Saturday was beautiful and Sunday was overcast but not too wet so we got quite a bit of outside work done.
We did some soil tests and confirmed that last year's corn had completely drained the soil of nitrogen. After we broke up the soil a bit we worked in about 6 pounds of fish meal and about a cup of blood meal that we happened to have. We then scatter sowed the oats, lightly raked them over, and Q walked over the bed to make sure we had good soil contact. We then spread the last of a rain-abused straw bale over them to discourage the crows from seeing it as a buffet. They're supposed to germinate in 7-2o days, so we'll know in the next month or so if our experiment is off to an auspicious start.
In honor of Earth Day, the garden center was giving away Japanese maple seedlings. This is one of our favorite "useless" trees so we got one. Since we have no idea where we could possibly put it, it is currently living in a very large planter. If it survives and looks like it might actually become a tree we'll have to work it into the back yard landscaping as that develops.
All that oat planning got me in a cooking mood and we made a double batch of granola (this batch features dried cherries) and a batch of oatmeal scotchie dough this weekend. We're rationing cookies to one pan per day. I think I'm going to have to start upping the walnuts and leaving out the almonds though. We finally saw Queen of the Sun this weekend (absolutely remarkable movie) and I'm not sure I want to support the almond industry any more. Monocultures are always bad but I'm deeply concerned about what this particular one may be doing to our bee populations. I haven't been able to figure out how to find any small farms that produce almonds and manage hives on-site.
Needing yogurt for the granola got me enthused about making yogurt again. I've wanted a way to maintain the temperature more efficiently while it cultures and Q found this project in Make. (Who wants to go to the effort of making yogurt in one of those stupid machines so you can just get 6 tiny little jars in a batch?) He ordered the parts on Monday and everything works out - I get a yogurt maker and he gets an electronics project.
Mom pointed out that I've been remiss in posting bump pictures so here we are at 22 weeks. I'm glad I took early pictures so I've got proof to convince myself I use to have a relatively flat tummy. I'll probably be glad later on, when my huge belly seems like a dream from a far of time that I have proof of that too. Amazing to think I still have 4 months of incubating!
I also finished a cute spring size 12 mo. sweater this weekend that I need to get a pattern and pictures posted for.
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