Cabin Crafted

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  • Olio

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    I finally gave up on trying to contain the mature hens. Ms. Houdini and Ms. Apprentice could get out no matter what I did to prevent it and the small area in front of the Palace was getting dug up to a hazardous state for my old bones. I took the plastic fence “gate” and put it on two step in posts across the front porch opening. The shorter pieces of plastic fence that had been protecting flower gardens but had to be removed to put the scaffolding up are being used to block the holes under that same porch to prevent the hens from going underneath. Those two hens will probably hide their eggs, but the production from the hens fell sharply when I stopped them from free ranging.

    Yesterday, the wild birds had no feeders up. Today we went to Lowes to replace the Niger seed feeder and the suet feeder and instead I found a large tube feeder that was divided similar to the one that was destroyed by the bear, so again the three favored feeds are hanging from the double shepherd’s crook pole and they will be brought in every night. The Finches, Titmice, and Woodpeckers have already found them and started visiting again. The Chickadees which I favor, quit coming to the feeder in spring and summer and will rejoin the other small birds in the late fall and winter.

    A couple of days ago, I finished my May spindle challenge spinning and plied the yarn on my wheel, gave it a wash and hung to dry. It is a pretty 4 ounce skein of turquoise Falklands dyed wool, about 485 yards. I haven’t measured it’s WPI since it’s bath, but it was about 18 prior.

    I haven’t decided whether to knit it or sell it as yarn. Falklands is a nice spin and very soft.

    Last week, I purchased a destashed Jenkins spindle that was in Sweden and figured it would take at least 3 weeks to arrive here. According to tracking, it has already been processed in Chicago, so I may see it by the middle or end of this week. It is a size that I don’t currently have and a weight that is within my preference.

    This is a photo that the seller sent. It is Birdseye Maple, a very pretty spindle. It is only 9 grams, so it will be my lightest, though not my smallest spindle.

    One of hubby and my walks is a section of an old paved over railgrade through part of Blacksburg and into Christiansburg. Since I moved here, it has been expanded from the original 7 miles to more than double that. There are two sections that we often walk, in both cases going out and returning on the same trail. The one at the origin point takes you to right across from the University stadium and last night we left the trail, took the sidewalk up a known road and picked the trail back up at the bridge that crosses that road. In doing it, we saw another trail that appeared to go along the edge of Stadium Woods, so once back to the car, we drove back toward the facilities buildings near the stadium to see if we could find it’s origin. In doing so, we discovered three streets with a cross street paralleling the one we had been on that we didn’t even know were back there and the trail and decided that the trail that we had seen from the stadium must be the origin. Today, we again walked out the section of the railgrade to the stadium and took the paved trail we had seen the night before. It wasn’t the same one. The one today took us on the other side of Stadium Woods parallel to the one we had found last night in our exploration, but it eventually brought us out near the same termination point and we walked back through the neighborhood to our car. I had hubby drive back to were we had seen it last night near the facilities building and let me out while he drove around back to the stadium parking and I walked it toward the stadium to see where it originated. I beat him to the parking lot as it seems that where he let me out was less than 1/10th of a mile from the origin and I walked out to the lot to wait for him. It looks like it will be a nice walk to do on another day. It will give us some variety, making an out and back walk into a shady loop.

  • Unwelcome visitor

    And unhappy birds. I had become complacent about bringing in the bird feeders at night. This morning as I sat down to my yogurt and looked out to watch the flock of various Finches that gather there, the scene was off. From the back deck, it was obvious that we had a strong visitor in the night. The half barrel of rocks and soil was tipped over and it is so heavy I can barely move it, the feeder that had small mesh on one side and larger mesh on the other for Niger seed and black oil sunflower seed was crushed and destroyed. The suet feeder tube was torn to pieces and crushed out in the yard.

    It had to have been a bear and it came in under the scaffolding, took down the bird mesh around the walled garden that keeps the chickens out, damaged a few plants in the processes.

    You can see how close to the house and deck it came. It is disappointing that the feeders were destroyed. Upsetting that a bear has found them and will come back looking again. The feeders were perfect for the double shepherd’s crook pole as it allowed the three favorite feeds to be put out. The birds will have to fend for themselves for a while. The feeders replaced and brought in every single night from now on. We enjoy watching them from the kitchen window and from the dining table.

    I love seeing the bears here on the mountain, but I don’t want to contribute to them coming to homes to seek out food. Our garbage is secured inside the garage and the compost pile is inside the garden with electric wire around the top, so neither of them are attractants. I don’t leave chicken feed out in the open, it is inside the two coops as is their water. We don’t raise bees so there are no hives to attract them, but obviously, a hungry beast took advantange of my complacency. And the dogs that bark at even us coming down the driveway, didn’t make a sound.

  • Let putting by begin

    There is a feeling of success when harvest begins to provide for the table, but more so when some of it can be put away for future use. Lettuce and asparagus have been coming to the table fresh for a couple of weeks now, but they must be eaten fresh or in the case of the asparagus, lightly refrigerator pickled. I don’t care for frozen or canned asparagus, so they are enjoyed in season, then replaced with other green vegetables.

    In the fall, the garlic is planted. Last fall’s planting was a block of an unknown variety of soft neck and an unknown variety of hard neck, plus some Romanian Red and German Hardy hardnecks. The unknowns are because I didn’t save the tags from the prior year, but they were good flavorful garlics, so I planted from last year’s harvest. Yesterday afternoon when I was moving the blackberry barrels to the garden, I noticed that the hardnecks were producing the scapes. Scapes are the flower bud of hardneck garlic and though pretty if left to open, they take so much energy from the plant that the bulbs don’t produce well. I would rather have good bulbs of garlic than the flowers, plus the scapes are good eating. Last weekend, a friend who’s garden is always ahead of mine, gave me a handful and we enjoyed them chopped on the pizza I made on the weekend and the next night in stir fry. When I first started growing garlic, I read to remove the scapes when they curl over, but didn’t know you could eat them, so they were sent to the compost. Now I await them almost as anxiously as the first asparagus tips. This morning in the cool, drizzly early day, they were clipped off and brought into the house.

    Thirty six garlic scapes found this morning, fresh and plump. They were snipped into 1 to 2″ pieces and put in a container for the freezer. They can be used anytime I would use garlic, roasted, in a recipe, or to make pesto. They are the first food put by from the garden.

    While doing some weeding last evening, I noticed that the older blueberries are full of fruit. I should probably get some bird net and tent it over them before the berries ripen. It looks like a good harvest from the original bushes. The two new ones, planted this year have put out good foliage, but they won’t fruit until next year or the year after. It will be great to have a succession of berries coming from the garden where I don’t have to fight the ticks and thorns and where the deer can’t help themselves.

    With the onset of late spring showers in the forecast, the hay may still be standing when the wineberries (thimbleberries depending on where you grew up) are ready, they are the first to ripen of the wild berries. Berries will be harvested as they appear and frozen, a single batch of mixed berry jam will probably be made and the rest saved for smoothies and to top oatmeal next winter when berries in the grocer come thousands of miles and cost your soul to purchase. Strawberries are coming in at the Farmer’s Market, but I rarely get there early enough to score any and no one I pre-order from has them.

    The grapes have tiny clusters of potential fruit. I will have to figure out how to protect them. Last year, though I got some grapes for jelly, the chickens and the deer discovered them and I had to compete with them for the harvest. I am toying with trying to make some wine vinegar from the grapes this year. Other than the Asian pear marmalade and Fig preserves, I don’t use much jelly or jam so I still have jars of grape and raspberry from last year. Son 1 doesn’t use much, daughter likes fig that I offer, and blackberry but makes her own, and her son will only eat commercial strawberry jam. Son 2 and his wife buy them at their farm market and I think may make some of their own. Some fruit vinegar’s would be a nice addition to the larder.

    Soon there will be peas, then green beans, potatoes, onions, garlic bulbs, kale, later tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, cucumbers, ground cherries, and cabbages. Beds will be replanted as harvests are made with more beans and peas, and the potato bed with it’s deep sides will be a fall garden that can be covered and protected from frost to maybe extend this year’s garden into early winter. Hopefully, the hydroponic systems will provide herbs and salad through the winter. I’m working towards a year round system of fresh food in our home.

  • Some success

    We wandered a bit farther afield for our walk today which took us by the nearest Rural King store. A stop there was made to check for the resin half barrels as they had lots last year and they had several tall stacks and a good supply of potted thornless blackberries that are good to -10 and -20 f which is way colder than our region every gets. Since the blackberries were potted, not bare root, and already leafed out, I felt safe buying them for transplant into the half barrels, so 3 of each came home with us along with 6 bags of container soil.

    I had the idea that I would pot them up in the shade of the garage, move them one at a time in the wheelbarrow to the garden and lift them into place. I have moved many of the half barrels around before, but the soil was heavier than I expected and though I could get them into the wheelbarrow, it only fits on some of the garden paths and I couldn’t get it close enough to place the barrels above the in ground asparagus bed as originally planned. The edge of the garden where the compost pile is building had a large mulched area below it and my decision was that the blackberries would be just fine there.

    The tags on both varieties said they were strong upright canes that would get 4 to 5 feet tall, but they weren’t too erect in the pots, so I staked them at least for now. They are currently getting watered in along with a good watering on the rest of the garden.

    You can see that the pile of old garden boxes still haven’t been dismantled and burned, but while Son 1 was here last weekend, he found and ordered two rechargable batteries for my cordless drill, so I can now get that task accomplished as well as building the compost bins. The garden is just a bit too far away from the house to use the corded drills without connecting two together which I don’t feel is a safe practice. Those batteries arrived by UPS today and fit the drill and charger.

    What a difference a couple days makes in the growth of the bush beans and the rows are filling in nicely. Soon they will shade the soil and weeding will be an easier job. In a month or so, we will have fresh green beans to enjoy.

    This morning when I went over to release the pullets, I carried a bucket of water to fill their in the coop container. It was still about half full and as I have to step up into the coop to move it, I decided to just fill the small black rubber tub in their run. I haven’t yet been putting water out there this spring. When I picked up the tub to dump the hay and dirt out of it, I disturbed a field mouse who was building a nest with hay and chicken feathers under the edge of the tub. She hightailed it across my sandalled foot giving me a bit of a start. I didn’t look to see if she had “micelets” in the nest, I don’t want to know, but I didn’t see the velociraptors fighting over anything, so I think it may have just been nest building.

    Each day, hubby chuckles at my attempts to corral Ms. Houdini. Lately she has been the only escapee and I still haven’t found her hidey hole. The mature hens are only producing 2 to 4 eggs a day, so the loss of her one is important. He says it is a battle of wits between me and a chicken and she is winning, though so far today, she hasn’t escaped.

  • Not the “Epic Gardener”

    But the garden is growing, I see future deliciousness in the works.

    After the hoses were tied up with the power washing efforts of the weekend, they were separated and reconnected to the yard hydrant and back outdoor faucet yesterday and the walled garden, then the vegetable garden each got deep watering, followed by very light rain showers. This morning as I was going over to let the pullets into their run for the day, I realized that all of the seed planted a week or so ago were sprouting. And that some weeding was needed. The hoop hoe was retrieved from the garage and as it was still very early and overcast, I had at the beds.

    Popcorn and hubbard squash a couple inches tall.
    Bush beans that may need some filling in if more don’t sprout in a day or so.

    As soon as there is more size there, straw mulch will be applied and a new layer to the tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes.

    Healthy peas with blossoms, so soon there will be fresh peas to enjoy.

    And since last year’s pickles are disappearing with many meals and there are asparagus, I discovered that if I pack fresh tender asparagus in a jar with garlic cloves and pour saved Garlic Dill pickle juice over them, that in a few days, there are crisp, refreshing asparagus pickles. So any that I don’t eat cooked or raw, or don’t take to daughter and granddaughter, go in a jar with pickle juice to enjoy later.

    While son was here, I dug 7 or 8 crowns from the old bed and packed them in wood chips in a lined tomato box to send home with him to get started in his garden in a raised bed. Digging the rest of that bed is going to be a challenge. They have roots the diameter of a wood pencil that go everywhere and deep. I may end up with two asparagus beds, one in ground and one raised. I will have to try to get the rest of the weeds out of the inground one and then heavily mulch it before I let the ferns grow out.

    Also while I was in the garden between helping him last weekend, I planted a row of mixed sunflowers along the north edge of the garden after getting the grass out from under the fence. I need to get a weed barrier under that fence, it is very difficult to clear under it as it is set hard on the ground due to our hilly terrain. Maybe I should dig out the grass for a 18″ and plant perennials and heavily mulch them with wood chips and a low fence to discourage the hens. It would be easier to line trimmer along the edge if the trimmer line didn’t get caught or cut off by the metal fence.

  • Whew, I needed today

    We were very fortunate to have Son 1 and Grandson 1 come to visit us this past weekend, but mostly to work at outside house maintenance that hubby and I just can’t do anymore. They powerwashed about half the house, caulked, attacked carpenter bee damage, and started re staining the logs. They worked far harder than I possibly could while I gardened some, stayed nearby to be a helper with scaffolding or ladder moving, gofer of items needed while they were up high, and to keep them fed and hydrated. It was hot! I had to wear long sleeves, long pants, and a big floppy hat whenever I was outside with them because I had 11 more pre cancerous lesions cryosurgeried off last week and they weren’t healed enough to slather on sunscreen over them. By the end of the first day, in spite of the heat, Son 1 was shivering as he was up close and personal with the power washing spray on the upper dormers and the water was coming from our well, so it was cold.

    On Sunday, Daughter and her two kiddos came over to have homemade pizza with us and have a brief visit with her older brother while he took a break to eat.

    After a final dinner last evening, once the weekend’s work was done, they headed back home for Grandson’s school week. There will be other weekends to finish what can be done on the ground and at least one with a cherry picker so the upper areas can be stained.

    We were able to enjoy a large salad with lettuce from our garden last night, fresh garlic scapes from a friend on the pizza and tonight in stir fry as mine aren’t as far along as her’s were. The various gardens are producing flowers as well. There are lots of volunteer sunflowers coming up in beds, thanks to the birds. The bearded and Dutch Iris are glorious this year. One of my peonies actually bloomed this year. They are more than a decade old, but I don’t think they like their location. I love the flowers that look like a cross between a rose and a carnation.

    Year before last for our February anniversary, hubby gave me a tiny rose bush in a thimble sized pot tucked into a little lady bug planter. When it finished blooming, I moved it to a larger pot and when the walled garden was completed last summer, the rose was planted in it. The deer found it to my dismay, so I put an upside down tomato cage over it to deter them and the rose has thrived. If purchased now, it would take at least a one gallon pot, though it is a miniature type rose and it is full of blooms and buds for more. When I was in younger, I used to keep a bowl with a bloom in it when I could, a camillia, a rose, a magnolia, whatever was available. This morning, I plucked 5 of the tiny roses and floated them in a small pottery bowl to help brighten the house.

    Last week’s appointments and the weekend’s work slowed my spinning considerably, but I got a new Carob wood spindle in the mail and started on the last quarter of the month’s fiber for the May “I love this color” challenge. I selected Shades of Turquoise in Falkland wool to spin, a total of 4 ounces. I hope I am able to finish it in the next 7 days, but there is no requirement that I must. I don’t know what I will knit from it, but have a couple of shawl patterns in mind.

    Though the temperature today was similar to the weekend, it has been overcast and since I wasn’t in and out all day, I was back to my above the knee skirt and short sleeves. I did put on sunscreen to take our walk and wore my big deep floppy brimmed hat that hubby says reminds him of “Dumb Donald’s” hat in Fat Albert comics. He says I should put eye holes in it. It isn’t really that bad, but it does protect my face and shoulders.

  • Farm Progress

    A couple of days ago, our neighbor to the east had a part of his herd escape into our tall hayfields. I heard mooing and bellowing and looked out to find a black bull in our west side yard. Going out on the porch, then the back deck, it became apparent that he wasn’t alone. He had brought his harem of 7 or 8 cows and about that many calves that you could barely see in the hay, just see the hay moving as they followed the others. Neighbor was on his tractor in the field to the east, planting corn. I messaged him of his escapees and they eventually wandered back toward home and he could see them. I guess his corn planting was interrupted by some fence maintenance. Soon the hay will come down and the fields will be shorn and available for wandering and looking for berries.

    The new asparagus raised bed arrived early. I had hauled the bags of raised bed soil across the garden and stacked them near where the bed was to be assembled and to await it arrival. Not expecting it until today or tomorrow, I was surpised to find it waiting on the front porch. After dinner last night, the box it came in and two other boxes were spread over a freshly weeded area where I had dug out the comfrey last weekend. A few more sprouts of comfrey had already come up. The raised bed was assembled, a layer of soil placed over the cardboard, the dozen crowns spaced in the bed and covered with more soil and a layer of straw. Part of a bag of the wood chip mulch was then spread around the outside over the cardboard and between the beds.

    As the crowns emerge, more soil will be added on top until the foot deep bed is full to the top. As soon as the old bed stops producing decent spears, it will be dug up, more cardboard put down, the half barrels for more berries placed where it was, but the berries will have to wait until next spring, I think. I can no longer find them for sale except online.

    I’m waiting for the garlic to finish off so it can be pulled and the box build without the upper end can be finished. The lower end of that box was planted with Tomatillos, ground cherries, cucumbers, and cilantro. The first three will have to be trellised as they grow. I still haven’t planted any sunflowers, just the volunteers that have come up in various flower beds thanks to the birds. I think the edge above the existing asparagus and garlic will have a row of them as soon as I get the grass from under the fence.

    The apprentice was the only hen to escape yesterday and it took her quite a while, I think she went under the fence this time, so lengths of firewood were placed along the lower edge where the fence had a bit of space under it to help hold it down. We will see if she finds another way out. She seems determined to not lay her eggs in the coop, but though I hear her egg song and come running, I can not find her stash.

    As the pullets continue to grow and look more like small hens, their markings are true. The older oliver eggers are black with gold feathers intersperced at their necks, with green legs and feet. The young oliver eggers are less attractive to me.

    This one is the least attractive one, and I wouldn’t know she was an Olive egger except for her green legs and feet.

    The pullet with her back to the camera at the top of the shot is the other one. She looks more like a Welsummer except she has green legs and feet. The Marans look more like the older Olive eggers, but they have black legs and feet, they are really pretty birds. The Buff Orpingtons vary in shade from pale to butterscotch, the two NH Reds don’t look like the adult ones I have (one of them is above the Buff on the left edge of the photo. The variety of Easter eggers are all attractive but each one is marked differently. I have never had a flock that were so distinctive that I could tell them apart, except for the Marans unless they are together and two are smaller. We should start seeing pullet eggs in about a month. Some of them are already developing real combs that are reddening.

    Today, more prep for the weekend with Son 1 and Grandson 1 here to get some exterior house maintenance done. First up is to go get the basement dusted and vacuumed and the beds made with fresh sheets.

    Off to work.

  • Failure

    I am now convinced that Ms. Houdini and Ms. Apprentice are magic. Somehow they keep finding ways out and I keep sealing up new holes, plus they are not laying their eggs in the coop and I can’t find where they are laying them, but I’m sure the skunks and raccoons will find them. I should be getting 5 to 7 eggs a day and am lucky if I get 4.

    After our walk today, we tackled erecting scaffolding on two sides of the garage in preparation for Son 1 and Grandson 1 to come this weekend and put a coat of stain on it. The next couple of days will be spent gathering the expendables needed to get the job done. We own 9 or 10 sections of it and most of it was stored in the garage, so it didn’t have to be carried too far. I toted it out and together we put it together minus the walkboards which are too heavy for me to lift to above shoulder height, but what was done will save them a lot of time this weekend. We will get the garage doors stained again and probably the side window, again to save them time, then mostly I will be the gofor to keep them hydrated and fed. The upper front dormers need stain too, but that will have to be another weekend and the rental of a cherry picker to get Son 1 up that high safely.

    It rained most all day yesterday and as it began to clear off last night, the fog settled in the valley behind us before the whole farm was engulfed.

    I love the play of the fog in the mountains.

  • Sleepless Nights, the mother of solutions

    Last night was a sleepless night, or a sleep is optional night. I was frustrated when I went to bed because I had opened the hen pen to let them all out a couple hours before dusk figuring all eggs for the day had been laid and since Ms. Houdini and her apprentice were already out and I didn’t want to play hide and seek or fetch to put them away. After it was dark, I turned on the front porch lights and noticed that two of my plants in pots on the front stoop had been dug into, one half dug out and in the grass. And the increase in outdoor work has caused my shoulders to ache at night and I hadn’t taken anything before settling in for the night. While lying there restless, I had an idea on how to enclose the hens’ pen without requiring me to crawl in duck walking to lock them in. The coop is a large A frame with each vertical of the A nine feet long. I figured if I stapled fencing to the frame outside the coop front, strung a ridge line out to a tall pole, I could create an A shaped pen. Because it isn’t framed, it sags some, so a 4′ wide section of the plastic fencing almost totally encloses the outer end.

    The six step in posts along the sides hold the fencing to the ground and provide a post to which a length of cord can be tied putting a little tension of the side A’s of fence. The post nearest the camera puts tention on the ridge line. I thought I had it set and came in to prepare dinner. Hubby let the pups out so he could prepare their dinner without them begging and he said one of the hens was in the front yard and the dogs totally ignored her. Drat, that meant there was still an escape hole, so after dinner, a few more places were secured together with cord and another step in post placed to hold the fence to the ground. In all the years I have raised chickens, this is the first group that has insisted on getting on the porch, digging in potted flowers, and tearing up the flower beds. I am still 5 or 6 weeks before the pullets are laying and the mature 8 sent to freezer camp. I really need to dismantle the rotting chicken tractor and figure out how to give the pullets some free range time without them learning the bad habits of the older hens.

    Yesterday while digging the comfrey for my friend, I decided that the asparagus solution is a raised bed set on cardboard and started with new crowns. The foot deep raised bed frame was ordered and will be here this weekend. Today I was able to find new crowns and purchased a dozen and the bagged soil to fill the raised bed.

    That does mean no harvest next year. I will let the current bed play out until June, then dig it up and use that space for the half barrels with thornless blackberries in it. The new raised bed will be easier to keep weed free and will allow me to finish laying cardboard and mulch in the remaining part of the garden. The Asparagus Crown packages also indicate I have not been treating my current bed right, which could account for it’s dimished output. And the new half barrels of blackberries will give me more fruit with blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, ground cherries, grapes, apples, Asian pears, a peach tree that has yet to provide usable fruit and a plum that has still not produced any fruit. We have plenty of wineberries and blackberries growing wild, but most are difficult to get to until the hay is down and most of the blackberries the past few years have been the small, harder, very tart ones that are slightly bitter and don’t make good jam or cobbler. There is enough space for a 4th half barrel for raspberries too, that would give me 4 of each. And there is still hope for the fig that was transplanted into a half barrel and is beginning to leaf out. I do love my gardens, both flower and fruit and vegetable and trying to put away enough goodies for us to enjoy when fresh food is harder to come by.

    I may look to making a wood frame and stapling heavy plastic or looking for old storm windows someone is discarding to see if I can make a cold frame from the deep bed the potatoes are planted in. They will harvest before fall crops have to be sown so we might be able to have carrots and some greens into early winter. With a good crop of potatoes, onions, and garlic, frozen beans and peas, canned tomatoes, peppers, and pickles, some carrots and greens would be very nice until the hard freezes occur.

  • Mountain Top Walks

    One of my favorite places to walk or hike is on the Mountain Lake Conservancy property. There is a 1 mile trail/dirt road that leads from the lodge to the upper recreation area and from there, another trail that traverses the ridge line and can loop back to the first trail or continue on behind the lodge to a fire road just below the lodge. We usually walk up the first trail to a crossover trail that is 1/4 mile straight up to the ridge trail then walk it back to the recreation area and then down the 1 mile trail. We get in about 2 miles or slightly more and it is rare to see anyone and never on the upper trail. Saturday’s walk after Farmer’s Market and some planting was taken up there. Spring isn’t as far along there, about 2,000 feet higher elevation on the mountain. There weren’t many wildflowers yet, but we did see this little white daisy like flower that my app won’t identify. The wood ferns are still fiddleheads, the trees with squirrel ear sized leaves, but many with lichens growing on their bark.

    I had donned a long sleeve shirt to work in the yard and was glad for the sleeve length up there.

    Once home, the rest of the garden was seeded and transplanted then watered in thoroughly. Bush beans, cucumbers, popcorn, Hubbard squash, Tomatillo, Ground cherry, and Cilantro transplants all in. The rest of the old garden boxes were removed for destruction and burning which clears an area for me to improve or restart the asparagus bed and I think to add 3 more half barrels with thornless blackberries. I have a Comfrey that is not in a good place, but it is going to be dug out and given to a friend tomorrow. And I need to use a flat hoe or spade to dig out some grass right under the edge of the fence. In working out there today, I realized that though I thought the asparagus was a poor crop this year, that actually they have expanded out from where they were planted and there was a large cluster under the spoiled hay. Since this garden is my first experience with asparagus I didn’t realize their habits over the half dozen years plus they have been there. I guess more research needs to be done on that front. And perhaps a new start in a raised bed to help control the weeds better. They really don’t like any weed growth.

    After prepping, eating, and cleaning up dinner, I tackled the succulent pots, giving one it’s own pot, making a nursery pot, and one that is just pretty to look at. The triple ponytail palm that was in our bathroom was so rootbound, I was surprised it hadn’t broken the pot, so they were divided, unfortunately ruining one of them, but replanting one for us, putting one aside with some trailing succulents to do daugter’s Mother’s Day gift she received from DIL last weekend. There are two more houseplant that need attention and moving out on the porch. I realized the Jade plant is pot bound and the tall Dracena needs some TLC and feeding. I guess larger pots will have to be obtained and both of them transplanted and fed.

    Another potbound plant was a small pothos, so it was transplanted into my Mother’s Day gift from DIL. I love the trailing stems over the sides of the white egg shaped pot.

    Yesterday was a busy, pleasant mix of social and market time at the Farmer’s Market, yard and garden time, a beautiful walk.

    Today I will try to connect with daughter to plant her pot and take her some Cilantro starts that I have going for her. My two hydroponic gardens are currently idle. They will likely stay that way for a bit until time to plant fall and winter house herbs and some salad greens for hot summer, fall, and winter salads.