Marquardt 102 beats Fisk 101

I have a phrase I like to use when I do home repair around here:
"Marquardt 102 beats Fisk 101." 
It's kind of like the way classes in college are numbered. If English 101 is the intro class, English 102 will be just the tiniest step above it. Not the intro, but no expert level. So our house was previously owned by people named Fisk.
They were do-it-yourself-ers. 
I say that with a bit of tongue-in-cheek because, well, in many ways I'm just as cheap about my home repair. 
So there are some things that they did that are.. um... less than perfect. Not that they started with perfect materials mind you, since this house was built in 1868. But here's a good example.
This is our coat closet:

It is a folding door with a rail at the top. When we moved in, if you closed the door all the way the little guide would often slide off the rail. This would be Fisk 101. So I employed all of my handyman style skills to fix it.

Can you see my fix? Here it is from the back.

Oh yeah, check that bad boy out. That's a shim that's been broken off so it's not too long. I unscrewed the rail on one screw, slid in a shim, and rescrewed the rail in through the shim. (rescrewed; is that a word? Hmm... spell check doesn't think so.)
And that would be Marquardt 102. Pretty good, huh?


So recently we decided we hated the storm door on our house. Chances are 90%+ that it was purchased at an auction for $20 or less and it showed. Darn thing was a pain in the keyster. (Huh. Keyster is also not a word. I'm full of these tonight!)
Here's the old door

What you can't see is that I've ripped out the bottom screen because our cat clawed it to death. If you've never seen a screen clawed to death, consider yourself lucky. It's ugly. Not to mention the screen totally loses its purpose in life. I've also already replaced the broken latch on it once, and the entire open edge was coming off so it made a horrible cracking noise every time the door opened and closed. 

Turns out if you replace a screen door, it's not a super easy process. It involves, like, drill bits and stuff. 
But two days later, here's what we have!

I feel the need to say "voila!" Maybe this one was actually complicated enough to be Marquardt 103. Or even Marquardt 201. Anyone want to hire a contractor? No job too small! 


So I invite you to share. Do you improve the things the previous idiot did to your house with things that are only borderline less idiotic? Or do you hire someone?

Lady in Red & Talking to Sheep

As I helped Ryan herd sheep tonight--this consists of standing in a spot he dictates and just being generally intimidating--I looked down at my red shirt and red polka dot farm boots and thought to myself, "this is probably not what Chris De Burgh was thinking when he sang 'Lady in Red.' "

While I do actually own a red dress that cleans up ok, this is not it.


My daughter's newest, best trick is that she makes sheep and cow noises. Not "baa" and "moo" but "me-eh-eh" and "maaahw." Altogether more accurate. Considering her current words are "Mama," "Daddy," "ball," and an occasional "num-num" in reaction to food she likes, she's soon going to make more animal noises than words. She's working on turkey noises too... 
But here's a video of her talking to the sheep for your viewing pleasure.

Bad Summer Night Poetry

There's a party in my garage,
and everyone's invited.
Turkeys, chickens, garden tractor
coexist united.

In amongst the concrete mixer, 

a brooder design is working well.

But can you tell turkey from chicken

in a building hotter than heck?

Cicadas and crickets harmonize
in a sky marbled pink.
They tell me "go and get a camera!
Then just stop and think."

So I leave you with the sound
of an Iowan midsummer night.
It's time to go in and wash the eggs
before I get a mosquito bite.

Garden Update & Weathervane Table Topper

At the beginning of the season I said I'd keep you updated on my garden, so here we go. As a reminder, this is what my garden looked like at the beginning of the season.

Cute, huh? Well, I have to preface this next picture by telling you that this is actually a better-looking garden than any I've ever had. Keep that in mind. I took this picture of my garden tonight.

There are wax beans on the left here, and some sage on the bottom right. I think there may also be thyme in here...

This is the end of our broccoli (we actually harvested two little heads of these!). 

This bed was largely spinach. It was yummy, I just didn't really replant it. There's some zucchini in the top left.

There's a stripped out tomato in the back of this one. I think bugs got it. 
So the moral of the story is that I'm just not very good at this gardening thing. But I'm still planning on retrenching. I'm not giving up on gardening yet. Someday I'll be that 60-year-old farm wife with a wonderful garden. I'll let you know when that happens.


I also finished up the little tabletopper that was my giveaway prize for a little giveaway I hosted in March. It will be the design I put on my barn quilt whenever I get that going.

Traditionally I would hang it this way (square), but I'm contemplating hanging it on point, like this:

Do you have thoughts?


Lastly, for those of you who want more pictures of my little girl on this blog (Don, I'm talking to you), here I am reading to her. We do this a lot, and she will grab a book and then climb into my lap and sit down. This particular book is from my childhood and is about moving, but the little girl in it has a little gray cat on almost every page. Therefore, my daughter has decided that this is the "find the kitty" book and she finds that little gray cat on every page of the book.

Raspberry Hunting & Poll Ending

Yesterday Ryan mentioned to me that there was a small patch of raspberries in the pasture that he had the sheep graze around that might be ready for picking. His directions to find it went like this: "You know that one big soft maple with the overhanging branch that's about to fall off? Follow that branch and it's the next tree west of there."

After a couple of clarifying phone calls to Ryan, I found the small patch.

I had the baby on my back in her Chicco carrier for a little outdoor adventure.

This picture's actually a little out of date, but it's the one I have on file.


Anyway, we got to the raspberry patch and found a very unsurprising surprise: Poison Ivy. It's all over the place on our farm. So now it's time for a little game! Can you spot the poison ivy vs. the raspberry plant? Hint: the poison ivy has a 3 leaf pattern. Oh, wait. So does the raspberry plant.

Well? How did you do?


Here's the raspberry leaves:

And here's the poison ivy.

So the poison ivy and the raspberry and I played a game of "touch this, not that," only complicated by the whole "raspberries have thorns" thing. Everything good is worth working for!

A meager harvest, but completely delicious. There weren't enough to make anything with them, so I just ate them. Perhaps in the future our patch will be big enough to make jam!


On a separate note, my poll ends tonight and so far it looks like my readers want to know more about my farm and home life. I definitely think people who read this blog at this point generally know me personally, so they are more interested in my daughter than I thought people might be. I will try to adjust accordingly. In the meantime, thanks for reading!

Lily Season Begins & Poll

It's my second favorite time of year for flowers: Lily Season! I love lilies, but they are second to lilacs. Most of my heirloom bulbs will bloom a little later (they are budding now), but the "cheaper" bulbs are working it right now!

This lovely red-orange specimen was elected to adorn my kitchen island. Just one stem and a few hosta leaves and I have an arrangement. 


Side note: if you've never tapped your hostas as a source for arrangements, you are missing out. They add wonderful texture, last forever, and it's hard to feel guilty about taking a few choice leaves because there are so many!


Also, because I can't stay on one topic for too long, I thought I'd note that Ryan and Jim and Michael C. got another wall of the building up this Sunday. Yay!

I didn't help this time. Sorry boys. I'm kind of a mess with a hammer anyway (my motto the last time I helped was: "Whoops. Is this close enough?" Answer: No. Pretty much never.)


Last point today: I've put a poll on my blog off to the right, it will close at midnight on the 4th of July. You can put in multiple answers (you don't just have to pick one) and the question I'm asking is: What do you like to read about on this blog? I'm just kind of curious if there are things I should focus on. I think about blog thoughts a lot, but sometimes I second guess myself and decide not to post because I don't think you'll be interested. So please be honest and I'll work on posting more of the things people who read this thing want to read. If what you like best isn't on there, just leave me a comment on this post.


Those of you who read with a reader (like Google), please please please go to my blog and fill in the poll. If you're reading this, I want to know what you like no matter who you are. 


Side note again: Google has a cool "next" button you can add to your browser that lets you see new blogs on their home blog page. It's in the options somewhere and I have discovered I love it far better than RSSs because I get to see people's actual blog. 


Ok, before I side note again, ta ta for now!

June Exchange & Another Quilt Relish

I signed up for a June Craft gift exchange thing this year, from the Craftaholics Anonymous blog. Not quite sure what possessed me, but I thought it would be fun. Anyway, it's in the mail now, my gifting partner was someone who likes all the owl patterns that are hot right now and is also a Scentsy dealer. So I made her a candle mat from an original pattern.

The owls are appliqued with button eyes, the rest is all free motion quilted in.

I also finished another one of the Modern Quilt Relish patterns, like the one in my cubicle quilt. I have to say, these patterns are very well written. I did cut the size in half, however, just because I didn't really want anything bigger. There is a pencil in the picture to give a sense of scale.

To anyone who is looking for farm news, I apologize for no update on that front! It continues to be a very rough year here. Our energizer is back from the manufacturer and we now have fewer sheep, but we're still having chicken problems like crazy. Our broilers just aren't growing like they should and the layers are falling prey to clever raccoons and foxes. My co-workers are telling me that we should just set traps for the coons. This is funny. Ryan actually tied the bait to the trigger and the next morning the bait was gone and the trap was still untriggered.
Crazy coons.