Just Pics

What started out as a soggy day...

...ended beautifully!

Rain=House Cleaning

Refreshing April Shower

Yea!  Someone needs to make it easier to get sarcasm across in a post.  Well, since I can't do much outside today, I'll just clean house.  Friday is my usual day to clean a little more thoroughly anyway, but I would rather pull weeds in 100 degree heat than clean and fold laundry.  I do this on Fridays because Saturday is our church day.  So, each week we take that day to rest.  After all, God did.  Tonight my sister will also be here, so it will be nice ancd clean when she gets here too..  So I guess I had better get off of Blogger and get to work!

Flowers and Greenery

The garden is basically in a stage of not needing much more than watering.  Everything has been planted, the weeds are at bay for now, and things are just starting to come up.  Yesterday there was some okra and potatoes poking their heads out of the ground.  I have said before that I will do whatever I can organically.  This includes pest control.  To help with that I planted some marigolds by the tomatoes and nasturtium in with the squash.  A great book to find out what kinds of thing there are for organic pest control is, Carrots Love Tomatoes.  It is also great for the Oklahoma gardener because its author is from Oklahoma and knows what special problems we face around this area.

Marigolds and Nasturtium

Since the veggie garden is taking care of itself (I still need to put some straw down), yesterday I focused on my flower beds.  All of my beds are in the shade, I naturally (no pun intended) chose shade flowers.  One thing about them is finding enough variety to make a bed interesting.  I see so many that are just green hostas.  I love hostas, but I like a little color as well.  I chose some caladium with different shades of red and pink.  I found some coral bells that look good with those colors.  The foliage is purple and the flowers will be white.  They will not bloom until next year.  I planted some 2 years ago but the ducks ate them last year so they never bloomed.  UGH!  Right now I just have two flower beds planted.  We are making plans to put in a small pond next to the deck.  Then I will plant more around and in it. I also have a few pots on the front porch.

Just so you know, I am a Longhorn, not a Cheater, I mean Sooner.

One of our Oklahoma problem is the wind.  Yesterday we had gust up to 45 mph.  My strawberries in the Topsy Turvy aren't faring too well.  They are really taking a beating.  The peppers and tomato look alright though.

You cant really capture the wind in a photo, but trust me, it was windy!

In Elijah's climbing tree we have a little nest of wrens holed up.  Why they chose that tree with him constantly in it is beyond me, but every year we have a pair of wrens make their home there. 

Easiest bird house I'll ever make!

Our other birds (chickens and ducks) are laying a bounty of eggs.  I have a fridge full of eggs right now.  I do mean full.  There are about 30 dozen chicken eggs and 10 dozen duck.  Just now a friend brought me a bowl of guinea eggs.  They are really cute, if an egg can be cute.

Chickens-brown

Ducks-white

Guinea-Thanks, Deborah!

Same Old, Same Old

Well, we are just sitting around and waiting for something to happen. The mustard is still the only thing that has come up. I take that back, there was some spinach poking through too. Today I just mowed the yard and then watered and fertilized the garden and flower beds.

A couple of days ago we put some strawberries and peppers in Topsy Turvys. I don't normally plant strawberries because they seem to take up too much time and space and we get very little in return. They don't seem to be faring too well in the planters.  They are really getting whipped by the wind.  Elijah wanted to plant some fruit (besides tomatoes he said), so we are giving them a go. I'm tyring to be optimistic about them.

The strawberry fiend, Elijah.  Actually fiend is rather appropriate!

In my flower beds, I added some caladiums.  I will probably get some more later to fill in a little better.  All of my flower beds are in the shade, so it is hostas and caladiums that I use for the most part.  I do have some calla lilies as well.

                     








That's really all that has gone on this week.

Something New

It's a cool April morning. A bit windy out, but this is Oklahoma. Yesterday we had a few showers so everything is nice and fresh. I was able to get all the hay put on the garden, but I will need a few more to finish it. It usually takes 6-7 to do it when we have it fill size (64x33.5'), so we figured 3 would easily do it. This year the garden is 32x33.5' Well, normally packed bales would do it. These were very loosely packed so they don't go nearly as far.

I found my mustard greens are sprouting, but so far nothing else. I have never grown mustard greens, but Jeff likes them so I thought we'd give them a try. Each year I try to grow something new. It may just be a different variety of something I always grow, like tomatoes, or something completely new to me. This year it is the greens, a Russian heirloom tomato called "Black Prince", and some white scallop squash.

This is probably the only way you should ever eat a black tomato.

Resting Up

Well, the garden is, for the most part, finished.  I still need to find some spaghetti squash seed or plants and  put hay on the rest of the garden, but for the most part it is ready to just be pampered.  Today, I took the day off from the garden.  I did go out and take some covers off of my bell peppers.  It was stormy last night, so I wanted to be sure the hail didn't get them.  No hail anyway.  We moved three more hay bales to the garden.  Sunday I hope to get them strung out.  I also bought some strawberries.  Elijah wants a Topsy Turvy for strawberries, so I we decided we would get one of those and see how we fair.  The tomato in the Topsy Turvy didn't fair to well in the wind last night.  We think it got to twirling in the wind and snapped off.  I put a more mature one in today.  I'm hoping this one does well.

HAY THERE!

I had hoped to keep track of the rain this year.  Elijah had our rain gauge turned upside down.  They don't catch much water that way.  Go figure.

I guess we'll never know!

The 7th is about to begin with a beautiful sunset.  Not my 7th day in the garden, someone else's 7th day.  Besides, His garden was much more impressive!  Now it's really time to rest!

I'm sure it is more spectacular without the tree in the way!

Always A Day Behind...

...Not in what I have to do in my garden, but in what I thought today was. I thought that today was the 21st instead of the 22nd. No big deal. What is a little weird is that while today is Earth Day and I don't normally focus too much on it. Don't get me wrong. I do what I can to reduce, reuse, recycle. I try to be energy efficient (mostly to save money). We plant a garden, raise chickens and ducks, and do as much of that as we can reasonably do in an organic method. We are, however, far from being tree huggers. I guess the weird thing is some of the things I did today as far as the 3 "R's" go.


First, as I am planting my garden today, I remembered that we have an old laundry sink out in the chicken pen. For several years we have toyed with the idea of using it to wash up veggies and duck eggs. (Ducks don't lay in a box like the chickens will, so they are always covered in dirt and poo.) I went and got it and brought it up to the garden, now all we have to do is hook a hose up to and it will be great! I also put it on an old table saw base that was just junking up the yard. It was headed to the landfill.

Two other things I did are for the garden. That involves what I planted. I found some very nicely sprouted potatoes under my sink. We don't eat a lot of potatoes, so it seems we always have several go bad. So I just threw them in the ground. It's a little late to plant potatoes, but they were free and close to rotting. I also planted some onions. These were green onions that had gotten very wilted and so I threw them to the chickens. Guess what, I found something that the chickens won't eat. After a couple of days I decided to stick them in the garden as well. They still had the roots, so we'll see.

I also found a basket in the yard and planted some flowers in it. It sits nicely in the shade and I should get some nice wildflowers pretty soon.

So, as you see, I am not a tree hugger by any stretch of the imagination, but I do what I can, when I can.