a collection of things

You know it's bad when your 5-year old sighs and says: mom you've gotta get that song out of your head!

Aoife has pink-eye due to taking a handful of sand in the face. Less than a week before we begin April, the month of road-schooling.

In the grocery last week, Aoife spilled a container of berries, and had smoothie all over her face. I joked about her being a mess and needing a bath. A grocer overhead me and commented: "at least they are girls. With boys the mess never ends."

"I don't know." I replied. "Last week when the snow was melting and everything outside was nasty, these two got 3 baths in one day and generated 2 loads of laundry. So, I don't know of its a boy thing or just a kid thing." He went back to his lettuce with a pensive look.

I spent all last growing season with the song "like a snake in the grass" whispering in my ear each time I stepped through the garden fence. Today, I met the snake. A passive, pillbug-eating brown garden snake. And I am thankful for the help controlling the pests.

We have just enough training pants that if I skip doing laundry mid-week, Aoife has to wear regular panties or a diaper. After two weeks in trainers she is anti-diapers. However she detests wedgies. Her big girl panties are a tiny bit big and do not stay in place. She runs around screening "poopy poppy!" Whenever they have traveled to uncomfortable locations.

Three years ago i watched as a bee pollinated my store-bought tomato plant. it then clumsily flew to the fence and slowly died. i vowed to start growing all my garden plants from seeds. Two years ago, I found a jar of canned cherries in the back of my cupboard. We opened it and enjoyed a few by the pool. The jar got left on the banister overnight and by morning was overrun with bees. The bees drank all the syrup and reduced the quart of cherries to a mere handful. Last summer i saw lots of bees hovering about my marigolds and radish flowers all season long. This spring, my neighbor discovered bees swarming out of the trunk of her pecan tree. I am hopeful that both colonies will survive another year. 

Please don't spray your flowers. The bees, butterflies and some types of wasps (who trap and eat spiders, including the brown recluse) need them to be non-toxic.

Garden Journal #10

The battle against the squash beetle continues. We seem to have a handle on it. Plants are surviving, flowering and producing so we have hope. I still have to go out at least every couple of days to check under leaves for eggs and pick off bugs. I usually bring a bucket of soapy water and just drown the poor guys, but other times I toss them over the short fence straight onto the dinner plate of a waiting chicken. Either way, we've harvested a variety of squashes and are waiting for the cucumber to mature.

The beans are flowering and growing like mad, but still no actual bean pods. We have entered the hot season and most of our plants are fading. We'll harvest what we can in the next few weeks and then give the garden a break during the month of August before planting the fall/winter garden. 

The mammoth sunflower opened today -Aoife is enamored! She wants to touch it everyday.

See all those lovely tomatoes? They are being guarded. By this guy:

Tell me how to get past this grasshopper-eating zipper spider without pissing her off? These are the most beautiful tomatoes I've grown in years, and I kinda want to eat them...

The chickens are surviving our 100+ weather with the aid of a fan in the hen house and the daily creation of a mudpit under a shady tree. Nothing like standing in cold mud to cool down! And as soon as the World Cup final is over, i'm taking the girls to the "big" pool to cool them down as well! Here's to the next 8 weeks of hot weather and timing water adventures and meal prepping to minimize sun exposure and overheating! Happy Summer!

In my garden (never posted because Aoife showed up)

This was written in October 2013.

In been a bit since we did any work in this tiny space. You may remember from my birth story that e planted a few things the morning before we met Aoife. This bed was sewn in April. The herbs are doing fabulous, the tomatoes seem confused (as they have all year), and the lavender we put in last year bloomed all summer!

We have spent much of our garden time fighting off the pill bugs who like to devour any leaf thing I plant. Especially in this box!  But by the look of the kale, I think we have finally encouraged lower numbers of pests! We did add a bit more greens here last week and, if you look closely, you may see that nearly all of the seeds have sprouted! Yay kale!

Our lone bean plant, usually a favorite for the bugs so I tested this one in a pot, just to see if I makes it past its first set of adult leaves. 

And of course, the pumpkin plants. Emagene was in charge of picking the plants for this fall garden. She choose pumpkin, corn (we have 2 small stocks of  pink Indian), and kale. I added a few potatoes and green onions (which I believe are working at pest deterrents) and here's what we have. The pumpkin is suffering a bit from blossom drop and needs a healthy dose of compost and some pollination. I went out yesterday to stir the flowers with a paint brush and was happy to see a honey bee had beat me to it! Here's hoping for at least one squash off these gorgeous vines!

Garden Journal #9 (and some chickens)

Meet my nemesis: the Squash Beetle. 

Today we waged war against this guy and at least 100 of his friends. Probably more. I armed myself with the following and spent a good hour and a half picking off bugs. 

The arsenal: a bucket of soapy water, a butter knife, neem solution and a whole lot of Diatomaceous Earth (DE).

The Plan: pick off whatever bugs we can, dunk them in soapy water. Shake leaves to knock large quantities of insects into the bucket. Use wet knife to scrape eggs off leaves. Spray the underside of leaves and around the ground with Neem solution, causing insects to flee to higher ground where they can be picked off and dunked in the bucket. Heavily sprinkle the ground with DE to discourage anyone who fell off the plant from climbing back on.

It does seem rather unlike me to use natural and safe products that encourage genetic defects in the target insects. Its a bit like chemical warfare but this way I don't end up hurting the good bugs, like the bees and butterflies and spiders. No innocent bystanders, like flowers, were treated in this process.

And when we finished it looked a bit like it had snowed in our garden.

I moved a few vines off the ground and tried to encourage some trellising with a piece of wire shelving, since it worked well before.

pumpkin, tomato, cucumber and pole beans

 The plants in our tiny space are so very intertwined that getting rid of this pest is crucial to the survival of everything. This particular insect feeds off the juices of the leaves, stem, fruit anything it can stick its needle-like tongue into, eventually killing the entire plant. I only lost 2 pumpkin plants in this battle. I did have to uproot a sunflower that was getting chocked out by the beans and acorn squash, and pull out almost all my mulch. Hopefully that's goodbye squash beetle and not a hello to the grasshopper who loves to lay eggs in bare dirt...

So grateful we have chickens! 

Which brings me to our next project:

A chicken house remodel. The babies' feathers have grown in (the stubs of wattles and combs are showing now! I expect eggs in about 4-6 weeks.) and so they no longer need momma hen to snuggle them at night. This means we have 5 chickens demanding space in a house built to spaciously sleep three. For a while now, Ferdy has been putting herself to bed in the nesting box in the shed. Ella was distressed two nights ago and couldn't go to bed without being pecked. All signs of over-crowdedness. Time to add a wing to the house. 

Naturally the girls wanted to help,

with some safety gear.

Welcome to the luxury nesting area and sleeping quarters:

Again, using only repurposed materials, we added a spacious room to the coop. The girls were apprehensive to climb in at bedtime, but they all had plenty of space once I got them tucked in.

 All that's left is to coat the inside with food grade oil and paint the outside before the next heavy rainfall. But for now, we just needed to get the house in place before nightfall. And we did!

It's a bit dark to photograph after lights out, but you get the idea. The babies are not quite ready to roost while sleeping, but now they don't have to fight for space once the time comes. Nor do they have to worry that they are sleeping under someone. I will have to install the fan next, but that's easy and then everyone will sleep extra comfy and I'll start giving eggs away again.

And now on to more important things, like giant chess.

Garden Journal #8

The Beans look amazing! I've even seen flowers, on the ground. The 5 or so plants that make up this tower of greenery might start to fruit but then drop. A condition known as blossom drop. Usually a sign of poor soil quality. So I added the usual coffee and egg shell grounds, a nice dose of dry grass trimming and leaves, and waited. Besides a sudden surge in growth, no change in the edible department. Time for research. I lurked around the Farmer's Alamanac forums and found that marigolds release an antibiotic into the soil. Pretty cool! The antibiotic is said to help keep tomato worms and other pepper, squash and onion pests away and aid soil quallity. However, it interfers with the fruiting of legumes. That finding led to my immediate transplanting of the 3 foot Aztec Marigold planted 2 feet away from the bean vine! (Well, i had to wait a week because I went camping, cleaned up from camping, sprayed the house for fleas, and spent yesterday running between playdates and library-led freeplay science explorer hour - if you live in Denton, check out that last one. It's so cool!) 

Anyway - this morning, I did some weeding, moved the giant flowering bush to where my lovely chicken left an acorn squash plant out to dry and hope this helps solve the issue. Next issue, I don't think my pole teepee is gonna be tall enough...

 I am waiting with baited breath for these big guys to turn red! Pictured are the most tomatoes I have had grow since leaving Oregon. that's right: 3 in the last 5 years. The only thing I did different this year, was not buy a plant from anyone. I grew all 9+ of my plants from seed and they all are fruiting. This year, we will have tomatoes! In fact, this year, we have already enjoyed more fruit from our garden than all the years since leaving Oregon combined,

Sneaking little bites of kale when no one is looking. Little Scamps!

 as long as these guys stay on the appropriate side of the fence.

This year has been extra wet and stormy. Yesterday we had another howler blow through with the chance of hail. The Crape Myrtle in the front yard looks like someone tried to drive a truck through the middle of the foliage 8 feet in thge air. I am hoping the dry weather today helps the plant put things back where they belong, but I digress. Last night as the wind was ripping through, I did the usual walkabout to make sure all the important stuff was tied down (like climbing on the pergola and securing the tarp. That was new for me.). I noticed one of my climbing trellises in the garden was swaying rather dangerously. Last thing I want is for my pie pumpkin to die because the trellises ripped it out of the ground. As I was securing it with tent spikes for the time being, I noticed the hidden cucumber vine that encircles the pumpkins finally had an actual cucumber on it! It was half buried in mulch and I assume the horrid squash beetles pollinated it. But I am so happy to have one that i didn't squish any beetles today. I did scrap some eggs off the leaves though.

 The mornings are the best time to see all the insects hard at work. I saw so many bees I was actually giddy. I am grateful for their hard work and I hope the bowl of nectar I put out in the fall and the constant stream of flowers we have in the garden helps them survive this coming winter!

Have you ever seen corn with this much hair?

 The radishes are still flowering, so I've left them for the bees. Occasionally I'll find a pod hanging off the plant and I'll pick that. These are the radish seeds for next year. I did some Googling and some book researching and couldn't find a thing on how to seed a radish. So naturally, I experimented. I just let the bulbs flower and watched to see what would happen. Pods formed where some flowers had been and as the pods dried on the vine, I picked one and opened it. Inside was a tiny round orb I can only assume was a seed. I haven't gather as many pods as I should have so I bet the radish has reseeded itself and I may have a voluntary crop come Autumn. I do hope anyway. In the meantime, the gnarly twisted plant is keeping the ground shaded and suffocating weeds.

 Happy gardening!

Garden Journal #7

The following photos are by Emagene 

 

Everything is doing well, except the kale. It's a bit late for kale anyway so letting it go to the caterpillars and chickens isn't breaking my heart. In fact, our one siberian kale plant is almost more than we can keep up with ourselves. Kale at every meal! So instead we check the plants for cocooned caterpillars and then feed the empty ones to the chickens before adding stems to soup or using them as teethers. I did lose a pie pumpkin vine to some sort of vine rot. We got one tiny squash from it before we turned into green compost. Apart from the occasional splash rot and blossom drop due to heat, we're sitting we'll above every other garden we've planted here! Moving the garden's location was a helpful choice. And the new neighbor bringing female dog home, replacing three male fence marking dogs, is making the move an even better idea. I am hopefully that some of the bean blossoms will turn to beans and that I can save our 2 ears of corn from the bugs. Otherwise it's kind of fun watching which bugs come and go, who likes to lay eggs where, and finally watching the plants flourish! Third time truly is the charm!

Garden Journal #6

This post really should be called Flowers and Fruit! But then i'd lose the consistency of the titles and my OCD wouldn't be able to live with that. So now, a barrage of flower photos:

These were taken earlier in the week. Now, after a half week of rain and humidity, we have new flowers and fruit!!!

The cucumber has twisted itself into the pumpkins

What's going on in your garden?