Good news and bad news

Bad news first. I've run out of episodes of "The Great British Bake Off." I've blown through all the PBS seasons, and the UK-only seasons. I'm a little verklempt.

The good news? I've run out of episodes of "The Great British Bake Off." I might actually blog a bit again. Apparently the drive to write a blog is satisfied by watching a dozen British home bakers  struggle to recreate obscure historic baked goods with diabolically inadequate recipes. Who knew?

I did try a few episodes of "The Great British Sewing Bee," but found it uncompelling. I'd much rather blog.

We're muddling along, doing gardening, for the most part. I did replace four broken panes on the front doors the other day. I was pleased to do something on the house. There's another broken window up high that C. will have to help me with (either by doing the whole job, or holding the ladder for me and being prepared to catch me should I fall over backwards, which I have tendency to do). Then the sidelights need attention. They are narrow stacks of three panes, but the muntins, the pieces of wood trim separating the panes of glass, are missing so I'll need to rebuild them. It's just little fiddly bits of wood so it shouldn't be too hard. It'll be nice to take the boards down and let the light in!

The left sidelight is missing the lower muntin. You can see where it should slot into
the window frame. And at the top, the creatively broken pane that still needs to be replaced.

This is what the repaired sidelight should look like. It's on the inside of the airlock, which duplicates the window arrangement of the front door area. It's in much better shape, with less weathering and vandalism.

We've still got our boy's two dogs, Walter the pug and Hazelnut the Tibetan spaniel. They should be able to go home soon. We've also got two of Em's four until she gets the tall wood fence up at her new house. That's Bella the indoorsy wiener dog, and Arnold the greyhound/kangaroo. Or meerkat/prairie dog. So we've got eight dogs underfoot. Our four are getting tired of sharing everything with all these granddogs, but everyone is mostly good. Except for the yapping.

Today is the last cool day before a stretch of hot ones, and we're working to get the last of the major stuff planted. Yesterday I got the Rattlesnake green beans planted in fat rows on each side of the trellis fencing. Today I set out all the little field-corn seedlings in the square bed at the north end of the garden. C. is working on getting the lower square bed in shape for amaranth and some of the determinate (bush) tomatoes, and some bush beans in the big bed by the little-dog yard. The big tomato push is next.

I took Birdie, our neurologically damaged house chicken, out to enjoy some dirt and sunshine as we worked. (You may remember her as Burday, but that was me being French or something. C. calls her Birdie, and Birdie she is.) I can't tell if Birdie appreciates sunshine and dirt, but we think it's good for her. So she's laying there, in the dirt and sunshine, and Bella the pudgy, lazy dachshund goes completely primal and grabs poor Birdie up and shakes her furiously. C. got hold of the dog and freed Birdie before any serious harm was done – we hope. But Birdie was pretty pissed, and will probably never trust us again. She's resting in her box in the bathroom. Enough sunshine and dirt.

I'm heading back out to shore up the lower square bed with metal roofing. We're out of medium-sized rocks to build a terrace wall, and besides, the roofing is faster. We've a bit left from the barn reroofing job.