New Flower Bed - April 30, 2021

 

I cranked up the little red tiller this afternoon - the one that the nephew-in-law fixed last weekend - and tilled up a new flower bed along the driveway.

When I started, I was just aiming to till up a little spot to put the zinnias.  As the tilled spot got bigger and bigger, I realized that my dirt was going to wash off the hill, so I pulled out some landscape things my sister gave me and made a fence to hold the dirt.  Aaaaannnd it needed more dirt.  A wheelbarrow full of dirt from an abandoned flower bed wasn't enough to halfway level the new bed on the hillside.  This called for a trip to the garden center to get more dirt.  I ended up spending the rent money on new plants.  

I got blue salvia, a hollyhock, a homestead verbena, an aster, and a couple of other things I can't remember.  

Those pitiful, water-logged zinnias may not make it.  I just scooped them out of the box with a trowel and set them on the dirt.  

After I watered everything, I sprinkled the rest of the pack of zinnia seeds, and the rest of a pack of larkspur seeds over the whole bed.  Oh, and a pack of bachelors buttons.  

We'll see what survives.

Squash and Zinnias - April 30, 2021

 

The zinnia sprouts were looking a little pale on the back porch, so I moved them to the patio table outside where they could get a little more sun.  Already on that table was a seed-starting tray containing squash,  zucchini, and dill seeds.  

I don't know why I planted squash and zucchini in a seed tray instead of planting them directly in the ground, as I usually do.  I raked up "hills" in the garden over a week ago, getting them ready for seeds.  Maybe the seed packets weren't in my apron pocket that day.  Whatever.   

When I moved the zinnas to the patio table, I noticed that some of the squash and zucchini seeds had sprouted and were pressing against the clear plastic "greenhouse" cover.  I took off the cover to give them some room.

Aaaaannd it rained yesterday.

Late yesterday afternoon, The Husband said, rather nonchalantly, "Your zinnias are drowning."

I jumped up from my chair and ran out to the patio to see.  Sure enough, the seedlings' heads were barely above water.  I tipped the box and drained off as much water as I could.  The whole business is a bit disheveled now, but I think I can salvage some of the plants.

That's a polonia blossom in the lower left corner - fell out of the tree above the patio.

The squash/zucchini tray was drowning, too, and it had a surprise in it; some of the tomato seeds that didn't sprout with the earlier tomatoes have now sprouted (center section).  They're hard to see in this picture, but there are also dill seedlings in the center section.  

I hope I can keep them all live until the garden dries up enough for me to plant them!

Garden Report - April 28, 2021

 

Purple-hull peas have begun to sprout.

No sign yet of the green beans or cucumbers.  

Tomatoes and peppers are looking okay.

Morning Pea Ponderings - April 26, 2021

I've been thinking about those purple hull pea seeds we planted a week ago.

If my recollection is correct, last year's purple hull pea seeds, planted a few days after Mother's Day, sprouted almost before I could get back to the house.

These new seeds are probably the same variety as last year's seeds.  They went in the ground a full month earlier.  It was warm when I planted them, but we got a late frost two days later.  This past weekend, it rained enough to soak the ground.  If the temps warm up this week, they ought to be poking their heads out of the dirt soon.

This is the first year that I've grown things on raised rows.  On the north end of the garden, there's a low spot that holds water after a rain.  Everything I plant there drowns unless I hold off planting until early summer, when it doesn't rain so much.  When The Husband prepared the soil this year, he pushed a little dirt to that end of the garden, but not enough to level the dip, and it was holding water yesterday after the weekend rain.  But we noticed that the raised rows he made with the hipper are above the water line.  This may help keep the plants/seeds from drowning.  The down side to that is that the dirt on the south end of the rows will probably dry out faster, and we will have to water the garden more often.

I'll wait until the end of the season to decide whether to raise the rows again next year.

From the back porch - April 25, 2021

 

It has been a rather nice weekend.  Two of The Husband's nieces visited from out of state, accompanied by one nephew-in-law and a great-nephew, who is about to turn two.  One of the nieces bunked at our house, and it was good to catch up with her.  Saturday, we had a birthday party for the 2-year-old at his grandfather's alpaca farm.  It was good to have the family together.

This morning I decided to try to fix the little red tiller (again) that the small engine repairman said could not be fixed.  The gas tank and carburetor came in a month ago, but I haven't been in the mood to fool with it.  I don't know what got into me today, but I dragged it onto the porch and put the new parts on it.  We got it to crank, but it would run for about 30 seconds and quit.  Frustrated, I shoved it into its hiding place and walked away.  Not long afterward, the nephew-in-law showed up at our house.  He's a mechanical whiz, and when I told him about the tiller problem, he jumped on it.  He fiddled with some stuff, and in about 10 minutes he had it running.  

It rained on the garden Friday and Saturday.  There is yet no sign of the purple hull peas we planted a week ago.  The tomatoes that I started from seed are not looking too well.  Before I took them to the garden, their leaves were turning a strange, white-ish color.  I need to research this to see if they've had too little or too much water, too little or too much light, or if this is a disease.

Otherwise, the dirt looks great.  ;)

Butterbeans, Green Beans, and Cucumbers - April 23, 2021

 

The Boss turned me loose after lunch, and I came home and mowed our yard.  Man, it was dusty under the trees, where the grass doesn't grow very well.   

After I finished mowing, I went down to the garden to plant the butterbeans.  The weather forecast was predicting rain for Friday and Saturday, and I wanted to get the seeds in the ground before it rained.  I'd bought a half pound of butterbeans, thinking that would do the two rows we'd prepared, but I was wrong; it only did one row.  I've ordered another 1/2 pound.  Maybe I'll wait a couple of weeks to plant them so that the whole crop doesn't come in at once.

While I was in planting mode, I went ahead and planted the pole green beans.  

I also raked up some hills for the squash, zucchini, and cucumbers.  There was a package of old cucumber seeds in my apron pocket, so I planted them in the cucumber hills.  They are last year's seeds - or maybe even older than that - and may not come up.  If they don't sprout, I've still got time to get new seeds.

About all I have left to plant is the okra.  I may wait for the weather to get (and stay) a little warmer before I plant okra seeds.

I pulled the pine straw off of the tomatoes and peppers.  They fared well in the cold snap.  

Granddaughter #2 had a softball game last night.  I thought it started at 7:30, and so when I finished in the garden, I came home and relaxed for a while.  When The Husband came home at 6, I reminded him of the ball game, and double-checked the time, and discovered that the game was at 6, not 7:30.  We hurried to the ballpark and got there in time to see her pitch a couple of innings.  Bless her heart . . . her team lost.  After the game, her little freckle-sprinkled face was so sad, and she was so down on herself.  She'd only pitched a couple of the innings, and she'd done as well as the other pitchers, but she felt like it was her fault the team had lost.  We gave her a pep talk and kissed her goodbye.  

Fencing - April 22, 2021

 Granddaughter #1 asked me to make a coffee mug for her high school band director, who is retiring at the end of this school year.  I was glad to do it, for I had been wanting to try out the mug attachment that came with my heat press machine.  I ordered a case of 12 blank mugs.  They arrived Tuesday.  Yesterday, I busted them out and had a go at making the mug.  I'd already set the type and the graphics, so all I needed to do was print the decal and fuse it onto the mug.

It took two tries to get a good imprint.

Once that mug was done, I decided to make a mug for The Husband.  It took three tries to get this one right.  

The net fencing that I ordered for the garden came yesterday.  As soon as we finished supper, we took it to the garden and wired it to the fence posts we set over the weekend.  The mesh is larger and thinner than I expected, but it seems pretty strong.  We pulled it as tight as we dared; I think it'll be sturdy enough to support beans.  The Nephew (who lives with Nanny) came out to help us while we were working.  The Husband said to him, "You may get up in the morning and find a deer hung up in this net."  The Nephew replied, "Not for long.  He'll be in the freezer once I'm done with him."

I'll be planting butterbeans this afternoon.

Cold Snap - April 20, 2021

 

The TV weather-forecasters are saying that it could frost tonight.  Might rain a little, too.  

I'll need to cover my tomatoes and peppers.  

Yesterday afternoon I went down to Nanny's and raked up another wagon-load of pine straw to spread over the plants.  

The butterbeans came in the mail yesterday.  I want to get the fencing up before I plant them.  The fence is supposed to be here Thursday.   It's supposed to rain this weekend, and I would really like to get the beans in the ground before that happens.  

The zinna seeds I planted last weekend have sprouted.  

The dill is also sprouting.

The larkspur seeds (which I planted at the same time I planted the tomato seeds) never did sprout.  Contrary things.

In my yard, I have a large flower bed that is mostly tall phlox.  The bed doesn't get much full sun, and so the phlox grow tall, and when they bloom they drape across the path between the bed and the house. To be honest, they look kind of cool draped over the path, but we have to fight our way through them to mow the path.  Yesterday, I performed an experiment: I cut about a foot off of the plants closest to the path, hoping that they will bush out and not grow so tall.  I'll let you know how that works come June/July, when they bloom.

I need a new weed-eater, preferably an electric one.  We have a big, gas-powered monstrosity that I can neither crank (because my arms are too short) nor use for more than a few minutes at a time.  We also have a battery-powered weed-eater that doesn't have enough "oomph" to whack down anything very substantial, and the battery doesn't last long enough to even do the walkway in front of the house.  We used to have an electric weed-eater, but it is nowhere to be found in the shed.  I suspect one of my children has it.  It's easier to go buy a new one than to shake the kids down for it.

From the back porch - April 19, 2021

 

Now that we have the fence posts up, I'm thinking about what material we're going to use for the mesh for the climbing beans and the tomatoes.  Lots of options, and of course the sturdier and easier to use options don't come cheap.

I would really like enough cattle panels to do four 70-ft. rows.  They are sturdy and re-usable.  They are also fairly expensive - about $500 to do what I need.  Nix that one for now.  

We have some old hog wire - probably not enough to do four 70-ft. rows, but it might do the tomato rows.  It's rolled up and tossed onto a trailer that is probably infested with wasps and snakes.  Assuming I can get it out of the tangled heap of tomato cages and fence posts, I'll probably need a tetanus shot after I mess with it.  

After work today, I stopped by Home Depot to see what they had for the climbing beans.  I saw some 50-ft rolls of orange plastic mesh fencing, but couldn't tell how much they cost, and they only had two.  Not enough.

We could do a Florida weave for both the beans and the tomatoes.  I've done it with tomatoes.  Hint: use something that doesn't stretch or your weave will sag.  Ask me how I know this.  But I'm not wild about the Florida weave idea for the climbing beans.  

I just did some web surfing to see what I could find to use for the beans, and I settled on some green plastic fencing from Walmart.  $50+ bucks for enough to do two rows.  It doesn't look all that sturdy, but it is taller than it needs to be, so we might be able to fold the excess down for a little extra support.  

We plan on raising all of this fencing about 18" or so from the ground - enough to get a hoe between the ground and the bottom of the fence so that we can chop out the weeds.

I'm anxious to do more planting, but the cold snap we're having will probably delay the seeds from sprouting, so we might as well work on our fencing, eh?

Kudos to The Husband - April 18, 2021

 

The Four Granddaughters came to visit today.  After they left, I said to The Husband, "I'm going down to the garden to water the stuff we planted yesterday."  He said he'd go, too.

We mixed up five gallons of Miracle-Gro water in the big yard wagon and hauled it down the rows, dipping it out with plastic cups, pouring it directly onto the ground around the plants.  When we finished that, we stood at the end of the garden and discussed support systems for the beans and tomatoes.

We have a collection of metal fence posts and some old, rusted hog wire.  Getting those fence posts in and out of the ground is a pain.  The post driver must weigh 30 pounds and is a monster to use.  I can barely lift the thing high enough to slide it over a post and slam it down hard enough to drive the post in the ground.  Then, of course, come fall, they all have to be pulled up with a post puller, and that's not too easy, either.  (This is why I often resist growing climbing beans.)  

Standing there, The Husband wondered if we could drive the metal fence posts into the ground with the bucket on the tractor.  

Such a thing would never, ever have crossed my mind.  

I said, "Well, get the tractor, and let's try one."

I got a fence post, and he got the tractor and drove it down to the far end of the garden.  I held the post, and he lowered the back side of the bucket onto it, and drove that sucker right into the ground with the greatest of ease.  My jaw dropped over how easy it was.

We still had plenty of daylight and time to work, so we decided to keep going.  I was going to tote the fence posts to the garden, two at a time, but The Husband had a better idea.  He drove the tractor to where the fence posts were stored, and we loaded them all into the bucket at once.  

We had to do the job backwards, since he couldn't drive forward once we'd set a post in front of the tractor.  Backing the tractor down the rows was a little tricky, but he managed not to smash any of the plants.

We now have the posts up for all four rows that will need fencing.  In less than an hour.  Without throwing out our backs.  Winner!

So far, I am extremely pleased with how the gardening is going.  We have nice rows.  The tractor tires have packed the ground between the rows so hard that the middles might not be so soft and muddy.  Dare I hope that the hard packing will suppress weeds and grass?  

Tomatoes, Peppers, and Purple-Hull Peas - April 17, 2021

 

Not too long after this morning's post, The Husband came out to the porch and said he was about ready to go to Uncle Jack's and pick up the hiller.  The timing was perfect for us to pick up our grocery order after loading the hiller, and then we went out and found some landscape fabric.

While we were loading the hiller, I told Uncle Jack that the PTO tiller had not tilled as deeply as I wanted, and he told me that we needed to lower the front end of the tiller.  So when we got home, we adjusted the angle of the tiller and ran it over the garden a few more times.  Then we hooked up the hiller and made some rows.  That thing did a great job making rows.

We then planted 39 tomato plants, nine pepper plants of various types, and three rows of purple hull peas.  We covered the tomato rows with landscape fabric, and then I went down the rows, cutting Xs, making planting holes, and dropping a little Epsom salt into them.  The Husband came behind me, planting the plants.  Then we mulched the shit out of the rows with the pine needles I'd collected.

Thirty-nine tomato plants may be a few more than I intended.  A dozen of them were store-bought plants, much bigger (and of a different type) than the ones I sprouted.  The other 27 plants were the ones I grew from seeds.  They have been living on my front porch, which gets bright afternoon sun, for two weeks.  Some of them are a bit puny, so we may not end up with 39 tomatoes, after all.

We forgot to water-in all that stuff, but I'll do that tomorrow, assuming I'm not too "stove up" to get out of bed.

I planted zucchini, squash, and dill in the seed trays that had held the tomatoes.  Most of the time, I plant those kinds of seeds directly in the ground, but whatever - maybe they'll come up and live.  If they don't, I have more seeds.

The butterbean seeds should be here in a couple of days.  

From the back porch - April 17, 2021

 

Today is, hopefully, the Big Day, when the garden will be readied to plant.  We need to run the tiller over it again, and then we're going to Uncle Jack's to borrow his hiller (or maybe it's called a "hipper"), which is a contraption that piles the dirt into raised rows.  If it works well, we will probably buy our own hiller for next year, though it seems a bit wasteful to spend $500 on a thing you use one day a year to pile dirt into rows when you could do it with a hoe if you had the time and the energy.

It's 7 a.m., already, and The Husband is still in bed, and I'm anxious to get the show on the road.  We REALLY need to run the tiller over the garden again to make it go deeper before we start with the hiller/hipper, for I worry that there's currently not enough loose dirt to make good rows.  I tried to talk The Husband into cranking up the tractor yesterday after work, but he just gave me The (You've-Lost-Your-Mind) Look and made us a margarita, instead.  After about 30 minutes, I was okay with not running the tiller, but now the tilling still has to be done before we can do the hipping.  It will be another hour before The Husband gets up, and another hour after that before he drinks his coffee and wakes up enough to contemplate getting dressed.  But I guess Nanny might shoot us in the driveway if we were to go down there now and crank up the tractor at this time of day.

But I am ready.  Yesterday afternoon I dragged the big yard wagon from our back yard to the garden to have it handy when it's time to mulch the tomatoes we'll plant once we have proper rows.  I won't have the mulch from the band fund-raiser until next week (assuming the mulch truck doesn't wreck again), but I have a buttload of pine needles that I gathered up a month or more ago and I can at least get started once the tomatoes are in the ground.  I really would like to put down some landscape fabric under the pine needles.  Yesterday I stopped at the dollar store up the road to buy some, but they were sold out.  Sometime today, I'll have to go on a landscape-fabric-hunting mission.  

On my way down Nanny's driveway yesterday, I spied another pile of pine needles that she'd raked up, and I stopped and put them in the wagon.  Nanny saw/heard me as I passed by her living room window, and she came out on the porch and yelled, "Are you going to spread pine needles?"  I thought this was a silly question, considering that she knew nothing had been planted in the garden yet.  I stopped, and looked over my shoulder, and said, "Eventually," which she probably thought was a totally bitch-y response, and I guess it was, but I'm blaming it on the steroids making me meaner than usual.  I shall have to be careful with my mouth today, because not only am I steroid mean, I have a headache from last night's margarita.

* * * * * * * * 

The next-door neighbor and I are worried about the baby owls in the tree behind our houses.  We're only seeing one baby in the nest.  We think we've been hearing the other baby squawking in the distance while the remaining owl sits in the nest squawking its head off.  I wonder what's going on.  Is the mama owl flight-training just one baby at a time?  Is the remaining owl too under-developed or weak to leave the nest?  Has the mama owl abandoned it?  These are questions that keep me up at night.

Since I had the camera out to take the owl's picture . . . . 

These narcissus don't usually bloom until Mother's Day.

Wonder what critter will eat the plums before they're ripe enough for me to eat them?

I dug these up out of the woods and call them "wild geraniums," though that may not be what they are.

Polonia blossom

 

When I left for work yesterday morning, I expected to have a very long workday.  And this was a problem, because before I found out that it would be a long day, I had booked myself for a couple of afternoon and evening things to do.

Granddaughter #1 is in her high school band, and they had been selling mulch (I know, crazy thing for a band to sell) for a fund-raiser.  I'd put in an order for 5 bags.  The mulch was supposed to arrive some time between 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. and had to be picked up by 6 p.m.  Also at 6 p.m., Granddaughter #2 had a softball game.  I figured I would not even be finished at work by 6 p.m., so I asked The Husband to pick up the mulch, which meant that he would have to leave work early to beat the deadline.  I'd probably have to skip the ballgame.

I picked up The Boss at 8:15 a.m. and we headed to another county to work.  We'd no sooner arrived than my Daughter-in-Law texted me that Granddaughter #3 was puking her guts out, and Granddaughter #4, who is only 3 months old, had a bad cough and she was taking them both to the doctor.  

As it turned out, the work-day was not nearly as long as we had expected, and we were able to leave a little after lunch.  When we got back to town an hour later, The Boss said I could go home if I wanted to, and I did want to, because I had other things I needed to do besides the mulch and the ballgame.  I texted The Husband and told him that I'd get the mulch, but I needed to clean out my car in order to make room for it.  

On a good day, my car is basically a rolling junk heap, full of stuff that I might need:  a kid car seat, folding chairs for ballgames, a couple of rolls of paper towels, hand sanitizer bottles, a can of Lysol spray, and bags of miscellaneous other things that I don't know what to do with.  Cleaning it out took a while.  My sister-in-law needed to borrow the kid car seat, so I took it to her house before heading out to get the mulch.

I'd been checking the band's web site to see if there was an update on the mulch arrival, but there wasn't any update, so I drove to the school.  There was no obvious mulch distribution point in sight.  There were groups of kids in the parking lot - xylophone players and drummers and flag girls - but they all looked stumped when I asked where to pick up the mulch.  I drove all the way around the school a couple of times, looking for a likely spot.  Finally, I found an adult working with one of the drum groups.  He, too, looked stumped for a moment, then he remembered that he'd heard a rumor that the mulch truck had been in a wreck, and the delivery was cancelled until next week.

It was 4:30 p.m. by this time.  Granddaughter #2 would need to be at the ball field in an hour.  With two sick babies, I figured the Daughter-in-Law would need some help, so I went to her house to check on the kids and see if I could help.  Granddaughters 3 and 4 had been diagnosed with a virus, but they seemed to be feeling fairly well by the time I arrived, and their mother was planning on taking them to the game.  I fed and entertained the baby while her mother ram-rodded Granddaughter #2 into getting her ball stuff together.  We made it to the ball park in time.

But everybody was hungry, including me.  I am taking steroids for a pinched nerve in my arm and have been ravenous for two days, and I did not want to sit through the ballgame un-fed, only to have to come home and cook afterward.  Solution:  phone in an order for pizza.

The Husband arrived at the ball field in time to pick up the pizza.  He came back with pizza and a sack of drinks.  We spread it out on the tailgate of his truck and fed us all right there at the ball field while we watched the game.

The paper towels and sanitizers I'd left in my car came in handy.

Tilling - April 14, 2021

 

I said to The Husband Monday night, "We really need to get the garden ready to plant this weekend."  He agreed, and said he would come home a little early Tuesday afternoon to get started.  By the time I got home, he was dressed for gardening and ready to get to work.

Although he had watched some instructional videos, we had not attempted to hook up the new pull-behind-the-tractor tiller.  I did not expect it to be that big of a deal.  I was wrong.  That's all I'm saying about that.  

As soon as we got there, Nanny came out to "help."  That's all I'm saying about that, too.  ;)

Eventually, The Husband said, "Call Matt."

Matt knows how to do everything, and he knows a lot about tractors and farm machinery (he's a farmer, himself.).  We needed both his muscle and his expertise.  I called him, but he didn't answer.  I figured he was on a tractor, tilling up his own garden.

Then, across the road, I heard Cousin Roger outside.  I knew he'd had a little bit of experience hitching things to tractors back in the day.  I made him come help us, and with his extra muscle we were able to get the tiller hitched to the tractor.

About that time, my phone rang.  Matt.  The Husband (whom Matt calls "Pa") told Matt he hoped we had the thing hitched up right.  Matt said he was in the vicinity - he'd been to get a load of rabbit poop from somebody - I'd had no clue there was that much rabbit poop in our vicinity - and he'd come take a look.  He helped us fine-tune the placement of the tiller in relation to the rear of the tractor, and hung around a while to watch as The Husband began the tilling process.  

I told Matt it sure is good to have a spare son.  ;)  

The Husband tilled the garden until dark.  It needs more tilling, but it rained today, so it'll be a few more days before we can tackle it again.  

I may plant these tomatoes and peppers in mud if the garden doesn't dry up by the end of the weekend.

My running butterbean seeds should be here by the weekend, but I'm not planting them until the soil is perfect.  

 

The Boss turned me loose from work a little early yesterday.  I was grateful, for I'd not slept well the night before and had a headache.  My plan was to come home, pop a couple of aspirin, and do something I rarely do - take a nap - until time to go to The Granddaughter's softball game.  

I'd no sooner stretched out on the couch than I heard a lawnmower approaching the back yard.  I got up and looked out the window.  Sure enough, it was Cousin Roger, come to borrow back the sandpaper he'd brought me last week to replace the sandpaper he'd borrowed over the prior weeks.  

He said, "I won't take the new ones I got you; I'll just use the old ones," which he'd returned along with the sander. 

When I found out that he was working on something for Nanny, I told him to just take some of the new ones.  

As we were talking, I showed him the birdhouse that The Husband had built over the weekend.  This was a cheap birdhouse to begin with - one that I bought at the dollar store for the grandchildren to paint.  It's been hanging out in the weather for several years.  At one point, we duct-taped the thing together and kept using it, but last summer the bottom fell off, and we just left it hanging.  I don't quite know what got into The Husband, but he decided to refurbish it.  He re-used the roof pieces and one side, and cut new pieces to replace the rotted wood.  He glued it together and left it to dry on the patio table.  As I was showing it to Cousin Roger, I took a notion to paint it.  It's peach and Caribbean blue.  (I intend to paint some flowers on it once it's dry.)

And there went my nap time.

At 5:30, it was time to leave for the ball field.  Lou-Lou (age 10) was scheduled to pitch for the first time EVER.  The coach put her on the mound in the second inning.  On the very first pitch, the batter connected with the ball and, partly due to the out-fielding, scored a home run.  She pitched the rest of the game, threw a few strikes, but also walked a good many (as did all the pitchers).  Bless her heart, she was so down on herself by the end of the game that she was physically sick to her stomach.  

I don't even know who won.

This morning, I loaded into my car an old pitch-back that we found in the shed; it probably belonged to Lou-Lou's father.  The net may be dry-rotted, but it might boost the kid's confidence to hurl a ball  right through the net.  ;)

* * * * * * * *

The coming weekend is my target date for planting the garden.  I am hoping we can finish preparing the soil this afternoon.  There's a small chance of rain today, and a bigger chance of rain tomorrow, but if we can get the ground tilled, maybe we can at least plant the tomatoes and peppers. 

I was not able to find any pole lima bean seeds locally, so I ordered some online.  I hope they come soon, for I am determined to get lima beans in in the ground earlier than I did last year.

  

 

On my way home from work Friday, I stopped at a garden center and bought 12 more tomato plants and some pepper plants.  The garden hasn't been tilled because it's been too wet.  There's an 80% chance of rain Wednesday, so I don't know when we'll get a chance to plant.  

The hyacinth bean vines that I sprouted from seeds are finally in the ground.  I planted them all over the yard, next to anything that they can climb.  When the make-shift "greenhouse" they sprouted in was empty, I re-planted it with zinnia seeds.  

Cousin Jamie next door texted us Saturday evening and said that she'd just watched the mama owl drop a big snake in the owl nest in the tree between our houses.  We grabbed the camera and went out to see if we could get a picture of the babies eating the snake, but of course the nest is too high off the ground for us to see what the babies were doing.  One of them did poke his head up to watch us for a minute.  At night, we hear them squawking.

I spent most of the weekend working on an alphabet for the embroidery machine.  A customer asked for a running-stitch font that would be good for t-shirts, onesies, and other lightweight fabrics.  I wanted to make a true-type font that can be typed like text, but am getting nowhere.  This has been one of the most frustrating things I've done in a while.  

The super-hero quilt is now on Lou-Lou's bed, and she likes it.  :)

Azaleas - April 9, 2021

 

My sister sent me some azaleas that she had dug from her flower beds.  She left them at my niece's house Tuesday, but I've had an unusually busy week and was just able to pick them up today.  Something had knocked over one of the pots and pulled out one of the plants.  I came straight home, planted them, and gave them a good drink of water.  They'll get another good soaking tonight, if the weatherman is correct.  Now, if I can just keep The Husband from chopping them down with the weed-eater.

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The Super-Hero Quilt is done!  I can hardly wait to give it to her.

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There's a nest baby owls - two of them - in a tree at the edge of our yard.

Play Ball! - April 7, 2021

 

Last night was the season opener for LouLou's softball team.  The weather was absolutely perfect; the teams, not so much.  ;)  LouLou played all over the field - short stop, left field, second base.  She got a good hit, struck out, walked.  I have no clue which team won, for I was playing with her younger sisters on the back side of the field and only paid attention to the game when LouLou was up to bat.

I love softball season, just as I loved baseball season when my sons were little.  Fresh air.  Sunshine.  Little kids strutting around in their uniforms.  The noise of the crowd when something happens.  No supper-cooking.  (I slipped away during the last inning to beat the ball-field traffic to a drive-thru window.)

On the way to the ball field, I saw Mr. Vernon planting seeds in his vegetable garden and wondered if he had checked the almanac to see if it was a good planting day.  Last weekend when we went to retrieve our tomato plants from Uncle Jack's greenhouse, we had a discussion about planting days.  He said that last year his running beans bloomed their heads off but produced very few beans.  A seasoned gardener later told Uncle Jack that he had planted on a "bloom day."  I had never heard of such a thing.  Uncle Jack showed me his planting calendar, which indicated that next weekend (the 17th-18th) will be perfect days to plant the garden.

Hopefully, our tomato plants will survive until then.  So far, they are looking very healthy - nice, strong stems and dark green leaves.  They've been living on our front porch in the daytime since we brought them home, but I've been bringing them in at night, except for last night (I forgot to bring them in).  It's supposed to storm tonight.  Remind me to bring them in when I come home from work.  ;)

 

Easter Weekend - April 5, 2021

 

Busy weekend!

I spent half of the day Saturday making dishes for Easter dinner.  Worked on my totem for part of the day.  Late in the afternoon, The Husband and I went over to Uncle Jack's to pick up the tomato seedlings he had been babysitting for me.  He took good care of them.  The seedlings looked great - their stems had grown stout, and they'd put on their first set of real leaves.  

Yesterday, I finished the cooking.  Over-cooked the ham, as usual.  I probably could've skipped the ham altogether and just made a bigger meatloaf, for the meatloaf disappeared right away.

It was good to have all of my kids and grandkids, except for The Grandson, who was with his mother.  

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 A couple of weeks ago, PBS aired a documentary about Flannery O'Connor.  I'd heard the name, but had never read anything she'd written, so that night before I went to bed I downloaded a book of her short stories.  Since then, I've read one or two of her stories every night.  They are a little dark for my tastes.  She kills off somebody in nearly every story.  (In the one I read last night, a grandfather killed his favorite grandchild by knocking her in the head with a rock.)  She does have a way with words, though.

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The "totem" is coming along.  I am using one of the straight, smooth, crape myrtle limbs from Nanny's trees.  I peeled off the bark with a pocket knife, drew some figures on the wood with a pencil, and started taking off the material between the figures with a dremel tool.   Mostly, I am just learning what each little attachment does, but I am having big fun with it.  It's one of those activities that puts me in "the zone."  I could do it all day.  I don't know what I'm going to do with this thing once it is finished.  The stick has begun to split at the bottom and will probably split all the way to the top, but I am going to keep working on it just to learn to use the tools.

Easter Dinner Prep - April 3, 2021

 

It seems like forever since we've hosted Easter dinner at our house - it may have been years - but we're doing it this year.  As far as I know, all of the kids and grandkids are coming, plus Nanny.  I got up early this morning and made a list of the old favorite dishes, went to the grocery store before the crowd arrived, and came back home and started cooking. 

Ham

Meatloaf (because The Granddaughters say "YAY!" when they find out we're having meatloaf)

Scalloped potatoes

Corn casserole

Green bean casserole

7-layer salad

Deviled eggs

Chocolate cream pie with whipped cream

Coconut cake (I cheated and bought a cake from the grocery store)

Everything is stirred up and ready to bake, except for the potatoes.  I'll cook them and the meat tomorrow.  

Because one of my sons is working night shift tonight, and the other is working day shift tomorrow, we'll be eating supper instead of lunch.  

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I went to visit my sister yesterday.  We've been promising to swap yard plants since last summer, but we haven't gotten together because of the virus.  Now that we've both been vaccinated, we felt safe enough to have lunch together, along with my niece and my sister's grandsons.  It sure was good to see everyone.  The weather was wonderful, and we spent a lot of time outside, admiring my sister's garden.  

I came home with a rose bush, an azalea bush, a hydrangea, some columbine, and some red lobelia.  On the drive home, I planned where to put everything, and within 30 minutes of arrival, it was all in the ground.  I'm especially stoked about the rose bush.  It is a "New Dawn," a fragrant, faintly pink climbing rose.  We had one, once upon a time, growing on an arch over a garden path, but it came down with rose rosette disease and I had to dig it up.  That was several years ago.  Hopefully, the rosette disease has left the premises by now.

Totems and Such - April 2, 2021

 

Back around Christmas, one of my regular Etsy customers asked me to create a font for her, something light-weight that would be good for t-shirts.  I had never done a font, but I said I would give it a try.  It turned out to be harder than I expected, in more ways than one.  First, I had to create the stitches for the letters, themselves, then I had to - or rather wanted to - figure out how to make them a true-type font so that my customer could simply type words instead of cutting/pasting individual letters to make words.  After a couple of days of working on the alphabet, I got side-tracked and moved on to something else.  My customer has rattled my cage about this font a couple of times since then, most recently while I was in east Tennessee.  I promised her I would try again when I got home, so yesterday I sat down and created the remaining letters.  They are still not in true font form - she'll still have to cut/paste letters to make words - but she should be able to manage until I do figure out how to make a font.

While I was working on the letters, I heard Cousin Roger coming around the back of the house on his lawnmower.  He had come over here last week while I was working on a "totem" that I was attempting to carve on the stick I'd saved from Nanny's crape myrtles.  By that time, I had peeled all of the bark off of my stick and was trying to carve shapes with a Dremel.  I switched off the Dremel when he came to the porch.

"Whatchoo doin'?" he asked.

"Carving a totem."

I could almost hear bells dinging in his head.

"How'd you get that bark off?"

"Pocket knife."

So yesterday, he rode his lawnmower over here to see if I had any marbles.  It seems one of the crape myrtle limbs we gave him had a crook on one end that reminded him of a snake head; he was in the process of carving a walking stick out of the limb, and he wanted marbles to make the snake's eyes.  Once upon a time I probably could have found him some marbles, but it's been a minute since I've seen any around here.  I do, however, have a plastic bin full of beads for jewelry-making, and I plunked the bin down in front of him and told him to help himself.  He chose two green turquoise beads for the eyes.

As Roger was digging through the bead bin, he commented how hard it was to carve the stick with a knife, and he kept glancing over at the Dremel that I'd left laying on a table.  I did not volunteer to let him use it.  

Before he left, he said that he'd finished refurbishing our swing and would bring it over.  The Husband said he'd come get it in the truck.  After Roger left, I said to The Husband, "Tell Roger we'll give him $75 for the swing, or if he thinks he can sell it for more than that, he can sell it."  (I could buy that same kind of swing for $85 new.)  We didn't have $75 in cash in the house, but we did have a $100 bill left over from our trip money.  I knew that Roger probably didn't have $25 in his pocket, so I went to the store and bought a bag of chips, a package of hot dogs, and a couple of other little things, hoping to break the $100 bill.  Wouldn't you know, my total turned out to be $13, which left $87 in change, and the heifer behind the counter would not give me two tens for a $20.  So we ended up paying Roger $80 for the swing.  

Maybe he can buy himself a Dremel with it.  ;)

Home Again - April 1, 2021

 

We're back from our trip to East Tennessee.  Left on Sunday morning, took the interstate (which we hate to do).  We had two fun days, mostly driving around to sight-see and playing with The Granddaughters, started home yesterday.

The interstate drive up there was everything we hate about interstate travel - big wrecks, traffic jams, 18-wheelers jetting by - and so we decided to take the backroads on the way home.  The return trip was a lot more interesting, but it took 10 hours from driveway to driveway, partly because the navigator (me) slacked off on the job, and partly because we took a detour down Natchez Trace Parkway just to see it.  Our butts were seriously tired of the truck seat by the time we got home.