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Hi Everyone,
I think that forget-me-nots are some of my favorite flowers—but I never can grow enough to cut them for a bouquet. I fell in love with them a few years ago when I planted some packets of wildflower seeds. Forget-me-nots were in the mix, and a few of them came up. I want a large patch of them, so last fall I planted a whole packet of forget-me-not seeds in their own 4 x 4 bed—but none sprouted. There is always next year, but until then I shall continue to marvel in the few little plants that peek out of the forest of wildflowers.
Last week started out with company from sunup to sundown. Monday we caught up with an old friend who is looking for some ideas for a milking parlor for her cows. Since we are in the process of having a new one built, and her mother is one of our customers, her mother brought her over to see our set up. It was nice to catch up with Angie, and here how things are going with her and her farm. She was gone about an hour when a new friend showed up to help me weed in the garden. We met Taylor on Christmas Day at a friend’s house. Taylor finally found some free time and decided to spend it here on the farm helping us in the garden. When Taylor arrived, I was busy leveling some dirt that Papa dumped over the fence. For years we have looked for a good place to make into a permanent compost pile, but we never could figure it out. Finally this year I decided that the back corner of the garden would be perfect—we can easily get to it from the garden side, it is not in the drive lane, and the tractor bucket can easily dump compost materials in it from the outside of the garden. The next trouble was that it needs to have a concrete floor and walls—to keep those pesky invasive weeds from infiltrating the compost. I thought that maybe we could do it ourselves—but time was not being found. I was ready to call a concrete expert to do it for me—but then that morning I was told that the two 8ft x 8ft concrete pads that were around our old milking parlor could be dragged over to the area that I wanted to use. Perfect! There was one problem though—the ground was not level. I had the milking parlor contractors take their leveler to the area and I found that one corner slopped 2 inches and the other corner slopped 4 inches. No problem! With all the dirt that was dug up around the old parlor I had plenty to make the area level. Once the area was level, then Taylor and I made a covering for the potatoes that had been frost bit pretty badly from the 33 degree weather the night before—and it was supposed to be cold again that night. We worked together to make a metal frame over the potatoes, then we got a big piece of plastic and covered the top of the frame with it. The wind was pretty strong, so we had to find some concrete stepping stones to hold the plastic in place. Finding those stones wasn’t very easy—for most were in use as walkways that were in use, but on the back wall of the garden there was still a row of stones that used to be a walkway, but is now covered thickly in weeds. I grabbed a shovel and some gloves and was able to unearth each stone—had a few fights with the cat claw vines and the blackberry brambles. Once the potatoes were tucked in under their new greenhouse, Taylor and I headed over to the onion bed and weeded them. Weeds have a tendency to prevent onions from forming bulbs, and I am determined to succeed in onion growing this year. We have already harvested a few of the Vidalia onions and they have been nice and sweet. We finished up in the onion bed around 5:00 and then we headed inside to cook dinner. Taylor left around 8:30, and we had such a good time fellowshipping as we talked about the Bible and how God had worked in our lives. I think that she is hooked and shall return whenever she can—and she thinks that an egg party and milking will be next on her “bucket list”.
Mom spent a lot of time using the back hoe to dig up the elephant grass from the back yard and the garden—I am now a step closer to a garden pond! Digging up the grass in the back yard also puts us one step closer to having a row of redbuds and crepe myrtles in our back yard. Maybe we shall plant daffodils and lilies underneath!
The time to plant the spring garden is nearly upon us and we are still looking at large beds of heavy weeds. Thursday morning I was ready to pay someone $1000 if they could remove every weed from our garden in an hour. On Tuesday morning Steve and I worked to demo the wattle fence squash beds in one of the large garden areas. None of the squash plants grew more than four inches last year—which meant we didn’t get any pumpkins, yellow squash, or spaghetti squash last year. I plan to plant cut flowers in that bed this year—we hope to sell flower bouquets this year, for I just cannot keep all these flowers to myself, I just have to share. So on Tuesday Steve and I tore apart the frames of the raised beds, leveled some of them, and Steve mowed down all the weeds. The next step will be to level the rest of the mounds of dirt, get rid of a few extra-large ant beds, and then till the whole area up. I bought some weed cloth to cover the area with, and then we will burn holes in the cloth and plant the flowers. On Thursday I actually came up with an idea on how to get rid of all the weeds in the other beds without pulling them all up by hand. I told Steve that this is the year we have got to start using our brains more than our brawn—but until then I will have to use his brawn, because my body just cannot handle some of the weeding. My goal is to cover a bed with plastic or a cover crop as soon as I have harvested the last of an item for the season—but I never seemed to get around to it last fall. Mom and I spent hours on our hands and knees pulling weeds in a 4ft x 16ft section—and there are 50 of those sections. I just couldn’t do that again, nor do we have that kind of time. So I brainstormed and came up with a triangular hoe, a garden rake, and a wheel barrow. Steve used the hoe to cut all the roots off below the ground, and then I used the rake to pull all the weeds into a pile. Once I had the wheel barrow full, then Steve wheeled it over to the chickens and gave them a treat. In about 15 minutes we had two sections done. When our time in the garden came to an end (well, when I physically couldn’t go no more) we had removed all the weeds out of ten of the twelve 4ft x 16ft sections. We had spent just over two hours in the garden—and I was tickled pink with what we had accomplished.
My niece, Makenna, turned eight a week ago. On Friday we all finally had time to celebrate it. We went to the Jacksonville Zoo. It took us until 11:30 to get everything here on the farm done, a lunch packed and the birthday girl and her family picked up. We ate a picnic lunch in the parking lot when we got there, and then we headed into the zoo. There was Grandpa (my Papa) and Grandma Street (my Mom), Aunt Tiare, Daddy (my brother-in-law Gary), Mommy (my sister Nichole), Makenna (my 8 year old niece), and Josiah (my 3 year old nephew). The first stop was to pet the stingrays, then we headed off to feed the giraffes. Makenna really wanted to see a cheetah, but there were only lions and tigers and leopards. Josiah’s favorite animal was the giant otters. He laid down on the step in front of the glass that held the water. The otters would come down and investigate him—which was really cute. Makenna loves dinosaurs and was excited to see a Komodo dragon—a real live living dinosaur. There was a big carousel and the children wanted to ride it. Since Josiah is only three that meant an adult could ride with him—standing beside him, not on one of the animals. I quickly told Nichole that I was riding with Josiah—it was an Auntie privilege. We found our rides—Josiah rode a bear, and Makenna a dolphin. As the carousel began to spin and the animals began to go up and down Josiah was thrilled, Makenna was scared of heights, and I realized that the ride spun around which is something my head doesn’t do very well without me getting dizzy. Thankfully it didn’t go too fast, so I survived. Makenna soon learned to enjoy the up and down. When the ride was over and I took Josiah off of his bear, he climbed right back on quicker than a wink. Later we went on the train ride that took us half way around the outskirt of the zoo—seeing the behind the scenes. Mom and Gary both enjoyed looking at all the plants—and I think that I was able to convince Mom that we need a Japanese Magnolia tree and we both agreed that we need some weeping mulberry trees. Makenna wanted to see an alligator, so we headed to the Florida section of the zoo. There they had a hurricane simulator, and Mom, Nichole, Makenna, Josiah and I all climbed in. We laughed and laughed as the wind blew faster and faster making our hair fly crazily. Once it reached 78 mph then it slowed back down. We left the zoo around 5:00 and decided that before we left we would eat the carrot cake that I made for Makenna. I climbed into the van to get the cake and got stuck there as I helped Mom serve it up. The negative was that the van filled up with tiny flying bugs that bit. It was getting very annoying and I couldn’t wait to get out of the van. What I didn’t know was that everyone on the outside was also fighting these flying, biting bugs. I grabbed my cake and a glass of milk and went over to the curb to sit down to eat. I put my glass down first, and then I sat down. Just as soon as I sat on the curb I somehow managed to dump my cake upside down on my lap. UGH!!! Of course it was icing side down. Papa gave me a plastic knife and some paper towels and I cleaned myself up. A little later Makenna wasn’t enjoying the icing, so Grandma was transferring the icing from Makenna’s cake to Grandma’s cake—when the bugs bit Grandma’s arm and she swatted them and sent the cake and icing flying upside down on her socks and in to her shoes. My sister laughed and said that she had two children and neither one of them got any cake on their clothes—but we two adults had done a pretty good job of it! We had a lovely day together, and really enjoyed our time at the zoo.
Now the time has changed and our days are longer, or are our nights longer? The sun sets later, but it also rises later. This morning we got up at old time 4:00 to milk the cows and they thought we were crazy. While all of you were still cozy in your beds, we did get to see a really interesting sight. I saw a red streak rising high into the sky from the horizon. After a little bit the red disappeared and a white light was left, then the red tail appeared again, and disappeared leaving just the white light—and then it was gone. Later we could see a large white cloud in the sky—all the sky around the cloud was pitch black for it was still early, but the cloud glowed white. The winds played with it stretching it out to all kinds of shapes and sizes. It was very beautiful, and when the sun did begin to rise, the sky had lots of red undertones. I guess it was worth getting up early after all.
My eyes are beginning to close, and so I must say farewell until next week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare