March Appreciation

The view from my front porch - March 2013

How important it is to not take the beauty around us for granted! This is what I see while standing on my front porch.

In a week or so, the blossoms will be gone and new green leaves will start to sprout. But, for a couple of magical weeks, I get to see this every day. I'm sure the farmers don't think it has rained enough, but the weather has been absolutely beautiful this past month--pretty much like what is pictured above.

Archie in wood chip box

It is still cool enough that a fire in the evenings and mornings feels good. When it rains, all the cats prefer to sleep in the living room near the wood stove.

I planted a few leaf lettuce plants for the first time in these grow boxes. Even with morning temperatures hovering near freezing, they have done okay. Between the lettuce and broccoli plants shown and in the box to the left, I also planted some yellow onion starts (looked for them early enough this year to buy them before all the stores ran out) and some potato eyes. 

The onions in front are from a red onion that came up this winter. I have no idea when I planted that onion start because it has been four years since I last bought them. It had three bulb heads in it, each with roots attached. I threw away the outer layers, washed and cooked up the middle layers, and planted the onion sprouts. So far, so good.

Double Challenge

With everything going on last week, it was a double challenge to work on my two challenges for the week.

First, there was the tail-end of the weed-out-the-garden-boxes challenge.  I intended to do it Monday, then Tuesday morning, but finally got it finished on Friday.

Now I can start all over with the first box and try to get the weeds before they are two feet high again!


I also started working on the hanging quilt I am making out of the Challenge Fabric I received at the Gateway Quilter's Guild January meeting.  The yard I received was the large leaf pattern of pink, lavender and aqua green on the black background.  Since these are not the usual colors with which I work, I spent a couple of months and trips to several fabric stores looking for coordinating colors and patterns.  If I want to finish this project by the quilt show the first weekend in October, I decided I need to get busy on it.

I used the gold metallic thread in a leaf design around the black border of the center square to bring out the gold outlining on the leaves.  I really focused on getting my points clean.

Oh, Garden --What a Mess!

A long, wet spring and a week of temperatures with highs from 101-105 degrees, and the garden got definitely out of control. These pictures were taken Thursday, July14th:

Buck built a compost box for me.  By Thursday afternoon it was full.

Part of our problems started when the irrigation water from our neighbor's land (elevation about a foot higher than our lot) broke through a gopher hole and started flooding our yard every time he irrigated.  It covered my black felt weed control between the grow boxes with about an inch of dirt which immediately sprouted weeds.  It also undermined our pump house next to the faucet.  So, Buck pulled up the felt and filled in under the pump house.  He also built berms to channel the water between the grow boxes and out to the lawn so that it would not undermine the concrete floors of the pump house or the shop.

In addition to the bermuda and crab grass getting out of control, I used some "straw" I was gifted for mulch to keep the weeds down.  Instead, I ended up with some nice stands of oats.  The good new was that because I set it on top of the soil, the roots were shallow and pulled up easily.  It was a different story with the other.....

The store-bought squash did not make it -- none of the four plants.  I got enough zucchini out of the garden to give two away and make a double batch of zucchini bread.  The volunteer second-generation "pumpkini" plants, however, is hale and hearty, and may make it if the bugs do not kill them.

As I cleaned out a grow box, Buck replaced the rotting and splitting three year-old stakes holding the sides up with two foot sections of the fiberglass poles he sells as portable ham antenna towers and garden stakes.

Buck was not my only company in the garden that day.  One was a pollinator, one was a plant chomper.

Only one grow box left to weed.  Then the weeds in the first box will probably have grown back and it will be time to start again!

The Garden Bug Bites Again

Today has been a busy day of miscellaneous errands. I made new little scripture bag for my Oklahoma granddaughter using pink and purple--her favorite colors.

Then it was time to catch up on my mailings and notices I need to send out. I was in the middle of editing and emailing a notice for the military history and genealogy seminar in Fresno on May 15th when Buck came in and asked if I wanted to ride into town with him to pick up a sack of cement. That is when I made my big mistake.
We have had weeks of on and off rain--more on than off. This afternoon the sun was shining, the sky was a brilliant blue, the air was clear and the world was beautiful. I said yes.



Even though I have neglected my vegetable garden all winter, once we got to the big warehouse store, the first place I headed was the garden department. I have already decided I am going to cut back on the garden this year. First, with the Worldwide Area Family History Support mission, I will not have as much time to play in the garden. Plus, I still have too much stuff left in the freezer. But, I could not help but wonder if they had my apricot tree I have been wanting for over a year.

Yes!

Garden downsize or not, while I was there, I had to pick up a few things for my garden. I settled on two tomato plants and some onion sets. We are due for rain tomorrow, and it did get down to 31 degrees last night. So I decided I better till up a spot in the grow box, plant my tomatoes and use a cage and some clear plastic to make little greenhouses for them.

The onions will wait until I can get back out there and finish pulling up the weeds that have taken up residence over the winter.

The Season Is Past Time

I just updated my profile to include gardening as one of my interests. How quickly I forget. I guess it happened because I started this blog in November and my summer garden is almost history.

I had such a wonderful time in my garden. Hubby and my son built three grow boxes for me and helped me fill them with soil, courtesy of the local cemetery, and the mulch, available from the local landfill. I enjoyed planting the seeds, transplanting my seedlings, shopping for small flats of vege and flower varieties that I did not start from seed and working to keep it all in order. We put a barrier down on the walkways around the boxes, so weeding was kept to a minimum.

It was so much fun--until enough of a harvest came on that we could not eat it or give it all away fast enough. I actually had to do something to keep all that produce from going to waste.

Part of my plan was to put up some of the food for the winter. I have enough squash-bean-carrot-broccoli-onion stir-fry mix, not to mention grated squash and pumpkin pulp to last me the year. I dried tomatoes so they would not take up as much space and put them in the freezer. Problem was, once it was harvest time, the fun was over and my garden started to feel like work.

I thought about a winter garden. Then, when the reality of harvesting and preserving really hit, I decided that my tendency to be a "time and season for every purpose" type of person should apply. My garden season is almost over and it is time to do something else this winter.

I think the garden agrees. I still have tomatoes--we have not had a frost yet--peppers and onions. Several are currently in my sink as I type will end up in the chili pot tonight. The flowers I planted between my vegetable plants to add color and discourage pests struggled through the heat of summer, but exploded with blossoms once the weather cooled a little. When my squash plants decided their season was over and stopped producing, the nasturtiums I planted next to them seemed to grow ten times their previous size overnight. The blossoms now are beautiful.

So, while others are enjoying the autumn leaves turning colors, I also get to look out my window and watch the flowers say good-by to the time and season of my garden. If food gets scarce because I decided to not grow a winter garden, I guess I can always eat the nasturtium blossoms.