So Beautiful

I am really having good success with my 15 minutes at a time jobs. My yard looks better than it has for 2 (or maybe 3) years. I am slowly but surely getting things planted and mulched. The unusually warm weather continues--it is hovering around 90 degrees. May I remind the weather that it is MAY not August! However, that means all the trees are fully leafed out, and everything is beautiful and summery.

Tonight, as I went out to take care of the chickens it was so beautiful. There is a tiny crescent moon, the treefrogs are singing and the air felt like warm velvet. I do love life!

The busy big childroon are having a babysitting/sleepover adventure at Miss Jenny's, so I have SmallDaughter and a quiet house. I think I will go to bed to celebrate!

S'No Way!

Yesterday, I actually listened to a weather report (which is quite a rare occurrence for me), in which they earnestly reported that we had a chance of rain in the afternoon.
That news bummed me out, because the reason I checked the weather was to continue my long procrastinated (yeah, like 7 YEARS long!) project of transplanting a bunch of bulbs and other perennial flowers from the random places they have ended up (due to the sewer projects, the driveway project, the chicken yard project, etc.) and placing them in actual flower beds. Quite, quite radical.

So, just after I checked that depressing news, it began to snow. Yep. And now we have about 3 inches. SIGH.

I know that it will melt today. I know that we probably have one more snow storm this season. But logic doesn't have a whole lot to do with the bummed-outness of someone who had some actual gardening plans going.

Busy Summer

I have been very busy--which means I have been alternately chauffering all of my short people to all of the many and varied places they have to go (I would like to mention here, that even SmallDaughter has a more exciting social life than I do--Physical Therapy--[which has a POOL!], Occupational Therapy, and Theraputic Riding) and reading A LOT.

The big kids just went to the area level (22 counties) for their
4-H "Health & Safety Speaking Contest" Skit. They were very good, and I am really proud of them. They did a funny skit on Car Safety--so we have had a lot (more than usual) of backseat driving!

MFG has been working out of town, which always throws my groove off. I have remembered to feed everybody (mostly), but the food gets WAY more casual. Also, I can't go to bed when he isn't home--a big problem for the chronic insomniac!

I have thought of a lot of blog entries, but always when I am driving, and far away from my computer. When I get near the computer I have forgotten them, and I am too tired. I have been sleeping even worse than usual lately. Sigh.

LargeBoy is SO happy his best-friend-in-the world has finally come back from Texas. The yard is full of sticks again (battles have been renewed) and yesterday they got in trouble for making a zip-line off of the TV antenna tower to the crabapple tree (they assured me they always dropped off before they face planted into the tree.) I still stopped them.

My garden is flourishing. The tomatoes are as tall as I am. The cucumber is producing about 3 a day--perfect. The chickens are big and busy sounding. I will post pictures of their new run soon.

Definitely Weather!

I have been hoping for some rain for my little gardens. It has been unseasonably dry here. Usually after Mother's Day, we get pretty steady rain for 2 or 3 weeks, but this year I have had to water every day.

Well, Tuesday took care of that. We got 5 1/2 inches of rain in 3 hours. That is A LOT of water. It continued to rain heavily on Wednesday, and the humidity is staggering. Also--yesterday (Wednesday) the power was off for about 8 hours. The kids always enjoy the novelty of no power, and they LOVE candlelight, so a good time was had by all!

WooHoo!

I just got all of my gardens planted (except the potatoes--and they hardly count!). This is the best garden yet (I am still in the "novice" stage of gardening, but I have finally made it out of the "newbie" stage!)!

I have two large raised beds, filled with my excellent home-made soil (which just wows me every time I work with it!), six small (tire sized) raised herb beds filled with the good soil, one small very raised bed (about 2 1/2 feet by 2 1/2 feet across, and 3 1/2 feet high--to try and keep the !@#$%^&*! ground-hogs out of the melons and cukes) and one "terraced garden" made from small containers (actually sections of 12" to 24" culvert pipe that MFG cut into 18" high chunks for me, which do make lovely mini-beds--plastic buckets with the bottoms cut out also work) which (sadly for it) is filled with our yucky, crappy clay soil (actually a load of topsoil that MFG dumped out of the back of the old dump truck he bought). In the potato and carrot beds, I amended the clay (spiffy gardening term for "mixed together") with the old, gross sand out of SmallDaughters sandbox--filled with pine-needles and wierd algae stuff from being wet and covered for months--definitely better in the garden!. Very heavy stuff, my arms are achy and tired.

Everything is planted with a companion marigold. Sadly, I am not very fond of marigolds, but they do keep the !@#$%^&*! ground-hogs, rabbits and deer from eating everything quite as quickly. I like them better than I used to.

ENVY ALERT! We got to go to the Greek Festival last night! There is a small Greek Orthodox church just down the block from my Dad's house, and each year on their Patron Saints day, they have a festival. We always love the tour of the sanctuary (LargeBoy whispered "I wish our church was this fancy!"), the dancing and THE FOOD! I trade off SmallDaughter and the WonderDog to my Aunt A, and take LargeCousinGirl with us(and bring bake lots of food for those who had to stay at home). All the food, and all the desserts are baked by the sweet ladies of the church. AAAHHH!

Almost free range chickens

I spent a large portion of yesterday building a portable chicken run for the ladies. (All of my chickens are ladies--or they had better be--the hatchery guarantees 90% accuracy on sexing them, which means we have a statistical possibility of up to 4 roosters, but none of them have shown any rooster traits--yet!) They seemed to enjoy it, although it may take some time for them to realize that worms and bugs come from the ground, not from the sky (in the always excited hands of the kids).

They can run around in the pen, without me worrying about catching them or getting eaten by critters (dogs are probably likelier, but I really hate raccoons--they are vicious!)

I enjoyed working with power tools, even though I am out of practice, so I took much longer than I should have, and tried in-effective ways of doing things first (as a short-cut, which ended up taking much longer, and being much harder--go figure!) I always feel a bit intimidated by power tools, but then I remind myself "guys do it all the time--and I can read the directions!"

Since I am coming up on "crunch-time" gardening-wise (where I live, historically speaking, if you don't get your garden in by May 14th, it starts to rain, and it is too wet until the first or second week of June). So today, I got one bed of my garden soil turned and mixed (it is so much easier with the lovely compost/loam mix--all light and fluffy and rich). I still need to turn 1 bed(but it needs to be done when the chickens can come out and eat the ant colony!) and build 3 more beds (but I can do that when it's raining!).

I got my herb bed started--I am using raised, bottomless containers layed over weed-cloth, filled with my own lovely soil mix. I got the first 5 herbs planted (the little Mennonite nursery I went to didn't have much selection in herbs). I also planted my Mother's Day perrenials. I am doing a "slowly improving each year" method, because that is all I can do.

Yay! We made it!

We are all done with the yard sale! It managed not to rain, although we had wind gusts in excess of 60 mph. We did well enough, although the real triumph was packing all of the leftover-didn't-sells directly into the truck and to the thrift store--YAY!!!

I made it through Mother's Day with no bloodshed and hardly any swearing. I am not a fan.

It appears that Scotty the eternal houseguest (he who was shot in the leg) who has been showing up randomly for a night or two--which I haven't bothered posting, because I just try to ignore the whole thing--may possibly be leaving. I am not holding my breath--he did it before, got shot and came back. It's sort of like a boomerang, only smokes nastier cigs.

I am planning a party. I do love to have parties--and this is the best excuse ever! My dear Auntie A is GRADUATING FROM LAW SCHOOL! I am so proud of her. She has been slogging through school against incredible odds (seriously, the first month of her law school she had a crisis EVERY SINGLE DAY--including her hubbys heart bypass surgery!)

This week I have to work on my garden. I finally have the other stuff resolved to the point of being able to. I must go and get more hardware, for making more raised beds. I have entirely given up on the dirt here in my yard (which is such a fine grade of clay that my sister actually made some pots out of it, dried them in the sun, and they stayed (visibly pot-like) all summer). Great for pottery. Just not good for growing veggies in.

So, I have started making my own soil, and it is MUCH more satisfactory. It is not rocket science. I just put nice former plant matter back together--well aged horse manure, sawdust, grass clippings, all the raked leaves from along the fence line, all the compost bin stuff, and anything else that comes along cheap.

I really like the "square foot gardening" concept. (Just google it, you know I can't get links to work). MUCH LESS WEEDING. Especially since I staple garden felt over the box, and just cut a little hole for the plants I want. AAAHH.

So today, I need to go mix together all of the soil ingredients I have been assembling since last fall. Then I will let the chickens roam through the whole thing to eat all the cutworms and slugs out of it, and voila! I will be ready to plant! (although there is always a whole lot more work before that voila than I like to remember).

There is HOPE

Having spent an utterly crazy night--BigGirl had 3 pre-teen friends spend the night (roughly the noise equivalent of an early 80's stadium rock concert), and, at the last minute LargeBoy had to have a friend stay over, too (due to a family medical emergency)--so life was LOUD and LATE.

Plus, my house looks like a very untidy tornado came through it. Also, My Favorite Gentleman and LargeBoy left at 4:00 this am, to go on a 20 mile hike.

So, entropy (what a great word--I just love it! "a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder, the gradual descent into chaos. see Chaos, Randomness, Disorder.") is prevailing, once again.

However, when I went to call 4 totally wet, happy girls into the house (it rained all night, a warm, spring rain, and they couldn't wait to get out into it. It is unseasonably warm here--about 15-20 degrees above normal!) The rain has stopped, a bit of sunshine is peeking out, and I see that my front flower bed has BLOOMING SNOWDROPS!

It is fabulously springlike out there. It smells heavenly. I know that it is only a cruel illusion--Winter is not really gone--last year, the kids had their easter egg hunts in the snow--in April. We probably have 2 more good snowstorms left (maybe 3). But it fools me every year!

I must get out my garden catalogs! I must start thinking about compost-y things!
Hope springs eternal in the heart of the disoganized gardener--"this year will be better!" On, On to greatness!