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Posted in Gardening, Pets/Animals on June 7, 2009|

My dad is really talented when it comes to working with wood.  Because of his health, he doesn’t get to do things very often, but every once in a while he will make something.  The bluebird houses that he made many years ago for my mom and Nanny were very tired, so he made a few new ones.  While he was making theirs, he made one for C & myself.

Birdhouse Closeup

The ones he built several years ago had a lift-up roof to make it easier to clean out the old nesting material before the bluebirds nested again.  The only downside to this was wind.  If there was a strong wind, and that is pretty common around here, the roof would lift open and damage the hinge.  Eventually the hinge would give and the roof would come off completely.  Dad came up with a new design that is pretty ingenious!  Take a look…

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As you can see, the front “porch” lifts off and the front “door” swings up for easy clean-out, so there is no danger of wind damage!  Our house is new, so we don’t have family in it yet, but we have plenty of bluebirds here so hopefully it won’t be long before we have some tenants!  Thanks, Dad!

Also, in other exciting news, we have green strawberries!  Yay!  I know, I shouldn’t be this excited over GREEN strawberries, but that means that RED strawberries can’t be far off, and that is always good news.  We also dined on the first 2 little cucumbers from our garden yesterday at lunch.  They tasted great and we can’t wait for more.

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I hope this is a good week for everyone!

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Garden Update

Posted in Gardening on June 1, 2009|

It is now the first of June!  This year is really flying by.  I wanted everyone to see the progress of our little garden project.  The first photo shows the overall bed, and, my, how it has grown.  I have already harvested several heads of lettuce, and the cucumbers are not far behind.  They are loaded down with blooms and baby cucumbers.  I do have a bare spot where the carrots were supposed to be.  New planted carrot seeds + hard heavy rains = NO CARROTS!  The seeds washed away.  I have now resown them, so hopefully we will see evidence soon.  The cucumbers are climbing the tomato cages well, as you can see in the second photo.  I can’t wait for this certain cucumber salad recipe that I have.  I will have 2 of the ingredients freshly grown in my garden, the cukes and the dill.  I will pass along that recipe when I have the good stuff ready.

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Above are the potato plants.  We have added dirt, or “hilled”, them several times.  The foliage is beautiful, and so far we have had no problems with bugs, despite absolutely no spraying.  Most of the strawberry plants are blooming now even though they are still small.  I love to watch things grow and know that my food is safe and delicious to eat!

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Raised Bed Success

Posted in Gardening, Pets on May 23, 2009|

I am so happy with the progress in our raised garden bed.  The potatoes are growing like crazy.  I am putting extra dirt and compost around them every few days and there are still new plants sprouting.  The cucumber plants have blooms and baby cucumbers on them, and the sweet pepper plants are starting to bud.  The herbs are growing as well as the lettuce.  Our strawberries are doing great, too.  Even though they are small, they are still getting ready to bloom!  We do have a very sad note to add to this, Baby-Cat is no longer with us.  Tuesday evening, we found her under the bay window and she was so weak she wouldn’t respond at all.  We started feeding her with a dropper and took her into the utility room for safety.  She lived until Thursday morning when she died in C’s arms while he was trying to feed her.  We have been so sad in losing Baby-C.  She was only here for a short time, but we loved her very much.  She didn’t look sick at all, so we think that a male cat may have tried to hurt her to get to her mother.  Godspeed, Baby-C! We will miss you!

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Wordless Wednesday

Posted in Gardening on May 20, 2009|

Future French fries:

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Progress

Posted in Gardening, Home on May 13, 2009|

I know I already had a Wordless Wednesday post, but I was so excited with what we accomplished today that I just couldn’t wait.  C & I are working on a few landscaping projects this spring.  I plan on doing a before and after photo show when these are done, but I had to throw in a few “during” shots.  Since rain is expected for the next few days, we were trying to finish up the planting in front of the garage.  We leveled the dirt Monday and yesterday, and I had hoped to get the chance to plant today if we could beat the rain.  We did!!  Also, there was a package on my front porch when I got home from Miller’s Nurseries in New York.  Guess what, now I had 25 Tribute strawberry plants as well!  Can you believe it…we got it all done!  YAY!  Here is the proof.  The 3rd picture is the strawberry bed. 

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Wordless Wednesday

Posted in Gardening, Pets/Animals on May 13, 2009|

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Working Vacation

Posted in Gardening, Home on May 5, 2009|

While C & I are off from our regular jobs, we are trying to accomplish a few things here at the house.  Since today was one of the few, if not only, dry days this week, we did as much as we could.  The last thing we did was mow and trim.  But first…

I finally got to plant my raised bed!  Yay!!!!!  I am so excited.  Here are some views of the bed.  First, ready to plant:

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Here are the carrot seeds that I used.  They are both heirloom varieties.  I have never grown the French ones that are different colors.  Apparently, according to Good Eats’ Alton Brown, all carrots were not originally orange, but for some reason, the growers kept mixing them to get orange carrots. 

carrot seeds

I also planted 2 rows of Black Seeded Simpson lettuce.  I have already picked enough for 2 salads before it was in the ground!  This photo shows the lettuce and the bare spot next to it are the carrot rows.

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Next are the cucumbers and herbs.  I planted about 12 cucumber plants and am going to put tomato cages for them to run on vertically to save space.  Next to the cucumbers are 2 sweet pepper plants, one purple and one yellow.  I also have ferny dill, sweet basil, and flat leaf parsley.

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That only leaves the potatoes.  I have 2 rows, which should be enough for the 2 of us.  Next year we may have to add more!

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We dug a trench and planted the potatoes shallowly in that trench.  When they start to grow, we can put more dirt on them to “hill” them.

Lastly, here is a shot of the whole bed.  I just love to sit and stare at it.  It is so pretty!

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We also connected our second rain barrel. C devised a great way to direct the rainfall into the barrel until we get the downspout redirect thingy that we have ordered.

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I am so excited with the progress that we made today.  There just doesn’t seem to be enough time, daylight, and especially, energy to do everything that I would like to do.  Oh, well, there is always another day!

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Ready or not…

Posted in Gardening on April 28, 2009|

According to the weather forecasters, we expected today to be a washout.  Instead, we just had a few showers this morning and this afternoon was beautiful.  Since it wasn’t too wet and C’s dad had some time to spare, we moved dirt!  I now have a full raised bed and lots of dirt around the retaining walls and in front of the garage.  Let the planting begin!!!  I can’t wait to see green things growing in all that beautiful brown.  I hope to plant the garden bed later this week or this weekend.  I have ordered 25 strawberry plants to set out along the back retaining wall as an experiment.  We will landscape the front wall toward the road, but the back will hopefully be full of bright red berries!  By the way, with just the small amount of rain today, our 45 gallon rain barrel was completely full!!!

 

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It’s a DIRTY job, but…

Posted in Family, Gardening on April 26, 2009|

“Ask, and ye shall receive.”  C & I plan on finishing up some overdue landscaping projects in the front yard this spring.  We were low on topsoil and my father in law had planned on bringing some from another farm a few miles away.  Yesterday, as he & C were mowing the yards, our friendly neighborhood dump truck driver drove by with a load of DIRT!!!  He flagged him down and asked if he would sell us some.  It turns out that he was moving the dirt for one of our neighbor’s farm who had dug a pond about 5 years ago.  His plan was to move the dirt down to his place and then sell it.  We cut out the “middle-man” by having him drop 3 loads here at our house, so now we have lots of dirt!!!

We would have probably started working with it yesterday, but we had a wedding shower to attend.  C’s step-cousin is getting married in June, and he and his fiancé’s shower was last night.  We took a fruit platter and a gift of course.  Big fun was had by all, and the happy couple ended up with lots of good gifts. 

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Over a Barrel

Posted in Gardening on April 25, 2009|

Since we plan on having a small garden this year, the thought of collecting rainwater to take care of it was very appealing.  Our “city” water is very chlorinated and hard on vegetation.  We found a deal on 2 rain barrels online and took the plunge.  Thursday evening, we went to work.  I started by leveling out the area where the barrels would go.  C finished that and moved 2 cement blocks on which to set the first barrel.  We are planning on getting a few pretty wall-building blocks from Lowe’s to finish.  Our plan is to lay landscape fabric underneath and then the wall blocks and then the barrels, but this will do for now because we wanted to test it.

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