Fall’s Here!

Posted on by
Reply

Today is one of those Fall days. It’s cold, miserable, rainy and leaves are dropping off the trees like needles off a Christmas Tree in June. I love it. I love Fall. Almost as much as I love the beginning of gardening season. The leaves are all crunchy and smell nice as I rake them up. Or mulch them with the mower because I waited too long to get that last lawn cutting of the season in. This year I need to get some mulch for my raspberry bushes and still have to yank the last of the veggies out. My tomato plants are still in. I love having the windows open even if I freeze because the house just smells good. It’s a mix of fresh, change, and a hint of eagerness.

Hello? Anyone Home?

Posted on by
Reply

I can tell it’s been awhile since I’ve visited the blog since I had several updates to do and I switched from Firefox to Chrome. So far I’m digging Chrome. Firefox was freezing up on me, Chrome hasn’t yet.

Tadpole turned two recently and my house looks like the Matchbox factory blew up in here. Kid loves two things more than anything else right now. Cars and Phineas and Ferb. I’m a fan of the cartoon Phineas and Ferb myself so the constantly wanting to watch it isn’t really a hardship. It has catchy music. The cars however hurt when stepped on. I’m waiting for one of us to go flying since he likes to leave them in the kitchen.

The veggie garden was a wonderful flop this year. Weather was most uncooperative and some of the plants didn’t help. Zucchini has both male and female flowers. Only the female ones turn into tasty zucchini goodness. A few of my plants only produced male flowers and the others produced only a few female ones. Tomatoes just didn’t want to ripen and those that did got bugs. I know that they are good protein but ewww. Watermelons started rotting before they even ripened. I did however do fairly well with my eggplants. Those are making a comeback next year. I have a few people I know that like them and they are just so beautiful. Already looking into what to plant next year. The sunflowers were fun this year and I have a feeling the might be going in next year as well.

I have a new favorite bagel. The Maple Cinnamon French Toast one from Tim Horton’s. If you have one near you I recommend that that you try it. Completely mouth watering.

Herman

Posted on by
Reply

We have a resident bunny in our backyard. I’ve named it Herman. I think it’s a boy but not sure since I can’t exactly get close enough to check. He’s pretty friendly as wild rabbits go and will tolerate me getting fairly close before he takes off like… well the rabbit he is. So far he’s allowed me to get close enough to see the markings on his face. For the most part he’s just like any other brown bunny you see. Except he has a thin line of white over his eyes that goes on to run down his cheeks. That’s how I know it’s my Herman. That and he’s smaller than the other rabbits running around here. Maybe he was a runt, or he’s just a teenager still. If so than human teen boys have something in common with rabbit teen boys. They never stop eating!

Everytime I see Herman he’s eating. I think the only time he wasn’t eating was when he was running away from the Tadpole. Herman is a rather considerate rabbit. He doesn’t eat everything in my veggie garden. He leaves some of the veggies for us. I’m almost certain it’s on purpose because he doesn’t completely wipe anything out. Either that or he’s a foodie that needs variety. He has dipped into my herbs so it feels like he’s experimenting. Kind of like the movie Ratatouille. Maybe next spring he’ll open up his own salad bar over on Elmwood.

I enjoy watching Herman because he’s soothing. I’m in the middle of suburbia and here’s a wild animal hanging out, sharing in the bounty of the garden. I need to figure out a way to make a shelter for him for winter. I feel like he’s a permanent part of the homestead. I may call this place Lilypad Farm but our mascot is Herman.

A wee bit of rearranging

Posted on by
Reply

So I’m redoing the front gardens. I’ve already redid the one to the left of the front door and my raspberry bushes are not doing too bad. Need some water so that’s a trip to Home Depot since one of my hoses split and I’m watering them the old fashioned way right now. The petunias and other plants I transferred to the other side didn’t do so well. We went away for the weekend and it was super hot and they scorched. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the strawberries. They are happily taking over the garden and eventually will choke out the other plants. I’m sure the lilies are already not too pleased because they are in the middle of the strawberry patch. I thought I lost my evening primrose to the rabbits. Now I’m finding several tiny ones all over the front garden which I’m both happy and not so happy about. Happy because I enjoy them. Not so happy because now I need to find new homes for the ones that I’m not going to keep.

And on an unrelated gardening note. I created compost and didn’t even realize it. I had a metal garbage can that I was using for my yard waste. I made it too heavy so the garbage men wouldn’t take it and since I tend to procrastinate I left it for a month intending to parcel it out into garbage bags. Well I told Dad that I would give him the can for his bird seed. His current container was too small for his needs and I hated the sound sticks and some other woody plants made on the metal can when I put them in. When I started to clean out the can for Dad I had about six inches of plant matter on the top and almost completed compost in the bottom. I never did anything they recommended for the stuff. No turning it over, no layering, no air circulation and in about a month I had compost. And even better, it never smelled. I had it in my garage too. Makes me feel better about doing it on a larger scale and out where the neighbors can see it. I will use a container though because of the rodents. Don’t want the neighbors to complain because they have half eaten watermelon rinds scattered in their yard.

Weeds, weeds and more weeds

Posted on by
Reply

So I have to admit that I have not only been neglecting to update the blog but I’ve been neglecting the Homestead as well. I can’t even fully blame the mass amounts of rain that we got because we did have some nice days that I could have worked. The lawn got cut and weed whacked but the gardens suffered. Apparently I had some very tasty weeds in the front garden that the birds liked. So I saw several gold finches hanging out by my front window.

Now I am playing catch up. After getting the back yard cut I weeded the front garden. While they do serve  purpose, somewhere other than my garden, I am severely disliking prickly plants right now. I had several of the tall prickly weeds and now my hands probably have more tiny holes than my pincushion. I even have the fancy gloves with the latex on them that I used. However that just protects the palms of my hands, not the back. I cleared five large bucket loads of weeds and I still have some left. I had to stop because my fingers hurt to uncurl them and I’m going hunchbacked.

I need to do something about the strawberries in front. I love strawberries and so do Tadpole and Nerdling. Strawberries will take over the garden they are in and then some. Add that to the stuff that I didn’t know. I’m hoping that my front garden can hold out till I find a better spot for them. If not I’m going to start digging them up and offering them to people. But they do go well with the raspberry bushes I’ve planted.