Before doing dishes, I cleaned up the kitchen a bit. The kitchen sink drain on the right side has been blocked up for a while. We tried pouring Coke down it. That works for most stopped up drains. Just buy a 2 liter bottle of Coca Cola and pour it down the drain when you don’t plan to use the sink for a few hours. For some reason other types of soda don’t work. It has to be Coca Cola. Well, even that didn’t work for this sink. Yesterday I poured about a gallon of boiling water down the sink drain. That worked for my bathroom sink, which was probably just plugged up because of soap scum. But it doesn't seem to be working for the kitchen sink. Next I tried putting in baking soda and following that up with white vinegar. It made quite a fantastic, bubbly fountain, but it didn’t unstop the sink. Well, I have a long, prickly stick (something like a bottle brush) that goes down the drain holes and pulls stuff out. It’s messy so I don’t usually try it first. It went down as far as the trap but brought up nothing much. The water still didn’t go down very well. So the last resort was the plunger. First I filled the sink with hot water, then took the plunger to it. Nothing happened except that water came up the other side of the sink. The slow side of the sink still drains slowly. Oh, well. I did get some exercise.☺
On Wednesday night a friend at church gave us some kale, collards, and onions. These got transplanted yesterday. The collards look OK, but the kale is rather droopy. Hopefully it will perk up. Below are some pictures of the garden so far. The hay part is experimental. We put it there to see if it would help to hold in some of the moisture so that the garden does not dry out too quickly like it did last summer. There is still some hay left over, and one of the ladies at church told us we can put it on top of the watermelons in the summer to keep the animals from eating them before we humans get to. ☺ So far there are peas, kale, collards, and potatoes planted. We planted lima beans too, but we don’t know if they will tolerate a frost; so we will probably have to plant more later.
This picture shows where the peas, collards, and onions are planted. The tomato stakes were left in from last year's tomatoes. They were still firmly in the ground, so we thought maybe the peas could climb up them. We also planted peas around the tomato cages, thinking that the peas can climb them as well. We'll see how it will work later.
He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth. Psalm 104:13,14