Tidying Up and Making Do

*peers up out of her burrow*

Same old, same old around here. I am busy at work. The Viking is starting to get regular hours at his new job. (Apparently, they hire people as part time fill-ins, and if they work out, fill regular part-time and then full-time openings from that pool. He's still not getting a lot of hours, but he's now getting regular ones. This is good). Success at home is measured in the dirty-dish level of the sink.

Today it's rather high. I hate this with a passion -- I want the stupid thing empty and to scrub the sink down and pour baking soda down the drain. The Viking promised he would help load up the dishwasher today. I hope he does. Hard as I try, I just can't do everything.

Knitting is progressing, slowly. Two rows a night before I fall asleep. Two rows ... zzzzzzzzzzzz.

Roses are going nuts right now. I need to take an hour some evening and do a little deadheading, and also spread some coffee grounds on their feet. I have a fair sized stash of coffee grounds waiting for distribution, just have to do it.

The coffee-grounds-on-the-roses thing is something I learned from my paternal grandmother. At the time, people thought it was old wives nonsense, but ya know, let's not go too far in dismissing old wives. Sometimes they're on to something. And you couldn't, as I recall, argue too much with Gramma's rosebushes.

Since then, it's been shown that coffee grounds actually make quite good topdressing for acid-loving plants. They're high in nitrogen, and because they're ground up already, they decompose quickly and add organic matter to the soil. They're also credited with containing compounds that promote healthy plant growth and inhibit late blight in tomatoes. They're supposed to help discourage slugs and snails. A rather interesting little project (PDF format) done on weed suppression at Berkeley (presumably by a an advanced undergrad or grad student) had coffee grounds as one of the more effective agents in the weed-suppression contest (the other was shredded newspaper/straw mulch).

Also, they're cheap. What's not to like?

verso - recto