Productive Social Distancing

I haven't spent a lot of time reading lately, and almost no time playing instruments.  What I have done is projects.  These have given me something to do while the boys work on school so that I don't stress out over their school as much.  My projects have given me a chance to use some of my rustier skills, and to develop new ones.  Here are some of the things that I've been spending time on.

This is the jean quilt I started over 20 years ago.  I am still not done, but I have a plan.  I plan to wait until a week when no rain is expected, and set it up outside on the quilt frames.  Of course, that only works if I'm really fast at getting it done, or if it is before the time of year when the sprinklers come on every other day or so.

This was the beginning of me putting my table back together.

This is me seeing what it would look like together, but the top isn't attached here because I hadn't painted the checker board.

This is the table all taped for painting.  I used gaffer tape because it was exactly the right width.  Derek helped me a lot, and it took longer than it was supposed to because I measured wrong and it was off center.  I should remember to measure twice!  Or maybe 3 times!

It turned out awesome!  I still want to spray a polyurethane coat or two on the top to protect it, but it seems hard to ask someone to help me move it to a better painting location!

These are the yellow folding chairs my parents gave us years ago.  We have used them quite a bit.  When I couldn't go to D.I. anymore to look for the two chairs I had in mind to go with my checkerboard table, I realized that I could repaint these, and they would do just fine for now.

Jake did a lot of the work for this.  He dug out almost all of the dirt for the fire pit.  I carried the paver things to go around it, which wasn't very smart of me since Connor and Amanda were in the back yard and Connor would have been glad to help if I had asked.  He would have been happy to help if I didn't ask too, but he didn't notice what I was doing until I was on the last one!  We cooked in the fire pit on Tuesday evening for dinner.  We have tried to do that on the Tuesday of Easter week as much as we could.  Jesus stayed on the Mount of Olives during his last week before his crucifixion and I figure He would have had a fire to sit by, or maybe to cook on.

This is my bean trellis -- made out of our old tree's branches.  I want to try to grow pole beans this year, more because I think I'll like the plants than for the beans, but maybe the grown up me will like home grown beans?

I worked on this today.  It's my fairy garden.  I'm not done with it, but I decided to try to transplant some plants that were mostly dead somewhere else to see if they would revive, and to transplant some that had spread all over, because it's cheaper to do that than to buy more!

This wasn't really a project, except surrounding it with rocks and putting nice dirt on top.  This is my pretty bush that is getting ready to bloom.

What you probably can't see in this picture is that, in the dirt at the bottom of the picture pea plants and radishes are growing.  They are just barely poking through!

Here are the yellow chairs turned blue.  I'm actually not done with them, but I got really, really tired of spray painting!

I started on the dark blue ones, which also aren't done.  I might need to sand those a bit and try again.  Did I mention that I got really tired of spray painting?  (And no, Derek's car was not parked there when I was painting.  That would have been a bad idea).

I cleaned that garage too, rearranging things a bit (with Derek's permission since most of it was his stuff).  I have absolutely loved the warm sunshiny days when I could go outside and do things -- even if it was just pulling weeds, or restaining my garden boxes.  Mostly, I am enjoying looking around at things and seeing if I can make them better.  Derek and my kids have been helpful and encouraging.  It turns out that social distancing can be very productive!