A Rambling Update

Since my last post about the dogs, I’ve been feeling a little low and had the need to disconnect for awhile.  There were days that I didn’t even turn on my computer at all - no e-mail…no Facebook…no anything.  Although I have not been plugged in, things have been happening around here, so here’s a little update for anyone who might be interested:

Since my previous post, Molly has already moved to a new home.  The Golden Retriever Rescue Alliance did a wonderful job, and I can’t say enough about them.  (To visit their website, click here).  Due to a scheduling conflict, Ashley actually ended up picking her up on a Tuesday and by the next Monday she had been adopted!  Here is the cute little advertisement they had on their site for my big girl:

I don’t know exactly who adopted her, but I was told that she went to a more affluent part of the metroplex in which we live.  Her new parents are older (one of them is retired and one of them works from home), and they usually have three Goldens at any given time.  One of their dogs had passed away a couple of weeks before, so Molly joined the two remaining “kids” for romping and playing.  She is living in a big house, with a big yard and a swimming pool, so I’m pretty sure that I am missing her more than she is missing me.  And I would have it no other way.

 

I couldn’t bear to get rid of her bed right away, so it stayed in our room for several days:

After awhile, I couldn’t take it anymore, so it was gone, leaving me with just my memories.  It seems I was not the only one who was missing her; Nestlé used to sit on Molly every chance she got whenever we were hanging out in the family room together.  With Molly gone, Nestlé has taken to trying to cuddle with Cookie, but it’s not quite the same:

Toffee is still here with me; the Brittany Rescue has not found a home for him yet:

 

However, it’s okay because I will only be at peace if I know that he goes to the perfect home for him, and if that takes some time, then so be it.  Besides, it’s a long walk to the chicken coop from the porch, and what will I do without Toffee to protect me from “who-knows-what” as I go out to tuck in Opal Chicken each night?

The really big news is that my mountain man has gone back to Yellowstone.  I thought that it would get easier the more he comes and goes, but this time actually was the hardest of all.  It was more than just my son leaving home – my friend was leaving!  The only thing that makes it okay is that he seems so happy.  And this time, he actually scored a position as an Assistant Manager of one of the stores.  He won’t be at Old Faithful this year, but he will be in some other part of the park.  He also won’t be living in a regular dorm, but instead will be in a little log cabin with a wood-burning stove.  Before he left, he got to spend some time with his number-one girl:

 

With spring here, I’ve been paying more attention to the yard.  Well, I say spring is here; actually, we’ve been having spring during one part of the week, followed by a quick blast of winter, followed by a little more spring.  The plants and animals aren’t quite sure what to do!  I looked out one windy, chilly afternoon to see two little squirrels snuggled up in the jar in the squirrel feeder:

Despite the crazy weather, the scrawny little rose bush that Alan and I transplanted last year has been doing great:

And remember how we had those tents over the raised garden beds?  Well, the aloe vera and lemon thyme not only survived the winter, they had babies!  I have transplanted the main plants to a bed in the back and put some of the “babies” in little pots to give to friends:

 

I bought this little greenhouse thing at Tractor Supply Store for $20 and have been using it for rootings and seedlings.  It has done a really good job:

In fact, the lavender and the lemon balm are from some cuttings I did a little while back:

 

I also have some parsley growing (at Mom’s request):

 

Since it has been going back and forth on the temperature, it has stayed cool enough that my spinach and lettuce are hanging in there (I think Nestlé has eaten more spinach than anyone):

 

Here’s a look at the overall garden…some things are doing well, and some things are struggling against the surprise freezes we have experienced (as well as my “gan-green” thumb!):

Despite all of my effort, Robert still leaves me in the dust on vegetable gardening.  Before I even had things planted, he was bringing home more monstrosities from his community garden (Ugh!):

 

This year, I’ve added some more stuff to the yard.  I bought three rose bushes (and they have grown from tiny stumps to pretty decent in no time!).  The cute little “bug-eyed” critter in the middle is a little something that my sister bought for me when we were in Pinedale, Wyoming.  A great momento from that trip!

 

I’m always on the prowl for new planting containers.  Here is a party tub that I picked up at Wal-Mart for less than $5.00:

 

I bought three of them; I filled one of them with lemon thyme and another with moss roses.  I put them on the ground with the idea that they belong to Opal Chicken for her snacking pleasure:

Robert loves to go to auctions and brought home this cute little wagon.  It sat in the yard, leaned up against the house on its side, until I snatched it and filled it with some extra plants:

The wagon is truly a blast from someone’s past.  There is an inscription on the bottom that says,

“To Ryan

From Granddad &

Grandmother

1978”

We attend a free gardening education meeting at our local library, and Russell Feed store is one of the sponsors.  There are drawings each meeting and I won this little cloth pot…my squash plant seems to really like it:  

I was really thrilled with this little beauty.  I have come up with a way to make self-watering planters out of 2-liter soda bottles.  Even though it isn’t an issue now, I’m hoping that they help keep my new strawberry plants safe and happy once the blast-furnace that is Texas summer arrives.  I asked Robert to make a box to hold all of them for me, and I must say, he did a really great job!

A friend of mine showed up at the house last week with a really neat thing that she had bought at a craft fair, just for me!  She was excited to give it to me, and I was very excited to get it!  Isn’t it cute?

In addition to planting things, I have been doing a lot of yard clean-up.  It is getting a little aggravating, though.  Just as I get everything perfect, I come out and find small branches everywhere:

The squirrels are making nests, and apparently they like clipping off more than they need.  But, sure enough, the jar in the squirrel feeder has been filled with leaves, making it comfy-cozy:

Nestlé loves the fact that I am in the yard more often.  With better weather and me outside to protect her from hawks and other predators, she gets to spend more time hanging out:

She also gets to run around in the large area (with the make-shift fence) that we call the “big girl” pen when I am outside.  The little pen in the back left area of the picture is her “little girl” pen, and it is covered so she can be out there when I am not in the yard:

One of her favorite things to do is to “taunt” Opal Chicken whenever Opal gets close to the fence.  She darts back and forth, and I swear I can hear Nestlé saying, “You can’t catch me!  You can’t catch me!” in a little sing-song voice:

As for the rest of our little family, Mandy and her crew are doing fine.  Our baby boy will be here in a couple of months, and Paisley is talking more and more about her “baby brudder”.  They recently enjoyed a Texas tradition - bluebonnet pictures:

Well, there is more going on, but I won’t prattle on any more.  There are more posts coming soon, including an update on (P)Earl chicken (yes, I got to see (P)Earl today!).  I’m also going to be catching up on a little blog reading, too!

Comebacks

As I was coming out of the chicken coop the other morning, I was greeted by this beautiful sight:

Did it just suddenly bloom?  Or did I just suddenly, finally notice it?  I’m not sure which is true, but it certainly lifted my spirits.  I’ve been a little disconnected from things lately.  It seems that for the past several months, someone is always sick or there is a crisis of some sort.  After my recovery from feeling so awful during January, last month Mom spent five days in the hospital with another round of pneumonia.  The only good thing that came of it is that the doctors finally recognized that she needs to be on oxygen as part of her daily routine.  Before she could come home, the “oxygen people” had to come to the house and set up a little rig for her here and also bring  her a little stash of oxygen tanks for any outings we might undertake.  Mom has finally become accustomed to moving about the house while tethered to her oxygen unit.  We are still trying to get the hanging of the portable tanks, as we really haven’t ventured out much since she came home.  While still not her old self, Mom is at least feeling better than she did last month, and the oxygen seems to be helping her breathing a lot.

Poor Paisley is plagued with a variety of illness and issues, but her mother also has had a rough patch lately.  An old foot injury flared up, and poor Mandy has been a little encumbered herself as of late:

We’re hoping that she heals soon, for being pregnant can be physically challenging and being gimpy can be physically challenging, but being both is just miserable!  Speaking of which, my “most beautiful child” quandary has now been solved:

How great is that?

In other news, Alan has “come back” home…well, until mid-April, anyway.  He had a little lull between seasons at Yellowstone so he flew in last Thursday.  He is enjoying watching television and eating at restaurants; he even went to see “Oz the Great and Powerful” with a friend this weekend.  We are enjoying having him home, and Toffee was just over the moon to see him.  He’s still as cute as ever:

In addition to his company, I am enjoying how much help he can be.  I had ordered some bare-root strawberry plants (way more cost-effective) and he helped me get them planted in some containers that I had squirrelled away over the years:

This is not the final stop for these strawberry plants – I have a nifty thing that I am working on, but first I am trying to get as many 2-liter soda bottles as I can (Alan is helping with that, too).  I can’t wait to show you this new project once it is finished…it is just what we need here in the heat and drought that is Texas!

I’m hoping that the arrival of spring will bring renewed energy and good things for all of those I love.  Here’s  to enjoying “comebacks”!

Resolution

This year has been off to a slow start for us…once again, illness hit our household hard during the holiday season.  I had started to feel a little puny on the morning of Christmas Eve, but managed to enjoy celebrating with our little family despite the sniffles.  (There’s emphasis on little family; since Alan landed a winter contract at Yellowstone, he was not able to be home for the holidays.  This was the first Christmas ever that we didn’t have everyone here – and I hated that!)  The Lackeys spent Christmas Day with Jeromy’s family, which was probably a good thing since I was going downhill fast.  One by one everyone in the house came down sick.  The doctor said mine was the old sinus/ear/throat infection, but during the time that I was on antibiotics I developed a cough that felt like my chest was being ripped apart.  This lasted over a week.

Two days ago was truly the first day that I have felt like doing anything since December 24^th….truly!  Although I like having the television on in the background, I normally don’t sit and watch television.  However, there was a one-week period that watching television was about all I felt like doing.  Thank goodness for Netflix and for the 23 episodes of a wonderful little show called “Rosemary and Thyme” .  I found it to be purely delightful, bringing together two of my favorite things:  gardening and mystery.   If you enjoy watching “Murder She Wrote”, it’s a little like that…except that it takes place in Europe…and instead of Jessica Fletcher you get Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme.  These two ladies own a landscaping business, and hiring them to landscape your garden is a lot like inviting Jessica Fletcher for the weekend…someone is going to end up dead and it’s up to the heroines to figure it out.  It made being sick almost fun.  I was sad that there weren’t more episodes.

Of course, I’m not surprised that the whole metroplex is sick; our weather here is crazy!  We not only have summer and winter in the same week; we can have summer and winter in the same day.  Opal chicken might have a wonderful afternoon scratching and tearing up our yard, but with the overnight temperatures well below freezing, she spends the night inside with us:

With our illnesses seemingly at least somewhat resolved, it is now finally time to give some thought to things that I want to work on this year.  The garden is a never-ending project, but I am going to conquer it, if it’s the last thing I do!  The thing that chaps my hide is that Robert doesn’t work at it even one-fourth as hard as I do, yet he has great success.  I know that I’ve mentioned before that he was involved in establishing a community garden in the city in which he works, and he has his own little plot:

Well, you can’t believe the stuff he has been bringing home from there!  Looking at the picture below, you might think that he is holding carrots and beets (he does grow beets).  Nope!  Those are carrots and radishes:

Another radish:

The only success I seem to have is that I have pretty good luck in propagating plants from the few surviving things that we have in our yard.  I have started some blackberry bushes and a few herbs from cuttings from our yard.  I have enjoyed using these little tents that I bought from Greenland Gardener that fit over the raised bed kits we purchased from them.  When it’s really cold, I cover the tents with some blankets or rig up one of our extra heat lamps.

I also have increased the efficiency of our compost bin by making a little tube to stick in the middle of it. The thought was that by allowing air and water to move more freely through the center of the pile, it might just cook faster.   I bought some mesh “fabric” at Tractor Supply Company and cut a piece that was just large enough to make a tube with that was about 3”-4” across the top.  I bent the loose ends in on themselves with some pliers to secure them. 

Since we lost the lid to our main compost bin some time ago, I didn’t worry about making the tube level with the top and allowed it to stick out a bit:

We have another compost bin that we made out of a trash can, and I cut the core for that one down so that the lid would fit back on securely:

I have to say, this little core that I made has really helped the compost do its thing a lot faster.  This is good because our horrid little yard needs all the compost that I can get my hands on!

I am finally learning to give myself permission to work on more arts and crafts.  As always, I am still struggling with the little voice that whispers, “If you have time to do that, you might want to clean the __________ (fill in the blank).”  But I am going to shush those voices, at least every now and then, and learn some new skills, as well as trot out some old friends. 

A couple of days ago, I joined The Society of Decorative Painters.  Later this month I will join the local chapter which meets once a month.  I’m hoping to learn a lot from watching those ladies in action.  Since I can’t draw at all, I’m pretty sure that I will never be able to paint on canvas or anything like that, but if it involves tracing a pattern and throwing on some color, I’m excited to give it a try.  I’m hoping to find old furniture and things for the garden and breathe new life into them.

Mom and I have been yapping about Pinterest for quite some time.  Mom has over 16,000 pins on her boards.  I have been telling her that we need to actually try some of those recipes and crafts that we both have found so intriguing.  I call it “The Pinterest Project”, and I really, really want to spend this year making and doing some of the amazing things that are out there.  Mom has done a better job so far than I have…awhile back she made a cute little baby afghan:

Hopefully, there will be much more to come, as well as posts with links to where we found the “how-to” for the things we do.

I have recently returned to an old love.   Years ago I was heavily into counted cross-stitch, but work and kids and life and church and, well, just everything made me feel like I just plain didn’t have time for things like that.  I recently came across a pattern that made my toes tingle, and I just had to have it:

I started working on it in the first few days of illness, but stopped when my head hurt too much to concentrate.  Now that I can see again, I am looking forward to making this beautiful ode to nature for my house!

I’m not the only one in pursuit of new interests.  The World’s Most Beautiful Child had her first dance lesson last week.  In the days before her lesson she kept telling her mother, “Dance class…so bad!”, which, translated, means, “I want to go to dance class so bad!”.  There was a little crying when they first arrived (separation anxiety), but before long she was right in there, doing her exercises and learning whatever it is that little dancers learn.  (Her mother says that Paisley especially likes tap.)  In fact, Paisley is one of my biggest inspirations.  I’m thinking that if a two-year old is willing and able to develop talents and learn new things, maybe her old Lolee should give it a try.

So here’s to learning, growing…and staying well?

Yard Stuff

We’ve been working in the yard a little bit lately.  The garden here at home is now gone…everything that had been out there had pretty much burned up, so I did a little clean-up.  The garden area is now a sea of black plastic; from the look of some of our tomato plants we began to suspect a disease, so we are sterilizing the soil by letting it bake under the plastic for a few weeks.  We will spend this fall and winter adding compost and amendments in an effort to rebuild the soil, and hopefully it will be better than before.

Despite our piddly results here at home, Robert is still active in the community garden he helped establish over in the city in which he works.  He will be having a fall garden there and has started some plants here at home for that little plot of earth.  Here are his plants:

Yes, you are seeing things correctly.  Those corn plants on the far left were planted in toilet paper rolls.  I had read about this awhile back and we’ve always wanted to try it.  The neat thing is that when it is time to transplant there is no need to disturb the tender young plant.  You simply place the whole roll into the ground where it will gradually break down (plus the plants can send roots shooting out of the open bottom of the roll).  So far we are kind of liking this idea…Updates to come…

I still have all kinds of critters here in the yard.  I removed a pot that was sitting on top of two flagstones to find this little guy:

Needless to say, I promptly replaced the pot so as to not disrupt the integrity of his hiding spot and to protect him from our hound dogs.

Then there is this guy:

I have seen him all over the garden all summer long.  With his fantastic camouflage he has managed to elude the dogs and Opal Chicken, quite a feat .

As part of our clean-up efforts we relocated the big compost bin, which meant dumping all of the compost out on the ground for awhile.  Opal was one happy chicken, let me tell you.  I’ve never seen a girl have as much fun playing in a compost pile!

Our latest round of compost has reached the stage that we finally have consolidated all three bins into one, large, full bin:

We are so happy that it is finally under 100° (for the most part), and we got some much needed rain this weekend.  Opal Chicken is finally able to sleep in her own little coop, leaving me free to reclaim the craft room.  Even though this year’s garden is over, there is always something to do outside, and Opal and Nestlé both love when we spend a lot of time outside because it means more time for them to “free range” in the yard.

Everyone wins!