Cliff and I were in Melbourne, FL for three days spending time with Mark and Jen, two greyhounds and a black cat. We have no pictures of proof. Never thought of it. Time with them was kind of scrambled. Jen spent the first of our visit with her mother in the hospital in Gainesville and Mark had to fly to Texas Sunday morning for a 6-week concentrated course for his new job, but they still wanted us to be there. We walked the beach, ate too much, walked the dogs daily, laid around and relaxed, and most of all spent time laughing with family. Mark finally found employment since moving to Melbourne last October. During the Christmas rush, he worked for UPS making deliveries in a golf cart wearing shorts. (The golf cart was not wearing jeans!! Mark was,but not going to edit this!) He found it a hoot and enjoyed a no pressure job after so many years working in a job he hated out in Kansas City, MO. When he interviewed for a position at Comfort ...
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Contour sheets are mischievous. In the dyer, they store socks, face cloths, and other small laundry items in their elastic corners, like "Chippy" scurrying around under the bird feeder pocketing seeds in his expansive cheeks. It's only after you've tightly fitted the fourth corner onto the mattress, run your hands across the fitted sheet to smooth it out, that lumps appear revealing the stored socks. Contour sheets are not fun to fold if you have OCD. I don't have OCD but we also don't fold contours either. On strip-the-bed wash-day, the sheets go into the washer, straight to the dryer and quickly back onto the mattress eliminating wrinkles and contour folding. In 1959 Bertha Berman patented a design for fitted sheets. Why she didn't call them "Bertha sheets" or th...
Time to catch up on some long put-off neglected chores like reading and deleting my 231 emails. That'll have to be spread over the next couple of days. Emails build up as I start saving ones like my subscriptions to Farmers Almanac, Mother Earth News, Oldways Health Through Heritage, which is a great Mediterranean cooking site, because I plan on reading the articles later in the day when I settle down. Only I never read them later in the evening when I settle down. Many of the emails in my box can just be deleted or unsubscribed because they don't pertain to me like Veteran's benefits or hearing aids or timeshares. The garden is overrun with weeds due to the incredible spring weather we've been having. If I can't get to the weeds by early afternoon, weeding doesn't take place as the sun is fully on the garden or we're having afternoon showers. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. The forest is lush and full. The Board hasn't decim...
Today I enjoyed a Mother's Day that fit me perfectly. We spent the day on the mountain with the mighty oaks, the blooming wild azaleas, the budding trellised wisteria, and the zillion vole tunnels burrowed in the tree roots and the garden soil. To avoid the crowded Mother's Day restaurants, Cliff took me out last night for local-caught blackened trout with steamed broccoli dinner at Brothers Restaurant. Last night was also senior prom night so we watched couples in tuxes and evening gowns gather in the dining room before heading to their exciting night ahead. That brought back memories! Lately mornings have been cool and quite comfortable with afternoon temperatures reaching mid to high 80's. This morning I started in the vegetable garden doing some weeding. Why don't voles eat weed roots?? I planted four hills of cucumbers and put in a teepee trellis just in case voles don't like the taste of cuke roots and they actually grow. Let...
We're so overrun with voles that I'm seriously thinking about giving up the garden for this year. My spinach is disappearing. The thirty garlic that were set in October now number twenty-six with three more stalks turning yellow. The garlic still have about 5-6 weeks to go before harvesting. I find numerous new holes and tunnels daily. Research on voles shows my approach needs a new method. We bought two bags of Sweeney's Armadillo and Vole Repellent to begin the new strategy. Day by day for five days, the granules are suppose to drive the little buggers away, maybe to someone else yard or to the woods. Today was the third application which should be steering them closer to the west woods. The repellent uses Fullers Earth as a carrier for the castor oil and the rodents should be repelled by the castor oil smell and exit the soil to a new territory. Two more days of applications and we'll see what happens. If this works, I...
April 25 .........proof read on May 2 Our farmers market opened three weeks ago so until our spring greens are ready to harvest I've been buying bags of fresh arugula, spinach, Swiss chard, and radishes. When the egg vendor is set up, I get a couple dozen fresh eggs. Sometimes our local family-run Mountain Pack n' Ship sells their neighbor's fresh eggs. This has been a different spring........ colder, cloudier than previous years so our vegetables and chickens are struggling. Chickens? When did I type that?! I must have been drinking when I drafted this back on April 25. And I never proofed it or posted it. Yesterday I resprayed the deer barrier tape and the ground perimeter after finding various animal tracks in the garden along with multiple vole holes and tunnels. Our neighbors up the road are still battling with some form of rodents chewing vehicle wires. Stories of rodent invasions this year are widespread. After a lit...
Our winter finches molted their drab feathers to become brilliant yellow spring birds. Carolina chickadee pairs have begun their real estate search for acceptable housing. Near the end of winter, Ernie, my neighbor up the road, built a shelf for me, attached it to a porch post and placed a decorative birdhouse on the shelf. Chickadees have been seen popping in and out, sitting on the roof, and talking about the little house. Sourwood trees are dropping their flowers while dogwood blossoms are slowly opening their showy blooms. Last weekend was the "dogwood winter" with temperatures dropping into the 20's. The locals tell us we have one more cold spell, the "blackberry winter." This last snap of cold air will sweeten the blackberries. April has been such a windy month. What ever happened to "March coming in like a lion and out like a lamb?" We've had weeks of March winds with gusts to 16 mph so I've be...