Today I went back and actually calculated it out. Eight hostas in the mixed package, three blueberry plants, and two pink and two white bleeding hearts plants, plus shipping and tax, came to $43.75. When you break that down, that's 15 plants, which means each plant is costing just shy of $2.92 each. Considering the local home improvement stores sell hosta plants for $15-$30 each, and last year we paid almost $30 for a grafted blueberry with three varieties (that were not listed by name), and the two-root package of bleeding hearts was something like $6.99 (and the chickens ate it as soon as I planted it), suddenly the $44 price tag seemed a lot more reasonable.
It's a good thing we have our tax return money. Tony gave me the go ahead and I placed the order today. I'm so excited! This should cover my space I'd set aside for blueberries in the west field. Between these three (Coville, Blueray, and Berkeley), the two Lemonade blueberries coming from Baker Creek, and the one currently in a bucket under grow lights inside, it should make an interesting row, and with plenty of flowers for pollination between varieties. I also have the grafted three-type plant in the East garden outside the bathroom window. In a couple of years we should start having a nice blueberry harvest! With any luck we will have enough to share with the local wildlife and still have enough for us too.
Today I got six chicken eggs and one duck egg from the barn. Yay! The recent rain has led to flooding in our area. While our basement is nice and dry, the colony building is flooding. Fortunately there is a cement shelf that runs the entire inner perimeter of the building and the rabbits have been using it as a transportation hub to stay dry. I'm not sure how I'm going to get the water out of the building. We had some minor flooding last year just inside the door when the snow melted from the roof, but not this bad. Yikes!
The next two days (Friday and Saturday) are supposed to stay below freezing, so the water should freeze and at least let them stay dry. It buys me two days to figure out how to fix it before it warms up again and the rest of the snow melts! The barn is looking pretty soggy right now too, but at least there's no standing water. The Weather Channel says the end of next week on should bring high temperatures in the 40's, so it's almost time to shovel out all the winter yuck from the barn that's been frozen the last several months. It's one of my least favorite jobs, but fortunately, the big spring clean up is just once a year - during cold and mud season. During the summer it's much easier to spot clean as needed under cages and preferred roosts because it doesn't freeze in place. Oh the joys of unheated barns and Minnesota winters.
Today is Pi day (3.14). To celebrate #1's school is having a contest for creative ways to display the Pi sign. She came home excited and asked if I could crochet a Pi sign. Well, I've never tried to do a color design other than straight stripes, but I'll give it a go. My first attempt was not great (grey with a blue symbol). Not satisfied with my results, I insisted I needed to try again. It took longer using a different method, but the second attempt turned out much better (yellow and blue). Still not perfect, but considering it's just for fun, it was a learning experience. I told her she can't win the contest using something I made (that would be cheating) but she still wants to bring them to school to show her teachers. Indeed, we are nerds at home, so I'm sure we'll find some use for these... coasters? Hot pads? Dish cloths? Whatever they end up being used for, I'm sure we'll enjoy the story behind them.
I'm just a few stitches from completing one of my crochet projects. When #4 was little, my mother-in-law made a couple cloth slings for us. The kind you wear toga-style over one shoulder and under the other arm and put the baby in so you can have your hands free. Well, She was a large baby and grew out of it within a couple months. I liked the idea though, so I thought I'd give a try to making a crochet version. Not for a baby, mind you - our youngest is five. No, this one is for Amos. The blind kitten. We all love to hold him and snuggle with him, and he often falls asleep in our laps, but because he's blind, he doesn't understand the dangers of rolling over or stretching in the wrong direction. I worry about him falling off someone's lap, and as much as I love holding him, it makes it hard to do anything else. So... A sling holder. I ran out of yarn about 16 inches from the finish, so Tony brought home a fresh skein. Once I finish the last section, it's just a matter of stitching the ends together before I can try it out to see if it will work or not. I made it big enough that it should fit him, even when he's full grown. I was trying to use up extra yarn I had, so it's orange with gold and variegated blue stripes. I'm not a fan of orange, but in this cage it actually looks pretty nice.
I've started putting together a list of the seeds I want to get winter sown. Today I even pulled some of the seeds from the collection and set them aside with every intention to start, but then everything else came up and I didn't manage to get started. But I am making small steps of progress toward getting some containers started... Soon.