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no such thing as a day with nothing to do
Apr. 17th, 2020 05:42 pmThis is my 2nd week of required Fridays off, unpaid. Although I will certainly miss that 20% of my pay, I am lucky and I know it. I can work from home the other four days of the week (I have been for just over a month now) and I can pay my bills, make charitable donations, and try to support small businesses.
And I must admit having any extra days off during spring in Maine is a golden opportunity. There is always so much to do and I never come close to finishing the big spring list. So this year I have more days to work down through things that I never get to. There is a variety of outdoor cleanup and prep. Plus there are a lot of little things that I've been seeing and ignoring that have to get taken care of.
Last weekend was pretty much a washout, because the ground was covered with snow until late Sunday. However, I did manage to get some things done inside. The big item being building a set of shelves out in the garage to hold the boxes of 78's that were slowing crushing down under their own weight. The structure is pretty simple, just unfinished pine 1x12's for verticals and horizontals with a thin plywood backing to add rigidity. It'll hold 30 boxes, which isn't quite all of the ones I have, but the vast majority.
Today was a nice day, a bit cool but sunny. Things done: weeded and mulched hazelnuts, weeded and mulched raspberry patch, sharpened the chainsaw, cut up small rounds collected by sawbuck, replaced broken bulb in exterior floodlight, replaced burnt out bulb in Derien's garage door opener (I've never gotten my bay's light working), replaced the 3 bulbs in the extension hall with LEDs, started the lawnmower, then realized I should clean out the air filter on the lawn mower and did that, gathered pinecones from the yard (aka next year's fire starters), swept up sand at the end of the driveway but didn't move it.
Over the last few weeks I've also started some seeds. I've got a whole lot of lettuce seedlings growing under lights. Soon it'll be time to graduate them up from 2 inch squares of soil to 4 inch square containers. The first batch of peppers didn't go well, a combination of a heat mat and a spell of warm weather pretty much cooked them. I've now got a second batch begin, without the heat mat, just using lights to try to raise the ambient temp for them. Our house is certainly not warm enough for peppers right now. No sprouts yet, but it may take a while for those.
Outside we have a few early flowers and almost everything has buds swelling. Soon everything will be green and growing again!
And I must admit having any extra days off during spring in Maine is a golden opportunity. There is always so much to do and I never come close to finishing the big spring list. So this year I have more days to work down through things that I never get to. There is a variety of outdoor cleanup and prep. Plus there are a lot of little things that I've been seeing and ignoring that have to get taken care of.
Last weekend was pretty much a washout, because the ground was covered with snow until late Sunday. However, I did manage to get some things done inside. The big item being building a set of shelves out in the garage to hold the boxes of 78's that were slowing crushing down under their own weight. The structure is pretty simple, just unfinished pine 1x12's for verticals and horizontals with a thin plywood backing to add rigidity. It'll hold 30 boxes, which isn't quite all of the ones I have, but the vast majority.
Today was a nice day, a bit cool but sunny. Things done: weeded and mulched hazelnuts, weeded and mulched raspberry patch, sharpened the chainsaw, cut up small rounds collected by sawbuck, replaced broken bulb in exterior floodlight, replaced burnt out bulb in Derien's garage door opener (I've never gotten my bay's light working), replaced the 3 bulbs in the extension hall with LEDs, started the lawnmower, then realized I should clean out the air filter on the lawn mower and did that, gathered pinecones from the yard (aka next year's fire starters), swept up sand at the end of the driveway but didn't move it.
Over the last few weeks I've also started some seeds. I've got a whole lot of lettuce seedlings growing under lights. Soon it'll be time to graduate them up from 2 inch squares of soil to 4 inch square containers. The first batch of peppers didn't go well, a combination of a heat mat and a spell of warm weather pretty much cooked them. I've now got a second batch begin, without the heat mat, just using lights to try to raise the ambient temp for them. Our house is certainly not warm enough for peppers right now. No sprouts yet, but it may take a while for those.
Outside we have a few early flowers and almost everything has buds swelling. Soon everything will be green and growing again!
