I picked up basil, pepper, and oregano plants at a local nursery for my container garden this year. I usually start with seed, but didn’t get the seeds in this year, so went with a short cut. I amended the soil with chicken compost from the bottom of my compost bins, which was nice and dark and crumbly, and used the wheel barrow to mix an equal amount of dirt from the container with the compost. I’ve set up the frog habitat again too.
This year’s container garden
I’m hoping that I didn’t plant too soon. It has been cold this week, and basil doesn’t care for temps under 40. Hm.
Our dog Missy likes to play fetch. Well, “like” doesn’t really cover it, “obsessed” is a better term. It may seem like I took the photo below just as the ball slipped from her mouth, but no, she carries these Holy Roller balls by hooking it on one tooth. All the better to pant with my dear.
Missy with a ball hanging from her bottom tooth
She has four of these balls, all different colors, because they are easy to throw and don’t hurt when someone misses and hits someone else. They are also much, much less gooey than tennis balls after a couple rounds of fetch.
I stopped by my local Brahms to pick up some Frontier soup mix and the cashier asked if it was easy (it is) and shared with me her way of shredding chicken: with a stand mixer. What? I’ve been using forks and battling the steam of the Instapot and doing a middling job shredding chicken to this point in my life. My stand mixer lives on my counter, right next to where I set up the Instapot, so transferring the cooked chicken (I cook for 10 min, high pressure, with one cup of water) over to the mixer bowl and using a standard paddle on low for less than a minute was much easier and more throughout than using forks in the pot.
Hot cooked chicken in a stand mixerShredded chicken in a stand mixer
She did warn me not to run the mixer for too long, so I watched as it ran on low until the shredding met my satisfaction. Then I transferred the chicken back into the Instpot to finish the soup. Yes, I dirtied more dishes, but the soup felt thicker with the finely shredded chicken than it does with larger chicken chunks. And I didn’t have to hold my hands over a steaming pot, cursing hot sprays of chicken broth.
In developing my 3D printed spindle design I’ve had three sizes printed up. The smallest works well, but the bore of the shaft is a little small. The largest version had a good sized shaft, but wasn’t as sturdy and was a little unwieldy. I’m hoping this new middle sized version is the winner.
Three sizes of spindle 3D prints
First, though, I need to sand down the printing artifacts, which are small bumps of filament that didn’t quite go where they were programmed to go. Filament is like that. Resin printing has less of these artifacts than filament printing, but the PETG filament is tremendously more durable. Plus it makes the spindle look like a calcite crystal. Nice.
When Mr Tom and Shadow showed up for treats (OK, Shadow comes for treats, Mr Tom comes to get brushed and de-burred), Momma cat was right behind them! She has a pink arrow in the picture pointing her out behind Shadow.
Momma cat behind Shadow
She was too skittish to eat a treat while I was there. I have the camera up, but the SD card is glitchy, so I only get a live feed, no scrolling backward through time. Still, the food I’ve put in the back of the cage has been consumed, so I hope all this will help to catch her so she can be fixed.
