More Spring...

Forsythia starting to bloom

This has been a cold, wet spring.  April has behaved more like March.  In like a lion, still waiting for the lamb...  I think the temperature has hit 70.  Once.  I wore sandals without socks. Twice.

This week, the last week of April, temperatures are back to the 40s!  April is hanging on, the lion still sinking his teeth in.  I shut the heat off in the upstairs of our house only to have the husband turn it back on last night.  It is cold and damp and overcast.

Hopefully May will be different.  It would be nice to enjoy some spring weather before the humid summer.  There are signs that spring is here.  The crocuses have bloomed (then froze and died).  The daffodils are emerging.  The Forsythia is just starting to bloom and the tulip tree is getting ready to burst into full bloom.  It is late this year, but proof that the warmer weather is coming.

Tulip Tree ready to burst into bloom

We have two more days left on our burn permit.  Always a last minute scramble to get as much done as possible, until next year.

In May begins the outside work of finishing the painting on the front of the house, adding lattice and landscaping, and beginning painting the side of the house that we re-sided late last fall.

The to-do list is ominous and lengthy. Welcome spring!

Spring Plantings...

The FedEx truck delivered our seedings this weekend.  Yesterday, we got most of them into the ground.

After debating how far from the front of the house shrubs should be, me insisting they are too far, the husband too close, we planted two blue hydrangas and one weigela.   These are very small right now, but should fill out nicely in a few years...if they live.

This is what the mature plants looks like (images thanks to Better Homes & Gardens).

Weigela 

Blue Hydrangea

We also planted some old fashioned lilac near the driveway and a reblooming lilac, that blooms all summer long, near the kitchen window.

Old Fashioned Lilac

Josee Reblooming Lilac

The kids also picked out some edible plants - we added a row of four sand cherries by the stream, one almond tree in the back and we have yet to plant a thornless blackberry.

Dwarf, flowering cherry

Almond tree

Thornless blackberry

My garden is your toilet...

Those little round brown things = bunny berries

Garden Bed or Bunny Bathroom? You decide!

I understand that you can train rabbits to use a litter-box.  Or, you can put in a small garden with some nice soil and a welcome mat.  The husband says bunnies make good fertilizer so I had to shake my Magic 8 ball (aka Google) to see if that was true ("signs point to yes").  What I found out is that "bunny berries" can be used directly on plants and yes they are good for the soil.  You can scoop up berries and add directly to soil/plants, make aged manure, or brew into tea.   I can see me now, brewing and selling bunny berry tea (for plants not people) at the Farmer's Market this summer.  Hmmm...maybe not.

An interesting fact is that "One doe and her offspring will produce over one ton of manure in a year."   I don't even want to guess how many rabbits we have hopping around.  Let's just say, that is a lot of poop!  

Click here for all the things you never wanted to know about rabbit poop.  

Of course the cat is a different story.  I have also caught her in the act.   She is not so garden friendly.  Not quite sure how to encourage the rabbits and discourage the cat...  

About this summer...

I know I have been remiss about posting this summer.  To be honest, not a lot on our to-do list got done.  The Husband will tell you that he has been working all summer.  By working he means...

#1 Tending to his garden.  Have you seen this monstrosity?  Just keeps growing every year...

[caption id="attachment_907" align="alignnone" width="450"] R in the jungle with the 8' tall corn[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_910" align="alignnone" width="450"] View from the backside[/caption]

#2 Mowing the Lawn.  Every time I turn around the lawn needs to be mowed again.  Honestly, I think someone likes mowing (especially on his new lawn tractor) much better than sheet rocking.

#3 Bombing me with Tomatoes.  Seriously, this has got to stop already.  I open the fridge and gag.  There is nothing grosser than rotting tomatoes, except maybe the fruit flies they attract.  I am begging, please cut back on the tomato plants next year.  100 should be plenty.  This is so out of control someone may need an intervention... It's October - here are pictures from this morning.  Apparently we have a second fridge just for the purpose of storing tomatoes.  Oh and what is in the other fridge?  three 64 oz juice containers full of sauce.

[caption id="attachment_924" align="alignnone" width="270"] Some people keep food in their freezer. We have bags of frozen tomatoes.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_925" align="alignnone" width="225"] Drawers full of tomatoes and yup! guess what is in the pot...[/caption]

Buried Treasure

[caption id="attachment_838" align="alignleft" width="112"] The one cool thing we have found in the yard...[/caption]

I realize it has been awhile since I have posted any progress information.  Truth be told, we took a vacation and escaped to Florida for a nice little break.  It is a slow adjustment from vacation mode to real life and we are slowly getting back into the project zone.

April was burn month and we managed to squeeze in four burn days.  Every year we plan to reclaim a bit more of the yard and battle the poison ivy and brambles.  We have uncovered some trash dumps where a previous owner apparently disposed of many plastic bags full of cat litter.  We have also found broken milk bottles, metal fencing, black trash bags, a rusty fan, metal pipes, and various other treasures.

When the garage came down they also buried it in the yard, windows and all.  Every time it rains, pieces of glass come to the surface.  I am not sure what we are going to do about that, but for now we have enough other projects on our hands to worry about...

It's May and burning season is now over. We are turning back to the bathroom.  Here are some photographs on the progress we are making with the yard.

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Attack of the killer tomatoes...

Things are calming down now, but for a while there we were flooded with vegetables...

Despite two floods, the garden has triumphed with a bumper crop of squash and tomatoes.  I have canned salsa, made two pots of tomato sauce and still we are overwhelmed with the red fruit.  Not to mention that we eat squash at almost every meal (besides breakfast)...  So please feel free to stop by and share in the bounty.  If you find random veggies showing up on your doorstep -- it wasn't me!!!

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Submerged...

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Hurricane Irene has struck.  Our little stream has become a lake.  The ducks have been out swimming all morning.  We are not sure if the culvert is blocked or if the volume of the water is just overpowering it.

T's nursery raised bed frame floated away.  He put cement blocks on the sandbox (mudbox!) to keep that from floating away.  Unfortunately the water is so high it is pouring through the garden and making a waterfall.  The tomatoes are floating away...  Someone is very unhappy.

Oh and we will not talk about the basement...

The blue thing...

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Also on Sunday me and boys decided to excavate the blue plastic thing that was showing through the lawn.  T had investigated it upon discovery and he thought it was a blue plastic barrel used to drain wastewater from the washing machine.

I decided to dig it up without telling him.  When he came down from the chimney work in the attic and saw what I was doing he was not pleased.  He basically threw a tantrum over me creating another project and more work for him that he wasn't ready to handle.  I stomped off inside with a snide remark about control-freak husbands that need to manage all the projects and to let me know when he deemed it an okay time to dig it up.  He then yelled at me to get back out there and finish it as I couldn't just "leave it like that".

So being the happy yo-yo that I am went back to my digging.  Rory and Jack came out to get in on the action.  The barrel was much bigger than I thought.  We discovered a white plastic pipe running into the top of it.  I got a little concerned and called Dad who assured me that we were not going to run into any raw sewage (we would certain smell that - right?!).

T came outside to check on our progress.  He offered to sawsall the pipe (I think he LIKES doing that) and gave us his metal pipe "fire poker" to try and pry the barrel out of the ground.  He tried and said we needed to keep digging.  I tried on the other corner and got the thing out of the ground and he hauled it over to the rubble pile.

After four loads of dirt from the stream bed we filled in the hole.  He still thinks I should have left it alone.  We do plan to reseed in the fall and I told him it is much better to have it done and not have to disturb the seeded area (again).  So the blue thing is out of the front lawn and that task is done.

The moral is:  when a girl wants to dig you have to let her.  Of course if you make her mad she might dig harder...

The first crop...

Radishes are In

As you are aware, T could not be without his garden this year.  He did get off to a late start so his crops are a bit behind.  Not to mention the soil could use a bit of fertilization and nutrients (not many worms I am afraid).  This year we get what we get (and we don't get upset).

He did produce his first harvest of the year.  A bunch of radishes.  Funny thing is he doesn't even like radishes.  When I asked him why he grows something that he doesn't like to eat he told me that he had leftover seeds.  Apparently he just could not waste them.  Now the question is, what am I going to do with these (and are there any more coming...)??  I just asked "Is that it for the radish crop?"  and was met with the response "No there are plenty more!  There are about another TEN handfuls."  Great.  Just what I wanted.  Canned pickled radishes anyone?  Apparently they are easy to grow and it's the growing not the eating that makes the man happy.  Got to keep the man happy, even at the expense of uneaten radishes.

Poisoned by Ivy

ITCHY!

Okay yeah, so all this yard work is really starting to pay off.  I've got my first case of really bad poison ivy.  Of course it is my own fault - I did have short sleeves on and I did suspect that there would be some residual poison ivy...

T and I both had it mildly last year.  He sprayed with round up and the plant is pretty dormant - no leaves yet - but yup alive and well. 

Thankfully I wore gloves!  I've got it bad on both forearms and one elbow and scattered patches elsewhere.  The itching is so bad that it wakes me up at night.  I went online to see if there was a cure.  I came up with a lot of conflicting information - the gist is to dry it out, but whether you do that with calamine or alcohol or saltwater or gasoline is debatable.  I even read something about rubbing a mango on it.  I haven't tried that yet, but I am about that desperate...

So I went to visit my docotor.  I thought maybe she would give me a cortizone shot or prescription strength something to stop the itch.  She told me to use ice.  She also wanted to put me on a steroid called prednisone.  She then cautioned me that some of the side effects might be weight gain and depression.  If I felt puffy I could stop eating salt (!)...

I can't help but being reminded of Jack's "Would you rather" book ...  Would you rather have skis for eyelids or buttocks made out of bologna?  Neither!  But after weighing my options I decided that I would rather be itchy than fat and crazy.  It's been a week now and I am taking my nightly epsom salt baths, washing with Burts Bees Poison Ivy soap, slathering up with hydrocortizone and trying not to scratch...

Clearing the Land...

Rory with his ships - or are they just sticks???

We got a burn permit from the fire department for burning brush.  I don't think this land has been touched since well before the ice storm of 2008.  There are so many downed trees and branches, and trees covered in vines, poison ivy and briars.

 Rory, Pilchy and I have been making stick piles.  Lots of stick piles.  Rory also makes lots of "ships" out of branches and I have to figure out what is a "ship" and what is a branch that can go in our piles.  If I pick a "ship" there is a lot of protest.

My friend Eric likened us to the pioneers, clearing the land.  I think he has been reading too many Little House in the Prairie books lately! 

Me and Pilchy picking up sticks - yup in my pjs and coat...

Although I will say that there is a certain satisfaction in picking up all the chaos and putting it in nice neat piles.  It is kind of like when you pick up that playroom and after hours you finally have missing pieces returned, everything in it's place and a clear view of the floor.  Only it's actually more satisfying than that, because when you are done "cleaning" then you get to burn it all.

There is still so much to be done, but we have made some progress.  We can burn things until the end of May I think.  We will need every day of that!

The Snarled Mess of Vines

The stick lands...

Here are some pics of what is still left to clear.  Of course this is only the wooded part.  The back field is a whole other story...  T is planning on brush cutting all of that and eventually putting in a garden.