As promised, I did finally haul myself upstairs, many times, in fact, since the houseplants at camp on the patio are starting to come in. Cool nights coming in fast, so I need to start cleaning them up, knocking off the wildlife, cleaning dead leaves off and wiping the pots. And all that.
Much stair climbing carrying heavy stuff ensues. The big Boston ferns are hung from the two ceilings upstairs, phew, that was the hardest bit, heavy and overhead, trying to see through the foliage to aim the plant hook over the ceiling hook.
The visiting snake plant is off home with its mom today, to north Jersey, with a promise to let her come back to camp next summer. She looks wonderful after the season outdoors in shade, new little snakelets around the foot of the established leaves. And the cuttings I took from her are starting to root, so next summer she will have friends to play with. Yes, I take it personally.
Anyway, in the course of bringing in plants and noting how they've all grown, so they can't fit back where they were in May, I had to figure out some inventive and cheap ways of staging them. And, as I was thinking about whether I had a plank which I could sling across two little tables which were also coming indoors, I took a look in my outdoor storage area.
And found the leftover "planks" three lengths, from the new floors upstairs. As I was saying, oh yes, you'll do fine, my neighbor suddenly showed up and said, I caught you talking to that wood, don't deny it! I also can't deny I've started a lot of thoughts with "and" but if Hemingway could do it, I can. And he couldn't raise houseplants for toffee, neener.
The planks not only work perfectly for the purpose, strong enough to hold plants up, light enough for me to swing them about, but they match the floor! like this, seen from above:
The bedroom has the real staging, two levels, the big time. Using two little wire table things I was given, and two tall stools I've had for years and years, no idea where they came from.
In the Nook, family name for the spare room, old family joke from childhood, is a single shelf on two low tables, originally found in the dumpster, brought in from the patio.
Results: nice looking very pleasing staging areas which keeps plants in light and off windowsills, and off the floor, and won't drive my cleaners mad. No tools involved. Total expenditure today: $0.
All the plants were either from slips or offshoots, one, the pony palm was a gift, the others all by propagation chez moi. This is just the advance party of plants, more to come when I get my strength back.
Now if this doesn't gladden the heart of a frugal DIYer, I don't know what will!
Another invented dish today:
cubed red sweet peppers, chopped green beans, cubed firm tofu, sharp cheddar, chunk of basil pesto, two eggs beaten with Italian seasoning and kosher salt. Buttered dish, all poured in gently, topped with several curry leaves. Baked at 375 for 25 minutes.
Very good lunch. Originally designed to be two meals, but I ended up enjoying all of it. Life's short. Speaking of which, note the upcycled flower vases and other things pressed into service to hold utensils. Much more appealing than the old plastic dishwasher insert they are replacing.
Stitching on my butterfly this morning. Playing music this afternoon. Cooking in between.
I've been reading House Beautiful again. I love reading decorating HD magazines, and seeing dear little tables at a mere $1200, just to fill in that little corner on a budget..it's like reading recipe books you marvel at but would never be pestered to make.
Anyway, I figured, if Apartment Therapy can do it, and House Beautiful can do it, anyone can do it, so I had a little tour of House Adequate, which is where I live, but if I say it myself there are areas of flair and even panache. Downstairs only, too lazy to climb up and continue. That's for another issue of House Adequate.
I followed the old maxim of using a lot, yards and yards, of cheap fabric when you have a massive window to cover. The patio door is 92 inches wide, super extra large because it's the only downstairs window on that side of the house.
Light does get through the passthrough from the kitchen window, and the living room is light enough. But that window is out of my budgetary reach. Even curtain rods are hundreds of dollars at that size, being custom made, anything over 84 wide is custom.
Enter the handy eight foot pvc pipe, less than three dollars, slung on three big hooks anchored in the wall, using mollies. The curtains are cheapish cotton tab tops, two pairs, one swaggy thing, and another pair of long tabtops in some transparent material forget what. Total cost about $50. And I think it looks pretty elegant. The other thing you can do for a curtain rod on a small budget and an elegant frame of mind is to use a long bamboo cane from the garden store, strong as anything, unbreakable, and long enough for a lot of windows, if you like a rustic touch.
Then there are the Arrangements of Art ideas, which I've been doing for years, long before House Beautiful caught on and all the posh Martha Stewart people.
And the funny object idea, here a child's chair rescued from the dumpster, brushed up and put below a fiberart work of mine. It's decorative, but you'd be amazed at how many grownups pull it out to sit on it!
And whoever said you don't have art in the kitchen? I do, why not. Oh, and remember my fussing about being shorter these days, and the counters too high to mix on comfortably, and what would be a good solution. See that wooden top in the picture?
After wondering and measuring and faffing about whether to introduce a table or an island, neither in my budget, I realized, as I was reorganizing the kitchen ready to start painting, that the storage shelves are sturdy and the right height for me.
Two cutting boards side by side on the top of one, and now I have my right height mixing counter and very well it works, too. Happy to hit on this solution using only what I already had in the house.
Dear blogistas, especially people on a limited budget, what cool ideas do you have to share? please do, always on the lookout for good ones.
Deliberately ambiguous title this morning. Read one way, it's about how food rules my current world. Read another it's about the rules I need to observe in order to stay in charge of the food and not be ruled by it! This is not about consuming food. This is about the logistics of liking to cook and save and freeze vs. the reality of a smallish freezer at the top of my fridge.
So I made a giant loaf of bread yesterday, whole wheat and oatmeal with sunflower seeds inside and poppyseeds on top. This is a variation I made of the whole wheat recipe in the Healthy Bread book. I also quit using loaf pans, and put the entire lot into one great big casserole with a non stick lining, which creates a fabulous crust.
I bake at the usual 450 F. for about an hour and a quarter, had to lengthen the baking from the loaf pan time, but now I've got it down. The crumb of this loaf is lovely, too, nice texture, firm, but good. Excellent for spreading tomato lemon jam on..
Then found that when I quartered it into useable sizes, the segments that I freeze wouldn't go into the freezer, dangit. Those containers full of herbs I picked for pesto were taking up too much space.
Deep sigh, removed them from the freezer, put the bread in their place and set to work, forced by necessity and the rules of food to get on with pesto making. And after all that whining and tergiversation, it only took about an hour to create flattened packages of pesto for the freezer, now in there lying on a plexi sheet to keep flat while they freeze.
Rosemary, sage, basil, English thyme, lemon thyme, peppermint, spearmint, oregano, I think that's the lot, all done. Instead of my usual olive oil, walnuts, herb, grated parmesan, I used all the above, but subbed grated asiago for the parmesan as an experiment, so we'll see how that works out. And I made a container of pesto water at the end, to rinse out the blender without wasting any pesto.
I also finished one bottle of oil in the course of this, just came to the end of it. Then left it capped and upended while I got on with the newly opened one. After a few minutes, uncapped it and as I expected, at least another ounce of oil in there still, poured that into the new bottle, waste not want not, good olive oil is expensive.
The food rule seems to be like so many other parts of life: just do it. Don't put up the ingredients and waste a lot of mental effort remembering and planning and resolving to do it. My whole winter's pesto is now up and done. And the bread and the pesto all fit nicely in the freezer.
Next to make soup from all the little containers of potato water and pesto water and green bean water and other bits saved up, along with all the veggies waiting their soup life. I'm thinking of putting soup into freezer bags and squashing it flat, too, why not. Space saving.
Every year at this time I wonder if I should have another freezer, and the urge passes if I lie down for a while..or until I get another space saving idea like this one. So that the cook, not the food, rules!
The weather seems to be cooling off rapidly, so I've begun to bring in houseplants bit by bit. The spider plant had a readymade place on top of a high bookcase, so she came in first.
And after fiddling about with a plate in place for the planter, and taking off the hangers it had used to hang from the cherry tree, and navigating a little chair to reach the top of the bookcase, I got the spider plant, with a lot of new children, set up in place.
It wasn't till then that I realized we had brought in a little traveler. Dear little guy, hanging on firmly to the wall now.
I'm torn between letting him stay and deal with insects in the house for me, and detaching him from the wall to set him outside where he soon needs to be.
He seems to be in tune with the current artwork -- I'd just got through molding paper over tiles with little amphibians like him on them. To learn more, go here
Perhaps he thought I needed a few pointers.
So I wandered out this morning with my cup of coffee, to see how Mrs. D. was getting on, and, screams of amazement and joy, she has a second flower in progress! see there at the right of the first, which is now developing, its male and female parts hard at work, see, the base now looks different from yesterday, and an unfurling third leaf behind there, which might even be a third one....
I must say, she's slow to get there, this is over two years' since she had the surgery that made two plants and a dead bit out of the twisted and unhappy plant my neighbor brought me in from the dumpster, Houseplant Rescue to work, but when she does, she's cookin'.
This is the plant from the original root. The other one, from further up the stem originally, equally large, doesn't show signs of flower.
It may be that only the parent root, not the side shoots, can do this, like the wisteria. You can grow a wisteria up the entire side of the house, tearing the roof tiles off and choking the chimney and never get a flower unless it's the main root you planted. Not that I plan to plant wisteria any time soon, hate the damn things, vandals of the plant world...
Yes, I know I get a bit carried away, but oh well.
Last week I got finally around to thinning the pachysandra on the patio, found to my amazement a couple of lovely box planters, buried, the thinning long overdue, now planted with petunia and some shrub, and sitting on the fence. A lot of tangential activity to that simple need to thin the pachy.
Then yesterday and the two days before, the big reward came -- first sightings in years of a hummingbird busily attending to the petunias. Flying backwards as they miraculously do, hovering at a terrific rate, just there for a few seconds. But I was out loafing and reading at the time and that's how I caught sight of her. Three days in a row. No pix, no time!
Then today, in the midst of turning out the kitchen, thinning out pots and pans for freecycling, washing the shelfy things that have been there years, amazing how much they needed doing, heavy labor, I found cachepots and thought I should check if they needed occupants.
Anyway, I took a break and wandered outside in case I needed to bring any houseplants to occupy them yet, fall seeming to be rushing in, and there, after three years of tlc, the dieffenbachia has thrown a flower!
I didn't even realize they could. Noticed yesterday what I thought was a new leaf, but here it is opened up, and it's a lovely surprise of a flower.
The farmshare this time of year becomes a pressing priority to those of us froogle folk who can't bear to waste food. So the jam, and the tomato sauce, and the veggie quiches, and all that happen. As well as a frenzy of chopping and slicing and prepping for the freezer. I did give away a bunch of eggplant to happy neighbors, too.
Today I made some sort of dish, can you help me name it, blogistas?
anyway, I used a glass lasagna pan, rubbed with butter -- I save butter wrappers in the freezer from the rare times I buy it, use them to butter pans, then toss, works lovely.
And put in a couple of handfuls of zucchini sticks, cut like big french fries, four ears of corn, cut off the cob, four eggs beaten with kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, a big swoosh of Italian seasoning stuff, turmeric, handful of grated cheddar cheese.
Poured this over the vegetables, sprinkle of red pepper on top. Baked at 350 for 30 minutes. This, yet another kitchen experiment, worked fine, as you see my lunch serving. The veggies were still bitey, not too soft, nice flavor, very fresh.
This was my second course,the first being a tomato cubed and salted and that was all it needed for a wonderful first course. Simply nothing better than a tomato fresh from the vine. I never eat them in winter -- that's when I use my spaghetti sauce from the freezer. Anyway, the tomato was gone before I thought of a pic, oh well.
Nonfood things will return to this blog, promise. Oh yes, gardening exploits, hm, yes, been doing those, too. But you don't need to hear about my allergy issues, that's been a feature, too, but too boring.
Tomato and lemon jam, to be exact. Call Me Michelle and Bette Davis stood on their diva rights and refused to join the kitchen squad.
But Blondie Firstborn, NameMe and Dreads, kitted up in their kitchen whites, set to to make this year's tomato and lemon jam.
The
recipe, which I've changed many times since I first used it, an Amish
one which doesn't mind tweaking, is for six half pints of jam, but I
make three whole pints, why not.
Then with the able assistance of Dollivers, stationed at
various point, we sterilized all my Mason jars, three, that is,
zested
the lemon using my handy zester, out on its maiden voyage, and very good
it is, then sliced the remaining lemon. The recipe says to just slice,
but I find the outer skin goes tough in the jam, so this will be better.
Then simmered the tomatoes in the huge pot I use about once
a year, add in a packet of liquid pectin, and the lemon, zest, slices,
everything,
and boil it a bit before adding in the sugar and getting it
to an unboildownable boil.
At this point I remember each year why it's important to have a huge pot, doesn't bear thinking what would happen if it didn't have room to boil out of all control like this.
And we have three lovely jars of jam, setting up nicely. And three Dollivers proudly showing their kitchen expertise before leaving me to deal with a mountain of dishes.. they complaining also about being tired, though.
The cook's privilege is to eat the last little bit out of the pan, and wow was it good. Very tangy, more interesting than fruit jams, great for breakfast. But now I have to make hot biscuits to go with.
And this is mine:
It's very spicy and hot, and I shake it over otherwise mild food. I just had a bunch of it sprinkled at the last minute over a potato and tomato salad, farm veggies, very good in themselves but after a bit you need something more lively going on. Pink salt, freshground black pepper, puffick.
I'm given items like this continually by Indian generous friends who love that I love spicy! they don't need to mild up foods before offering them to me.
A couple of days ago, my friend from across the street came running over with fresh cooked food for supper: Indian street food! except made by her at home. This is the sort of food you'd buy from a food vendor in the Indian street, and she makes lunches for her husband's colleagues, in Manhattan, now and then, since they all have the same dietary restrictions, very strictly vegetarian.
These were two sandwiches, split buns stuffed with potato and chickpea and various other very hot and spicy stuff. She said ketchup would go well, and she was right. Glass of red wine, probably not on her diet, also went well. I had eaten them rapidly before thinking hm, shoulda made a pic of this.
She also keeps me supplied with fresh curry leaves, which I use in all sorts of things where a lovely deep savory flavor is good. Not hot, though, despite what you might think from the name.
Contemplating large amounts of shredded zucchini and chopped green beans and onions in the freezer, after an avalanche of frozen items fell on me, I thought, self, you had better use some of this up. The farmshare season is in full swing, tons of fresh vegetables falling on me every week, and I eat fresh, share round several friends, and still have plenty to freeze.
Sooooo, I thought, what about Diane's crustless spinach quiche? Daunted only for a moment by not having a lot of eggs and no spinach, I figured, fewer eggs is okay.
And I made a nice sort of quiche using caramelized onions and garlic, except for the garlic segment that flew across the kitchen and vanished as I was smashing them with my knife blade, Pepin style, this never happens to him, unless they edit that bit out..where was I? oh right, big cup of shredded zucchini and cut green beans, plenty of shredded cheddar, three eggs, seasoned with kosher salt, dry mustard, cumin, buttered pie plate, 350 degree oven for 30 minutes, and here's a nice dish. The seasonings are not very evident, but just make it interesting to eat.
Several lunches here. And since corn is a staple of my farmshare, next one will perhaps be a corn quiche. I might experiment with freezing it, just to see if it works out.
Locked in battle yesterday over attempting to work with Pinterest. Very Alice in Wonderland designs there, where you have to do something before you can find out how to do it...I rest my case. But I did manage to get in, activate my membership, stop unwanted general Pinterest emails, and generally get in gear.
One thing that surprised me, once I was under way, was the people have been merrily pinning from this blog without a by your leave. Please don't do that, folks! at least ask. One good thing, though, the pins I found were all attributed to this blog, the least you can do when you pin.
Anyway, back from high tech, during which I burned a pot because I forgot about it while pursuing Pinterest, and had an avalanche in the freezer shortly after, resulting in frozen stuff in smithereens, hard to tell the containers from the contents, where was I, oh yes.
I had heard my neighbor talk about paneer, so I thought I'd look it up and try it, and, get this, pin the recipe to my board, legally, since it's a big site with Pinterest enabled right on the site.
And I did make paneer, Indian cheese, very interesting, milder than yogurt cheese, but fun to make. My Indian friend dropped in during the afternoon and I showed her my results, which she correctly identified as paneer and told me all kinds of interesting stuff to do about it. So I felt so proud that it had an official seal of approval, or recognition, at least.
If you go here
you'll find my boards, including on the right my one and only pin to my recipe board. And a huge parade of Dollivers who feel it's high time they were on a world stage. And the beginnings of uploading artwork, much more to come. Feel free to sign up and follow! okay, if you don't like to.
And if you look below, you'll see my version of the paneer, not quite as skilled, but certainly very edible, and currently forming part of a nice supper, with fresh farm corn, raw, and tomato.
Nice glass of red wine, too. I shall endeavor not to knock this one all over the place this time.
Well, I do! wonderful spirited lady, retired truck driver, now textile artist, rambler, animal rescuer, living large on a small income:
/http://meanqueen-lifeaftermoney.blogspot.com/
I'm a follower. And she's a frequent blogger, not one of those who go walkabout for a few weeks!
I was on my way out to walk on the Preserve when a neighbor called me over to identify a shrub or tree or something behind her house, not planted by our landscapers, since we have a lot of rogue trees planted by birds, with thousands of bright red fruit, many of them on the ground. I thought maybe a species of cherry, maybe chokecherry, who knew, though the trunk was not the lenticulated type that cherry usually is, more rough and sort of hairy.
We were both puzzled that not a single fruit was eaten by birds or our rapacious hordes of squirrels. All the fruit on my own wild cherry is polished off in short order in early June by said critters.
So I took a sample twig with fruit to the Preserve, and consulted the naturalists there, who first wondered if it was chokecherry (!) then did a massive computer search yielding not much in the way of answers. The only fruit I could come up with that is so astringent it's almost inedible is a kind of wild plum, but I don't know if this is one. I left them them sample twig in case anyone else came by and identified it better.
Anyway, they asked me to email them pix of the whole tree and they'd refer it to other people more expert - they were the insect guys, I think, since I found one of them later out with a giant net and container. I also thought I might have experts reading this here blog, so here are pix for you, too. Click to see better.
The naturalist who was trying to help, along with his colleague, was in search of dragonflies, of which we have many species, to show for a walk later in the afternoon before releasing them.
And while we chatted about dragonflies and other insects he mentioned that there were luna moths on the deck at the building. After a wonderful walk, peaceful, quiet, through the woods, me and various birds, I went back and found myself swept up in a Moth Hunt by a mother and daughter, young teen being evidently an encyclopedic knowledge bank on moths.
She rapidly showed me and named any number of them, including a few luna moths. My first sighting of them, very exciting! as well as various other ones, including a herald moth (which she obligingly spelled for me, heh), tiger, rosy maple, this one came out a pink and cream blur, so I didn't add it in here, she seemed to know the lot.
Her mom took pix as they hunted and Christina, the daughter identified. Very impressive youngster. Her mom said this wall, facing trees and lake, was a great resting place for moths, always worth a visit.
So here are my attempts at pix of most of the above, some of the moths being tiny and some being high up, but I did my best for you.
Two luna moths, my first ever sighting.
Front and back of possibly a herald, if you know better, please tell us.
Tiger maybe?
Then home, ready for cakes and ale.
To be exact, black forest cake made for Handsome Son's birthday dinner yesterday, he left me some, and ginger ale. And a mystery book all loaded on the Kindle ready for me to officially read, and actually doze with it resting on my chest.
This has been a wonderful summer, enough rain, plenty of lovely days very few in the high 90s or over, and today is bright shade, in the 80sF, great walking weather.
So I fitted in a nice stroll by the pond. Pity you don't have the sound effects of cardinals (birds, that is), catbirds, warblers, barnswallows, frogs shouting and splashing, wind shaking the willow branches.
But here's a virtual walk. I park the car, cross to the park, then down the walking path, then across the bridge, then to the end and back, along the water, probably a couple of miles, easy walking in that it's flat, but nice since once across the bridge, it's earth and grass, not paved.
Here's a Chinese fisherman, who knows there are great fish in these waters, and that the cormorants don't fish as fiercely here as in our other waterways, where they're a great competition for the angler. I saw this man earlier, putting along down the walking path on his ancient bicycle, crate attached to the back as a carrier, rods balanced fore and aft, and here he's getting into the best position to surprise fish in the shallows.
Here are a few pix of pond flora: cardinal flower, which also sometimes shows up at my house near the downspout, opportunistic grower, then mallows facing the water. Then across the water at the foot of someone's garden, pink flowers I can't identify, but if you can, please tell.
Farmshare day, and this evening's supper was a lovely ear of corn picked this morning, two minutes in the microwave, sliced tomato, first of the season from the farm, today's picking, with pink salt and fresh ground black pepper, cubes of sharp cheddar. Nice glass of red wine.
Dessert loganberries, today's pick, and yogurt cheese, done at home. Sprinkle of brown sugar over. Puffick! for a few moments.
Right after the dessert picture, I leaned over to put the dinner plate on the pass through, and managed to spill the entire glass of wine over my dress, the lovely Greek embroidered napkin, the placemat, the chair cushion and acres of floor. Amazing how far it went, really. And since the glass was almost full, I can't blame the wine on it. Just me looking through the wrong part of my glasses.
So rather than sitting happily digesting, I found myself ripping off my clothes and the cushion, placemat, napkin, and doing a rapid stain treatment. They're now, except for the cushion, soaking overnight till I feel like addressing them again. Sigh. I will never have a future in food design.
Nonetheless it was a wonderful supper, almost all from the farm. A favorite thing to do. I did put up in the freezer other items, and there's a quartered melon in the fridge, too. And I delivered a couple of veggies to my friend across the street to get when she comes home.
I will now attempt to have the glass of wine. Maybe I should break out a raincoat ahead of time. Meanwhile you do know how to make yogurt cheese, no?
I do it all the time: turn out your yogurt, mine's nonfat plain by choice, to drain in a cheesecloth lined sieve, over a bowl, don't waste the whey, you can drink it. After a few hours you have the cheese, which works like sour cream or cream cheese. I put that in a lidded container, and I use it over baked potatoes, fruit, tomato salad, cucumbers, all kinds of things.
My Indian friends approve of this, and tell me the Hindi name for it, likewise an Egyptian friend who told me the Egyptian name for it, both of which escape me.
The Rubicon is now in the rearview mirror, and I'm done for the day. I did almost all I hoped to do, and the next phase is organizing the stuff away from the window wall. This involves taking down curtains and swaggy thing, and moving a lot of glass items and maybe reconsidering where to put things after the painting is done.
The picture is about half of what I did. Finished the fireplace wall and the first of the other recessed walls.
Today I did all the edges around the ceiling and where walls meet, and the baseboards before getting to the fun part of using the roller. And I used two trays of paint, just got to the end of the second as I ran out of wall. The most strenuous part is the edging along the ceiling, involving climbing up and down and moving the steps bit by bit. I'm feeling my lost height now. I used to be able to reach further. But it still looks okay considering.
I realize you can't tell any difference from yesterday before I painted, but take my word, it's nice! where there was now dingy formerly soft white, there's soft yellow which contrasts well with the stronger yellow on the next wall. So I put a different artwork up to see if it worked there, and I think it does. It's a stitched piece.
I think I'll easily be able to get all this done, so that the new paint meets the first wall I painted, completing the room, well before I need to bring the plants in again from the patio, since that's my deadline. Most of them go against this very wall for the winter, impossible to work around them without moving all of them again.
So this is nice, and I was visited by a neighbor who had her house repainted recently, after a disastrous flood, and wanted to show me after she'd finished admiring rather mutedly my pale yellow wall. Not her taste, she's more of a strong color person. So I went over and admired her walls, too! We're both happy with our choices.
A grandiose way of saying I'm making sure I finally get painting that living room wall on the fireplace side tomorrow by setting it all up this evening. I'm pretty sure when Caesar said that originally he was probably about to divide Gaul into three parts or invade England or something, actually I think it was about crossing the Rubicon, but oh well, to each his own scenario.
I finally managed to get out and shop for paint, another pale yellow, this will make four different yellows in the living room, so it doesn't look like the inside of a box or something, I hate rooms all one color. And I love the way it looks interesting without looking obvious.
Marigold is clearly very suspicious of all this activity late in the evening.
Where was I? oh yes, and I lined the paint tray with a plastic bag -- you do know this tip, no? where you line the tray, pour the paint on top of the bag, which takes the shape of the tray, paint away, when it's finished or you are whichever happens first, you invert the bag, tie it off to toss it, tray perfectly clean as before. Saves a ton of cleanup. And I use cheap roller sleeves, and toss them after at most two painting sessions.
I also hauled the furniture out of the recess, the tv on top of an oak cabinet, ow, heavy. And put down the dropcloths. And moved the cats' drinking dish, to their annoyance. And put out the paint can and stirrer, inserted the roller into its sleeve, found the painters' tape which I may or may not use, having a steady hand and an aluminum guide.
And took down the artworks, impressed that my cleaners had not allowed a dust buildup there. And dusted the whole area with my handy electrostatic long handled duster, in fact it was pretty clean, my cleaners are good.
And now I'm off to find the screwdriver which I'll use to get the lid off the paint can tomorrow, the hardest part psychologically of the whole exercise. I already located my Crummy Painting Clothes, having improved from the days when I'd paint in whatever I was wearing, sometimes an unwise procedure.
