Smitty thought he had died and gone to heaven.  He was so excited!!  Not only was it not raining, but the people came outside!!!!!!  Holy Whisker Mittens!  (That's what Smitty says when he gets excited.)

So, if you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that I used to take my dear kitty George for walks in our woods.  I've been waiting for some decent weather so that I could introduce little Smitty to the woods.  Today was the day.

The path that is cut through the woods is sort of a figure eight, and the woods extend down an embankment on the west side of our property.  That means that the path also extends down to the access road that we share with our other four neighbors who live closest to us.  Needless to say, I don't want Smitty wandering down to the road and away from the house until I've had a chance to show him the ropes a little bit.  Since I don't really know what he will do when we go for walks (George always stayed right by my side), I haven't wanted to venture too far.  Today, we stayed on the part of the path where the house is visible.  He was so excited, he did just what I thought he would do, which was to run from tree to tree and run up as many as possible.  Uh, oh.  A little too high here.  He got down by himself though.

He was charging around at half the speed of light; thus, the blur.

Can you see how the ridge of dark fur on his back is standing on end?  So funny.

So when we'd had all the excitement we could stand, we came up and filled the bird feeders for the first time in months.  We're very bad bird parents and don't feed the birds in the winter.  It's too cold and wet, and I, for one, don't feel like trudging around in the mud.  Sorry, birdies.  Anyway, we fed them today.  

As long as we're going to feed the birds, we decided it was time to cut some branches off a low-lying tree.  You can see how close it is to our birdbath in the image below.  The birdbath is a little difficult to see, so I put an arrow pointing up to it.

Smitty had taken to sitting on that rock that was well-sheltered by the tree limbs and waiting for the birds.  The birds would be hard pressed to see him there.  But we fixed his little red wagon and cut the limbs so that he will be much more visible.

Besides, this is what I refer to as the "rock chair".  If one doesn't mind getting poked in the butt too much, one can sit here and admire the view of the mountains.

Someday I hope to share the rock chair with my not-yet-conceived grandchildren.  (Sigh.)

So that's about it for the outdoors today.  

When I mentioned having machine tied a flannel quilt in a recent blog post, a few of you asked about it.  Here is the quilt I was referring to.  It is a rag quilt, and it's one of the very first quilts I made when I started quilting.  I call this quilt "The Great Outdoors" after the flannel fabric line that it's made from.

I love this quilt.  It's the one I snuggle up under when we watch TV in the evenings.  Anyway...I used a buttonhole stitch on my sewing machine to machine tie each square in the four-patches.  You can see it right in the center.  It's a little eyelet buttonhole stitch.

Here it is a little closer up and easier to see.

This quilt has received a lot of love, and these are still holding fast.  You can make one of these little buttonholes in less than a minute, and it's a little easier on your fingers than hand-tying.  Still, I like the look of hand-tying.  I'm still considering whether I'll use this machine stitch when I tie my Salt Water Taffy quilt, or whether I'll do the good old-fashioned hand tying method.  And it would help to actually finish the quilt first too.

So how's your Saturday going?