{pretty, happy, funny, real}

Giveaway! Drinking with the Saints an... {bits & pieces} and the winners o...

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

The giveaway of Drinking with the Saints is still going on! Leave a comment on the giveaway post for a chance to win one of five copies! We’ll wrap it up on Saturday.

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Every Thursday, here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!

{pretty}

Bear with me, will you? Soon enough I’ll be back to my trademark gray photos punctuated with piles of snow. For now…

Let’s take a walk in the orchard.

It’s getting a bit overgrown — they seem to be on a “low-prune” regimen in the past few years — but a few rows are left on purpose to make magical tunnels. (Yes, super sad to see all the apples on the ground like this. But pretty in its own way.)

{happy}

Every year I vaguely have some sort of idea (occurring to me sometime in January) that garlic should be planted in the fall, but never know enough to do it. This year my friend gave me a bit leftover from her planting (her daughter has been working on an intense organic farm and gave her a bunch to plant).

What’s in the bowl is hers, and the other is what I bought as the nicest-looking fat garlic I could find, just to make a whole (small) bed of garlic for the spring.

I kept thinking… “Oh man, the warm sunny weather will be gone soon — need to get out there and plant the garlic!” Finally on Tuesday I did it, and my next thought was… “I hope the garlic won’t start sprouting with all the warm weather we’re in for!” Heh.

unnamed

In other happiness, All Soul’s Day is one of the few days in the year that the monks say Mass at the tiny chapel down by the river. Every year our family tries to go there on a pilgrimage in May. November 2 is another special day for the Guadaloupe shrine.

I stole this picture off their website so that you can see how small it is:

chapel

You follow that path lined with trees… all the way down…

Sorry for my quick cell-phone pics here. I’m standing in the doorway.That’s it. That’s how big it is! And there were a lot of people (not pictured), so lucky that it was balmy and sunny outside!

A beautiful way to pray for the Holy Souls.

{funny and real}

I think I’m vicariously nesting, because Sukie is about to have her baby and I really need to get some things done around the house before I go to be with her! Is that a thing? Grandmothers nesting??

I’ve had my dishwasher for more than 16 years. I happen to really like it a lot and it works very well, but in the past year or so, it’s been bugging me because it was so… well, not to put too fine a point on it, dirty.

I scrub it, even running those tablets through it, but recently I realized that what bothers me the most is the door seal gasket — that black rubber that goes around the tub — you can’t clean it after a certain point! Dirt builds up all around it! It’s not scrubbable! It’s gross!

Seriously, I was on the point of buying a new dishwasher! I figured it had given me its all (and it may still break down yet, who knows) and I just wanted a clean one. Is that too much to ask??

When I say 16 years, remember that it’s more like 25 dish-washing years, when you figure the 2 and even 3 times I ran it a day for so long, with up to 11 people a day to cook for at times. Plus, some of the interior bits have just started literally wearing away — there are some prongs on the racks that will never be heard from again, for one thing.

However, a new dishwasher isn’t cheap. As I was looking at them down at the discount appliance store, I suddenly noticed that the gasket is actually really easy to pull out.

And that gave me the thought to just buy a new gasket.

Do you see it? Please ignore the fact that the inside of the door isn’t sparkling white, due to being 16 years old and also there are dirty coffee cups in there and that’s when I took the picture. Focus on that crisp black gasket and the pristine area around it. Turns out that when you pull the old one out, you can then clean for real all around it. Since I don’t rinse dishes, it was really grody. (What a workhorse, right? No need to rinse dishes!)

For $30, I feel like a new woman with this dishwasher!

I’m telling you — you can pull yours out, clean it (and the channel it sits in), and put it back! Zero tools needed! If you could use a new one, just poke around on Google shopping with your model number and you’ll find it cheap.

And if you can stand any more of this fall-cleaning talk, I also took advantage of the warm weather and defrosted my deep freezer. Do you know that “deep freezer organization” is one of our top searches here at LMLD? Because of this old post! I thought you might like to see more, although I’m going to say that if you are a blogger and your deep freezer is in your Garage of Death you are never going to get great pictures.

Do you get the idea? You use those fruit boxes that have plenty of ventilation and even handle grip hole thingies cut in the sides. Just catch the guy as he’s stocking the produce section. You broadly divide up your food into categories like “big roasts” and “veggies” and “partially cooked stashed food,” using the boxes to keep it all contained. Stagger the boxes as you pile them up with the big things down low and in the spaces created by the boxes. The bread goes in the section that the manufacturer fenced off. The basket holds the little odds and ends that would otherwise fall to the bottom.

A lot fits in this way but it’s never just a pig-pile. (Don’t worry, that’s not really frost there, just a little condensation as I had the top open to show you.) Put a horizontal surface of some sort next to your freezer (any shelf will do) and that gives you a place to put a box while you are rummaging.