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Showing posts from May, 2019
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Fifty-one crisp degrees this morning at seven.  With our forest so lushly thick and an earlier sunrise, we can't see the brilliant rays peeking through the leaves until it's a bit higher on the mountain horizon.  The Carolina wren is our "rooster" perched on the porch rail or high on Cliff's shed tower with neck extended, head back, cheerfully singing just as loudly as his can.  From the back woods we hear the rose-breasted grosbeak's distinct melody of notes.  As soon as I finish breakfast, I head to the garden. Trees shade the garden until around noon so I have hours to enjoy the garden chores before it's too sunny and hot to work anymore. Cliff finished the north-side of the house today.  It's a difficult task moving the extension ladder and setting the leg extensions to fit securely and safely on the slope. It makes me nervous when he works on the north side.   He scraped the stain drips from the six windows on that side, cleaned away years o
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The front facing the road and the kitchen sides of our house are stained and Cliff's now in the process of staining the under-cover back porch.  The North side will be challenging due to the extreme sloping.  And he's having so much fun with his woodworking tools that he built a long table for his ham radio equipment. This past weekend we had 3+ inches of rain that beat up the vegetable garden knocking over everything upright, flowers, spinach, kale.  The temperature was a cool crisp 53 this morning when I got up at 6 and will only reach high 60 this afternoon.  Perfect outside weather for gardening.   Before our rain-drenched weekend.................... Foxglove flowers did a forward-fold touching the ground so I tied the stem to a support propped on a fence post hoping to save it.  The flowers are hummingbird and bee attractants.  Sweet smelling wisteria also attracts bees. With all the rain we've had throughout the winter and this spring, the wisteri
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What's more exciting than the sound of a Honda engine running in a new pressure washer?   The harvesting, washing, and bagging the first crop of lettuce, spinach, and Lacinato kale!  Dr. Weil has a fabulous kale salad in his cookbook, True Food, that I'll be making for me tonight with our grilled tuna steak. Since Cliff bought the new Craftsman pressure washer, with a Honda engine, he's cleaned the front of the garage and stained it, washed the side of the house facing the road, and the peaked-front of the house.  Each time he smiles and reminds me how much he loves the purr of a  Honda engine.  Purr?                                    Wisteria bud getting ready to bloom.  Forgive me if I repeat myself and have posted some of this in earlier posts.  I just went back to my earlier writing and didn't see any but it seems I've said this before.  Deja vu............. Each spring the rose-breasted grosbeaks return to nest here, then leave. Not sure wh