The Flock at Willow Croft

Busy week here. Every surface has been dusted and cleaned, sometimes more than once. We have family arriving any moment now, so we have been getting ready.

Projects have been finished. My ‘cover up the breaker box wall hanging” has been finished and hung.

It is a smallish hall, so taking a picture was tough. But you can see in the mirror that hangs opposite how it looks.

The tea cart has also had a cleanup and spruce up:

I painted the removable trays with leftover paint from the bathroom cabinet, and then padded their bottoms with batting and fabric from my stash. The entire thing folds flat should I want to store it, but for this week will be useful for snacks on the front porch.

My stash cupboard also got a fresh coat of the same paint.

In addition, the house looks so lovely and shiny. We have rearranged the furniture to accommodate a wheelchair. We like it so much, we may leave it this way.

We have all been up since dawn, way before the visitors could be expected…nine cups of blackberries have been picked by excited small boys and tall ones as well…

And I have made our favorite version of brownies, in honor of one of our guests, who first taught me to cook (and sew, and quilt).

These are Andes mint brownies. First, you make your favorite brownie recipe.. ours has walnuts in it. Then, immediately after you pull them out of the oven, you begin to unwrap and place Andes thin mints on the surface:

Here are the first few, placed randomly on top.

Any sort of thin minty chocolate will do, but we use Andes. We cover the top with an entire package.

Once they are all on the top, they have become quite soft, and you can gently spread them out, making a thin layer of minty icing.

Once the chocolate has been spread around, the brownies are left to cool. The chocolate will then harden back up. My grandmother, who will arrive any time now, would keep a batch of these in the freezer, individually cut up already. At the end of a busy day, with the late evening news, she would serve them to us with a small glass of coke… frozen and lovely, in the Texas heat. Here at my home, they rarely survive long enough to make them to the fridge. I plan to serve them this afternoon as a treat, with a small glass of coke… or tea or whatever they fancy, as a way to remember those lovely days of my youth!

Have a good weekend. The family will be here until late next week, so I suspect I shall be scarce!

(A day in the life info here at Little Jenny Wren. I need to figure out how to do the little badge thingy….hmmmm)

Figured out I think!

It is early in the day here, so check back in for updates (Eastern standard time, USA - UPDATE DONE!)

We woke to rainy weather, after a blistering weekend. The activities of the weekend, and the rain, have us all moving a bit slowly.

(We have a family game we like to play… everyone wants to be the first one to shout to the rest “Drought’s Over” when we hear the rain hitting the roof. If the rain pauses for half an hour or so, and then begins again, “Droughts Over” can be shouted again. Usually, we do something like this “Hey _____, guess what? Drought’s Over!” It amuses us all no end. We actually began it when our youngest was quite small, and we had a particularly rainy couple of weeks… it rained and rained and rained. The man about the place and I were being particularly silly about the rain. However, last summer, as a real drought gripped our area, it took on a whole new meaning when we could finally shout “Drought’s over!”)

Hey Blog world, GUESS WHAT? DROUGHT’S OVER!!!

Animal chores of feeding chickens and dogs carried on, in spite of the rain.

I have had my breakfast of yogurt, raisin toast, and some blueberries from our bushes. I did not eat the entire contents of that basket… just about 1/2 cup.

The chimney sweep is coming to clean the chimney at 10 am… so we must get ready for him. During the burning season, we just put our paper trash into the wood stove so it can be easily lit the next time we need a fire. Usually this means that there is a stove full of paper left since the last fire, and we try to remember to burn it off before summer gets here… but this time we forgot. So I had to burn off the paper this morning. I am sure a little smoke went up the chimney, which always worries our neighbor across the way. Usually she calls when she sees smoke when she thinks there shouldn’t be smoke. But no call this morning. Maybe the rain made it hard to see.

Now, what is on the list for the rest of today?

1) Reflect on how our SUNDAY FREE went. (click here for explanation) Sunday Free went well this week. We did not drive anywhere. We ate cold salads for dinner. We did not run the air conditioner. One reason we did not run the air conditioner was because we were painting the outside doors…

This is the front door. We also (I say we, but it was mainly me) did both side doors. The hot sun and many years had reduced the door paint to shreds, so it was time for a nice new protective coat.

2. Oldest son to ortho.

3. Clean out bathroom cabinet.. Actually, it has been cleaned out, but the stuff is still all over the hall. Put back and reorganize is more like it. (DID NOT GET DONE)

4. Begin making lists of things needing doing before the grandparents and great grandmother arrive from Texas on Friday.

5. Hmmm… who knows what else. You will have to visit again later to see how it all turned out.

Anyway, because the day has started off with a slow heavy feeling, and the front that has come through with this rain has given me a headache, I started the day with a spritz. Something about summer time always makes me think of floral fragrance. I am not really a perfume kind of gal, except in the hottest part of summer. I keep this lilac body spray, and another one of lavender, in the fridge….and when I am cross or blue or hot in the summer, I spritz the cold scent on me… and it works magic. I also sometimes spray it on the light bulbs.. that way, when the light is turned on, a lovely scent fills the room, but not overpowering and cloying.. just a light hint of lavender or lilac!

10 am… chimney sweep on his way. I will go make my morning tea and wait. See you later in the day!

Other half of the day:

1. Chimney cleaned and sweeps left. All three sons dispatched to collect produce from the garden when rain stopped.

(Oldest, picking blueberries… the days haul from the garden: 4 cups blackberries, 12 cups blueberries, 4 largish cucumbers, and a quart of wax beans, some of which is pictured above. Wax beans blanched and frozen, berries frozen, cucumbers turned into tzatziki sauce.)

2. Orthodontist visited and newfangled wires added to mouth metal. Grocery shop on way home. Forgot own bags…..arghhh.

3. Ironing done.

4. Dinner made and served at 6. Boys dispatched to various yard jobs and animal chores.

5. Baking begun for family visit at end of week. Making my Nana’s cream cheese cookies, blogged about here.

Here it is, 9:30, and I am bushed. A good book and some chamomile tea are on order.

Good night!

Dr. Michael E. DeBakey passed away last night, and hearing the news took me back to another lifetime ago….

After I graduated from college with a BS in Biology, I began some wonderful post baccalaureate work at Baylor College of Medicine in the Human and Molecular Genetics Dept. It was such an awesome environment.. buzzing with hard work, and competition, industry, exploration, cutting edge work… the energy of the place was amazing. You could feel your brain cells swell and grow as you worked on your research.

And Dr. DeBakey was a part of that. As grad students there were plenty of lectures we could attend.. some for the med students, some just general purpose lectures. And I attended a couple of lectures that Dr. Debakey gave. It was always clear how much he loved BCM, and how important he felt research to be. You could not help but admire and respect this pioneer in the cardiovascular field.

I never saw him out of his scrubs… he was always wearing his surgical cap, and scrubs, even for the lectures he gave. This picture is always how I saw him, and how I will remember him: click here.

Take a moment to click on his name at the beginning of this blog entry and read about this man. Chances are, his work has touched someone’s life you know… due to a technique he invented or pioneered, or perfected.

Such an upsetting week as far as nature is concerned….

1. Field mice invading the house in spite large black racer snake that has been coiled around our recycle bin for several days. Annoyed because I have to deal with mouse myself, as man about the place is on vacation.

2. Large black snake disappears… only to be found by youngest in the nest box of our one chicken that had gone broody. And of course youngest had counted his chickens before they hatched.. as did mama… we had our hopes up high for fluffy peeping balls. Again, as above, I was left to deal with this on my own. I warned youngest not to worry if there was lots of screaming as I wrangled it out of the box with our snake pole (yes, we have a bonified snake pole).. I said there would definitely be screaming, and that if mama ran, he should run too. Screaming and wrangling commenced, but snake was removed from nest box… he had consumed all but one of the eggs, and that one the mama chicken abandoned. Snake returned next day, for second course. At this point I am tired of living in the country, and want to find a big city flat instead. This time, we called in grandpa from next door. He managed to wrangle snake without screaming, and got him into a large bucket. He planned to take him to a new home in some uninhabited woods miles from our house.

3) Went to work on weedy gardens, only to discover, smaller, but still biggish, black racer snake. With all this snakeage, how can there be any field mice left?

4) Shredded hands to ribbons and destroyed all fingernails trying to get wire grass out of garden bed. However, managed to turn this, into this:

A large pile of weeds…. some new flowers and boom:

You can see the back half still needs some work…. waiting for rain to calm down… and the lawn needs mowing and edging, but the youngest and I will wait for the menfolk to come do that. Needless to say, the ant bites from lifting the rocks and pulling the weeds out from underneath are smarting quite a bit. At one point I sat on a nest, and before I knew it, they were biting me from neck to bum.

5) Ants are everywhere this summer.. never in all my life here (12 years) have I so much as seen a mound or had ants in the house. But they have begun marching. I spent a couple of days trying to vacuum them up as they came  in the door. But now they have found the kitchen. So I have dusted the kitchen with pepper and cinnamon (frugal, green methods of ant control worth trying).. and mixed borax and sugar into a past and put it in their path outside the door (frugal, but poisonous). So far, the pepper/cinnamon seems to be helping.. not so sure of the borax.

6) In trying to ascertain where the ants were coming in, I missed a step at our back door… You see, I went out the door, foot on first step, turned to look back at the door to see where ants were getting in, and missed the middle step… and I fell on the concrete steps, twisting ankle and wrist and scraping skin off top of foot. Not to mention feeling the fool, even though the duck is the only one to “know”. There was no bruising or swelling of foot, so I guess I really did not twist it.. but if I have to put weight on it, such as going up and down stairs, or tiptoeing to reach something, it caves in!  I would think I would be in pain if something had snapped or broken… but nothing external to be seen or felt.

7) SO reaching upon tip toes to get the willow branches I need is out of the question.. at least until this weekend when there will be people around to help should I need it. Every time I have tried it, the foot just caves. So our wattle fences are 3/4 done.

This is the fence for my middle sons water garden.. the chickens and duck have made real nuisances of themselves with the new plantings. SO we are trying this.. so far, seems okay.

And it does not detract from the overall effect.

The fence around the herb garden is looking like this:

It might be a bit hard to see, but I think it will work when it is done. We still need to push down the wattles in places, as well as finish the full circle. Those ants have a lot to answer for.

8. And just when I think we have been through all the plagues possible, I discover my perfect Swiss chard, which I was saving to harvest Sat when the gang is all here again….. overnight looks like this:

Groundhogs may be cute, but this does not make us friends. We cornered one in the garden a couple of weeks ago… me and the 2 youngest staring him down. We shooed him out of the garden, and to see that fat little body fly suggested he had learned his lesson. How he gets in, I do not know. The garden is fenced.. and he is toooooo fat to climb. We have tied things to the fence to blow in the wind, because movement will scare them. Grrr…. we better not meet up face to face.

Although I have my suspicions that middle son is paying him under the table to do the dirty work…

9) At least we are getting rain. Which is why my kitchen/dining ceilings now sport some new dark patches… cannot wait to show those to the hubbler when he gets home.

I have had a lot of bad nature karma this week, and I do not know why. But I am soooo over it.

The youngest and I have been on our own this week, and we have mostly been working outside. Nighttime thunderstorms mean the ground is soft and the weeds can finally be pulled. The rains are most welcome, and they have plumped up our blackberries something extraordinary.

One dirt stained fingernail, to show size of our berries this year, with all the rain.

A quick walk through the blackberry patch yields this:

Such a contrast to the low yield and small berries last year.

This is our herb garden… such a mess of dill and weeds and everything else buried beneath. Several hours of hard work, and we had this:

We have pulled the weeds and mulched everything. We cut back the leggy bits, and removed the dill. We planted some new thyme plants and parsley plants. We added the old toilet tank as a bit of a joke. Since this photo we have filled it with soil and planted our peppermint in there. Usually the peppermint and spearmint are kept in pots so they do not take over the garden. Now they are in the tank, along with a bright pink Vinca. We have also begin a wattle fence to surround the garden. We are hoping this will help keep the chickens out of the garden, without having to resort to the giant orange fencing we had there before. I have a stand of willow on one edge of the property, and we are using that.

The longest branches have been cut to weave in and out. More pictures to follow as we get it complete!

In between loosing teeth, the youngest and I have also been weeding the beans and cucumbers and onions. The first set of onions are out of the ground and drying. The tomatoes and raspberry canes have been propped and staked… lots of lovely looking tomatoes ready to ripen. We picked, blanched and froze a couple of quarts of wax beans yesterday, and I suspect we will be able to pick another round tomorrow. And several perfect cucumbers have been picked.. and I even consumed one then and there, raw and lovely.

It is lovely to have the fresh produce..but always so time consuming to pick and wash and process… keeping us very busy!

So we are pretty nearly done with what we planned to do. We used a colored grout (”Linen”) for the floor.. the trend is toward colored grouts, so they don’t get all grimy looking. But frankly, some of them are so dark they look like they started grimey. But the man about the place did not want white grout (WHY? It’s not like he cleans it.) And I decided to be flexible.. but I did not want anything grey. I think this color looks nice, and goes with the stripe in the shower curtain. It also matches the counter on the sink…

Baseboards will be the last step.. they need cleaning and repainting. Maybe when everyone returns from Boy Scout camp.

We all really like the blue color. It may not exactly go with the 50s green of the tub, but we will have to just cope with that. It would be too much work to replace the tub, and they no longer make them this large and strong.

So we can now flush… YEAH! And the place feels cleaner and prettier than before. The tiles were on sale.. and it only took 2 boxes plus a couple to do this floor.. about 25 dollars total for tile. The paint was rebated at Home Depot, and only took a gallon. The toilet wasn’t too much either. So lots of satisfaction, without a lot of cost.

Evening thunderstorms have curtailed my postings, so I shall post this morning, before I get to my days work.

This is my post about what I tried from the internet this past week. Each week I plan to try something new I read about from another blog and post about it. The wealth of information out there, for free, is overwhelming and generous. I love trying new things, and when that is coupled with a lovely tutorial on how it is done, it is hard to resist.

This week comes from the same source as last week. My middle son loves to cook and so we have been sharing that love while I am on vacation. We tried 2 things from The Pioneer Woman this week… and here are the results.

The first recipe I tried was her favorite salad. We have had a hot week, although not the hottest..but everyone was wanting cool suppers, and I was wanting not to be cooking over the stove. So this was an easy to assemble salad, with lots of healthy ingredients that can be easily grown in backyard gardens, it is customizable to various likes and dislikes, and it is a very hearty, complete meal.

You should click on this link to see some very nice photos and complete tutorial: Favorite Salad

And here is how our version went:

1) The dressing is absolutely scrumptious. I love that asian flavor, and it really penetrated the noodles nicely. After I cooked my noodles, I did pour on a small bit of the dressing to keep them from sticking while they cooled. I only used one jalepeno, without the seeds, because the man about the place has crohn’s disease and cannot tolerate things that are too spicy. The dressing had a mild hint of a kick, without a real kick. If I were making it for me, I would have gone for the second jalepeno.

Here are some of the greens chopped up and drying. I chopped and washed early in the day, covered it with a cloth, and let it air dry. We used the napa cabbage, the red cabbage, and some romaine..but not the spinach. Unfortunately, it is too hot for greens here now, so none of this is from my yard, but I did add onions from my garden.. yumm.

We did have fresh cucumbers, and next time, I would use even more. They really tasted nice with the dressing.

I ended up with way more greens than I think supported the amount of dressing made…next time I would cut down on that a smidge. The nice thing about the salad is that it had something that everyone liked and made it worth eating, even if it also had stuff some children did not like. My middle son is not fond of the cilantro, but was able to eat healthy portions in spite of it all. And neither boy that was home to eat the salad commented on the cabbage, which they refuse to eat otherwise. The man about the place loved it, although again, I must make it in smaller quantity so we do not have to eat it for several meals…too much cabbage is tough on the crohn’s as well. (Also, blueberries are coming off our bushes in droves, and he has not resisted eating those.. so cabbage plus berries..not great combo for crohn’s)

Our second recipe held high hopes for me. My oldest son, who is currently away at camp, has the metabolism of a hummingbird, and needs to be fatted up - not a typical American issue. The ped wants us to feed him butter and cream in his scrambled eggs, etc. Well, he feels there are only so many days a week he can eat scrambled eggs.. so I am trying to find some easy, higher calorie. hi protein recipes I can have during the school year. And wouldn’t it be great if the middle son, who won’t touch eggs, would eat it as well?

The Sleepin in Omelette seemed to be the answer.

Now, I had read in several places from people that tried it, that the amount of butter could be cut back. So I only used most of 1 stick of butter, not the 1.5 she recommended, or the 2 originally called for. I also use low fat cream cheese, and the butter I used was a Smart Balance blend for baking, rather than full on fat butter. The reason I did that was because the son that needs the calories is at Boy Scout camp. I wanted to test run this on the rest of the family first. Because this would be a lot to make for just him.

The man about the place and I loved it. It was quite nice. The middle son could not get past the idea that there were eggs in it. It did not taste eggy.. it was cheesy and good. But he would only eat his three “no thank you bites” and then refuse to eat more. So that was a bummer. The youngest cannot eat dairy at all, so we knew he would be out of the picture. But I do think the eldest will like it. It takes 10 eggs, which we have plenty of at this time of year. And it does reheat well the next day. So I think I will make it once more when the eldest is home.. at least he and his father can eat it during the week.

Our free Sunday (see previous post) did not go as planned. Firstly, it was barely “free”.

I made it through the first part of the day just fine. No computer, no air condition, no lights turned on….but it wasn’t long before things fell apart. As I was vacuuming the living room, I suddenly realized - hey, this uses electricity! We were tracking in dirt and bugs with our bathroom reno project, and I decided to finish vacuuming.

The youngest son and I spent some time in the garden pulling up the carrots and some beets. The plan had been to serve them raw, as I was not going to use any energy to cook. But the boys wanted roasted veg, and the man about the place was too busy to get a fire in the grill going, so I caved, and roasted them in the oven. Weak as water I found myself!

(We grew a variety of carrots this year.. some bright yellow more than orange. They were yummy. )

(An interesting carrot couple…they grew around each other.. I took them apart to wash them, the put them back together to cook them…very funny)

My younger sons were complaining about how hot it was.. which was a bit unusual. After all, they play outside almost all day, running and biking. They are used to our warm house, because we keep the thermo about 80 - 83 most days. But they complained and whined and began picking on each other and I finally had to take the small one in my arms where I discovered he was really HOT!

101 fevers for both of them, followed later in the afternoon by throwing up. Which prompted me to look up tick borne illness on the internet because several friends have had tick borne illnesses recently, and we have been pulling ticks off right and left around here lately. SO, the air conditioner was turned on to help make them more comfortable.

Then a massive set of thunderstorms started to roll through the area…. so we checked the weather forcast on the internet, and watched the radar. Lights were turned on, air was running, we had a fanb blowing in the bathroom to keep the new tile drying.

I laughed to myself at how pathetic our ability to do without electricity for the day really was, as I DROVE to the grocery store. The plan had been to leave early the next day for 3 days in DC.. the man about the place had meetings there, and the younger boys and I were planning to do museums and such. But with the fever and stomach troubles, it was apparent I would be staying home, and needed groceries. SO doing without the car didn’t work either.

I did remain strong concerning my time on the computer.. I checked no blogs or email… but with sick kids, and a bathroom reno, of course I really had no time. BUT I really questioned my intent and my sincerity.

Groceries stowed, make shift sick beds made up, and the evening stormed on. And then it happened… a large lightening bolt took out our internet. We have been without it for three days.

And, because of all the illness, the bathroom, the only one we have, did not get finished. So we have been making do with bucket flushes.. which is ironic because the one thing I knew we could not do without was the pump that flushes the toilet. I knew that would be the one use of electricity we would not go without. But we did, for three days.

I believe the gods have been having fun with me!

So what have our last three days been full of?

Well, no computer for one thing. And then the storm ushered in a cool front that allowed us to go Mon - Wed without the air conditioning! No air in July is a gift in the southern US. The illness quickly faded with the boys, so there was plenty of time to work on projects. And with tummies better, but not quite right, we managed to go the last few days without cooking.. just simple meals of yogurt and berries from the yard, and leftovers eaten cold, etc.

Tonight we hope to grout the bathroom so the toilet can be officially hooked up again.

Here you can see the tile is in place…and the toilet has been set in, but not hooked up yet….

Then I repainted to give it a more “grown-up” feel now that the boys are no longer small.

I also have been quilting my wall hanging that will cover the old breaker box.

And I managed to finish a sock.. just needs the toe grafted!

We will try again this next Sunday.. I come from a long line of people who have always made do - reusing, reducing and recycling, living with thermostats set higher than normal (or lower) etc. We’ve grown our own organic food for generations, and been “green” well before it was popular or easy. But I think we could still do better, do more. And it also helps to appreciate what we do have.. and going without for a day, and seeing how difficult that really is, helps to do that. We have had ice storms and hurricanes that have left us without any power, and we know how to survive that… but doing it voluntarily one day a week will help us remember on a daily basis not to abuse the gifts that energy gives us.

Anyway, it has been a funny few days!

Well, another hot day here in the Southern US. We had a scrimmage game last night, a friend sleepover, all the neighborhood boys over to play in the field.. and that was all before 12. Once the passel of boys went home, I attended to laundry and started us down the road of a bit of a project.

Here are a few hints:

I know you will be wanting to know why there is a toilet in our bathtub, and where our floor went. But that will have to wait until next week.

As I wittered away concerning my love of the internet, and all it has to offer, I have also realized just how much time the internet can take out of my day if I am not careful. In an effort to utilize my time more wisely, I have subscribed to bloglines so I can check one place for updates, instead of scrolling one by one through all my favorites. I have set myself limits on how much time I can spend on the computer.

This is not easy. When I wish to sit a minute and think about what I need to do next, I like to check some boards I post to, or check my favorite blogs to see if they have updated yet. And all of a sudden, 30minutes will have gone by. I read as I brush my teeth, or wait for things to load on the computer. I also check in for practical purposes… how do I make prairie points for my little wall quilt? What could I use this yarn to make? Are people using this yarn to knit socks? Just how much water does a pitcher plant need? And what is the summer reading assignment for my rising ninth grader?

IN my effort to show more restraint, I have decided to have one day free from the net. This also coincides with the idea circulating in my area to have a day where you cut your electrical/gas use. So I am going to try going “free” on Sundays.

We won’t achieve total freedom… I would like to cut off electricity for a day, but then our toilets would not flush. And getting to church would require a car. But we will do our best to cut out the lights, the computer, the unnecessary trips anywhere.. and just enjoy a day at home sitting on the porch in the heat of the day, eating a cold meal for dinner, playing cards and listening to the music in our hearts instead of on our radio. We shall see how it works.

Tomorrow of course there will be the rather urgent putting the bathroom back together.. because we only have this one bathroom, and you see where the toilet is!!! …. but more about that on Monday!

See you next week!

We knew it was hot, but this is crazy….

…. And misleading, . This is what happens when you place your rain gauge/indoor outdoor thermometer so that you can get an accurate rain reading. Unfortunately, it is in direct sun, on top of the air conditioner, which is blowing out hot air. We have moved it to a shaded area, where we are hoping it recovers quickly. It should be reading about 93 degrees today, as a cool spell has blown through and brought it down several degrees in the forecast, LOL!

So while it is so hot outside, what have we been up to?

Some sock knitting…..

Some crafting in my cleaned up room… this is to

cover a breaker box….a small wall hanging, using stuff I have had for years.

And then, there are always fun things to try from the internet. When we were young marrieds, expecting our first child, we lived in a small townhouse in another city. I was teaching, and we were looking for our own home. The man about the place was attending graduate school. And one day (this was in 92) he came home with the crazy idea about getting internet service. Hooking up to the WORLD WIDE WEB. I think my exact words were, Why would we want to do that?

It is difficult to imagine life without the web now. Email to keep up with distant relatives. Family websites to share photos without the expense of sending them to so many family members. And then the blogosphere…. I love the blogosphere, in part because of the great ideas and wealth of knowledge there is out there. Planning a trip.. we turn to the internet, to read up on websites and blogs about places to go and eat at, etc. We turn to the blog for special occasions.. what new food will we try to impress our guests. I have a folder on my computer called Things to try.. and there I put recipes and craft ideas and patterns I want to try. And each week, we pick one, and try it.

So this week, we tried Crash Hot Potatoes from Pioneer Woman Cooks. This recipe is similar to one we already make, but without the smashing of the potatoes. The boys love them smashed this way!

Crispy and browned, salty and herby… we have used our own rosemary, and we have used store bought dried thyme, having made this recipe more than once already. Either way, it is a hit here.

Here they are, ready to bake. You can visit Pioneer Woman’s site for better pictures.. but this is evidence that mere mortals can make them as well. And here they are ready to eat:

Now, I do have lovely old fashioned potato smashers, hanging on my wall.. but I would have to wash the dust off of them to use them. So I have been using the bottom of a glass. The result is that there is some floor clean-up as well. Guess it is time to wash the dust off the mashers…

But at least this way, the rugs get shaken out!

Anyway, what have you tried from the internet?