lazy morning

Everyone else is asleep so I have had 40 minutes of doing nothing. Today this means drinking coffee and pursuing random garden focused blogs. The livestock have enough food/water to tide them over until the girls get up - when they see the note from me (I will be at work) asking (or rather telling nicely) them to do the morning chores. Tomorrow I am off work, but my to do list is so long and I don't plan to spend time in front of the computer.

On a side note, Hubby brought these home from the P-patch yesterday. One of them was for me. They are sungold cherries, and all of the rain we have had has made these the best textured cherry tomatoes I have had in years. Usually my tomatoes have tough skins, but not these.

We spent an hour or so in the community garden a couple days ago. The tomatoes have taken over! We pulled up the banana pepper that was being smothered (now in a pot on the front steps) and pruned hard the cherry tomato plants. (brown, red, yellow and orange) We also dug up some volunteer dill that is now planted in our front landscape. The garden is in a holding position, as the cold crops bolt (we missed the window to harvest broccoli and it is now flowering) and the fruits are just starting.

Quick, while it's not raining

The last couple weeks have been hot in the am, thunderstorms with heavy rain in the pm.

The first storm knocked the downspout off the gutter above the hen yard, causing a major waterfall between the girls and the coop. Hubby held said downspout in place while I chased them inside then tied it to the deck rail to end in an old garbage can - since my rain barrel has not been finished. It filled up in ten minutes and I watched, angry at myself, as it overflowed into the yard. All that water wasted. . . .

My time at home seems to be taken up by reorganized the house for better wheelchair accessibility - or working on the front yard so the neighbors find it pleasing. . . .

The only thing growing in mass quantities are mushrooms. They are all over the yard and in the landscaping. We think they are edible meadow mushrooms, but without an authority on the subject to correctly identify them they are useless to us. . . .

The winter squash and watermelon are going all out - vining profusely but only with male flowers that will bear no fruit. The peppers and tomatoes are fruiting - better at the P-patch than at home. Nasturtium at home is burned, at the P-patch they are 6 feet long. We cut back all the basil at the P-patch, enough to make 5 cups of pesto.

Hubby got his first ripe cherry tomato (yellow sungold) yesterday. He claims it was the size of a golf ball, but since we never saw it (he ate it) I am inclined suspect this is the gardeners version of the fish that got away story.

We lost (literally) one of the quails this morning while I was cleaning their hutch. After an hour of Juju and I chasing him (her?), it slipped under the deck - as far as we know it is still there. I had a heart to heart with Mesha before work. She has been very insistent this year that we become urban farmers and I told her that losing livestock is part of being a farmer. She seemed to take it rather stoically for a 6 year old.

I've still got to butcher the last meat chicken. . . .

P-patch bounty

Meanwhile . . .back at the ranch

So this is the first chance I have had to sit down and write about what happened here during my summer vacation. (read - I have coffee and everyone else is asleep)

First up - we now have 5 chickens. As Hubby grumpily emailed me while the girls and I were chillin' by a lake in N. Minnesota "Here I am wringing the neck of sHeena before I've even had my coffee" He had been woken at 5am by the Polish's attempt at crowing - again. We had an idea that a second rooster was with us - the female's head feathers are soft and curving and sHeena's had grown out spiky. It also explains why he always had a standoff with the bigger meat chickens (of which Dumpling is still left). I emailed My Pet Chicken and they responded promptly that I was covered under the 90% guarantee. We want 2 more hens and will be looking at our options (either chicken swap, county fair, or 2 new chicks)

Cadbury escaped again. Chris found his doors open when he got up Tuesday morning after fireworks. After searching unsuccessfully for a couple hours he enlisted the help of the boys next door. They found him in ten minutes - hanging out under the far corner of the shed asleep with Ivan. Wish we had a pix of that!

The peas are done. I fed them to the chicks. The branches I had used for them to grow on were way to flimsy - before planting again later this month (for fall harvest in theory) I need to come up with another option. (I only have one of the decorative metal things shown)

Our beans (rattlesnake, gold of Bacau & Christmas Lima) are finally up and also need a climbing option - that needs to be done this week.

The raspberries took the transplant hard. Being brambles I am sure I will see them happily growing and producing next year. Same with the rhubarb.

All of the squash and melon planted from seed are still on only their second or 3rd set of leaves. Even the 3 I transplanted from inside are slow. I have heard this from other gardeners also.

Here is a white oriental lily that I discover last fall smothered by vinca and virginia creeper. It is still small and in danger of being covered again - but it didn't bloom last year.

The rose blooms are small this year - I am not sure if it is from the hard pruning I did, need for soil amendments or the weather. I will examine them next year.

This year I also have hollyhocks! Last year the plants were rusty and stunted and never bloomed. Following directions from various sources I cut them to the ground and trashed the plants. We have 2 shades of pink and a few whites. This almost makes up for none of my 2 packets of seeds I planted indoors surviving to be planted outdoors - if they germinated at all.

We have peppers forming! Also tomatoes.

On a totally different note. Quail are freaking messy! At least 3x a day we have to clean out bedding and poop from their poultry style waterers. The style used for parrots would be a better option. Now I know why rabbit hutches were suggested (wire floors) The rabbit style of hopper feeder stays cleaner than the poultry (jar) style.

My "needs" list for the animals and garden is almost as long as the "needs" list for the family.

It's a first

I have always grown cut and come again lettuce. But this year I thinned out some of the squares of lettuce at Hubby's P-Patch to get heads and this is the first - a bibb style. It is a day or 2 late in the picking, but lovely none the less.

Be it ever so humble . . .

There's no place like home.

Moving day

We are leaving on vac (save hubby who will be holding down the "farm") so I had to get it done today. Except for hardware the new hutch is made from leftovers from other projects. 5 of the quail are in the top, 4 in the bottom. I hope they are happier than in their rubbermaid tub. It was quite an adventure moving them one by one from the hen yard to their new home - they are not tame birds and tried to fly away - one nearly made it out the 2x4 openings near the top of the pen, I barely caught one of its legs in time as it was squeezing through.