Productive Day, Inside and Out

Today was a productive day.

I started out by canning some ginger honey applesauce, got some pumpkin butter going in the slow cooker and roasted some pumpkin seeds. It was nice to spend the morning in the kitchen, but the sun was actually shining so I was anxious to get outside.

I decided to work on our future garden spot, shown above on September 2nd. It's not as green, all of the weeds are brown, but they are nearly as tall as I am. I had every intention of working on it sooner, tilling the ground and prepping it for spring, but time got away from me and other projects took priority.

Before I could get working I had to go out to the shop and collect supplies; weed whacker, rake, wheel barrow, etc. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal but when I stepped into the shop I heard a "Tink, Tink, Tink". "Oh great, a mouse" I thought. I slowly walked around listening to the "Tink, Tink, Tink" as it lead me to the big oil drum stove we have in the back. One of my cats had beaten me to it and was anxious for me to open the door so she could get inside.

By this time I had realized that the noise was much to loud to be a small mouse. A rat perhaps? Maybe a squirrel? That happened once when I was in high school; a squirrel fell down our chimney and left sooty paw prints all over our house. Today I braced myself as I opened the stove door and jumped back just in case. A flicker (the bird pictured in my last post) flew out and up to the ceiling looking for a way out. I rushed over to the "hanger door" and opened it as wide as I could. This bird wasn't very smart, it took it several minutes to head towards the sunlight. When all was said and done I looked out the shop door at the yard to see the dogs, cowering in the distance. They were not at all thrilled by this crazy bird.

Once that was settled I was able to get out and do a few hours of work in the sunshine. Brian picked up some free tarps from a local beehive maker and I'm hoping they will help kill the weeds. They are brown paper on one side and a white tyvek like material on the other. I know that people use either black tarps or newspaper to kill weeds, and I feel like this is somewhere in between. I'm hoping that the brown paper will decompose and the plastic topped with snow this winter will help smother the weeds. I'm not sure if it will work, but it's worth a shot. I know they will let water through, and sunlight when it's not covered in snow- both of which are undesirable for weed killing, so I guess we'll see. I'll be sure to post whether or not it works.