~July in the Garden~

Truth be told, I've been doing awful at getting the right pictures taken at the right time.  And the weeds (we won't blame the husband who aimed the grass cuttings directly into the garden) have gotten so insane, despite my attempts to keep them under control... I really don't like the entire view of the garden... It's too green, if you can believe that.  ;)

Then there's another horrible side affect of planting everything too close together, having the weeds take over, and just being extremely busy all summer... Bugs.  The squash borers are HORRIBLE.  And when you squish them with your fingers, they ooze out a blue cream, and ugggggghhhhhh.  (I'll spare you the pictures)  I would love nothing more than to dump a bazillion bottles of raid on my poor garden... but since I have animals and small children who spend half of their days hiding in the tomatoes... yeah, it's not going to happen.  You can be proactive with the evil squash bugs, and pull off their eggs, squish/drown the adults, and keep their numbers to a point where you don't see much damage, but I'm afraid we're too late, and now we can only hope that the 4-6 pumpkins I've seen survive to harvest time.  Next year we'll have to be way more proactive.  (Maybe bribes will get the kids over their fear of the blue goo!  ~Kidding, maybe)

I have to say though, for a rushed garden, that was unplanned, spur of the moment, with 2 year old seeds, things are thriving... or at least doing quite well considering the situation.  The sunflowers are beautiful, if you ignore the fact that all but one were knocked over from the storm, and they're blooming on the ground.  The tomatoes are doing... okay.  Since our garden was unplanned, I didn't have the time to grow tomatoes from seed.  I bought whatever was offered cheap at the local store, and then if you factor in the fact that it's been extremely cool here.  They're just doing okay.  I had toss out (compost/critters) the first two batches we picked because they were so soft, and rotten, like they just couldn't ripen in this weather.  They're recovering, slowly, and I think some pruning has helped as well.  

The chickens (all 3 that we have left from last year's massacre)  are deeming themselves totally worthless.  Let me rephrase that.  The chickens, had we a rooster, would have hatched out billions of chicks by now.  But we don't have a rooster, and they're just cranky and mean when you try to shove them off of an egg.  Brooding is awesome when you have tons of chickens, and you want to hatch chicks.  Brooding is a pain in the butt when all three go into it.  Apparently there's plans to rehab our chicken efforts, so I've heard.  We'll see.

And like I said, July was not my month for taking awesome shots of the garden.  Although we did get tons of work done around here.  I think my grand total for planting was 4 blue spruces, 1 dogwood, 6 bushes, 2 pussy willows, 2 raspberry bushes, 1 peony, 1 hydrangea, and an entire shade flowerbed on the side of our house.  Knock on wood, everything looks to be doing good, and I hope it all comes back, because I so don't want to ever plant that much at one time ever again!  Well until I put in that mini orchard I've been wanting!  

On top of the gardening and planting, we've been re-doing our son's room, and cleaning up the entire property, trying to prepare it for some "hopeful" plans for next spring, and beyond.  And with super nice weather, and constant projects the summer all too quickly fades.  School starts next week, canning season has taken hold... and I don't want summer to end.  
How did July treat you?
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When it Rains

When you live in Missouri (and in general, the Midwest), you get used to all sorts of weather.  Tornadoes, Hurricane Jet Streams, Droughts, Floods, Blizzards, Tornadoes, and more Tornadoes.  But I can honestly say that this week, we had a storm like no other.

Typical summer storm started with some angry sounding clouds, that grumbled on for about an hour, until they twisted into a blacked sky, with more lighting flashes than the forth of July.  Then came the rain.  Like a fire hydrant in the sky had been opened on top of our house.  The storm quickly grew so intense, that we did the, "Check every weather forecast in the planet, this HAS to be a tornado," shuffle.

The radars showed a huge red splotch just over our county, no where else.  The red blob twisted, and grew, and shrunk, then spun, and grew again.  Rain, Flash, Straight Line Winds, Flash, Hail, Flash Flash, Rain, Hail, Thunder, Flash.  

Two hours later, and the storm slowly began to burn itself out.  Two hours of intense lighting, rain, and hail. Without a break.  That was the crazy part.  Storms here are always on the move, they come, and they go.  You get slammed, and then you get a break.  This one formed over us, and stayed.  

Luckily the house seems to be fine, with no major damage that I can find.  Everyone made it safely through the storms, including the goat.  ;)  My garden on the other hand... not a total loss, but there's quite a bit I'm positive we won't be able to save.

This is mainly how our entire property looks right now.  Lots of small trees down, and large limbs.  Luckily there were no larger trees taken down... but it's still a huge mess that will take forever to clean up.

During the storm our entire driveway was under water... this is the morning after the storm.

My Black Russian Sunflowers.  I might try to trellis the few that kept their roots in the ground.  Some tomato plants right next to these also were bent over, stakes and all.  Gotta love the wind shears.  ;(

My poor pop corn.  It was just starting to grow ears too.  Again, if possible, I'll try to trellis it all up, and see what I can save, but there's a lot of roots showing under that mess...

Loofa Squash, yanked off the trellis, and torn to bits by the hail.  Everything is looking pretty much like this, smooshed to the ground, with lots of holes.  It's going to be a waiting game to see what stays green, and what starts to turn brown.  The silver lining is that it all turns to compost eventually, lol.  Failures today, make awesome dirt tomorrow.  ;)  As long as all of my brand new Spruces, and my Pretty Baby Pink Dogwood stay alive, I'll be happy.

This by far entertains me to no end.  The one fallen limb, is holding the other fallen limb in the air.  Like someone jammed it in there after the fact.  And actually this side of the property had the most damage all together.  Another wind shear I'd imagine.  

So for the next few weeks it's going to be a lot of picking up sticks, and bonfires for us.  You're welcome to stop by, just bring the chainsaw and some marshmallows!   

~Emily

All Before 7am

I'm not sure if everyone who lives in the more rural parts of their towns deal with these things... or if it's just me.  I get that when you have more animals, and more things going on, that you'll have, in general, more to deal with.  But...

So I get up, way too early this morning, which wakes up the dogs.  Half a sleep, I shuffle downstairs to feed them, then shuffle back up to make the coffee while they eat.

We have a friendly little bird, who HAS to keep a nest above our basement porch lights, every year.  We've tried taking down her nest, and putting other objects up there every year to keep her away... and she won't give up.  So we've resorted to keeping a chair under her nest, so babies won't go splat, and we check to make sure they're all safe before we let out the dogs.

As routine dictates, I head out the upstairs door, to check on the baby birds before I let out the dogs... and I see one hopping across the driveway, followed be another one, and another one...  "HUN, the babies are hopping all over!"  Because, weird, right?  He yells back, let them be, maybe they're big enough, and leaves for work.

It's now 5:15 am, and it's dark, and I continue to the basement door.  And I see a dead baby on the ground.  I walk over it, to get to the door, to grab something to pick it up with... and BAM I walk right into a thick spider web, with a big friggen spider dangling in my face.  I'm doing the web dance, while looking for a stick to remove the big spider from my path, batting at him, trying to clear the way, when I look up towards the nest....

And a thick, icky, SNAKE tail waves back at me.  (insert all sorts of heart attacks, and skin jumping, and not so nice words here)  And I run inside.

My poor dogs had to wait 2 hours for me to gain enough confidence to go back outside to potty them.  The snake was gone... but not forgotten.  *shivers*

All before 7am.  So honestly, this sort of thing is common right?  I'm not the only one?  No?  At least tell me that finding a snake above your head while battling a spider is some sort of good luck right?

Help.....  ;)

June ~ Garden Update

The days of June have been going like this:

It's raining.

It's not raining, but there's five billion things to do.

It's raining.

And I think we had three really nice days, without rain or a billion things to do... but I seem to have forgotten my camera on all three of those days.  So this month's update is minus the billions of pictures I meant to take.

Harvest Count:  A Gallon bag of Radishes, and a Bushel of Carrots.  (Oh and 2 heads of lettuce that were watched a day too long and bolted)

So we were finally able to pick the carrots.  My toddler had been staring those suckers down since the day we planted them, waiting, holding her breath for the moment they'd be ready to pick.  AND OH MY GOODNESS was she excited.  Until she bit into one.  And then she promptly tossed it to the goat.  And yelled something about how rabbits could eat such yucky things.  Meanwhile my boy had half of the carrots eaten already.  

The carrots were a sort of Danver's Half Longs.  We have hard clay soil, and these are supposed to be the best type for dense dirt.  Considering that my seeds were 2 years old, and planted all wrong, almost all carrots were edible, and looked like carrots.  The goat gladly ate all the underdeveloped carrots.  

So then I had this great idea that I'd photograph the kids, with the plants... a whole height comparison thing.  But after 20 shots, this is the only one where they were both standing still, and straight.  It's the whole rain thing.  Their energy levels are busting over the damn sort-of-speak.

And we even have tomatoes growing this year!  Which is only because my Chickens all think that they're going to hatch an egg, and won't leave the coop long enough to discover said tomatoes.  Thank you people at the hardware store for selling ample amounts of cheap tomato plants... I still miss my heirlooms.  Next year there will be a HUGE seed order!

The weeds have been loving this weather, and I'm no where near done removing all the sod from the garden area.  And it's a non-ending battle... "Do I rip out more grass, or do I weed?"  So progress seems small.  Until you actually compare the few pics you have taken.

First Week of June:

This Week:

I just can't wait for next season, when all that green stuff is plucked, and rotted, and all making awesome healthy dirt.  And I don't have to break my back digging up all of that sod again!  Oh the plans that I have!

How's June treating your garden?

~Emily

Book Review ~ The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

There's one sure fire way to make a book a best-seller.  Ban it.  Ban it, then have numerous articles floating around the webs, and then people like me, who aren't up on the newest reads, who never would've stumbled across the book ever, then HAVE to buy the book, immediately.

True story.

So I read an article about this book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, and how parents were having it banned from a School Library, and how a group of teens started buying the books to give out, and there were cops involved, and free books, and angry parents.  Apparently the book was riddled with colorful subjects that parents weren't ready for their kids to read.

The book is really about a boy growing up on an Indian reservation, life as a teen, and throwing in the twist of going to school outside of the reservation.   Through candid words, and cartoons (the main character, Junior, was an aspiring artist), the writer takes you through illness, addictions, bullies, death, friendship, poverty, racism, life in a reservation, love, and life in general.

So is the book ban worthy?  Let's put it this way, I would not want my 8 year-old son to pick it up.  For now.  In a year or two, or three, heck yes.  The writing was wonderfully done, the story was captivating, moving, and should be read... just not by immature children.  There's talk of serious addiction, deaths, masturbation, but these are real life things that every child will have to face, and the way this book faces these issues is perfect.  So let's not ban it, but let's put it on the shelf away from the elementary kids... if you're asking me.

And no one's asking me if I think they should ban the book, but you may asking me if it's worth your time to pick it up.  And yes, yes you should read this book.  Especially in the age of poor writing and prose dominating the book store shelves.  And hey, every adult should be able to indulge in a book with cartoons every once in awhile.  ;)

Have you read any good books lately?  Did you pick up, "True Diary"?  What did you think?

~Emily


ps.  I bought this book with my own cash, and was not paid in any way for my review or my opinions.