If you are as impatient as I am a plant or tree is definitely the way to go, while I plan to live to be at least 100, I don’t want to spend all those years waiting for a tree to grow from a seed, I want WOW and I want it NOW!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Bonsai Gardening, or Not!!
If you are as impatient as I am a plant or tree is definitely the way to go, while I plan to live to be at least 100, I don’t want to spend all those years waiting for a tree to grow from a seed, I want WOW and I want it NOW!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
The Debacle of the Electric Fence
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
If It Hops, and It's Ears Flop - It's Public Enemy # 1
Then, just before the first frost, I was looking at the baby clematis my sister had planted for me in the spring and it was gone, just gone, chomped off at the top of the cup I had around it.
Click Here!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Does A Bear ..........................?
I must preface this story by relating another one to you - One morning I called this Queen's home. Her husband answered and I asked for her. In his most formal tone he told me she was unavailable. I said "Well, what is she doing?" He started laughing and said "She is out in the yard, she has climbed a tree to look for a mother bear". The fun just never ends!!!
In our part of the country when you have just related the most bizarre tale, purported to be true, the almost immediate and universal response will be a cocked head and the word “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww?” At which point the purportee will, with the most solemn of faces say, “Does a bear s……….. in the woods?” There is no more solemn oath in these parts. And I for one know this to be true in a big way.
This time of year, late fall, all the critter’s memory of a hungry winter begins to kick in and they go on an eating rampage. We usually have a couple of grumpy ole bears up here who are still kind of picky, sniff the meager outside offerings and go away. This year we had the cutest yearling. He was an almost round ball of fur, about 100 pounds. He hung around for a couple of hours, smelling the bacon and eggs we just finished and peeking in the side lights on the door trying to find a way in to that smell. He finally gave up on that and sat down on the front porch to ponder “What’s next?”
Suddenly, he ran off with his tail up! I gingerly stepped outside to survey any damage. All over the bottom step was a residue of white powder. “What in the world?” Then I saw the bag, a brand new bag of Epson salt ready to be mixed for one last feeding for my beds. It was empty.
Don’t ever ask me if a bear s……..s in the woods.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Starting a Vegetable Garden
So, I surveyed my little estate, picked the side of the yard where it was protected from the wind, but got a lot of sun and declared “This will be my garden!”
With the help of my husband and grandson and an entire winter of working (no, it doesn’t always snow every day and it isn’t always cold in Kansas in the winter) we dug out shrubs and found 18” of lava rock on the ground underneath – now I do not know who created lava rock, but there is absolutely no space in my vegetable garden for them. I started with the lofty goal of picking up 20 pieces per day in the most Queenly of manner. It soon became apparent that this method was netting me zero progress! So, we scooped, we put 3 trugs in the dumpster each week, we scooped some more, we took giant boxes full to my step-mother on the other end of the State, we scooped some more. We offered it to local landscapers who offered to trade what they wanted to get rid of to us for ours. We swore that it was giving birth to little pieces each night while we slept. One week I got carried away with what I put in the dumpster and was presented with a note the morning after pick-up that said “Too heavy to lift” and all my lava rock left in the dumpster. Seemed we would never get to the end, and since Spring was right around the corner by then, we borrowed my Godson’s pickup and after three trips to the landfill with the pickup loaded to the max, we were finished with the lava rock. The landfill is an experience no Queen should ever have and fuel for another story, but believe me it doesn’t take many minutes there before I was a real “Prickly Pear” and pretty well finished for the rest of that week – poor little muscles!
Next step – prepare the soil. Sounds easy, doesn’t it, well, let me tell you that is not for the weak at heart! You beg, borrow, rent, or buy a rototiller – and once the gas and oil are full, a mystery never totally solved by me, you start it and away you go – this is the most muscle-building experience known to woman-kind – unless you are training for Miss Universe – and this one doesn’t involve oiling your body, just the machine! There is a rope, there is a little rubber handle and there is a lot of yanking, many invoked blessings, and finally it sputters – this is when you are supposed to keep one hand on one part, another hand on another part adjusting it, and use your foot to hold the whole thing together until the adjustments are made and you are once again upright and composed.
After three trips over the designated area it was time to pick up the grass clumps and rake – carefully judging the weight of each clump to avoid the “Too heavy to lift” note, we filled in all the bare spots that we could find in the yard and tossed the rest in the dumpster, which by then was my most important garden tool. Of course before you can toss any into the dumpster, you must do the “shake, shake, shake” with it to remove any precious soil from the roots.
Time to amend the soil – a Queenly brew of peat moss, horse manure, compost, and staying as organic as possible, no chemicals on the garden. Again, the rototiller, if there is any doubt in your mind what part of your body is flabby, I recommend about three minutes behind a rototiller, anything that is not firmly affixed to bone will shake and rattle, and roll!! So, strolling behind it like a drunken sailor that job was finished.
Finally it was time to do the final raking and sit down with a long tall glass of tea and a stack of seed catalogs that would have killed me if it had fallen on me. What to plant and where to plant it, so many ideas and so little space and room – although I was reminded the space was 27 feet long and 20 feet wide – it seemed so huge when it was being prepared and so small when it came to the planning stage.
I think you might enjoy reading about organic gardening in either of these books:
Organic Food Gardening Beginners Manual Click Here!
My Organic Food Garden:
Click Here!
Monday, October 26, 2009
A Plant's Prayer
I pray my leaves the Deer don’t eat
And when in spring, shoots I make
I pray they get a tummy ache
The End
As much as we all love our gardens, it is time to put them to sleep. Sleepless gardens are a pitiful sight.
And besides we have other Queenly duties to perform now, what with the holidays and all.
These are the things we do to ensure they have sweet dreams and gain strength for the coming spring.
1. We wash everything down with: 1cup mouthwash, *1cup chewing tobacco juice, I cup dawn.
Put into a sprayer and work from top to bottom on all perennials. *We buy 1 pk. Of chewing tobacco in the spring, put it in a half gallon container and fill with water. It lasts all season and is a good alternative for organic bug control.
2. We spray with dormant oil and weather protection like “Wilt proof”. Again from top to bottom. Wilt proof is also good to protect your plants from sunburn in the heat of summer.
3. Final feeding for all our beds, bone meal and Epson salts, spread according to directions. Mulch well, we like shredded cedar bark for bug control.
Say “Nite, Nite! Sleep well, don’t let the bugs bite!
I think you will be interested the book "Organic Pest Control Secrets" which tells us how to rid our garden of many of the common pests and still be kind to our Earth:
Click Here!