Parsnip row in the Big garden

Sunday morning I was up and had to get both! stoves going as it was so cold outside. I got the post up, sat down for a cup of tea and at 8AM got started on the estate stuff.

My brother eventually got up and got my car charging and spent some time looking for wood supports for his bed. We also hauled the wrapping paper box downstairs (where it will now be under my bed) so he could wrap presents. He worked in the dining room while I was in the office.

There’s even a few presents under the tree now. When he finished that he wanted to go dig parsnips.

They should have been dug 2 weeks ago after the first good freezing, but he was on vacation elsewhere. So I bundled up in all my warm winter stuff, found the fork and shovel and we headed over to dig.

There was still green foliage along the row, so we had hopes the critters had left us something. The ground was frozen down 3” – 4” but the fork went through it so the shovel could be used after it. But alas, all we found was tiny chips of one. They had eaten the entire row, again. We even saw 2 of them run off as we dug. So we put the mulch back over the row, defeated again.

I went back to working on the estate stuff and he went off to buy wood for his bed. No parsnip chowder for us on Sunday.

Later on I was putting away the empty bed box in the spare room, and look what I found (above). The missing #4 Advent present. If I had put away the wrapping paper box (which I hadn’t), I would never have found it. It would have been pushed to the far side of the bed. It’s only 1” long.

But I had lifted the bedspread to put the empty box under the bed and there it was. My brother had presents to send to my sister, so I taped it to one of those.

Mid afternoon I was tired of doing estate stuff, so I watched Christmas movies, with help.

It had been a very cold day with little sun so I had used all the wood in the stoves. My son finally brought in more and I soon had both stoves going well.

We are to get snow during the night and into Monday. Then it turns to rain overnight Monday night and well into Tuesday, so it will be washed away. On Monday my #2 intern is coming in the morning and we are off to do errands. I also have laundry and still more laundry stripping to do. And walkways to sweep before I leave in the morning.