What Housework?:

A view out back last night. In between showers we had the highest-arc rainbow I've ever seen. After about a half hour without fading, the left side showed up to complete the arc. Unfortunately, it sits right over our neighbor's house, which ruins the pastoral photo op.

Anyway, happiness. I just got a comment from a reader saying she finds happiness in my blog at a time when her own life is short on it.

I wrote back to say that we have a lot of happiness here these days, but also a lot of stress. I'm busy, and tired, and the financial roller coaster we've been riding for over six months now doesn't look like it's going to come to an end in the foreseeable future.

And yet, I'm happy. How is that possible?

It's the little things. Like my garden. Check out my lettuce patch:

I've been having a giant green salad for lunch every day. This makes me happy.

Things are growing, slowly but surely. And we're leaving for our annual camping "vacation" tomorrow, just two towns over, which means my peas will no doubt be ready for picking next week, the little beasts. But aren't they cute?

The photo above is one of my shell peas. Knowing the yield on a row of shell peas is pitiful, I followed some old farming advice (basically, why plant in straight single rows if you're not using power equipment to plant, weed and harvest?) and planted a wide row. It might be a little overplanted...

The onions, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, beans, squash/pumpkin/cuke vines are all coming along nicely. I even threw in some broccoli plants (about the only things I didn't start from seed besides the onions) even though I have a mortal fear of broccoli worms.

Taters:

All these make me happy, even though I know I'm going to be overwhelmed with harvesting.

The baby turkeys are doing well and growing fast. Can you see all four here?

They make me happy, as does the laundry hanging on the line back there.

Even rotten Milo makes me happy. This morning he thought he'd maybe ambush some birds at the feeder. (He didn't. He almost fell to his death jumping up there in the first place.)

This picture was taken on our back porch where we have our morning coffee in the summer time. (Makes me happy, 'course.)

And tomorrow, we go camping for 10 days. Even though we can't afford it, even though I'm working half of next week, even though my garden needs me to stay here, even though I don't really enjoy camping all that much (even in a camper with a bathroom), even though I don't know how we're going to make it through the rest of 2009 -- I'm still happy to be getting away with my family. And I'm going to have plenty of much-needed time to just sit and knit.

Happy.

What makes you happy? (Don't you dare say "money.")

Ah, it's a crazy, beautiful time of year. I love it but I'm truly exhausted these days. There are now about 15 hours of daylight and I think we are squeezing every possible moment from every hour. I wish I could save some of these for February.

We got a new beef cow, Sam, who's about a week old in these pictures.

My brother-in-law decided four cows (with two on the way) weren't enough, so here he is. It's a bit dicey, bottle feeding a sweet little baby knowing in a couple of years he'll be dinner, but I think I've mastered it now. (Come to think of it, we have 70 meat chicks arriving today...)

The other animals are doing fine. Here's Gert (or Polly, I can never remember):

And here's one of the Steak brothers, Chuck or Flank (again, I can't remember -- and I didn't name them):

And, as always, piggies.

I love this sleeping pig picture mostly because of the pigeon on the roof. I don't know why. Click to make it bigger.

Calvin:

Maude the bantam and her adopted baby:

Maude is in the front. Her baby, soon to be a full-size laying hen (or rooster), is still a chick but is the same size as she is.

Just beyond the frame of the sleeping pig picture, to the left, is the new garden space. It's huge! These pictures are a couple of weeks old (I'm telling you -- I have not had a spare minute to blog), so imagine everything the same but bigger.

Radishes among the carrots:

Lettuce, lots of lettuce.

Peas (these are dwarf shell peas; I've got snap peas as well):

Onions:

Potatoes (we planted over 100, but about half drowned. We still have plenty!)

I've also got almost 30 tomato plants, basil, plus butternut squash, jack-o-lanterns, baking pumpkins, zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumbers. I admit I "weeded" one vine and I can't remember what it is, so scratch one of the last three in that list.

In between work, family, softball, gardening, farm work, yarn work (not much), cooking, cleaning (again, not much), and general spring insanity, my husband and I actually got to go on a date. Will wonders never cease.

Since, however, we are "too poor to even pay attention," as my husband says, we picked an unusual destination. An older man in the next town has a "museum," almost 6,000 square feet of collections of stuff, some antique, some not. That includes old gas pumps, Coke machines, tractors, farm tools, toasters, telephones, maps, brochures, menus, yardsticks, bottles, apothecary items, Victrolas, a couple of player pianos, oil cans, irons, lunchboxes, Coca-cola memorabilia, sprinklers, and so on and so on. It's amazing. It took over three hours for a whirlwind tour. This was my favorite find:

It's a great wheel, totally intact, right down to the braided cornhusk holding the spindle on.

The catch, however, is that the man is a collector, not a dealer. He refuses to part with anything in his collection. He also gives tours but doesn't charge admission or even take donations.

I asked if he'd sell the wheel and he said, "I can't, because if I did, then I wouldn't have it." He is sitting on probably millions of dollars of stuff, some of it worth money individually, much of it worth money because of the completeness or size of the collection.

A lot of it isn't even old, it's stuff that we'd throw away, like take-out menus or McDonalds French-fry cartons or a SpongeBob lunchbox. Even a McDonalds ashtray -- remember when there was such a thing?

But when you see it in a collection that spans years or decades or even a century, it becomes part of an important timeline. He even has parking receipts from Disney World every year from 1976 to the present. (Parking has gone from $.50 to $12 a day, in case you were wondering.)

"Not everything here is old," he said. "But someday it will be."

So, I have to go get ready for work, but I'm going to leave you with a few of the 100 or so pictures I took of his collection. Collectors might go ga-ga over some of his stuff but he doesn't own a computer and when I asked if he ever sold or bought on eBay, he smiled and said, "How do you spell that?" This stuff is not going anywhere.

Many pictures below. (Everything is underlined from here on in, and I can't seem to make it stop.) Click for larger. See if you remember any of this from your youth. Or your grandmother's.

Wax cylinders, before vinyl records.

Old Mickey Mouse:

Ka-boom:

Not just another gadget:

Look closely:

Anyone up for a cruise? Or not.

Mind boggling.