Coffee and Chainsaws

This morning I am stealing a few minutes by myself (with coffee :) ) at the kitchen table. The girls are on the porch eating their breakfast watching the tree maintenance guys trim the tree from the power lines out front. Um, spoke too soon! I was halfway through the sentence before this one and Tassie called out "Millie spilled all of my food!" Tassie was almost done, but now the girls are calling out "Nooo, nooo, nooo!" in unison because they want to come inside.

So that's probably why I don't blog a lot anymore. :)

Work is going very well. I even oriented a new RN the other day! I've now been licensed for just over a year, and soon will have been at my job for a year. Time flies, life is busy, my perpetual life theme.

I planted hops in the little strip of soil next to our house! Tassie and I have been putting a little twig in the twine at the top of one day's growth and noting how far it grows every day. It sometimes grows 2 inches. I think they can grow up to a foot a day in the summer! I am intending for them to be multipurpose. They are growing on twine that goes over one of our windows, so it'll allow for some shade in the heat of summer. They also will provide hops for brewing, and supposedly they make good tea. Malt, hops, and yeast are the major (and usually only) components of beer, and if I can grow my own hops that will be a good cost savings. I haven't brewed in well over a year, sadly enough, but I have all of my equipment and I'm hoping to start again in the fall when I don't have to worry about high temperatures for the fermenting period. Brewing in summer heat without any heat control results in off-flavors. I do want to get a propane burner for brewing, because it's very hard on the stove to heat 5 gallons of water and boil it for an hour.

I need to blog more regularly because I  can always just put up some pictures and call it a blog post. It would certainly be a window into my life that some of you can't see from so far away.

Last night I was looking out our back kitchen window and I saw a beautiful, bright sunset, and what looked like firework sparks moving sideways, in an erratic pattern. It was moths lit up so brightly they looked like fire. I thought about walking along the block to see them up close. But it wouldn't have been so magical, would it?

I learned today that a group of moths is called an "eclipse" :)