August 10, 2010: Thinking Ahead

I'm loving the way the pole beans are growing through the lattice on the inside of the patio. I'm thinking I might tap into the irrigation pipe and put a drip line all along this west end of the patio next year, to take advantage of both sections of lattice. These are dry beans, but I have grown green pole beans in that corner before, and it was really easy to pick them right from the patio. In case you're wondering, that's not Cookie, my pet rabbit, up there on the ledge. That's my "scare robin"! We always have problems with robins nesting on those beams, so have resorted to setting critters around and/or tacking up hardware cloth between the rafters.

If I'm MIA for the next couple of days, I have good reason. I didn't even make it out to the garden yesterday, I was so busy inside the house. I decided to tackle the carpet cleaning for now, so I steam cleaned the living room, dining room and hall. Then I swept down the Halloween decorations....OK, you probably call them spider webs. Washed the windows, polished and rearranged the furniture, cleaned the lamps and lampshades, dusted the fireplace hearth and mantle, ran all the washable knickknacks through the dishwasher, scrubbed the entry on my hands and knees, washed the entry hall rug and hung it out on the patio railing to dry. Ran to the computer and printed out updated grandchildren pictures for the picture frames, cleaned said frames and glass and put in the pictures. I even dismantled the dining room chandelier and washed all those little prisms and rehung them. That's practically a full afternoon's job in itself.

Sheesh, it smelled so good in here last night, you wouldn't know the dogs lived at our house! I'm on a roll, so today I'm tackling the kitchen.

Yes, there was Chinese take out for dinner.