Tuesday - January 20, 2020 @goldenoakfarm

I guess I’m getting better with the new camera. I couldn’t believe I’d actually captured this rose in the mid afternoon sun.

Most of them have opened up now.

My helper friend was here on Tuesday morning and the first thing we did was to take the fan from the chicken coop apart and clean it as thoroughly as we could. There’s an awful lot of dust in a chicken coop. It gets pulled into the workings of a fan. The fans usually are only safe to use for 2 or maybe 3 years. Too much dust gets inside and becomes a fire hazard.

I’d picked up a new ivy, Hedera helix ‘Frances’ for the bathroom and we potted it up. The kalanchoe that had been there was all but dead. I don’t have a good track record with ivys, so we’ll see how long this one survives.

Then I bit the bullet and started the spring cleaning. It always gets done in winter, a slow time here. We started with this part of the upstairs hallway. My helper friend worked on the bookcase while I tackled the stairwell.

He takes all the books out, vacuums, dusts and polishes the shelves, vacuums lightly each book, and puts them back. While he was doing this I’d taken down all the stuff on the walls and cleaned it, polishing glass and washing what I could.

Then I washed the walls of the stair well and the stairs themselves. He finished the book case and vacuumed the walls and trim. We both finished about the same time, in time for an early lunch.

In the afternoon, the cat (who will be 19 on Valentine’s Day) slept in the sun.

source

While she slept, I read a book, Once There Was a Farm, written by Virginia Bell Dabney, about her childhood growing up on a farm in Virginia in the 1920’s and 1930’s.