Kind of productive weekend, and chicken counting.
Tomorrow I get my students back, and their babies. Rumor has it I will have two new babies -- possibly more later? I looked at the class list with the teacher of recford but she has an ELD (English language development, pullout support for second-language learners, what we have instead of bilingual education nowadays thanks to the Texan influence on education) class on the same roster and she didn't know who was who, and she was told she had six teenaged mothers out of the lot. I recognized two returnees, of whom one has her child in preschool. I also know I have three babies who aren't in her class, so four babies and also one girl I think is supposed to be on that list but I don't recall seeing her name (hmm. She ought to be on the list). She was sort of frantic because she also has two thirty+ -student classes in the same room and it was currently set up with one big horseshoe table which could fit maybe twelve students. It's big enough for the desks she needs but as of Friday it needed a lot of work to get there.
So Saturday Frank and I stripped the plum tree. I decided against making wine this year because the plums didn't get all that sweet or flavorful. But when I started processing the plums for jam, cans, and drying, I noticed they were pretty good. Just as well about the wine though because by the time I did strip them there were not enough good ones to make a whole batch of wine. But now I have eight jars of tremendously wonderful almost black satsuma plum jam -- tastes more like blackberry, really: six pints of canned plums to eat with cottage cheese: and five trays of dried plums. Also a plum clafoutis (kind of. Sliced plums, a tad of thinned plum jam as a kind of gklaze, topped with a thin layer of custard that turned totally magenta in the cooking and a sprinkle of almond meal and a tiny bit of sugar)and a jar of plum syrup and another bowl of plums. Also I made banana bread with three of my frozen bananas and a bunch of last year's dried fruit and mostly almond meal and a but of that weird "white" whole wheat flour (not very good flour, but it's okay in banana bread where you don't notice the flour anyway).
This year I have also canned eight jars (mostly 24 ounce jars) of tomatoes and three pints of tomato juice and five jars of escabeche (chiles and carrots in vinegar --mostly carrots because that's the part of the escabeche I actually like) and eight jars of peaches and ten jars of pears, and I have dried several batches of other sorts of plums and four trays of pears. And I made eight little jars of "wild" plum jam (the tiny yellow round ones from around the corner) I want to do another six jars of tomatoes and probably half a dozen each of bread-and-butter pickles and garlic dill pickles. Then I think I'll put up a dozen or so jars of applesauce and maybe apple juice as well. I'm munching on the dried apples I made a few years ago: they have softened some and now they're suddenly delicious, so maybe I'll dry some of the apples too, just not make them as crispy as I did before when I decided I didn't like them.
Also. Got my friend Paul over and we pruned the apricot tree to a faretheewell because it hadn't gotten pruned properly in a while and it only fruits on new wood. Hopefully we did it soon enough and there will be a lot of apricots next year. Mostly pruned the plum tree too. Have to bite the bullet and spray everything really well this winter.
And.
I got the loan on the house restarted and it looks very good indeed.
.
And interest rates dropped again since January so even though I think I'm tacking on Frank's tuition for this year the whole thing will still cost less, and will result in lower monthly payments especially after I immediately pay off every last debt I have. And Zack will start building as soon as we have the money for materials, and will move in during the spring, and that will be a load off my mind.
And -- as usual -- the loan officer's daughter was a classmate of Frank's.
Today I am officially off work but I am finishing putting my room together for tomorrow! Also getting my whooping cough booster and mailing that damned Clue game to Glen.
So Saturday Frank and I stripped the plum tree. I decided against making wine this year because the plums didn't get all that sweet or flavorful. But when I started processing the plums for jam, cans, and drying, I noticed they were pretty good. Just as well about the wine though because by the time I did strip them there were not enough good ones to make a whole batch of wine. But now I have eight jars of tremendously wonderful almost black satsuma plum jam -- tastes more like blackberry, really: six pints of canned plums to eat with cottage cheese: and five trays of dried plums. Also a plum clafoutis (kind of. Sliced plums, a tad of thinned plum jam as a kind of gklaze, topped with a thin layer of custard that turned totally magenta in the cooking and a sprinkle of almond meal and a tiny bit of sugar)and a jar of plum syrup and another bowl of plums. Also I made banana bread with three of my frozen bananas and a bunch of last year's dried fruit and mostly almond meal and a but of that weird "white" whole wheat flour (not very good flour, but it's okay in banana bread where you don't notice the flour anyway).
This year I have also canned eight jars (mostly 24 ounce jars) of tomatoes and three pints of tomato juice and five jars of escabeche (chiles and carrots in vinegar --mostly carrots because that's the part of the escabeche I actually like) and eight jars of peaches and ten jars of pears, and I have dried several batches of other sorts of plums and four trays of pears. And I made eight little jars of "wild" plum jam (the tiny yellow round ones from around the corner) I want to do another six jars of tomatoes and probably half a dozen each of bread-and-butter pickles and garlic dill pickles. Then I think I'll put up a dozen or so jars of applesauce and maybe apple juice as well. I'm munching on the dried apples I made a few years ago: they have softened some and now they're suddenly delicious, so maybe I'll dry some of the apples too, just not make them as crispy as I did before when I decided I didn't like them.
Also. Got my friend Paul over and we pruned the apricot tree to a faretheewell because it hadn't gotten pruned properly in a while and it only fruits on new wood. Hopefully we did it soon enough and there will be a lot of apricots next year. Mostly pruned the plum tree too. Have to bite the bullet and spray everything really well this winter.
And.
I got the loan on the house restarted and it looks very good indeed.
.
And interest rates dropped again since January so even though I think I'm tacking on Frank's tuition for this year the whole thing will still cost less, and will result in lower monthly payments especially after I immediately pay off every last debt I have. And Zack will start building as soon as we have the money for materials, and will move in during the spring, and that will be a load off my mind.
And -- as usual -- the loan officer's daughter was a classmate of Frank's.
Today I am officially off work but I am finishing putting my room together for tomorrow! Also getting my whooping cough booster and mailing that damned Clue game to Glen.