My morning started at 4 am again yesterday morning. I had to go find something to corroborate my feelings about it and did find numerous articles talking about how it is more about the quality of sleep and the right amount. I wake feeling rested every time I am up this early so I have learned to enjoy it. It's quiet, not just in the house but the local world is quiet, there are so few people awake the energy of our region is super low. There is little traffic on the highway and I am fresh and can think really clearly which makes writing a lot easier many times.
I busied myself with chores in the morning then at 11am the second session came on of the PDC and the first match was the 16 year old phenom Luke Littler who has exploded onto the scene. He has won a bunch of junior worlds so is no foreigner to the stage but his handling himself super well. I can't get past the fact that he REALLY doesn't look 16 to me. I mean I can see it a bit but he looks more 20 than 16.
Chores was the name of the morning and I got my clothes washed then managed to get the boys to sorta kinda maybe help clean in the house.
It's theirs yet they refuse to clean it up... so I swept it into piles where it would be easy to pickup in a dust pan and toss in the garbage and I think they understand that now so they are a bit faster to react.
When it was first light I had gone out to check on the soil heater. It was not that warm and the row cover had ice on it above the pipe. I figured that the large amount of air contact had seeped the heat so I needed to cover it better. I went out and took shovels full of dirt and buried the pipe and heat tape in about a 6 inch mound all the way down the length.
My intent is to have a mass covering the heat tape closely so the heat is transferred into the soil and not directly to the air. I ordered an IR thermometer which will be here today and I want to use it to check the surface temp of the soil in and around the heat pipe.
I covered the rows again and the mound creates a long lump under the cover.
Late I got the trailer hooked up for the grain run I have already done this morning.
I was fighting to figure out something for dinner and I came back to the spiral cut ham I got the other day at the store. I did what I will regularly do in this situation, go to my trusty and handy Betty Crocker Cookbook and look up the ingredient and see if there is a recipe that looks good. I happened to find the scalloped potato recipe and it had a ham option.
I grabbed a bunch of potatoes from the basement and peeled then sliced them thin and layered them in the casserole dish. While I melted the butter and cooked the dried diced onions I pulled out the ham and got it sliced up. I added the milk to the sauce and heated it to about boiling. I didn't bother with the getting a full boil as it was going to the oven. I dumped the ham in the sauce then poured it over the potatoes. I had to add an extra cup of milk as I had more potatoes but when it came out of the oven after an hour at 400F it was perfect. It ended up tasting super delicious and all of us absolutely loved it.
The Kraken played and miracle of miracles they actually managed to win 2-1 with no OT or shoot out. I caught the first 2 periods but went out to soak during the third and came back in to see the highlights.
Was out of the house by 4:40am this morning and am back from the grain run now. PDC is on again today and some top players will have matches. I'll be checking the soil in the greenhouse this morning after I empty the grain, it's to be 44F today which will be quite nice, I get the IR thermometer so I will be able to check the surface temp of the soil this afternoon, and try to keep cleaning up around the house and under the carport.
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