A Week Later...It's Nearly mid-March

Wasn't really a week after my last post, but it sure seems like it. Time really flies.

So. Spring has apparently sprung around here. Really nice, warm days. The past couple of days we've been up to near 80°.
I'm ready to get gardening.
Though I probably won't until after Easter.

I've been hanging laundry out on the line to dry - my favorite thing!

My wild flowers (aka weeds) are growing in; pretty blue Speedwell, white Chickweed, yellow Dandelion, and Buttercups (not pictured), purple Deadnettle.
I've been seeing some Bees already!

I've still been dividing most of my days between working around the house, and volunteering at the food pantry. (Still nothing good to say about that.)

We got J's brother buried and had the Memorial Service.
(You don't want to hear what I have to say about that, either.
I can't think too much about it or I lay awake all night fuming.)

My chickens are doing well.  I'm getting typically 4 to 5 eggs a day now.
The Ameraucana (blue egg layer) only lays three or four times a week.

I had gotten 7 eggs one day and thought that they were each all laying now, but shortly after that, my Buff Orphington hen went broody, so it was more likely that she laid a clutch of eggs to try and hatch.
(Which would never happen, since I don't have roosters. None of the eggs my chickens lay are fertile.)

As far as I knew, I was happy with my little flock. Seven chickens is plenty for my little farmstead, I get sufficient eggs to eat and share.

One day they will stop laying and I'll have to think about making them into dinner, but that's probably another year or two away.

But then one day someone in one of the local egg & chicken groups I'm in posted a, "Coming Soon, Chick Moms!" with a pic of Tractor Supply Chick Days signs, and I thought, 'I need chicks' (?).

I never raised chicks before, and to be honest, I wasn't that excited to do so.

Still, though, it kept nagging at me. Maybe I'd like some more "blue egg layers".
Had it not been for the 25 chick minimum order, I probably would have went ahead and ordered a few.

A few days later, Cousin Joe was over and we got talking about chicks and he said if I got any chicks or wanted to hatch any eggs, he had an incubator and already has a place to raise chicks and he'd raise them for me 'til the got big enough to live outside.

I still wasn't sure I wanted to buy 25 chicks.....then a few days later, someone posted they had EE hatching eggs for sale.

EE is an Easter Egger chicken, which is a mixed breed of Americauna or Aracauna with other breeds of chickens.
Depending on the "color gene" they catch, EE's may lay blue, brown, pink, or green eggs.

So I bought (nearly) 2 dozen of eggs from the lady.
She was short four, so put in a couple of English game bantams, and a couple of Serama bantams.
One of the EE eggs was bad, so we're at 19 currently.
I figure with a..I don't know, 2/3 hatch success rate...and some of them being roosters, I should get at least 5 or 6 Easter Egger hens when alls done.
Just a guess. I may figuring too high on the hatch success rate. We'll see.

The same day I went and bought the hatching eggs and took them to Cousin Joe's, was the same day I got 7 eggs from my flock, and then my Buff hen went broody.

Poor chicky, she sat in that nest day in and day out, setting on eggs that would never hatch, not to mention I'd come steal them from her every evening.

I felt sorry for her, but at the same time I thought, 'this might be something interesting'.

I messaged a neighboring farmsteader that I knew raised chickens, etc. and asked if she had a few fertile eggs, didn't care how many or what kind, for my poor broody hen to sit on.

She did, so I went and got them and brought them and stuck them in Buff's nest.
(She was in it, I had to move her out to put the eggs in, then return her to it.)

I could have broken her from her broody by forcing her off the nest, but I thought it might be a new, interesting experience to let her try to hatch some chicks, and (hopefully) care for and raise them herself.

I like the idea of the hen(s) hatching/raising chicks the way nature intended (not in an incubator or under a light in a brooder)....even though I have to substitute the eggs for fertile ones from other chicken parents, because I want to deal with roosters even less than I want to raise chicks.

"Weeds"

Last year, I had a really "Duh" moment when it occurred to me that Bees were important for gardening, and that was when we decided to allow our yard grow up in the Spring, instead of running out to cut it as soon as it started growing the least little bit.

Because our yard, full of what most call "weeds" is actually thousands and thousands of a hundred different variety of Flowers.

Beautiful flowers. It's frustrating because I can't manage to capture the beauty, what I see, with my camera.
Doubly frustrating because even in person, most look at the yard and see a neglected-looking, weed-infested, over-grown mess.

When actually it's a vast collection of lovely, colorful Spring wonderfulness. Literally every bit of what you see in the picture has some kind of flower on it. White, purple, pink, yellow, blue. Some are so tiny you have to get close in to see, but they are there.

Star of Bethlehem

There are gorgeous patches and patches of these beautiful white flowers. This picture don't do it justice at all.

Buttercups?

Fields of these dainty, lovely yellow flowers.

Unknown name, resembles a Daisy

Purple Violets

Large patch of lovely, delicate White Violets.

White Violets

Hello, Bee.

That there is a Carpenter Bee. Exterminators and others will tell you these Bees are the worst thing ever.
We swat away the ones up at the house, digging and drilling into the wood, but we don't kill them on account of they're excellent pollinators.

When the weather is nice, I hang out a good bit on my back porch, and I look out over the back yard and am just awed by all the beautiful flowers.

I wonder, how can they not see?

More Gardening

So I ended up with insomnia last night. I used to have insomnia nearly every night, but I learned to overcome it so it's rare I don't sleep at night these days....er, nights.

But last night, I didn't feel good. Honestly, I felt hideous. Cramping and achy. When my tummy hurts, I eat and eat, which only makes it hurt more, I think. I felt bad, and I was mad, and upset about having to mess with the taxes, and I got to thinking about our finances, and all the horrible, very bad financial mistakes I've made over the years. All the years J has worked to earn it, and I spent/blew/wasted most of it.

Still do, truth be told. I've never called our mortgage companies to try to get the interest rates lowered, so we have the same rates as, like, 14-15 years ago, when others tell me they are paying lower rates now, since the banking/housing/economy crisis all went down.

I just don't have any idea about finances, mortgages, rates, any of it. I fear messing up even worse than I already have. I feel like if I just leave it alone, and work to get out of the mess, and not get into it again.
But then last night I was thinking how much we're paying in interest, we could maybe be paying less and getting out of the mess a lot sooner.
All night, it seems, I waited for morning, so I could call the company(ies) and talk to them.

But then I dozed off about 5:30am, got up around 7am to open the door for Ryan coming in from work and take a couple of ibuprofen, then passed back out until about noon.
When I got up again, I didn't want to mess with any of the household "business" - taxes, interest rates, bill paying, nothing.

So I put in a load of laundry and went out to plant tomatoes.

I came by a package of Jiffy Pots for free, so I used those to transplant more of my Beefsteak tomato plants, plus 4 styrofoam cups when I ran out of the pots.

All told, I have 35 Beefsteak tomato plants potted.
Not all of them sprouted, and some of these probably won't survive Transplant Trauma, but if nothing catastrophic happens, I should have a good few tomato plants to put in the garden when it's time.

As I was sitting there working on my transplanting, I heard a buzzing near my ear and looked up to see a Bee and a Spider on of the of the cups from yesterdays transplanting, that I had sitting out on top of the garbage can getting some sun.

When I first saw them, the Spider was over near the Bee, and looked like it was poking at it. The Bee poked back at the Spider, and either it or me reaching for my camera scared the Spider and it left.

The Bee appeared to be hugging my plant name tag and either stinging, or humping the side of the cup? Not sure, at any rate, it didn't seem to be interested in the tomato plant.

After that, I needed to transplant my Black Russian tomatoes into something larger, hopefully giving them some growing room to grow a bit bigger/stronger before I plant them out in the yard in the next couple of weeks.

I didn't have enough styrofoam cups left, and I wasn't going to buy anymore. I almost broke down and just made some more of the newspaper pots, but I was too worried they/I would kill the plants again.

I may end up killing them again anyway, but the idea I finally came up with, I call Hugelkultur v2.0.

I had an empty 5-gallon bucket that I thought would work pretty good for planting the tomatoes into to allow them some room to grow before I transplant them in the garden within the next couple of weeks.
If I was planning to raise a tomato plant in a bucket, there would only be room for one, but I just want mine to grow a little bit bigger/stronger, then I'll plant them in the garden to do their growing.

My considerations were, one thing, I didn't want to use so much of my potting soil filling the bucket, and also, I didn't want to drill holes in the bucket for drainage.

I had read about putting rocks or pine cones or plastic drinking bottles in the bottom of flower pots to take up some space so you need as much soil, so it occurred to me that I could do the same with sticks.
I wouldn't need to use as much soil, and any excess water will drain down into the sticks and not keep the soil too wet.

It worked out really good - so far.  I filled the bucket about 3/4 full with sticks I picked up from around the yard, then it didn't take very much potting soil at all to fill the rest of the bucket.

Crossing our fingers that it works and they grow...but not so much that I have trouble getting them loose when it's time to move them into the garden.

(This isn't technically Hugelkultur because - well, it's not a mound, or hill - or because I won't leave the soil/sticks in the bucket long-term to break down into new soil. Which it probably couldn't anyway, since it's in a plastic bucket, and worms and other bugs and stuff can't get in to process it. When I get done with the tomatoes, I'll probably dump the whole thing in one of the other Hugelkultur beds or something.)

One Nice Spring-like Day

Yesterday was a warm, sunny, nice, warm, gorgeous, warm day.

J came in yesterday morning from working a 48 (24 FD/24 amb) and went to bed, and I took a nice, window-down ride to the grocery store.

When I got back J was up and asked what I wanted to do, as far as the kitchen remodel work. But we ended up deciding since it was so nice out, but would be ugly again later in the week, we'd go find something to do outside instead.

The yard has been covered with leaves since last Fall.
My Grannie used to (and my older neighbors still do) rake up the leaves into piles and burn them. I should ask my neighbors if there's a particular reason they do it, or what. Maybe too many leaves piles on the grass kills the lawn?
Anyway, after reading a "story" that appealed to me although I can't swear as to it's accuracy, we've started just leaving the leaves on the ground through most of the Winter. Then yesterday J got out on his mower and chopped them up all over the yard, to 'mulch'.

This is probably the last time we'll mow again until late Spring, maybe early Summer, depending on the weather.
When the weather finally starts turning off warmer, this will grow into a nice buffet for the bees.

While J mowed, me and Kevin messed with the Tater Condos.
Last year, after I found out we were never going to have enough dirt to keep these things going, I just sort of gave up and let them go. Grow what they would, or wouldn't.

We had gone down sometime in the Fall after the plants had to died to see if we'd managed to grow any potatoes, but something happened, can't remember what, but we never did get to it.
I wasn't too worried because, for one, I doubted we'd actually grew any potatoes, but for another I figured if we did they would be safe enough stored in the dirt, like a root cellar of sorts.

So yesterday me and Kev started shoveling out one of the bins to relocate the dirt to another spot, and sure enough there were some potatoes.
He didn't think too much of them, because they didn't look like the ones we buy at the store.

If I try growing potatoes again this year, I'll definitely stick with the 4x4 condo, or maybe I'll just buy a clothes basket!

*Although I get weather updates on my FB wall, it's a lot of "maybe" this, "chance of" that, and I pretty much skim it and forget it.  So, I didn't have any idea it was supposed to be as nice as it was yesterday.

At one point I saw my weather app on my Desktop said it was 72*, but the word "Alert" was lit up in red at the top. I thought, "Hm, warm as it is, we may be in for some storms", and clicked to see what was going on.
To my surprise, it was a Freeze Watch for tonight.  Well. That escalated quickly. lol.

Woke up to rain today, but I like it. Some rainy days I just enjoy.
It's hard to explain, but it's grey, dreary, foggy, rainy/drizzly, and chilly out there. But in here it's warm and I've got lamps turned on. I looove lamp light on rainy days. Making it warm and dry and just comfy-cozy.
I think I'll have some tomato soup and grilled cheese for supper, and watch a movie or two on tv.

Yeah, it'd be a good day to work on inside projects, de-hoarding and such. But, meh. It's not a disaster if I take a rainy day off.

Beautiful Buffet for Bees, Butterflies, and Birds

I mentioned in my last post how our yard isn't really grass, but more of a bunch of weeds. I didn't care if it was grass or weeds, so long as it was green.

And green it was, soon as the weather warmed up enough. It'd turn green, and grow half an inch, and I'd have J out there mowing it. It looked too "raggedy" otherwise.

Back in January and February, we had some nice weather days, and the yard started getting "thick". I remember telling J he needed to cut the yard, but ended up he couldn't because we hadn't gotten out there yet and picked up all the sticks, limbs, and branches that the trees had dumped over the Winter and during a couple windy stormy days we'd had.

March wasn't a very good weather month at all. I remember him coming in from work one morning and saying we were going to get out in the yard and pick up limbs, but I looked at my desktop thermometer and it said it was 34* outside. I said, yeah, that ain't happening.

So, the yard grew more than we usually like for it to. I look out my kitchen window and think, gah, that looks bad, we need to cut it.

Besides Clover and a big tangle-gangle of other weeds we don't know the name of, we noticed these purple-ish-colored funny-looking things growing in abundance all over the yard. J was curious as to what they were called so I googled and learned they're called Purple Deadnettle.
I didn't even notice until I googled it that there are tee-niney little flowers in these "weeds", which really aren't a weed at all, but an herb related to the Mint family. You can actually eat it in salads and cook with it and make a tea.

Yeah....no, but I read that these are an important source of protein for Bees which can be hard for them to find this early in the season, so we decided we'd just live with the growed up yard for awhile, for the Bees.

Purple Deadnettle

I also noticed several days ago a very lovely white flower growing in bunches down by the garden near the back fence.

Not long after that I saw a post on my Facebook wall from Georgia Gardener that these are called Star of Bethlehem, and was really surprised to find out that people consider them a nuisance weed and want to know how to get rid of them!

Star of Bethlehem

The past couple of days have been dreary, chilly, rainy, not very nice at all, but today is sunny and warm and gorgeous. I went out on the back porch to enjoy it a little while and was surprised and pleased with what I see all around my back yard:

A profusion of beautiful Star of Bethlehem flowers, (and, you can't see it, but one of my blueberry bushes has some blooms)

There are some purple Violets growing wild along with some of the SoB's,

Yellow (Buttercups?), so delicate and pretty,

A large patch of Grape Hyacinth, mixed in with some kind of tiny, lovely little blue flowers (Creeping Speedwell?).

Make a wish! What a dandy Dandelion!

Some pink/purple-ish blooms,  (the little black spot on the right side of the petal is a bug. There were two of them looked to be playing Tag...or, mmm, a more adult type game...)

Resembles a Daisy, the inner yellow part is daisy-like, but the white petals surrounding are almost hair-thin. The thicker, fuzzy stems don't appear to be Daisy-ish though.

The one thing I didn't see much of was Bees. I'm hoping it's still just a bit too early/chilly for them yet. I spotted this guy (or gal) but I don't know what kind of Bee it is, if it's a Honey Bee or not.

Some time ago I read one of those emails people send around that I really liked but can't seem to find again....n'ermind, I found it (I always do after I say I can't)...Check it out, it's awesome:


Imagine the conversation The Creator might have with St. Francis about this:

"Frank you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there? What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect, no maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long-lasting blossoms attracted butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But all I see are these green rectangles."

"It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers 'weeds' and went to great extent to kill them and replace them with grass."

"Grass? But it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees, only grubs and sod worms. It's temperamental with temperatures. Do these suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?"

"Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn."

"The spring rains and cool weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy."

"Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it _ sometimes twice a week."

"They cut it? Do they then bale it like hay?"

"Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags."

"They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?"

"No, sir. Just the opposite. They pay to throw it away."

"Now let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow. And when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?"

"Yes, sir."

"These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work."

"You aren't going believe this Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it."

"What nonsense! At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. Plus, as they rot, the leaves form compost to enhance the soil. It's a natural circle of life."

"You better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and have them hauled away."

"No! What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter and keep the soil moist and loose?"

"After throwing away your leaves, they go out and buy something they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves."

"And where do they get this mulch?"

"They cut down trees and grind them up."

"Enough! I don't want to think about this anymore. Saint Catherine, you're in charge of the arts. What movie have you scheduled for us tonight?"

"Dumb and Dumber, Lord. It's a real stupid movie about..."

"Never mind I think I just heard the whole story."

Plant Flowers for the Bees

Sometimes I feel like if you looked up the word "Duh" in the dictionary you'd find my picture there.

In my defense - sort of - I wasn't really taught much about gardening and nature and such as I was growing up. I wasn't especially interested in learning, either, though.

My parents were born back in the latter 1940's, when life wasn't as convenient as running to your choice of the four or five local chain grocery stores a mile up the road to grab a bag of potatoes for dinner or an apple for a snack. They grew up same as their parents grew up, raising their own food and living off the land.

By the time I came along in the 1960's, that had changed.
My parents lived in a subdivision behind a shopping center that housed 2 chain grocery stores, a drugstore, and Variety (department) stores, among others. Across the street from that were Fast Food restaurants and Full Service gas stations.
Along with packaged foods and drink, it was just much more convenient and easy for Mom, who worked a full-time job, to grab stuff for dinner at the grocery store or take us to the Burger Chef.

I remember - fondly - as a little kid spending Summers on my great-grandparents farm up in the north Georgia mountains. Life up there was very different from The City, many people still didn't even have indoor plumbing, much less a grocery store down the block. Other than a few things like tea, sugar, cocoa, etc., they pretty much grew and raised everything they ate.

Like I said, I was a little kid at that point - 5, 6, 7 years old. I had learned to gather eggs, milk a cow, slop the hogs, feed the fish, hoe weeds, dig potatoes, pick strawberries and cherries. I knew where beef and pork and fried chicken came from. I watched milk straining, butter churning, honey harvesting, canning and preserving.

But where I spent a few weeks a Summer doing it, my Dad grew up living that way everyday, and he didn't want that for us. He wanted us to live in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood, with indoor bathrooms and central heat (central air still wasn't common even here in the South back then) and every convenience and ease of life. And he succeeded at that.

As the old people died off, so did the "old ways". My grandparents raised a garden up until my Grandpa passed away when I was around 11 years old and then Grannie, who also worked a full-time job, couldn't manage, or didn't want to, a garden and all the home-canning/preserving anymore. Grocery stores and (tin) canned foods were just too convenient.

Later on - probably, oh, sometime in his late 30's or early 40's - Daddy seemed to miss or wanted to return to his earlier life, or recapture "the old ways/days".  He bought 8 acres in the "country" and plowed up two large areas for gardens, built a barn and got some dogs, chickens, goats, rabbits and even a pony at one point.

Problem was, me and my sister were "City" girls. We maybe enjoyed the animals, to a point, but we weren't raised as farm workers, and wouldn't have anything to do with cleaning up after them or working out in the hot, humid heat in a garden. Just wasn't happening.
Eventually he gave up and moved us back to a nice house in a neighborhood.

Fast forward a few more years, me and my sister married and moved out, Mom and Dad bought a couple acres and Dad raised a small vegetable garden for him and Mom to enjoy some fresh veggies during the season.
I guess I just never really thought about it, but up until then I don't think I was even aware that you could plant a garden smaller than an acre, and not have to raise enough vegetables to be able to can and preserve for the Winter.

It didn't matter, though, because as far as I was concerned, there was no point in me even trying to make a garden of any size. I had attempted a few times over the years to have some houseplants but I never was able to keep them alive, so I knew in my heart I'd never be able to grow a garden.

Fast forward some more years and my Grannie - Dad's Mom, in north Georgia - passed away and after my Dad retired, him and Mom moved up there, where he decided to try Fruit Farming. He planted a few varieties of apple trees, pear trees, peach, plum, cherry, and apricot trees, blueberry bushes, raspberries, and grapes and muscadines.
Like everything he touches it seems, his Orchard did very well. 

Well, that kinda ticked me off...or, well, challenged me maybe. It was one thing that I couldn't raise flowers and plants like my Mom and her Mom, because I felt I was more like my Dad's daughter, in which case, I thought I should be able to grow stuff, too.

Some time after that, I started with a few vegetable plants (didn't have time to plant fruit trees and wait however many years it would take them to produce even though I like fruit much better than veggies for eating) just to see if I could keep them alive, if not actually get any yield.
I actually did manage to grow some actual, real food.
After that, J got more interested in gardening, too.

We've managed to actually grow some corn and tomatoes and a few other things here and there, but even so, our knowledge of gardening is not much more than being able to sprout a seed, and keeping the plant watered.

Case in point, when we moved to this house around 13-14 years ago, I had J take out a lot of flowering plants and bushes and stuff that was growing willy-nilly around the yard.  I attempted to get rid of several scraggly rose bushes growing in the front yard, but they keep growing back on their own. I finally gave up fighting with them.
But all I wanted was a nice, neat, clear yard with green...grass. We don't actually have grass, but more like a cover of clover and/or some sort of other weed(s). Whatever, it's green (mostly) and that's all I cared for.

After we started vegetable gardening a few years ago, and then I started the coupon/deal shopping, I ended up with a lot of packs of seeds. Mostly vegetables and some fruits like pumpkin, cantaloupe and watermelon, but also some herbs and flowers that I had no interest in.
I don't cook with herbs, and I actually said, "It's a waste to plant flowers because they don't grow food."

I think I also thought Bees' only purpose was making Honey.
Eventually I read about Pollination, and that we want to attract Bees to our gardens to Pollinate the plants.

Sadly, it still didn't occur to me, that flowers also attract Bees.  And flowers generally bloom a lot earlier than my garden plants.  I've had daffodils/jonquils and one of the rose bushes I couldn't kill already blooming.

If I had a yard full of flowers and/or flowering plants, I could have Bees in here, working on the Pollinating thing some time before the garden is ready for them. They'll already be here when the garden is ready for them.

Fugh. How could I have not known that? Thinking back, I remember being taught about it in school, but I didn't care about it enough to remember it. I didn't know how it applied to my life, when we could just go to the store and buy what we wanted to eat.