{"id":10828,"date":"2025-02-19T12:50:53","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T17:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=10828"},"modified":"2025-02-19T12:50:53","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T17:50:53","slug":"all-those-great-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2025\/02\/19\/all-those-great-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"All those great plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, I planned on planting my first pepper seeds last Friday. Well, that didn’t happen. I’ll tell you why. We’ve been having a spell of very cold weather, with the daytime temperature reaching only single digits and nights going down to -30 F. We keep the house nice and toasty all day and evening. But late at night, the fire often goes low or out and the house gets pretty chilly. Like down to 50 degrees. We don’t mind it so much but pepper seeds, trying to germinate, do. They often rot instead of germinating. And, as we’re off grid, using heat mats under the flats doesn’t reliably work. So, I’m waiting. Not happily, but waiting until the temperatures moderate, as they’re forecast to do by the end of the week. Better to wait instead of having unreliable germination. Or none!<\/p>\n

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Kept in a very warm spot, pepper seeds will germinate in a week’s time. Cool? Up to a month. Or never.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I want to thank all of you for your thoughts and prayers as our son, Javid, slowly passes from this earth. He is still steadily failing and it’s so hard on us. I wanted to go visit him this past Sunday but was trying to come down with something. Sore throat, achy body and stuffed up nose. Fortunately, it seems to be leaving me without getting worse.<\/p>\n

The supply chain seems to be getting worse, without COVID. We usually get our seed packet envelopes in a week’s time at most. Lately, we’ve not gotten them after several weeks! So, we had to go back to buying plain envelopes from Uline and stamping them with our contact information and packed-by date. Poor Will! He stamps them and I fill them. Keeps us out of trouble though!<\/p>\n

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Here’s Will, busy stamping seed packets so I can fill them up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The enemy dogs, Hondo and Sarge, are doing okay with separating them. Sarge is shut in his crate, his “house” while Hondo runs around, free. Then Hondo goes in the bathroom so Sarge can have his turn at freedom. We got the E-collar. Now I just have to learn to use it. (I’m tech-challenged!) For now, we are okay with what we’re doing \u2014 it’s habit now. But I will learn the E-collar and we’ll start our training. Sarge won’t be a fan! We can’t get him neutered until the end of March so we have to do what we can until then. No, we don’t neuter our male dogs, as we have no neighbors and have never had this issue before. Our female dogs and cats are <\/em>always neutered as we don’t want to add to the over-population of critters on this planet.<\/p>\n

This weekend we cleaned out the stovepipe in the living room and Will installed a new damper. Dampers are not <\/em>made in the US anymore and they usually warp or burn out in a year’s time. Ours was not functioning well and when Will pulled it out, it was broken in several places! Yes, we burn a hot fire every morning to keep creosote from forming in the stovepipe (there was absolutely none <\/em>in there), as we burn pine, spruce, and fir, along with poplar. The kitchen range’s pipe had a little soot in it but no creosote either. We were pleased. With temps diving down to the -30 F mark, we like to keep both stoves toasty.<\/p>\n

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Just think, in a few weeks we’ll be busy weeding and mulching. That seems so sweet!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

— Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know, I planned on planting my first pepper seeds last Friday. Well, that didn’t happen. I’ll tell you why. We’ve been having a spell of very cold weather, with the daytime temperature reaching only single digits and nights going down to -30 F. We keep the house nice and toasty all day and evening. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,24,9,12,13,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10832,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828\/revisions\/10832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}