The storms last night split and went north and south of us and I don’t believe we got a single drop! It happens from time to time and we really need the rain.
It started clouding up this morning and a little while ago I looked out and…it was raining! A nice, slow, steady rain. Just what we need. The sun is out now and it’s most likely turned into a sauna outside, but that’s OK since I have no intention of venturing out today. The errands yesterday and not feeling well due to Rx drug side effects has left me in the mood to hibernate and knit. And read. And play solitaire on Pogo.
I just remembered I need to take some ground beef out of the freezer for chopped steak tomorrow. And I need to saute some veggies to go with the chicken I’ve already cooked and shredded for our dinner later this evening. I’ve got broccoli, red onion, yellow and orange bell peppers in the fridge. I ate the last of the sugar snap peas for a snack yesterday or I would have tossed those in as well. I’ll steam some rice in chicken broth and it will make a nice meal.
Next time I order groceries I’ll see about some sweet potatoes for baking. I might try cutting a couple of them into wedges and cook them on the air fry setting in the oven. I’m trying to stay away from white potatoes for a bit and we both love sweet potatoes anyway. Sweet potatoes are good as twice-baked potatoes too. I also steam them in their skins and then peel them and make mashed sweet potatoes.
I’d also like to do another batch of BBQ chicken in the crock pot and freeze part of it.
I just heard more thunder coming our way! Please, Lord. Let it keep up for a while longer. We are out of the county wide burn ban but we still need water. The stock ponds on the farm are more like wading pools lately, not even deep enough for Grover to walk out and cool off his tummy! He loves to stand in the stock pond when the heat starts climbing in the summer months. Granted, he’s a tall bull, but still…it’s kinda sad seeing him standing there knee deep in the pond, looking up at the house as if to say, “What the heck?”
Brad and I were talking earlier about things we want to get done outside when it’s cooler and more fall-like. We need to get the gutters cleaned out and we can get the landscape guys to do that for us when they come out to mow next time. We don’t have nearly as many pine needles to deal with as we did with those six tall trees on the north side of the house that we had taken down last March, but we do have one nearly 70 foot tall tree on the southeast corner of the house. Eventually we’ll need to replace those gutters but it can wait a bit. We’ve put a lot of money into home improvements this year.
We need to clean the outside of the windows and the window screens but there’s no point in doing that until after the guys have mowed one more time. We’ve almost got enough green grass for it to be worth their while to come out but I want to be sure we don’t have more rain forecast before we ask them to mow. We also need to have them cut a few low hanging branches along the south fence and down the driveway.
Then there is the cover Brad made for the above ground water filter several years ago that needs to be replaced. The scraps of siding that he used are showing water damage even though it sits on bricks. The bricks need to be taken up and leveled as well. We also need to put some kind of hangers up in the garage for the rubber hoses during the winter. We took down the old ones and put up storage on that wall for rakes and shovels and such. There is nothing sitting on the floor of the garage in that corner now and it’s easier to clean with the leaf blower or the broom.
Another thing we need to do is go shopping for an upright freezer to put in the garage. There is a set of plastic storage shelves against the wall near the south side door that will need to be moved for the freezer. Or, we can put it on the opposite side near the north side door instead. Either way we need to clean off the storage shelves and toss some stuff we aren’t using. I’d also like to find a small fridge for Brad to put in his shop/man cave. He could keep beer and soft drinks in it.
The sun is out again and it looks like the rain has moved on for now. I’m watching Dr. Pol reruns and I need to work on my knitting until it’s time to prepare our dinner later. I’ll quarter an apple and peel an orange that we’ll split between us for an afternoon snack. Actually, that sounds really good. Snack coming up!
Have a blessed Tuesday afternoon and evening, ya’ll.
Rural Texas Knitter 