Homestead mailing list

["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

Well now, a typical California day begins when the sun trickles across the 
pillows and we awake to the chatter of the hummers outside the bedroom 
window.

Youngest and I do most of the gardening and like to get it done while it is 
nice and cool outside. Today it was bringing in the last of the broccoli, 
some snap peas, green onions and carrots for stir fry tonight.  DH attends 
to the orchard.  After that, we come in and I do whatever in the kitchen 
(breakfast, starting bread, whipping out some pasta if that night is a pasta 
night, setting some beans on to cook, or other prep for dinner) and she does 
some cleaning (usually sweeping and vacumming with that dratted gadget plus 
bed making).

Then we take a break.  Right now she's immersed in learning German, so it is 
either listen to tapes (OMG, again with the gadgets) or read the German 
grammar or I flipped some flashcards she made up.  I check my e-mail (more 
gadgets) and then do some work on my cookbook or a book I'm writing [The 
Names Have Been Changed].

Next, lately, is some more work on the kitchen.  She just finished painting 
some baseboards and I just finished making a shelf which DH is installing in 
the new cabinet next to the newest gadget (electric stove, generic, 
inexpensive but has a lovely *true* simmer <g>  The meatballs last night 
were delicious and I made extras so they will be dinner tomorrow night for 
meatball sandwiches using the pita pockets I made Sunday).

This afternoon I'm going to finish hemming some pants for youngest.  She 
said she's going to cut out a pair of pants that she wants to enter in the 
fair.

Most mornings, DH starts by checking the fences since the deer are hell on 
fences.  Then it is some project.  The heat doesn't bother him, so he works 
until it really gets hot and then usually comes in to kick back around 2 or 
3.  His days will include doing a little wood (one wood shed is already half 
full), and doing more fencing as this place had none when we moved here.

Tomorrow he is going to make a maple butcher block top for a cabinet I 
finished the doors for yesterday.  When he finishes the butcher block, then, 
I'll oil it.

After the butcher block his next project, so he says, is to finish the 
screened porch on the back deck.  We love to set up guitars and amps (oh, 
phooey, more gadgets) and keyboard for music on a nice evening but the 
mosquitoes and little bugs take the pleasure out of it.  With a screened 
porch we'll have our music with the cool breezes in the evenings.

I'd be working on another quilt square but I have to order more embroidery 
floss.  Seems no one stocks the satin stuff anymore.  Go figure!  Although I 
did find some glitter stuff to make the stars with.  I guess that sounds 
strange.  Might help to explain the quilt.  It is a fantasy quilt for 
youngest's bed.  So there are dragons and wizards and unicorns on satin and 
velvet that I got at the thrift store.  Old dresses make excellent quilt 
squares.

So, yes, there is lots of time for just enjoying "stuff."  This weekend or 
next we'll take a ride to the coast.  I miss *my* ocean <g> so have to take 
an occasional trip to get revitalized.  The garden will do fine as I'll do a 
deep soak that morning and there isn't anything else that won't keep.

Lynda, who absolutely hates agreeing with James even more than she hates 
agreeing with Bill <<bg>>
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com>

> Can't speak for what might be happening on a California homestead, but I
> do
> wonder what people think this lifestyle entails.  The whole idea is to not
> dash
> off before dawn in a mirthless sweat trying to get it all done.   It's a
> change of thinking.