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Hi Everyone,
The chestnuts are in full bloom around here for the last month—I guess you can say that May is the month when all the “smelly” trees bloom (chestnut and mimosa). They both permeate the air, but the mimosa has a powerfully sweet smell, and the chestnut has a powerfully pungent smell—one that makes you a little nauseated. We don’t just have one chestnut tree either—we have a whole orchard of chestnuts (like around 200). Last Sunday night when I did chores (with my camera in hand), I had to go up to the chestnuts to feed Yasha. The sheep were grazing under the chestnuts on the lush green grass, and the trees were loaded with tasseling flowers. I walked around taking pictures of the trees, the sheep, the birds in the trees and the bugs on the flowers. While I may think the trees stink, the bugs are quite attracted to the smell, and the birds—well they are not dumb, for they know that where flowers bloom, bugs dine—and so can birds!
Chestnuts are not the only things producing uniquely pungent smells around here. A few weeks ago we spotted a skunk around the chicken house. We would see him walk through the garden—and see the signs of him being there later as he left holes behind. Some mornings he would be in our yard or in the front field. There was never a day that we didn’t see him. He would come out around 5:30 in the evening, and then he would go to bed around 8:30 in the morning. It never failed that our worker, Steve, would be at the chicken house feeding the birds and letting them out for the day when Pepe le Pew would arrive, walk past him (like four feet away), and head under the house to sleep for the day. He is a very cute creature—but I was beginning to wonder if it really was a Pepe le Pew or if it was a Penne le Pew. Friday night that mystery was solved—kind of. Papa was out locking up the chickens after dark when he spotted the skunk. When he shined his flashlight on it he saw that there were THREE baby skunks with her. So we decided that Pepe must be a Penne. When Papa came in and told us about the three babies, I grabbed the camera and Mom grabbed another flashlight and we all went back outside to get a close up look of the new kids on the block. Needless to say, we never could find them. Once I thought I saw their eyes glowing from the flashlight—but when I got up close I found the glowing dots to be spider eyes instead. I knew that spider eyes were reflective, but I had never got a chance to follow the glow back to a spider. The next morning we only saw the big skunk wandering around in the yard—the one we called Pepe. Then while Mom was doing dishes, she saw another skunk high tail it for the chicken house—but it looked different, it didn’t have as much white on it as the other one. We still hadn’t seen the babies. When Steve was taking care of the ducks he let them out, gathered their eggs, pulled up the anchors and dragged their hoop house to new ground. When he went back around to anchor the house back down he came in contact with a teeny, tiny, adorably cute little skunk—about the size of a squirrel. All we can think is that it was nestled under the ducks nesting boxes. The little skunk began to slowly make its way to the chicken house. On its way to the chicken house it detoured through the milk cow field, and of course the cows had to sniff it out. I was concerned that they would kill the little skunk (for the beef cows killed one of my geese a few weeks back). I shooed off the cows while Steve ran to get me a bucket. Mom, Steve and I were all wondering at what age a baby skunk can spray. I poked at it with my foot—and it raised its tail at me. Momma told me that I had better NOT get sprayed. I backed off, but when Steve gave me the bucket I intended to scoop it up and carry it to its “home”. The little critter was pretty fast though and managed to stay just ahead of the bucket. I didn’t want to aggravate it too much, so I didn’t pursue it too fast. Once I did manage to get it into the edge of the bucket—but it sprayed the bucket. In the end, the little skunk was safely home under the chicken house, the bucket stunk, but I still smelled like me. We haven’t seen any of the skunks since then—but we sure can smell them when we drive by the chicken house.
Last week we weeded and planted, and weeded and transplanted, and weeded to unearth plants that are already growing. I replanted the zinnias and sunflowers in the cut flower garden—and the zinnias are already coming up! I transplanted paprika, cayenne, cinnamon basil, and cup and saucer vines. I had planted zucchini back in March, but only about four plants of the 20 plus are still around—I pulled them up for looking too puny. This time I dug a whole, filled it with chicken compost, covered it up with the garden soil and planted more seeds. The yellow squash that I did this with is looking really good. The acorn squash and the pie pumpkins are producing abundantly—but a few of the “acorn squash” plants are producing yellow squash. I do not know what exactly happened there, but we did enjoy our first squash meal of the season.
I spent Friday afternoon in the kitchen finishing three batches of salves that I started making a month ago. My Mom’s Aunt placed an order for some Soothing Salve (of which I had enough, but filling the order left my supply low), some Black Salve (of which I was one short), and some Virus Salve (of which I haven’t made in a few years so was totally out of). The Virus Salve I made years ago when I had some warts on my wrist. I had found this Virus Tea that you could drink, but the ingredients sounded a little too exotic for me to drink—so I decided to turn them into a salve. The salve also came in handy when my Grandma and her sister came for a visit and the sister had a BAD case of shingles that itched so bad she couldn’t get any sleep. I gave her a jar of the Virus Salve and she slept perfectly that night and has been sold on the salve ever since.
Saturday afternoon Mom and I had one goal—to fill up more trays of our GreenStalk planter. We had seen them “advertised” on quite a few of the homesteading vlogs that we keep up with and figured that it was the perfect solution to growing strawberries and herbs around the house. Each planter has seven trays that hold six plus plants each. We wanted to try growing some lettuce in one tray, marigolds in another, herbs in two of them, and we cut off some of the runner babies from our strawberry plants in another. Mom had made an herb garden out front in the courtyard a few months ago in an old metal water tank—but the plants were not thriving. They really didn’t like the full sun. Therefore, we dug them up and planted them in the GreenStalk and then we filled the metal tub with basil—it likes hot summer sun!
According to the weather channel it looks like spring has come to an end as the temperatures this week rise to the 90’s. We still have 60’s at night, and I have been told that the grasses don’t really start growing until the nights are in the 70’s. By the look of some of our fields not only do we need that 70 degrees, we also need some rain.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare
The butterflies don’t mind the smell though—I guess to them it is the smell of dinner!