The Rain is Here

The rain is here. So I am stuck inside.

I think I will clean up the mom wall. This is where I put papers from school, art work, gardening articles, and apparently a picture of Mamala with her girls. There really should be a better way to keep up with my kids stuff, but I have yet to figure it out. Any suggestions?

That Wasn't Very Smart.

I almost electrocuted myself this evening. Yesterday, I cleaned up a big mess on my front porch. This motivated me to clean up a few more messes. Our deck is a mess and so is the tiny backyard the Monkeys play in. Our vacation, the rains that followed for ten days or so, and the mad dash and craziness that comes with getting three children back to school caused me to neglect it. It needed mowing bad. Really, it could have been baled. We had a small Memorial Day party at Mamala's house this afternoon. The boys and I arrived back home with just a little bit of daylight left. I told the Monkeys to pick up their toys and I went to get the lawnmower. It is a really little bit of lawn. It takes about ten minutes to mow it.

I have two lawnmowers. One is an old fashioned push lawnmower the other is an electric lawnmower. When the grass gets too tall, I have to use the electric machine. So I set up the lawnmower with an orange electric cord and proceeded to mow.

There are all kinds of kid accouterments in that yard; trampoline, swing set, log cabin playhouse, and the dog trough. Yes, Abby needs a dog trough not just a water bowl. This is pretty much a lawn mowing obstacle course.

I started mowing and was trying to get it done. Gustave is supposed to bring us rain tomorrow, so I needed to get it done tonight. I was just about done and it was just about dark when it happened. I ran over the extension cord. Sparks flew. Monkeys fled in a panic. Tailless cats jumped from the deck to the roof. The dog looked at me like I was retarded. I unplugged it and we are all fine.

Moral of the story: Do not mow in the dark. Has anyone else ever endangered their life doing yard work?

What a Mess

Things have gotten out of hand. The Monkeys have been allowed to run amok and their stuff is everywhere. My front porch was a disgrace.

Skateboards, roller blades, and socks were everywhere. That's right, I said socks. Someone took their socks off on the front porch and left them there. One of my containers was knocked over and broken. The plants looked pitiful. There was a table I found on the side of the road and brought home. Don't know why it was upside down.

Now isn't that better. A little paint, a broom, and a few more plants from the back deck and the front porch looks a lot like a gardener might live here.

Please ignore the black paint. I don't know what they were painting and pretty sure I don't want to.

Maybe this is too much of a good thing. Our good neighbors really filled this compost up. The bunnies are getting nervous. I am going to create a dry shade garden behind our back fence. I will take some of those grass clippings and use them to start the new beds. A four to six inch layer of them should make a nice mulch. When the time comes to plant, the soil should be perfect.

Tomorrow, I take on the deck. Believe it or not, it is worse. Anybody else have a mess they need to clean up? Please share, it will make me feel better.

How To Lose Control of Your Garden in 10 Easy Steps

1. Make a Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween

2. Compost pumpkin innards

3. Wait five months

4. Spread compost in your little garden

5. Mistake pumpkin seedlings for squash seedlings

6. Leave the pumpkin vines in after realizing your mistake

7. Fertilize the pumpkin vines

8. Water the pumpkin vines

9. Refuse to remove pumpkin vines because of baby pumpkin cuteness

10. Watch in horror as pumpkin vines take over your tiny garden

It took two pictures to capture this one. First growing amongst the peppers

Now wrapped around the birdbath and headed toward the road. That vine is at least sixteen feet long.

Opps, here is another one.

The little baby pumpkin. It gets bigger every day.

Ponytail Trap

I love this blog. This girl is seriously funny. She has caused me to share that, occasionally, I have slammed my ponytail in a sliding glass door. A ponytail is a young woman's hairdo. I am really too old to wear a ponytail on my head, yet I do. About once a week, I walk through the back door, shut said door, and get yanked back by my scalp. Most of my hair is outside while my body, all of it, is inside. Ouch and humiliation.

Gardening Injury

I don't like to water my perennial borders. The plants need to be tough to make it around here. This means plants that can live on very little extra water, so I rely on native and adapted plants. There are no ferns, no hydrangea, no hostas, or any other water hungry plants in my perennial beds. At this time of year these plantings look pretty pitiful. I have really let them go and the weeds were pretty bad. The ground was so dry that I had to turn on the water hose, soak the ground, and then pull the weeds. It is a pretty effective weeding method, water hose in one hand, weed with the other. It is also pretty fast, the weeds just come right out.

So anyway, I was watering and weeding and watering and weeding and then it happened. I pulled up hard on a particularly stubborn weed, the weed came free, and my elbow went right up into my most thorny rosebush. I ended up with several rose thorns in my upper arm. One especially big one right in the softest part right above my elbow. OwwWWWwwww.

Got any weeding techniques to share?
Any gardening related injuries?

Opps

Sorry, y'all. I have been going on and on about my three sisters plantings. I was so happy with my first group of five that I planted two more. The first groups have popcorn, red noodle beans, and heirloom squash varieties. The popcorn varieties are strawberry and calico. The squash varieties are straight and crook necked yellow squash, and three types of zucchini include the cute little Ronde de Nice.

In the two new plantings, I planted sweet corn, more squash varieties to be determined and regular green yard long beans. Another pumpkin vine showed up and it gets to stay as well.

My popcorn is beginning to put out tassels. This prompted me to do some research. So after the fact, I go look up how to grow, harvest, and store popcorn. Step 1 pick your varieties with this warning "Don’t plant popcorn and sweet corn near one another, as they will both suffer if their is cross pollination." CRAP. I can only hope that the popcorn is finished with the pollination thing before the sweet corn starts it. I still have so much to learn.

Here is the article from gardenguides.com. There are some good popcorn recipes. That's right folks, popcorn recipes.

Have you made any gardening mistakes this year? Do you have popcorn recipes to share?

Really Horrible Herbal Tea.

I have been trying to get sick and finally succeeded. I don't know what it is, but my throat hurts, my nose is stopped up and I am coughing like crazy. All of this has set my asthma off badly. This morning at 5:00 am I woke up wheezing and thought I was going to have to go to the ER. Cold water made it worse. A warm bath made it better. After the bath, I reason that a good cup of herbal tea should really sooth things. I had some fennel I cut yesterday. Smells like licorice should taste nice and feel good. NO, DO NOT DO THIS. Fennel tea tastes like grass and dirt. How do I know what grass and dirt taste like? I am a gardener - I know exactly what grass and dirt taste like. I know some of you will tell me that a little dirt is good for you. Might be so, but I still don't enjoy it. I do like the taste of our little annual winter rye grass and I love wheat grass. This taste, however, was some kind of skunk weed and should never be ingested by a person. As soon as it gets light outside, I am going to go find some chocolate mint. I know that will make good tea.

I''m Going In

Here is my crazy overgrown winter garden. See the broccoli all gone to seed? Isn't the Swiss chard lovely. It tastes good too. Then there are the misplaced French hollyhocks.

So, I'm going in. I intend to spend the next two days cleaning up this mess. We will also be on a search and rescue mission. Somewhere out there are little lettuce plants, sugar snap peas, carrots, and radishes.

This is the result when you have a tiny garden and absolutely no self control. I am pretty sure I need counseling with regards to my plant addiction.

Here is my comfrey plant in the foreground and my Duchess De Brabrant rose in the back. Can you tell I never got around to pruning her last fall? I know you can't see it, but there is a Celtic knot pathway through this disaster.

I intend to use this Monkey as slave labor/helper. That is his own personal lawn mower. He just came in and invited me to help him with the lawn, so I gotta go.

If I'm not back by tomorrow night, send a rescue party.

Winter Weather One More Time

I know, I know, I cried wolf on Monday and we got nothin. But today, they are saying we are going to freeze and may get snow tonight. It is wet so there will be ice. Right now it is just a cold cold wet rain.

I know my northern and Canadian friends think I am being a big fat baby. Ya'll don't understand. We are unable to handle freezing water in this part of Texas. We can't drive. Our electricity goes out. We don't all have fire places. We have lost our mittens.

The driving is really a problem. We can barely handle cold water. You should have seen us trying to get to the quilt shop in the cold rain today. Some idiot decided to drive 17 miles an hour down the highway. We almost got creamed in the rear by an 18 wheeler because of this moron. Mamala had road rage. She said "Damn" a lot. If we actually get ice on the road we all will slide all over the place. Into ditches, into each other, into our garage doors. It's pretty much a pick-up-truck drivin rodeo.

We can't stand up on ice either. There will be booty bruises. It is kind of fun to stand at the back window and watch my neighbors fall down.

I'm staying home.

If I had a super power, it would be the ability to control the weather.

What would your super power be?

Cold cold cold

Its cold. I hate cold. I have a job I need to finish, but its too cold. I dont live in Texas for this.