Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

One of the peonies that I bought a while back, and planted (bareroot, from Lowes) is growing! Notice the lack of mulch or anything… just a bare hole in the lawn. We have a really old peony in the lawn that doesn’t seem to care about the grass, and Ron usually mows it down when it’s finished blooming. Crazy! I will probably go out and mulch it tomorrow. We are expecting anywhere from no snow to maybe 10 inches of the stuff over the weekend. Sheesh!

It was an absolutely fantastic day outside today. Nicer than yesterday, where I spent a bunch of time getting ready for going into work at noon and then got there to find out that I wasn’t needed after all. They did call me and leave me a voicemail on my cell phone. Thing is… I never look at my cell phone unless I need it… and usually that is to check the time or something, not to talk on it! LOL! I was a bit annoyed, it’s quite a drive and a waste of gas… not to mention I couldn’t even pick up my paycheck as the boss had just left and hadn’t signed them yet. So I went shopping, then came home and puttered around. Planted my latest addition to my new vineyard.

This morning I went to Lowe’s with the truck. Twenty bags of mulch for my grapes. I over-estimated, I’ve got 5 bags more than I needed at this point. I put down landscape fabric, then about 4 or 5 inches of mulch. When we get a calm and dry day I’ll go out and use RoundUp around the edges of that. Have to stop the bermuda grass and weeds so that the grape roots won’t have to struggle. Oh, and besides my Muscadine grapes, I also picked up a seedless table grape locally last week. Vanessa, which is a red seedless. I was VERY impressed with the roots when I planted it… they were HUGE! The Muscadines I bought online had very wimpy tiny roots. Lots of em, but tiny. The Vanessa grape had long fat roots winding around in the pot. I unwound them planting, of course.

All nice and mulched…. but you can’t see the vines in all that mulch. I did try a few photos, but decided they weren’t worth uploading. Basically, aside from the trips to post office and Lowe’s… my day was spent mulching the grapes.

I dumped out the dirt in the “window” boxes a while back, and used the potting soil I’d bought end of season last year to fill them back up about a month ago. Planted radish seeds in one, then forgot to water it! It was too cold right then, so after about a week I remembered about watering and watered them, and now I have baby radish plants, growing VERY slowly. Radishes are pretty much the fastest and earliest veggie you can get out of a garden… and I love em. Here is a photo of them… I had a duh moment today and moved them to where they get full sun all day today.

Because I had a second box that didn’t get full from that bag of potting soil, I finished filling that up with potting soil out of one of my tomato buckets… and planted more yesterday. The baby chicken wire and hardware cloth on top of the boxes is to keep the darn cats from digging and using them as toilets. I watered both of em yesterday, too.

I tried to get photos of buds of lilac, but my camera wouldn’t focus that closely… it has macro mode and I couldn’t get it to work. Can’t see the screen in bright sunlight, can’t read it anyhow without glasses sometimes. Oh well. The lilac needs some major pruning… sections of it are dead. We will wait until it’s done blooming, but the Althea might get lopped down this weekend. Needs it even more than the lilac. The floribunda rose in the yard needs dead wood cut out, too.

More signs of spring… Our neighbor Brent came up with his tractor and disced our garden area… and then came back a few days later with his tiller attachment and tilled it. It’s WONDERFUL! But Ron thought I should have asked/told him to do more of the garden area… even though what is done is fine for what we usually grow. So, being Ron, he decided that he would get his own tractor out and do it himself.

I don’t know how long he’s had this tractor, but it hasn’t been used in the 4 years I’ve known him. He got a new rototiller since I’ve met him… but never bothered with his old tractor. He said all it needed was a battery. But it ended up needing filters cleaned and gas put into it… the gas had evaporated! Gaskets had to be made… New terminals for a battery… and finally today he had to go get hydraulic oil for the transmission and lift.

The tractor is running, but the lift is not working, and that makes it pretty useless as a tractor. You need the lift to keep the discs out of the ground while you are driving, turning, etc. Or whatever you are pulling behind. You can’t just be dragging it all the time. Have to lift it up.

Anyhow, I took a photo of it today, parked in front of the garage. Then, before I started this post I looked up just how old the darn thing is. Shocker! It’s older than I am! It looks it, too, lol… but figure those are probably the original tires on it… dang!

That’s an 800 series Ford tractor and they were built from 1954 to 1957 in Dearborn, MI. This one looks like it still has original paint, too… what’s left of it. I hope Ron can figure out what’s wrong with the lift, he spent most of last weekend messing around with it and it looks like he’ll be spending this weekend messing with it, too. I’d rather have him help me with other stuff! LOL!

Finally, because this is also a sign of spring around here… kittens! There are only 3, and I only did close ups of two of them. They have different mothers, but the mother in the first picture decided to take em over when we moved the other 2 out of the cold. She’s not a very good mother, let 2 of her own die… I guess her mothering instinct is just slow working and she’s taking good care of all of them now. Big size difference… they are only a week apart! Kittens grow fast, the tiny ones are already getting their eyes open, not a week old yet.

This is Patches III….

And finally, a sort of tortoiseshell kitten…

Too cute! They didn’t even yowl at me when I picked them up to take their pictures! Itty bitty babies usually howl and holler… and are super hard for me to photograph, they wiggle too much. I just lucked out, I guess!

hugs,
Vyx

I forgot to mention…. I’d rather use newspaper or cardboard under my mulch, rather than landscape fabric… but it’s almost ALWAYS horribly windy here and I just can’t see how to lay that stuff down. The fabric stuff is on a roll, and held down by the roll…. and then I dump mulch on it. Can’t see doing that with a good layer of newspaper… the paper would blow away before I could do anything. So… landscape fabric it is.

It felt like spring this weekend and while I was at Lowes buying a new doormat I saw all the packaged bulbs and plants.

I couldn’t resist. I got a package of 5 stargazer lilies and two packaged peonies. I KNOW the darn things will be growing in the bags since they were in the store where it’s warm…. but it’s better to buy em now while the stuff is still alive.

Yesterday I was out digging holes. I planned to put the lilies out in my flower bed and the peonies up by the fence in front of the garage where we have another peony. So I started out digging one hole for the first peony. Not really that much digging… more digging the grass out and getting the rocks out. The dirt up in front of the garage… aside from the part we drive on… is WONDERFUL soil. Thick black dirt, not all clay… and not that many rocks, either. I love it when there aren’t a lot of rocks. The few I found I pitched through the fence to the cow pasture side. Ditto with the sod. But I dug up a huge piece of hinge… solid steel and pretty large. Plus a couple huge nails. Must be from the old farm that used to be here… the old farmhouse is in pieces slowly rotting away down at the bottom of the property.

Then I went over to my flower bed. I had Ron till up a strip a couple years ago… and he pried out a LOT of LARGE rocks. I added a few bags of good garden mix to it and planted brugsmansia and datura the first year. Last year I went with bags of clearanced glads. Tossed about 1/4 of what I bought, moldy or just dried up. I did have good glads last year, though. I ought to have better this year. I =thought= I was digging just outside of the strip and dug up some huge glad bulbs. Probably about 3x the size I planted. Great! I stuck em back in… hope I got em right side up, lol!

So I move over and dig some holes. It was a bit damp, but not muddy. I got a few lilies in and then went back to my peony hole to plant one of those. Surprise! Instead of just one peony in the package, I had two! Well, no problem, I’ll just put the extra one over in my flower bed. It can go where I had some sunflowers last year that didn’t get mulched. I stick my spading fork into the ground and pry… and up comes this whole yard of metal. Dig again and I get what looks like more of it. I’m not sure what it is… it looks like part of a rusted farm implement, something that would be dragged behind a tractor. What it’s doing under a fence and in between posts I don’t know. A bit of it had been sticking out, but I never tried to dig that deep last year in that spot. Good steel, just like the hinge piece… hardly rusted at all.

The trash that is at the bottom of the property is crazy… you can see pieces of roof with shingles. Old fridges laying on their sides with the doors hanging open… sheet metal… old pressure tanks from having to get well water out of the ground. Just lots of junk… and all covered over in summer with wild things growing and piles of brush getting tossed in. It’s actually great for wildlife.. the bits of roof make nice covers for animals that don’t actually dig burrows. Piles of brush left alone eventually break down and become dirt. We don’t really notice all that stuff in summer, it’s grown over. But winter… ugh. Could be worse, though… and I’m sure it would be if it didn’t have piles of old sticks and stuff thrown over it.

This is life in the country… and where no one outside of city limits had trash pick up until fairly recently. If you had the land… Just shove it over there, eventually it’ll rot away hopefully. Of course it doesn’t… My Mom’s property had trash pits all over it. When she had her pond dug, we were picking up plastic milk jugs for years. Plastic is forever. My Mom was good, though… she composts everything that can be, and then even before trash pick up would sort stuff out and save it up and haul it out to where the county would let rural customers take trash. Now she has trash pick up… she still composts. She does, however, still burn paper stuff. I’ve found that most people that live out in the country still do that. At least it’s just junk mail and cardboard from packaging… not trying to burn plastic milk jugs. That’s illegal here now, any burning of trash…. but I’ve also found that most people that live outside of town never heard about it. Probably the people that lived in town and had trash pick up voted on that, lol! There are the idiots still… people that don’t want to pay for trash pick up because they never have. They have DUMPS in their yards somewhere. Sometimes multiple dumps. Ugh!

It’s not nice digging up a bit of the yard for a flower bed and coming up with bits of old tin can and broken glass. Or pieces of old farm implements. From what we know, the previous owners of this property never had a vegetable garden…. too many rocks is what they said. That’s pretty unusual around here… everyone has a veggie garden, you did it because it was cheaper than buying food. If you had rocks… you picked them out, along with your children helping… because that is what people did. I’m still trying to find the old farm area where the garden was, though, lol! Ron did his picking up of rocks… he says that he thought he was going to end up with another pond. If you saw the pile of rocks you would understand. It’s HUGE. Perhaps the garden area was that section over where the peony is… NICE dirt. There is always a spot somewhere on an old farmstead where the dirt is good.

Anyhow. Today it rained most of the day and watered in all my new stuff. Now it’s going to flurry and then freeze again. Hope the peonies survive. Hope my new grapes survive. If not… well…we’ll see.

hugs,
Vyx

That’s my chiles before stringing up on strong thread to dry. Those small red ones are supposed to be ancho/poblano peppers, but they are NOT. Too small, wrong shape, and too thin walled even when they were green. The longer ones are anaheims, not a good variety. Again, these ones are too small.

All I can say is… don’t buy chile pepper seeds from a company called “Totally Tomatoes”!!! LOL!

The strings of them are hanging up to dry in various spots in the house… whereever I could find a place. Except for the hooks holding up the light over my craft table, there are NO other ceiling hooks in this house. I need to remedy that someday…

And the kitten photo… this is Freckles, the last of the kittens. My neighbor across the hiway adopted the little grey and white kitten AND she came back and adopted the chocolate brown kitten, too! I tried to talk her into taking one of the bigger kittens, but they liked the little ones the best.

Other than Freckles, all the other cats are either teenager kittens or grown ups. Freckles doesn’t mind… he will cuddle with anyone he can. Since the weather went suddenly cool… I go out on the porch and the cats, all of them, will be in a big pile! Too funny!

I think this is it for tonight… got chores to do.

Vyx

Last week I took some squash and tomatoes across the road. The kids came outside, their Mom was too busy to come to the door.

I noticed a screen topped aquarium on the porch. “Whatcha got in there?”

A snake. Ooh, really? I can’t see anything except some crickets and grasshoppers.

They did, they had the smallest baby snake I’ve ever seen. And insects for it to eat that there is NO WAY that poor baby could have eaten them.

To cut things short, I told them that it would probably die if they kept it, so could I take it and let it go?

Yep! So I brought it home, took some photos, and let it go in my flower bed.

Here are the pictures. That’s a regular sized mayonnaise jar to give you an idea of the size.

So, I have no idea what kind of snake it is. I don’t really care. I don’t like poisonous snakes in the yard, of course, but everything has a reason for living. And after I found out that we killed a king snake in the dog pen a few weeks ago… not knowing what kind of snake it was, and it was dark and upsetting the dogs… well, here I am putting a new snake into the yard. (King snakes are GOOD snakes, darn it)

I am not afraid of any kind of snake… have actually picked up a copperhead because I didn’t know what it was. And it was dark. And you know me, I’m fearless, lol! (plus I know how to handle snakes so as to not get bit)

Anyhow. I went back to work a week ago yesterday. Back to my old job that I got let go from back in February. Things are different, things are the same. The worst thing is that they no longer have a 3 min warning bell in the afternoon… it’s just a ONE min warning. That’s not enough time to clean up or anything. Heck, it’s hardly enough time to just DROP everything and get out of there. I guess the new kids they have there were lining up to clock out at the warning instead of cleaning up.

It ticks me off. I was always ready to dash out anyhow… I get to work at least 20 min early. I clean, I set up, I’m ready and probably working before the day starts. I don’t live right around the corner, tho, so I want to LEAVE when it’s time, not still be putting stuff away. I NEED that 3 min in the afternoon. Grrr.

Otherwise the job is good. I’m stuck off by myself with good soldering irons and a microscope, and I’m changing parts out on DVD player boards. Boring, sort of, but I don’t have to deal with anyone else most of the time. Hey, electronics assembly IS pretty boring. I need to find out the personal music player policy… I might finally need to get myself that MP3 Player I’ve sort of wanted for a while.

This is all for tonight…

After dog walking tonight, I wandered down to the berry hedge to see what was up. And to check on tomatoes and peppers of course.

I walked around to the east side and yes, still plenty of berries not being eaten up by bugs yet.

Got to the end and looked up. There is something furry sitting there. Is that a possum? A raccoon? It’s awful small…. a baby something.

Went back around to the west (the side that faces the house) and had a better look without sun glaring in my eyes. I thought it was a cat, but all our cats are at the house having their dinner kibble.

It’s a baby raccoon. No, didn’t think about running back to the house for my camera. I just couldn’t believe that a raccoon of any size would be sleeping in the berries. He was perched way up high, and sound asleep. Oh, he’d shift every so often, but you could still tell he was sound asleep. Wish I’d thought of my camera!

Where is his Momma? I look down and there are lots of trails beaten into the grass and mulch and stuff. Evidently this guy went to sleep and Momma left him. Perhaps all the berries are NOT being eaten by bugs, but by raccoons! Heck, the raccoons are probably eating any bugs in the berries, too.

Poor little guy. Left in the berry hedge. But now I know why my dogs are way interested in the berries these days.

And maybe that burrow under the berry hedge has a Momma Raccoon, not a family of armadillos! I thought raccoons lived in trees, but you never know… and raccoons sticking close would explain why I’m missing an 8 week old kitten and one of my adult cats has chunks of flesh missing from his back.

(otoh, Sadie HAS been interested in eating berries lately… she has to stop to pull berries off the wild blackberries and when I took her to our berry hedge she was eating those, too. But only right off the vine… pick one for her and she turns her nose up at it, goofy dog)

Other news: I’m back to work on Monday. There will be a whole lot less late night posts from me. But I got called back to work like I was on lay off… and I’d thought I was fired. I’ve had a nice vacation, nearly 6 months of it and all thru the good part of the year. Was getting serious about finding another job, but nothing is really out there that I can do. So the job call back is a good thing.

hugs,
Vyx