It's October 6, and I'm still waiting for the greenhouse installer to get here. So I'm parsing out the steps in the construction along the way. On this day, we got concrete!
On August 3, it got real when the concrete truck growled up the driveway. AJ, Lane's dad and the company owner, ran the skid steer, taking scoopfuls of concrete from the driveway to the construction site. There was no way that concrete mixer was going to drive over what remained of the "lawn."
I can't even imagine how sore my arms, shoulders and back would be after raking concrete for hours. Lord have mercy, I felt for those guys.
And still the scoops kept arriving.
At one point Lane stepped into one of the footer holes while raking, and got a muckboot full of concrete. That must feel AWFUL. He had to hose it out right away and put the boot back on, wet. Ugggh! I could just feel the blisters forming.
By the end of the day, we had a pad. I was so excited to finally see the dimensions of the structure to come! It felt REAL now!
Once it had cured awhile, it needed to be buffed to make it nice and smooth.
Curtis was SO good about not walking on it while it was wet. But the next morning, he instinctively knew it would be ready, and he wanted to be the first person to walk on it. As it should be.
As I write, it's gone down to around 40 at night for the last three nights. I've made a massive push to get all my treasured plant friends inside and installed in windows where they can, I hope, get enough sun and light to get them through until the glass installer gets here and I get the heaters installed in the lean-to.
You cannot even imagine what it was like to carry Creole Lady up those tiny wooden stairs. She's over 6' tall. I let her dry out for a couple of days (she wasn't really dry, but she was wanting water), then just carried her in short bursts up two flights of stairs. Here's to big plastic pots that look like terra cotta but weigh 1/20th as much! And here's to loving a plant this much. She said thank you in the most beautiful way the very next day! Six enormous coral violet blossoms.
Who wouldn't be happy, with warm sun, lots of companions, and this view! You can just see the new red dogwood I planted below the center of the photo.
I also made pesto, three cups' worth, out of the massive, gone-to-seed, leaf-droppy plants in my garden. I really need to make pesto when the basil is happy and green! Oh well. It still tastes pretty delicious. Note to self: 8 cups of packed leaves makes 3 cups of pesto. I used sunflower seeds as the nuts, because who can afford pine nuts these days? And I used gorgeous homegrown garlic from my dear friend Tami G.
I will admit that my pesto is garlic-heavy, but when ONE bulb yields this much gorgeous fresh garlic, you have to do something! Good thing there's no one around to offend with my hippie garlic power breath.
Because someone is going to want the recipe,
I used 8 cups of basil leaves, packed
maybe 3/4 cup of roasted salted sunflower hearts
one 8 oz bag of freshly shredded parmesan
and maybe 1.5 cups of olive oil.
I can't be specific; I was doing it strictly by feel. I like a fairly loose pesto that packs down well in the jar. I refrigerate the jars. I also froze a ziploc, filled with a thin flat layer of pesto and it's great to be able to snap off the amount I need and keep the rest fresh. So I think I'll transfer that jarred pesto to ziplocs, because I know I'll use it more, and it won't go bad in the jar.
Bathed in nostalgia by the overpowering smell of basil and garlic, I had one of those winter-is-coming melancholy days on October 7, but then the light did this
(note gratuitous rainbow fragment)
and a shelf cloud did this, and Curtis and I did this
and I felt a bit better.
I hope your winter preparations, whatever they are, are going well. Caved in and turned the heat on last evening--it felt so good to wear fleece again! Hot tea and lamplight season is here. Might as well embrace it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment