In Search of Horse Manure

I meet the nicest people trying to get more horse manure.

The first person I met is named Patty and she lives on a bit of land further west of State College. She has two horses and a lot of horse manure and sometimes hay. She's very sweet and I met her through freecycle.

Then today I had another gal call me and offer me some horse manure and she has hay for me, too. And she gave me directions out to her place in stormstown. The directions were very funny and I look forward to meeting her on Saturday when I go out there to pick up the manure and hay.

My garden is very lucky.

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Today I was Mrs. School Volunteer Mom. I started out by helping out at the book fair this morning. Then came home, worked for a bit, made everyone lunch, and went back to school where I became "Paint Lady." It was my job to paint a hopscotch grid and a 4-square court.

The hopscotch grid took--no joke--an hour and a half to tape. I had no idea. The 4-square court took about 30 minutes to tape out and even so, one line is a little wonky. But by then, the clouds had rolled in and Mother Nature had served notice.

I stirred the paint, poured it into a cup, and did the fastest job of painting concrete I've ever done.

I think it was worth it. I won't know till we see what it looks like tomorrow. When I left I'd cleaned everything up and all the tape was up--but I don't know for sure that all the nooks and crannies were totally dry. The paint was a fast dry variety that was supposed to be good to go in a half-hour. But the concrete pits held paint and although I didn't see a true rain until more than two hours later--I can't help but wonder if we won't find streaks of orange day-glo paint bleeding out from the lines in the morning.

Oh, well. The hopscotch court is a work of art if I do say so myself--although it now needs stenciled numbers. For the time being, kids can write in the numbers with chalk.