Category: Gardens

We aren’t nearly as hot as the west coast, but it got up to 91f today. That is hot for the Virginia Mountains. In spite of the heat, Grandson 1 and I tackled a couple of jobs, such as reducing the old garden boxes to ash, what 16 year old boy doesn’t like playing with fire.

I didn’t think his choice of going shirtless was too wise, but he didn’t get burned and the boxes are all gone. While he was doing that, I took all the hardware off of the rotting chicken tractor, but gave up before it was totally disassembled. We will save that for another hot day, we have several more in our near future. Most of the wood from the chicken tractor will be burned as well.

As we finished up, the hay crew arrived, three tractors, 2 with mowers and 1 with the tetter. The first mower started at about 3 p.m. and by 8 p.m., all of the hay was down.

They left the tetter here attached to one of the tractors and will return tomorrow with the rake and baler and it will all be baled to haul away. It looks thick this year and if the other nearby fields are an indicator, they will get a lot of hay this year. Now that I can get to the edges, I may start pulling Autumn Olive bushes up by the roots with our tractor once they are done.

The last of the peas were picked today, some enjoyed with dinner, the rest blanched and flozen for later. And the first tiny paste tomato was harvested and shared with Grandson 1.

This Echinacea was planted from seed last year. It is blooming this year and the butterflies love it.

We still need to finish getting the chicken tractor disassembled and the coop repaired and stained.

Only two of the pullets are laying, but it is fun getting the tiny blue and greenish eggs.

The various summer projects are slowly being completed. Son 1 with some help from Grandson 1 and from me got most of the staining done. This is the last time he will do it, we will hire it out in the future, it just isn’t fair to him to deal with it.

When he returned home on Tuesday morning, he left me a 16 year old worker, who so far will do just about anything I ask of him.

Son 1 dug out the septic tank top and found the cleanout so we could get it pumped out and to eliminate the hassle in the future of finding it and digging it out of the hard rocky soil, once it was pumped, Grandson 1 and I erected a baffle and filled the parts that wouldn’t have been needed to be dug if we had known. We sorted out rocks and filled in with the soil and gravel sized rock. Yesterday we purchased topsoil in bags, some edging, and a couple large flower pots and some perinnials to plant in them. We also purchased a small bag of grass seed and I seeded around the new bed. It was well watered in yesterday afternoon and straw sprinkled over it. The hens will all remain cooped or penned up until the grass emerges. The topsoil we purchased was all my car could handle and wasn’t enough, so today another load was picked up and we finished placing the edging, filling with soil, mulching over with wood chips, and placing the potted plants on the bed.

There is now a well defined and much smaller area that will have to be dug out of easy to dig soil in a few years when we have to do it again.

Last evening, the tall worker also helped me get hay down in both chicken runs and in the Chicken Palace. Still up on our agenda, next week, is to deconstruct the collapsing Chicken Tractor, salvaging what we can, burning the rest. And to make repairs on the coop and get it stained.

It is nice having a strong back to lift 40-45 pound sacks and work with me to get the jobs done.

The pullets have begun to lay eggs. I have been getting a small blue egg each day from the Easter Eggers. The New Hampshire reds look like they are about to add to it.

The hay guys are finishing up the fields down from us. We should be up next and the fields will again be clear enough to walk.

I have spent the last hour or so setting up two new phones for hubby and me. Our phones were at least 5 years old and failing.

We rented a cherry picker and Son 1 came to work on staining the parts of our home that didn’t get done two years ago. The plan had been to finish last summer, then COVID happened. Hubby and I managed the garage doors just before he and the cherry picker arrived within an hour of each other, but neither of us can go up on the scaffolding or the cherry picker and paint higher than our shoulders. It was brutally hot up on the roof areas where he was working and I know he is exhausted. The house looks so much better. There is still some to do, but it can be done with ladders or scaffolding.

My main jobs are keeping him fed and hydrated and being a gofer, opening windows, gathering items he needs. I know he knows how much we appreciate his work, but I want it said out publicly.

He loves this area and helped build this house, doing all the stone work with stone from our farm, doing all the interior carpentry, laying floors, building cabinets, and all of the interior doors, grading and yard work, and started the area that now has my garden, and it is a much loved home.

Last night and tonight, we drove down to get ice cream after dinner and both nights we saw black bears. This is on top of having the bear damage to my bird feeders a couple of weeks ago. There must be a lot of them this year in the area.

Coming in from gathering eggs this afternoon, I spotted my first Day lily of the season.

My little anniversary rose bush from year before last has dozens of flowers and buds.

It is a miniature bush that was thimble sized when he gave it to me. The scent is light and I am saving petals in a bowl.

Well, it turns out that this Olive Egger isn’t a pullet. HE discovered his voice over the weekend. It is like an teenage boy with his changing voice, but I won’t keep a rooster here. That will leave me with 14 egg layers soon to be. Ms. Houdini continued to escape, but two more escape holes have been blocked and she stayed in today after spending last night out in the wild AWOL.

With Son here, I cut lettuce for salad and greens for dinner from the garden. There are lots of pea pods that will fill in and provide us with goodness. The greens were sauteed with a green garlic bulb from the garden as well.