Tag: Flowers

Olio – August 23, 2014

A few days ago in the pouring rain, we pressure washed the deck and porch in preparation for resurfacing them with one of the new deck resurface products. As the outdoor cats often settle on the front porch and have their supplemental food on that porch, it was all moved. One of the garage doors was open and the dog crate that is used to move the cats to the vet for rabies shots, used to transport chicks when they are purchased locally, but otherwise stored in the garage was sitting on the floor. We prepared to leave to buy the deck resurface paint and went to close the garage door. This is what we found. . .

This guy is our sickly male who is about 5 years old, much older than we were led to believe that he would live as he was born with Feline Aids before we rescued him. The healthy female bolted for the barn as soon as the powerwasher was started. I would give him access to stay there, but the 2 week old Rainbow Ranger chicks are in the brooder in the garage. There is an old window screen over the top, but that wouldn’t stop a dedicated cat.

In spite of the rain, or maybe because of it, we have had some spectacular sunsets. We would love to get the decks painted, but the forecast calls for one more day of rain before we finally get a period of dry days, hopefully enough to get the job done.

Tonight as I surveyed the refrigerator for dinner, I remembered about a quart of beef stew made earlier in the week and not wanting another meal of just stew, I added some vegetables and a crust and made one of my favorite comfort foods, pot pie. Usually I make chicken or turkey pot pie, but the beef stew was just too tempting.

Broody Girl finally gave up her empty nest sit, but she still hasn’t begun to lay. We are getting 3 eggs most days from the 13 hens and pullets. Hopefully, we will start seeing more eggs soon. The pullet eggs are getting larger, but as the only laying hen’s eggs are speckled, I can still distinguish who is laying. I need at least 3 extra dozen a week to break even on their feed, since we are also feeding 15 Rainbow Ranger chicks. The chicks are rapidly outgrowing the water tank we use as a brooder. I am at a loss about what to do with them. They are only 2 weeks old and still need a heat source. The chicken tractor is hardware cloth on the lower half and I can’t get power out to it or I would consider putting plastic sheeting on the lower half and moving them there. If any of my readers have good brooder pen idea for 15 rapidly growing meat chicks, I would love some ideas.

Most Saturday mornings, though not for the past few weeks, we travel into town, enjoy breakfast at Joe’s Diner, a local landmark then wander the Farmers’ Market for goodies. Today we were able to get potatoes, onions, carrots, and green beans (ours are still not producing). Some beef and pork from our favorite meat farmers and flowers for the table were scored as well. It is such a pleasure to visit on Saturday mornings and chat with friends, pet pups and supply with goodies we aren’t producing. Today was a bit crazy in town as this week has been move in week at the University and the town is bursting with new students and parents who are bringing or returning them to school. The summer of being able to eat at the local restaurants without a wait is over until Winter Break, but the energy they bring to the town is worth that inconvenience.

We love life on our mountain farm.

August 23, 2014
Olio – June 18, 2014
Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

Pet peeves of the day;
- the trend of semi fast food restaurants to shout out across the dining area “Welcome to …” each time a patron enters any door of the establishment. Do they really think that is appealing and welcoming?
- also in a semi fast food restaurant or even a real restaurant for an employee to walk up to your table and grab the tray/plate before asking if you are finished with it and say, “May I take your …” One literally tried to take the tray with my husband’s fries on it today while he was still eating them.
- along the same vein, to be in an establishment and have not only your own server ask how your meal is, but anyone else that works there. We have been asked at one steak place we patronize as many as 4 or 5 times by that many different people about how our meal/visit was while we are still seated and eating. Let us enjoy our food in peace.
Today was resupply all the critters feed. We managed to run out of dog food, cat food, chicken layer and chick starter grower all at the same time. That was a car full.

On our way home, we stopped at a local greenhouse and bought 4 new Day-lily plants, different from the two that I have and also bought 3 more pepper plants as some of my heirloom starts didn’t grow once put in the garden. Of course that mean garden work when we got home and it is HOT, HOT, and humid out there today. Two of the Day-lily plants went in the perennial bed in the front of the house. The garage wall bed had gotten grossly overgrown with grape iris, the purple ones that smell like grape Kool-aid.

That is one of 4 huge clusters when they were blooming. They haven’t been thinned in a few years, they were overrunning the English Daisies, and the bed had gotten weedy as well. I dug them all out! I hate to throw them away, but there are too many to replant. I am going to load them in the tractor bucket and dump them where we don’t mow. I bet some of them will come up next year and bloom there. A few of them were moved to a bed by the deck. The rest of the bed now has the other two Day-lily plants, two lavender plants, some English Daisies, a yellow poppy, three clusters of Dutch Iris plants that I divided from the deck area and on the opposite side of the walkway out of the garage side door, the Bronze fennel. The bed is weeded, watered, and mulched with spoiled hay until I can get some more shredded mulch to apply to the bed.

It looks sparse now, but will fill in quickly and have more variety.

The haying is not going as quickly as we had hoped. Jeff is trying to do too much at the same time. They tettered the upper fields yesterday then came back and raked it into rows for baling, but the first bale was too green so they left it to mow the lower field and ran out of fuel. This afternoon the have turned the hay and

hopefully will get it baled this evening as we are due for rain for a few days.

The first batch of mustard is so good, there are 3 batches fermenting now to share. Two are Bavarian style and one is a repeat of the horseradish recipe.

I think I am going to have to buy some sausages to grill soon.

Raspberries are ripening. Tonight I harvested about a cup of them and resisted eating them as I picked. They went into the freezer. As soon as I have a quart, there will be a raspberry jam making session.

Life is good on our mountain farm.
June 18, 2014
The Good, The Bad and I’ll spare you the Ugly

THE BAD

Last night we went on a date night, that should be good, right? The dinner was fine. The movie we went to see had started 40 minutes earlier than the time we had noted, which must have been from the previous day and it had been playing for 20 minutes when we got there, so we picked a different movie that started at 8 p.m. We have only walked out of two movies in our 36 years of marriage, one because it was longer than we thought and we had to pick eldest son up at a concert when he was too young to drive himself there and the second one was last night. Think “Animal House” with more vulgarity and no humor. We made it only half way through the movie and got up and walked out.

It was late and I was a bad chicken keeper and I didn’t go over to close the pop door to the coop or the door to the chicken tractor and my gamble was an epic fail. An O’possum got in the coop, killed one 12 week old pullet and seriously injured another. I found a pile of feathers at the coop entrance, another at the run gate, and what was left of the pullets in the cull pen. I feel like a heel. I brought the injured pullet in, cleaned her wounds and put her in a large dog crate in the garage with food and water to watch her and see if she is going to heal or if we are going to have to euthanize her. I know predators happen, but this was preventable.

She is eating a little and drinking water, and she moves around a bit in the crate, but she is so pitiful.

THE GOOD

This morning, after dealing with the mayhem, we drove into town for breakfast at our favorite local diner, then on to The Farmers’ Market. Today was customer appreciation day, so some vendors had give away goodies for their regular customers. For the past couple of years, Jim has given me a Flower CSA from our favorite local organic farmers, Stonecrop Farm. We have had to miss a couple of bouquets each summer due to travel, so this year, we decided to just buy a weekly bouquet on the weeks we are home and flowers are available from them. We purchased a bouquet, a few veggies that I’m not growing and got a bonus baggie of micro greens as a gift.

Yellow poppies, pink peonies (mine won’t bloom) and two different dianthus colors with mint and wheat stalks. Quite a stunning bouquet to put on the dining table.

After our return, we took turns wearing ourselves out trying to start the big commercial Stihl weedeater for the first time this season, always a challenge. I finally gave up and went back to weeding and spreading the mulch we bought a few days ago, when with sweat and swearing, Jim finally succeeded. When we were both were hot and worn, we took a break and made a Lowe’s trip. I was short 4 bags of mulch.

A decade or so ago, my Dad made me a little wooden decorative wheelbarrow. It has lived at a couple of houses now and is usually filled with flowers in the summer and pumpkins and gourds in the fall with a mum. It had fallen into disrepair, so before we left for Lowes, I repaired it and decided that a couple of flower baskets needed to be purchased to fill it as well. At the Farmers’ Market, I added a few more herbs to my collection and they needed pretty pots for the deck as that is where the bulk of my herbs live.

The front of the house, the perennial bed in the breezeway alcove are weeded and mulched, the herb collection is potted up except for the fennel and one lavender that will go in the garden tomorrow when I have the energy to move again. Jim has weed wacked the culverts, the well head, around the house and around the trees and shrubs on the driveway hill. I pushed the gas powered mower and cut the front and back yards. When I thought I was done, I decided that the last flower bed, a small one that started out as a nursery bed by the side of the deck also got weeded. We are spent.

Dinner is “Mustgo,” ever had it? It is the leftovers in the fridge that must go. Tonight’s Mustgo is left over pot roast, pork tenderloin and a huge new salad with micro greens and green onions.

The house and gardens look great. Now we rest.

May 31, 2014
Retired Means

Tired again, and that is what I am. Bright and early this morning, Jim left to ride to Charlottesville avoiding the Interstates to meet our youngest son and his family who drove there from Virginia Beach. The ride took him more than 3 hours, but he got to have lunch and a visit with them prior to starting his ride back on a different route, still avoiding the Interstates. I drove his monster SUV into town and had breakfast with him then we went our separate ways for the day. My first stop of the day was to Lowes to stock up on a few plants and a lot of bags of mulch, though not nearly enough. Three years ago, once the final grading was completed at our house, we set about to landscape. One of our shrub purchases was one that we later found out, should not even be sold in this planting zone and it did not survive the first winter. The others were Pygmy Barberry and Dwarf Nandina and they did fine the first winter. To do this landscaping, I first had to move all of the grape iris that I had been given in a trade and the English Daisies that I bought from a local friend and had planted on the front of the house. They had multiplied and were divided into beds on the east side of the garage and in the bed created by the east side of the house and west side of the garage, bounded on the south by the breezeway. That bed has been planted with shade loving perennials toward the breezeway and daylilies, iris, and daisies toward the front where they get more light. When we did the landscaping, we put down weed mat and heavily mulched that area, but the ground cherries, plantain, dandelions, wild geranium and chickweed thrive in there.

This past winter after a cool wet summer last year, nearly did the Nandinas in. I was ready to dig them all up when I noticed that though they really look scraggly, they are putting out new growth. The dead shrubs were well spaced to add 3 new Pygmy Barberry shrubs. When I got home with the car full of goodies, the short handled digging tool was brought out and I sat down and inched my way across the full front of the house, weeding and digging out all of the misplaced wildflowers, planting the three new shrubs, and mulching the entire bed.

With potted flowers at each end of the two beds, a fresh hanging plant on the shepherds crook, the spider plants hanging from the porch, the front looks presentable again. Though some weeding was done in the breezeway bed, it was sprayed with a vinegar/Epsom Salt/Dawn detergent mixture to hopefully kill back the tender weeds then more mulch will be added to that bed as well.

The tomatoes and some of the peppers finally made it into the garden today. While I was at Lowe’s, I picked up a few heirloom peppers that already had some size on them to get things going. Some of the exotic heirlooms that are starts will be added as soon as they are more than an inch tall. A row of heirloom Tomatillos was also planted and the entire veggie garden was soaked down with the sprinkler since we aren’t getting rain for a few more days.

After a late lunch, the same treatment was given to the east side of the garage bed, and a shrub was divided and planted on the front corner of the garage. I hope it survives the move. Tomorrow, more mulch will be purchased and that bed will be given a new layer as well. It appears that the Iris need to be divided again. I don’t like to throw them away, but everyone up here has beds and beds of them in their yards.

My final task for the day was to put the American Flag on the banner pole between the garage doors. It seems only fitting since it is Memorial Day. After a dinner prep of a slow cooking pot roast with vegetables, a long hot shower and scrub, I’m sitting on the porch with a glass of iced tea, resting and waiting for the wayward traveler to get home and see my efforts from the past two days. I love it when my labors show and everything is neat and tidy.

May 26, 2014
Mow day

Last night after dinner out and before it got dark, I pushed the mower two swipes around the house and in the corner that I can’t reach with the tractor in preparation for mowing this morning. The first mowing of the season, I got as close as I could and just did a patch around the house large enough to get to the cars, the chicken coop and garden without walking through knee high grass and I didn’t premow the close strips, so that grass was thick and tall last night, stalling out the mower constantly.

This morning after a trip to the Farmers’ Market for meat and spring greens and turnips, I cranked up the tractor and mowed the area we consider yard in the middle of our 30 acres. That includes around the garden, the orchard, an area that is too small to hay above the orchard, around the well head and the front, side, and back areas that are regularly mowed. With last week’s rain, it didn’t look like it had already been mowed once. The areas around the chicken fence and close around the orchard trees has to be done with the lawn mower or weed whacker and I started on them with the mower and ran out of gas. Not wanting to go out again, I quit for the day, just before Jim arrived back home from his motorcycle ride.

As soon as I came in to get the watering can to water the newly planted porch and deck pots, I spotted a hummingbird who had already found the red geraniums that I planted yesterday. Have you ever tried to take a picture of a hummingbird? You will just have to take my word for it.

It is looking more like spring everyday. The trees all have a haze of small green leaves, the dogwoods are blooming and beautiful.

Only another week or two and we should be clear of late frost and more of the garden will be planted.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

May 3, 2014
May Day – ooops, almost

The past two days have been beautiful after the heavy rains of the prior days. Jim has gone off on his Harley for short rides that turned into long rides, but he is enjoying it and getting more comfortable on the big bike.

Me, I just enjoy the farm and the beautiful weather. It was still wet outside yesterday to do any playing in the dirt, but today, since the garden is still pretty soggy, I worked on the porch and deck pots. This winter was hard on the shrubs in front of the house and we lost everything except for the Barberry. It looks lonely amongst the dead Nandinas and the other shrub, I can never remember, that we should never have been sold for our climate. I have to decide whether to move the Barberry or replace the other shrubs. The front bed is under an overhang and has to be watered, it is also on the north side of the house so it receives no direct sunlight. The shade plants that I am most familiar with all are deer magnets, so I don’t want to replace the shrubs with them. Before the shrubs were put in, I had a perennial bed of English Daisies, grape Iris, and a few daylilies. After the regrading was finished a couple of years ago, I moved them to the east side of the garage and put in the shrub bed. I should have left well enough alone. I think I will just put several half barrels along the front rail and plant annual flowers in them for spring and summer color.

Today was just flower pots.

A quick trip to Lowes to fill up the back of the CRV with plants.

Petunias and trailing petunias in the front.

Geraniums with Verbena on the south deck, they match the cushions and umbrella and the hummingbirds love them. I still have a large pot that goes between the garage doors that needs something tall and spiky and a hanging pot for the shepherds crook. Last summer I never had to water, but also could never eat outside. I would rather have to water and be able to enjoy dinners on the deck this summer.

Now to go run the chicks out of the coop for some sunshine.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

May 2, 2014