Observation Medication 7/15/11

WHEW!  It is HOT! 

I'm going to be honest today and tell you I haven't been outside much. 

Maybe it is aging, maybe it is global warming...

I don't know what it is, but it is just hot and I am not enjoying it.

What I am enjoying is the bounty that is coming from the garden.

Jason made pickles on Sunday from our cucumbers.

I have started freezing the green beans as they come in from the garden.

Jason's grandfather has assured me when his lima beans start coming in I can come over there and pick all we want.  (Kalib will be thrilled)

I'm hoping to can some tomatoes this weekend.  (There is nothing like opening a jar of homegrown diced tomatoes for soup when it is wet and cold outside or making fresh salsa from tomatoes that have flavor rather than from out of season tomatoes.)

We have a watermelon on the vine. (YUMMMMYYYY!!!!) Hopefully more to come.  We made Watermelon and cantelope juice last year and it was delicious.  You just puree it and then strain it if you don't like pulp.  You can add sparkling water to it if you want a little fizz too.  Talk about refreshing a sweet.  MMMMM makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

I've got the ingredients for fresh pesto on my grocery list, so I'll be making some pesto to freeze sometime during the week.  (You know, in all the spare time I have.)

We've (well, Kalib) has started taking clippings from the herbs we use in teas and cooking and they are starting to dry for us to save for the year.

My kitchen is in a constant state of MESS, but its a good mess and one I can definitely live with and enjoy.

Fresh vegetables?

OH! YES!!!! 

And best of all, we've been able to share our abundance with friends!

I grew up eating fresh vegetables or canned vegetables from the garden, so to have them flowing through my home to feed my children brings me immense pleasure and satisfaction. I hope it makes my parents feel good to know their love of growing food when I was a kid has filtered down through me. 

I appreciate the work that goes into growing good food and my taste buds appreciate it even more. 

There are few things in this world as good as a ripe tomato straight off the vine.

We've got to make some plans to go pick blueberries!  Blue berry pie in winter?  PLEASE!!!!

One day, all these blue berries Jason has around here are going to really begin bearing fruit and we are going to be covered up in blue berries.  I say, bring it on!

Have a great weekend.

Try to stay cool and hydrated! 

See you  on Monday!

Observation Medication - It's Good for the Soul

I have decided to officially dedicate Fridays to my observations of the world around me and my beautiful pre-teen came up with the new official title of my Friday posts!

Observation Medication - It's Good For the Soul

Last week I told you all I had challenged myself to noticing one new thing about the natural world a day.   It has been enlightening to me how much more connected I feel to life while making an effort to really pay attention.

Here's some of what I observed THIS week.

The Oak Leaf Hydrangea is about to bloom - Hydrangeas are my favorite blooming shrubs.  When I was a little girl I had a blue one right outside my bedroom window under the cherry tree.  When it was blooming was when I most enjoyed sitting by my bedroom window so that I could see the blooms.  I even remember moving my bed one time closer to the window so I didn't have to work so hard to look out it.  (Can you imagine how small I was as a child being that I'm only 4'11" now?)

The heuchera patch has doubled over the last two years and they have put out their dainty little flowers, but the leaves of this plant are what it's all about.  The diversity they add to the garden.  YUMMY!

These sweet little flowers are some you will typically only find in a plant nerds garden.  Or maybe they have become more popular now that gardening has a foothold once again in people's lives, but when I was in school, these sweet little gems were hard to find.  They are Hepatica.  The blooms only last a few days, but they are so precious.

India's roses are in full bloom and have been saved from the inch worms thanks to some safer soap and diligence of pulling them off as well as the June Beetles that feast upon them at night.  Most evenings as dark settles in, you can find our pre-teen outside on the phone chatting it up and pulling bugs off her roses.  She never fails to amaze me at her dedication to her roses.  She keeps them blooming all summer by pulling the dead flowers off and keeping the bugs off.

The coreopsis by the fire pit is just days away from bursting open with their bright yellow flowers!

And lastly, my sinuses are fully aware that the honeysuckle has started blooming.  When the honey suckle is in bloom is the only time in spring other than when the pine drops its dust of fine pollen that my allergies kick in.  I'm not allergic to the pine like I am the honeysuckle it just fills my nostrils and I can taste it in my mouth, but the honeysuckle even as sweet as it is makes me sneeze and cough like crazy.  Thankfully, they only last a few weeks and it doesn't make me miserable, but we have to keep the windows shut while they bloom. :(

Until next time!  

I'm off to do laundry, squeeze in sewing down the LAST of the beads, work, and then if time permits, the fabric shop to pick up some backing fabric since I didn't manage to get there yesterday!

This Week

I set myself the challenge a few weeks ago to try to notice one new thing about my world each day.  I'm finding it to be pretty easy thus far with everything coming out fresh and new with it being Spring and all.  I'm thinking that as summer wears on it may be harder to find things I see as "new", but so far I'm really enjoying the process of paying closer attention to what is happening around me. Honestly, it makes me feel more awake and in tune - which I only see as a good thing.

This week...

I noticed the ticks are out in full force.  I think I have already pulled a dozen off that have actually managed to bite me. I haven't been counting the ones that I find crawling on me, but there have been plenty of them. I'm trying not to complain about the ticks (or mosquitoes for that matter) because I know all life has purpose, but sometimes I just don't see it.  I try to be grateful for the things that don't necessarily make sense to me too.  I definitely need to make some bug repellent.

On the brighter side of things

The day lilies in our backyard have opened up over night bringing some color to the garden.

These sweet little iris that only bloom for a few days have opened.  They are the smallest iris we have in our yard and the blooms only last a few days.

My FAVORITE iris opened up this week.  The flowers are so heavy they always fall over so we bring them into the house and enjoy them inside.

They are so incredible - the work the plant has to do just to produce something so uniquely beautiful.

If I was a bumble bee or butterfly I would certainly come and check this flower out for delicious pollen.

The sage is blooming.  If we are lucky it will bloom again before fall comes.  I'm going to harvest some leaves for cooking. (YUMMY)

The Baptisia (False Indigo) opened up this week.  This one is another big favorite flower of mine.  It was one of the first flowers I came to love while studying horticulture in college.  Most flowers I know what it is about them that I love so much, but Baptisia is one of the few plants I look forward to every year for no reason other than for its beauty. 

And lastly, I've been admiring the green brier in the woods.  It's so lush - and plenty dangerous for the legs when walking through it.  Did you know you could eat it?  I dare you to try it.  The taste might surprise you.

Have a great weekend!  I'm finally off to round up beads and get back on that quilt!

The Hens got a Pen

As much as I love having yard birds they are causing damage to the garden and frustrating that sweet HuBby of mine.  And we just cannot have that - he's too sweet and the food he grows is too good to give it all to the chickens.

So, the Hens got a Pen.

It seems every time we turn our backs to those lovely feathered ladies they are back in the garden chowing down on everything good.

Who can blame them really?  With all the freshly turned earth and the leaf mulch that covers the ground with all those yummy bugs in there or the fresh hay he put on the freshly planted grass seed?  Not to mention those delicious seeds that Jason's hidden in the soil.  

I'm no chicken, but I definitely understand the temptation that draws them into the garden.

The girls digging up the second round of cucumber starts was the straw that broke the camels back. 

The chickens do not like the pen one bit.  They've been fussing all day. Thankfully, hens forget quickly.  It won't be long until they accept it and I won't have to hear Jason screaming fowl (pun!) language from the backyard over them messing up his hard work any longer.

How do I feel about the pen?  

Well... It's going to take some getting used to visually.  It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but J's planted some gourds to grow up the fence and we can plant other things around it to kind of camouflage it.  I'll miss the girls and their clucking close to the house, but I won't miss Fred, the rooster, chasing the kids around the yard and I certainly won't miss chicken poop on the front porch.  

I'm embracing it as a step forward in our chicken raising and a step forward in our food raising. 

Now, I'm ready for those cucumbers and tomatoes to start bearing good fruit for us to eat!  Once those veggies start rolling in, I will LOVE the hen pen!

And for those of you interested in the quilt... I haven't picked it up in 2 weeks.   So much for working a couple of hours a week on it. But, rather than giving myself a hard time over it, I see Spring is here, we are all trying to get outside and enjoy the weather before the heat and humidity move in.  I'm spending lots of time with the kids and we FINALLY have no plans this weekend, so I will be getting back to it in the next couple of days. 

These are the days of wine and roses

I got all the bottles in the ground and got to spend the day in the warmth of the sun.  It was a pretty breezy day where it was warm in the sun and cool in the shade.  Our yard has plenty of both which is fortunate for us since Jason loves growing food and I have a deep love for shade plants and natives.

This is where I left off last year at the end of November.

Kalib had a  friend here and they were sweet enough to help me move all the bottles outside and get them laid out where I was going to get started.  Then Jason got involved and started fixing a path that I was hoping to get to before I ran out of bottles

I finished the right side of the path all the way to the grass.

My plan is to eventually take the bottles all the way past the gate in the photo to the edge of the wood and line the raspberry bed with them. That's AFTER I finish the front gardens.  (Many MANY bottles later)

 After finishing the section to the right of the path, I came back to the front porch area and started heading up the path towards where we park our cars.  I stopped where they ran into the liriope we have planted down that path.  I'm still trying to decide whether to go all the way up the path or not, so I'm stopping there for now

Once I hit the liriope, I moved over to the path that runs to the water spicket.  This little path becomes an issue every summer as it was getting overgrown with liriope and there was a large cherry tree in the corner. Jason pulled out the cherry tree and pulled up the liriope and we have replaced what was there with roses for India.  (She raises ALL the roses around here - they are her plant specialty)  

As I get more bottles I'm going to line the right side of this path next. We will mulch the path and getting to that water spigot in the summer will be a breeze. (This is the path Jason was working on in the other photos - doesn't it look nice?)  This spigot is where all the irrigation for the front yard connects to, so being able to get in and out of there easily has become important.

This is a view looking back towards the porch and shadier side of the yard.  (We are thinking about how to light the bottles at night.  Any suggestions?)

 

 

If you are willing to save your bottles for me.  I would really appreciate it.  (Well, that is if you live close by and drink wine.)

I am also trying to think of somewhere local I could pick up bottles from that would be convenient for me.  What I think would be perfect is somewhere that serves a small variety of wines and doesn't go through tons of bottles a night, but enough I would need to pick them up every few days.  I think I could handle that.

Now, I'm off to sit out in the sunshine a read a bit, then back to those flowers!

She's Back on the Bottle

Oh Yes!  The weather is warming, the rain has moved out for a few days and the sun has FINALLY come out.  I'm excited to be able to get back to my garden bottle project. I have been a busy girl in the kitchen scraping labels off of wine bottles. 

I had to leave this project alone at the end of November because the soil was getting too hard and the weather too cold and WAY too wet.  Can someone remind me just how many snow days did we get this year again?  Oh. That's right. Too many for Georgia.  

Here is where I last left the bottle project - my stopping point for winter.

After a while, I even quit taking in wine bottles through the winter. I had so many waiting to have labels removed and get into the ground that I eventually started feeling like I was going to run out of space to store them before it was warm enough to get to them.

Our annual Maypole party is coming up and we are eager to get the yard whipped into shape for the myriad of people with whom we will be celebrating the return of the warmth, the blooming spring, and ALL the new life swirling and spiraling around us. 

With the Maypole party and the sunny weather in mind on Friday morning, I put a new blade into my razor knife and started bringing bottles in.  Looking at the huge pile of them awaiting me, I was a bit unsure of how long it would take me to get the labels off them all.  I was wondering whether I would actually get them into the ground this weekend on not.  As it turns out, it only took me about 5 hours all total to get them all done (there were A LOT of them)  

First, I bring them in and soak them in warm soapy water.  I try to let them soak at least 5 minutes before I start trying to get the labels off.  This seems to soften the glue and helps the label come off much easier.  (There are plenty of products out there one can use for this, but I'm into keeping it simple and cheap - even if it takes a little longer.)

Then, I bring them over to the other side of the sink and scrape the labels off - some labels come off really easily and some do not.  I don't worry about getting everything off - eventually the glue will wear down in the sunshine and weather.

Once the labels are off, I rinse the bottle one more time and make sure everything sticky is off and then move them to the drying rack.

When the drying rack is full, I usually move them outside and then bring in more, but I was determined to get them all done at once this time, so I set out towels and dried them on my counter.

It turned out to be 78 bottles we cleaned.

That's a lot of bottles and I only drank a few of them!

Now, I'm off to get them into the ground!  

garden progress

I'm making progress so keep those bottles coming!!!

mosaics?

Just about as long as I've been quilting I've wanted to try my hand at making mosaics. It's a very similar design process in my mind and one day, when Jason and I get to build a house, I want to be able to do some fancy tile work myself. They aren't exactly the same process, but close enough. I have dreams of this spa like bathroom with a huge bath tub and shower all open and in this bathroom, I dream of really beautiful tile work similar to what they have created in the Jeju Spa. I'm always thinking ahead and I know that we will figure it out and do it. When we finally get to build a house, I have no doubt that it will be stellar - even if it takes us years to put up all the walls. The idea of doing most of the work ourselves really excites me so everything I learn I think about how we are going to use it in our nest... Anyhow, I digress (imagine that?!)

I've really been wanting to mosaic and with the wine bottle project happening and the inspiration in the yard, now feels like the time to take on the endeavor. I am intentionally not planning my life out to the minute right now and I'm really enjoying the freedom that not being over scheduled is giving me. It opened up Saturday to do a little tile shopping with Kalib (we also hit the new Trader Joes for a few things while we were at Lowe's - we couldn't get that close and not run in there for like the 10th time) - then on Sunday, we went to the flea market where we picked up some mirrors and a few other little odd and end things and then... we set to work.

Truth is, they aren't all that yet and Kalib's turned out the best so far. I started too big and Jason's got rained on. Mine isn't finished yet and I still have quite a bit of work before we get to the grouting stage, but I thought I would share the process with you none the less as it is exciting to me and by sharing I have to finish. Not that I don't want to, I did enjoy it, but it's actually a lot harder than I thought and we worked on the ground outside and I think next time I will choose a harder surface and try to cut more of my tiles before I put glue down. (This part wore my hands out using the nippers and hammer - not to mention all the little glass shards I got in my hands - I should also wear gloves) We also couldn't find all that much in the way of color without spending a ton of money, so we are now in the process of collecting things we can break to get colors and somewhere along the way we'll go to a flooring store and maybe find some goodies there. There are all kinds of tiles available on line, but I'd like to obtain as much as possible as local as possible. I did find a great yellow ash tray at the flea market to buy, but India talked me out of it because it was circa 1970's and was pretty - for an ash tray. I didn't buy it because I wouldn't have ever broken it. She was right. She hasn't made a mosaic yet because she went to her friend, Casey's, house on Sunday, but the next time we get it out she wants to try... if it's sunny this weekend we may give it a second go. The plan is to leave mine outside in the garden. I want to make yard art for now! AND KEEP THOSE WINE BOTTLES COMING!!! I need to get a good many more before I post more pictures of that project.

Ok, so here are the photos SO FAR.

Kalib's - his is really going to look great when we get it grouted and he broke everything himself.


mine - I think it will look much better once it has been grouted because the pieces will stand out more (maybe I'm making excuses because my first one didn't turn out as good as I had hoped)


Jason's - the kids are pretty upset with him about this one - this is an old well pump they painted with Grace a long time ago and it has been a staple of the yard and he changed it and they are very upset about it. I think it's going to look really cool, so maybe they should just help him.

wine bottles

I have ask all my friends to please save me their empty wine bottles for a garden project I am also working on. Jason and I started out our yard with really big intentions when we settled on this property. I was a horticulture student at the time and had access to A LOT of plants. We built our front yard garden while I was in school and it has evolved over the years with the black eyed susan's spreading to every corner of the yard and the more fragile plants getting choked out by the ground ivy that we must have picked up in a bag of leaves or in some mulch we bought. Every year before this past Spring (Spring of 2010) we have gotten out in the yard got it all weeded and mulched and tried to fight off that creeping plant to no avail. So, we have decided to pull out as many of the plants as we can save, transplant them somewhere there is no ivy and move them back assuming they survive the move next spring. Last year, we gave up and let the ivy have the beds because Jason was tending the big garden in the field (which we have decided is more than we can handle in our lives right now and he is revamping the backyard to be more productive) and I just have so little time for gardening. Our focus is just getting those beds to looking good again so that even if they are empty they aren't covered in weeds. We are going to loose some plants, but my hope is that if they are all cleaned up and ready to start somewhat a new in spring I can throw in some new herbs and really think about what I want to be growing and using in our home. I wasn't thinking about anything being useful to me when we started out and we have a small greenhouse in the back now that I can start from scratch pretty easily. There are few things as awesome as homemade tinctures and salves and teas all from the garden - not to mention how much we all love having flowers in our homes.

So, where do the wine bottles come in? Well, when I was in school I always wanted to create a more Howard Finster feel to our land. Maybe not quite as extreme as he had his, but maybe - I want it evolve into whatever it becomes. I love the outward expression of your home being a creative entity as much as your spirit. Because if your home and garden ooze creativity it feeds the creative spirit inside so much more. You know how when you are passionately working on a project (at least for me) so many more always come into my mind and my issue is that I don't have time to make all the art that I want to, so I have to pick and choose. This project is easy because I only have a few wine bottles at a time to put in, so it only takes a few minutes and the kids helped with this first row helping to set them. It took us maybe an hour because we had so many to start with. We discovered putting a stick in the ground to stand them on made all the difference in getting them to stand properly and right next to each other - otherwise getting them side by side wasn't working. I'm excited. My plan is to go around any area in the garden that is supposed to be not for foot traffic with wine bottles. So far, I love the look in front of India's roses and I have other projects with mirrors and glass - something similar to mosaics in mind to go behind the roses as time and money permits - and the kids will be able to help me with everything I want to do. Double bonus, I'm doing something creative with my kids and we get to do whatever we want! So, SAVE ME YOUR WINE BOTTLES, please.

Here's what we have so far...


I even like the labels still being on. It gives them a worn look.


Some of the bottles were already upside down in the garden, but they were being placed rather haphazardly, so I'm just bringing a little organization to it.


We don't need beer bottles, save those for Jason Bray's beer making. As you can see in the picture, they don't quite fit with the others. Who knows, maybe I'll end up using some somewhere along the way, but for now, I like the wine bottles.

jason made a friend

While working in the garden last night, Jason unearthed this critter. It just stuck around hanging out in the dirt beside him. It was there the entire time I was standing there talking to him and then India came out and got me for a phone call. I went back inside and got my camera, came back out and took a picture of it and when Hubb came in for dinner about an hour later it had finally slithered back into the ground. It wasn't afraid of us at all. Jason was digging all around in the dirt around it and pulling out grass. (there is a lot of bermuda grass out there that is choking out his plants). It's just a very small rat snake about a foot and a half long, but we figured it must be in the process of molting because it was moving slow - or it might have just eaten because it had a bulge in the belly. Either way, it's good to have it out there - all though I don't really like KNOWING a snake is about, but it will eat the moles and voles that hang out in the garden and a garden snake is a good thing to have - at least that's what I hear... AND because I'm all about us having familiars... we are calling him Herman... I wonder if we will lay eyes on it again this year?!