Excellent Saturday

The day started all right, although since it started at the Church cannery, I should have known there would be challenges. I keep a fairly big supply of long-term food storage at my house. You never know when something may happen: a job loss, can't get to the store (although in my climate I can't imagine how that could ever happen), or the truckers decide to go on strike. Of course Pedersen Transport wouldn't do that. Anyway, I made up my order using their online form and submitted it several weeks ago and arrived at the cannery at 7:00 this morning. Luckily the cannery is in my city, although on the other side of it.

The cute little old volunteer couples who help the patrons really try hard, but each one of them had different ideas of exactly how the canning process should go, and they were new to boot. Every time I go I have internal angst because some of the procedures don't make any sense at all. My partner was sweet, but really wasn't paying attention to what was needed. Two of the five items I ordered weren't available. In all, it seemed like going there this morning was a bit of a waste, but I was almost out of wheat in 25 lb bags and really wanted to get a couple bags. They did have wheat in stock.

I ended up getting:

2 25 lb wheat
4 5 lb bags of powdered milk
2 5.8 lb bags of hot chocolate mix, and now that I look at it again, I see they overcharged me

I didn't get to buy:

1 bag of flour
4 bags of pancake mix

I wanted the flour because the flour I have in storage turned out to have an off-flavor when I had to use some a couple of years ago and I wanted to build up my supply of good-tasting white flour in strong containers.

They also forgot to give me my refund for reusing some of my containers. I guess my canning time was kind of a wash today. On the bad side, they overcharged me, didn't have 40% of the items I'd ordered, and I had angst. On the good side, my family is a little better prepared and I got a ride down with one fun friend and a ride back with another fun friend.


When I got home dh and I decided today was the day to deal with the new little Tango Mandarin orange tree I bought a couple of weeks ago. We'd been trying to decide where to plant it. We have a backyard, but it isn't very big. It already has a very large grapefruit tree in it, a small orange tree that someone in the past planted under the grapefruit tree (duh), and a spindly, three-trunked, virtually non-producing lemon tree in another part of the yard. We also discussed a new location for a tree, which would be outside our bedroom wall with the hopes it would block some of the blazing summer sun from heating up our uninsulated concrete brick wall. In the end we decided to cut down the poor lemon tree and put in something with promise. Dh got out his chainsaw and within 30 minutes had the whole thing down and in the back alley in pieces. He worked really fast.


Then we raked up 25 years of fallen leaves, free-ranging succulent groundcover, and really cleaned up the area. It's a triangular corner of our yard on the far side of the pool. It is the the lower left of the pool in this picture. I want to point out this satellite picture was taken before we moved to this house; under our care the pool is always blue. Then we started digging through little and medium roots to make a hole big enough for the new tree. Luckily there were two additional circles with concrete edgers, one on either side of the old lemon tree. We used the one on the left and will put something else in on the right, leaving the space with the lemon tree stump bare. It took quite a bit to get the hole dug, but once it was big and deep enough, we added some homemade compost, some potting mix, some of the original dirt, and the rooting fertilizer to the hole along with the tree. The whole area looks so neat and tidy now! Just two more years before our tree starts producing like the one in the picture.

During all this time I made lunch, ran a load of laundry, hung it out, folded and put it away, walked S to the park with her on her Big Wheel, and swept and mopped the floor. Dh and I dropped off a large dining room table and 6 chairs at the Salvation Army thrift store and got milk at Costco.

By dinner time I wasn't exactly up to cooking, so I microwaved some large potatoes, heated a can of chili, and served the chili over the baked potatoes with sour cream and guacamole to add as desired. I squeezed 5 lemons and made fresh lemonade to go with it. It all was excellent.

Now I have a sunburn and feel like I accomplished a lot today. It really was a good day.