Finished Planting Roses, At Last! Or Not.

Yesterday T. finished up his CAT test and, as promised, I made Roald Dahl's Strawberry Fudge and Wisteria's (from "Twice Blooming," in the sidebar) Banana Pudding to celebrate. The directions for the fudge said to bring to 234 degrees, but I should have stopped sooner. The candy turned out crumbly and sugary, not creamy. K. likes it anyway. The Banana Pudding turned out much better, though I used much too small a pan and couldn't fit all the bananas or vanilla wafers. Also, my pudding was nice and firm before I put it in the oven, but has been runny since. I'm not sure why, but it still tastes good.

We overnighted T.'s test to Seton for grading, and they e-mailed me his results today. I beat the June 30th deadline by days! The Mother Seton people were wonderful to work with (we had a FAX machine issue, and they were very patient about resending until I finally asked them to e-mail instead), definitely a good testing company for the procrastinating homeschooler!

I dug up some more sod and planted my last rose bush this morning. Big sigh of relief! This was the "replacement" bush which turned out at the last minute to be unnecessary, so a slight extension of the garden was necessary. We've been having lovely mid-70s to mid-80s weather, but digging up sod is sweaty work, even so. On our way back from the library today, where the kids enjoyed a very nice magic show and replenished our book supply, we stopped at Lowes for spray for my sour cherry trees. My poor little trees have some sort of white powdery ick on the tops and bottoms of the leaves, and all the leaves are curling up. They don't look good. Also, there are Japanese Beetles and something that is laying bright green eggs on the stems, but the most pressing issue seems to be the sick leaves. I think it might be powdery mildew, but, of course, I don't really know. Anyway, I bought a concentrate for fruit tree sickness and bugginess, and a pump sprayer (I really wanted a nice cheap little bottle of pre-mixed stuff, on the theory that my trees will recover quickly and never get the ickies again, but they didn't have that), and was heading for the register when I saw roses on Clearance! The same shrubs Ed gave me last October, for $2.00 each! They are a bit peaky looking, but mostly just small and untrimmed. I couldn't resist. Now I have six more roses to plant (aren't you impressed by my restraint?!), and no idea where I'm going to put them. Also, no more peat moss or cow manure compost, but that's another trip to Lowes (I'd have gotten planting supplies, but Ed and the kids were getting a bit insane waiting in the van). I promised Ed that I would tile the kitchen backsplash this weekend (being as how school is out and I'm on holiday!), but the roses can wait 'til next week.

*K. wasn't bad. She just wanted to dig.