We just finished putting up ten pints of dilled carrots. We grew the
carrots and the dill, used Pickle Crisp in each jar and followed the
recipe in the Ball Big Book. We've used that one since the book came out
and we all like them, in particular our great grands love them. We just
don't tell them we put garlic in them.

The rest of the carrot crop we've been eating in the form of baked
carrots with onions. Peel and cut in chunks both the carrots and the
onions, put a little olive oil on them. Preheat the oven to 475F, put in
the carrots and onions for twenty minutes, take out and eat. We like
carrots most any way but in particular the baked ones.

Swiss chard is finally starting to grow, looks like we may have some to
eat and some to freeze. Beets are starting to split. We've had about 12
inches of rain in the last two weeks but welcomed it. Reckon we will
probably can some beets later this week. We can them in the pressure
canner in chunks and pint jars so we probably won't need to plant beets
next fall.

Almost time to get the spring garden in, probably in the next week or
so. Our last frost date is usually February 18th and it looks like warm
weather is upon us. We've been having temps in the low seventies most
afternoons it isn't raining. Bright sunshine today. I've been out in the
garage using my new compound, laser guided miter saw to cut baseboards
for the remodel of the master bath. Used a bunch of old trim learning
how to do and surprised myself by only making two mistakes in the job.
Luckily I had bought plenty of new trim. We have the master bedroom to
repaint and fix up, the living room only needs the trim painted, and the
last room we will do is the dreaded art room. Probably will have to rent
a pod in order to empty it as there is no place left to store stuff that
won't get in the way. I tease Miz Anne about renting a dumpster but
she's not having any of that for her "stuff."

We hope to put this house on the market in May or June if the market
continues to rise. We have about $7,000,000,000 in new heavy industry
construction starting in mid-year and that should push house prices up
by about 10%.

George