Starting the month off right!

 The first thing I did on Monday morning was to get on the Wii and see how old I am.  45.  That is pretty good.

Posada had fallen heir to a bunch of bananas so I made them some Banana Nut bread.  9 loaves to be exact.  Pretty good stuff if I do say so myself.

 I finished up the wax I had accumulated and they now have 4 1/2 dozen candles which they probably will not need until next winter, but they are there now.

I checked the strawberry bed and found several little blossoms, but I can not eat blossoms.

 I was very happy to see that there were several little green strawberries and I am most happy to announce that since these pictures were taken I have had 2 nice red strawberries and like the little red hen and her loaf of bread, I ate them!

I am most happy to report that I have gotten most of my broken limbs out back and burnt some of them.  Just have to finish up the Red Bud Tree.  The green beans are up as well as the zucchini.  Also up is either the watermelons or the cucumbers.  Not sure which one I planted.  I am going to have the sprinklers worked on and when that is done I should be pretty well set until winter when I will no doubt freeze my ass off, but for now...life is good.
Or it would be had I not seen the fox out by the goose pen early this morning.  No doubt she has babies and is looking for something to feed them.  Damn!

Good morning world!

I woke up this morning with my brother on my mind   Sometimes that just happens.  So I went into Picasa because I was wanting to find a picture of him, but then I got side tracked and that is never a good thing.  I found this picture from a year or so ago.

That made me afraid to go downstairs because I know that one came from under the deck.  So I kept looking for Jake's picture.  And I found this.  This one just made me miss my Rowdy bird.

And my sister.

And the other sister.

And Cleo

And finally I found Jake. It is sad that this is the best picture I have of him.  Well, to be honest this and one taken when he was 9 years old are the only pictures I have at all.  So, I miss him, but life goes on and the road winds over hills and down in valleys and life is just pretty much is what it is.  We miss those who are not here, but we also miss those who are.

Today is not a day I want to spend missing anyone.  I got up at 4:30 with hopes of actually getting the garden planted today, yet here I set.  Had a friend tell me the other day that the way he does it is carries a timer.  He decides he will spend 1 hour on yard work and when the timer goes off he moves on to something else.  So I am going to try that one.  First I will go spend one hour in the garden and then 20 minutes in the shower and then off to do a chore in Belmont......

The road to hell is paved with good intentions!!!

Oh, Oh! Damn! Where does time go?

I looked at the calendar just now and January is almost gone.  3 days until the anniversary of my husband's demise.  This date coincides nicely with the Super Moon which I want to try to stay awake to see.  Then one
day to whip out the goodies for Addie's open house 90th birthday at the church, which is Saturday which is no longer January.  From here it is down hill through tax time, spring cleaning and garden planting, into the hot summer, through the fall and ito the freezing cold winter so I can start moaning about the lack of  Christ in  Christmas and then start the whole thing over again.
 
Many years ago I was into doing a lot of hand embroidery and made several cute little pictures that hung in the bathroom in little brown frames.  They were called Thumbprints and a little sheep looking thing said "Ewe's not fat, ewe's fluffy."  The little thumbprint then looked like a woman on top of a hill and said  "When you are over the hill. you pick up speed."  My favorite was the thumbprint with the confused look on it's face that said "Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."  That little collection seemed to mirror my life so I threw the whole bunch in the Goodwill box and never looked back.  I am now rethinking all of that!

The wise saying about being fluffy still holds true, although the fluffs now have wrinkles in them.  The picking up speed is almost scary.  If there was a policeman in charge of time marching on, I am pretty sure I would be ticketed every day as time whizzes past me.  And as for the mind being gone, it is not so much gone as just out to lunch a lot of time.  Some one asked for my phone number the other day and I drew a complete blank.  "How in the hell do I know.  I never call it.  There is no one home."  I did, however, manage to recall the sequence of digits.  I have only had the same number for 31 years.

Most of my day is spent running either upstairs and wondering why I came up here, or going back down the stairs only to remember what I went up there for in the first place.  After a few of these marathons sprints, I usually set down in my recliner and the cat jumps up on me and holds me down.  Since I am captive at that point, I usually fall asleep.  How long I sleep is a matter of whether or not a car passes by up on the road causing the dogs to unleash a flurry of barking in an attempt to scare it away which always works, hence the term "car passes by."  God help them if they are heading for my house and come up the drive because they will be licked to death!  But barking is apparently very important to them.

Now I do not want to make you think that all I do all day is sleep, because that is far from the way it is.  I do have my little ebay business and it keeps me busy listing things to sell, making things to sell, photographing things to sell, selling things I sell, packaging the things I sold and then running to the post office with my parcels.  Anyone who is privy to my operation is amazed that I know where anything is.  Me too!  I have lost a coral and turquoise ring some where between the roof and the basement, I think.

And I do manage to do a little volunteer work sometimes.  And of course visiting.  Going to have lunch on Friday with my friends Renate and Val.  Have not decided where yet, but I am sure we will.  Oh, and I need to get the oil changed and the tires rotated.  I need to pick up a bale of straw so I can clean the goose house, but may put that off until  Spring.  I do need to get down in the basement and dig out that box of old Playboy's and get them listed.  Pretty sure I am not going to read them.  I am pretty sure the garden is going to be taken care of by my friend, Richard, this year.  He plants, weeds,  waters, and harvests and I eat it.  Well, some of it anyway.  I told him I have the dirt and that is all of my involvement in this little venture.

And now I have rambled on for a full page and said absolutely nothing.  This, dear friends, is the story of my life!

If summer comes, can fall be far behind?

Ah, the garden has finally yielded nectar of the Gods, or in simple language, I finally got a tomato!  Let me show you my little garden of Eden here.  At first glance it may appear to be a patch of weeds.  That would be the untrained eye! 

See, if you just look way down here you can see a squash.  I planted two full packets of squash so the geese would have lots.  One packet was yellow summer squash and the other was zucchini which is there favorite.  I have 26 squash plants and only 2 of them are zucchini.  Big thank you to Monsato for that one, I am sure.

 

Here is the beginning of a yellow squash.  It is about 2 inches long.

And here is a bunch of them getting ready to be made into goose food.  See, if I pick them when they are 5-6 inches long and slice and sauté them with a little garlic and maybe a green onion....oh they are so good.  But then the skin is no longer smooth they are almost impossible to chop let alone eat.  The geese do not know the difference.  Stupid geese!

Now if you look real close here you can spot a little watermelon.  It is about 3 inches across and is going to have to do some growing if it wants me to eat it, and better yet, if it does not want to get frozen and have wasted all the summer trying to grow for nothing!  Geese don't even like green watermelons!

Some where over there on the west side are some potato vines, but I have learned that I need to wait until the vines dry up or I will have no potatoes.  I do not know why the call them "vines" because they grow straight up like a tomato plant.  Well, come to think of it, they call those "vines" also.  Here is one of them and if you can see a tomato, more power to you.

But, while I was rooting around there, I did find a big red tomato.  Hell, I almost jumped out of my skin!  What you see here was lunch yesterday.  Sorry you missed it, but there was only enough for one, and what can I say?

Oh, look!  Here is the angel Lyn set in my garden to make it produce and keep it safe.  I am thinking this little chickadee is falling down on the job!  But then again, I did get that tomato.

Now,  look what is right over the fence!  This is my New Mexico Sunflower taking over the area between the Choke Cherry Bush and the actual garden area.  That is where I bury all my pets, so it is some very fertile ground.  This is the first time I have had blooms for a while, because if you remember, the Llama's were over there for several years and they liked to eat them and they had very long necks and really big teeth!

 

Remember this?

So there you have my garden.  I have been telling myself for 40 years that next year I will do better and nothing has changed;  I grow weeds and occasionally God will toss me out a little something to eat.  But, you know what?  It has worked pretty good so far, so why mess with something that works?  Like momma always said..."If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring time means baby geese on the ditch by my house!

Well, I almost wrecked the car on the way to town a couple days ago.  I knew there was a pair of Canadian Geese hanging out on the ditch, but I did not know they had already hatched the babies.  I counted and there were 7 or 8 of them, but those little suckers are fast.  When I stopped mother and babies were in the water and father was up on the topside.  He immediately jumped into the water and headed them upstream.  Guess he thought I might eat them.

Now at my house, I am staying up on the birth control thing.  Goose lays an egg, I grab it, run in the house and blow out the contents.  No babies here on the farm!  No, siree!  Now Diane at church also has a farm over by Penrose where geese and other fowl abound.  She has offered to give me some of her flock since I have no babies, but I have a better idea.  I would like to give her my flock and she can keep hers.  Granted they do a fantastic job of keeping the weeds down out back, but then so does Round Up.  And a bottle of sterilant costs about the same price as 2 week supply of goose food.

And then there is the grasshopper control factor.  Grasshopper would have to be completely insane to land on my little acre!  Oh, and when someone tells you that geese eat stickers, you can say with all certainty that is false.  They will eat the stickers if I pull them when they are young and hold them in my hand for them.  I have started tilling small areas and planting Rye which should mingle with the stickers and the geese will eat the Rye and trample the stickers.  At least I hope so.

The Apricot and green apple trees are loaded.  Now I eat neither of these things, so they become ready goose food.  I will plant 5 or 6 Zucchini plants and let the Zucchini get big and chop it up.  Well, I do not actually let them get big, they just seem to do that on their own!

So, things are going along right on schedule here in the Rockie Mountains.  Well, not really.  I planted 6 tomato plants and two packages of tomato seeds yesterday.  Also some potatoes that were already growing in my potatoe  bin.  Then the man on television told me, "Don't get excited and plant stuff just yet.  Looks like we may get a freeze next week."  Damn!  But you and I both know that 2 feet of snow next week is not out of reason for this area.  Would not be the first time, but there is always the possibility I can pull it off and have the first tomato of the season.

Spring time in the Rockies!!  I love it.

I just now seen it out there by the carport!

I just ran a package over to the post office on the highway and when I got home I looked over there and there is a pretty little yellow crocus.  Debbie called me this morning to tell me she just picked a Jonquil.  So you know what this means?  Spring is here whether or not it is actually here!  When the flowers bloom that means it is Spring, I do not care what no damn groundhog says!
The farmers are out plowing and I am fixing to pull the Cruiser out and dig out my rototiller.  Then I will go get some fresh gas and I been hearing from the tall guy that he will  "get out there and get that machine ready for tilling very soon."  Yeah, tall guy, by the time you get around to getting out here, I will have a crop in the ground.  Going to amend that old saying "Time and Tide wait for no man." to say "Lou waits for no man!"  Been waiting all winter and now I am waiting no more.
Neighbor man dumped a big load of manure out there and tomorrow the goose house is getting new straw and the old straw is going to line the pathways.  I can almost taste them tomatoes now!  Ah, and the eggplant, cucumbers, squash and Lord only knows what kind of seeds I may find in the drawer.  And I got the organic thing going on, so that is good.  If I hurry, I can get a little lettuce before it gets too hot!
So if you are calling me, just leave a message cause I can not hear the phone over the rototiller motor and the squawking geese and barking dogs!  And if I do hear it I will probably not answer.  Gotta make hay while it is sunny!!

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6 degrees and one of us is rising!

I am setting here in my banana belt enjoying a lovely 6 degree morning.  Yesterday at 7:30 AM I took Elvira in to the beauty shop.  Noticed a few flakes.  Dropped the dog off and headed home in a blinding blizzard.  9:10 Doug called to say she was ready, but not to hurry cause it was supposed to stop at 9:00.  Hmmmmm.  By the time I drove back into town through the same blinding blizzard the snow was about 4 inches deep.  And when it finally got around to slowing down, this would be the view out my office window.  It was anywhere from 4-8 inches depending on where you stuck the ruler in the snow at. 

By 2 o'clock  the snow had stopped.  I had to run over to the highway and drop off some packages.  At that point the roads were snow covered and it was slushy. 2 hours later I walked up to get the mail and South Road was clear.  Patty came in about 6:00 and arrived on a sheet of ice. 

Now my point is this, where is that damn groundhog when I need him.  I had been setting here on Wednesday plotting the tilling of the garden and planting of the seeds.  Then the next day I am digging out the snow shovel again.  As I recall, back home, it was a simple matter of watching and when things started popping up, it was time to plant.  We used to start tomato seeds inside in flats in January and when planting time came we had big nice plants ready to stick in the ground. Such is not the case here in Colorado. 

Remember when they had a car advertisement that said "Zero to 60 in 9.9!"  That seems to be the motto here in Colorado only just reverse it.  Now I see that the 7 day out look is calling for this to happen again on Tuesday.  Want to come shovel for me?

When Amy was here nary a flake fell.  Wait, yes it did, but not much.  What happens in Colorado is almost comical.  See it drops down to exactly 32 degrees.  Then it starts to rain and it drops another 1/2 degree.  This causes snow flakes that are about 4 inches across.  Looks like a bunch of white feathers coming down.  These, of course, pile up very quickly.  So we have a very deep snow going on until it stops and the temperature shoots up to 32.5 degrees and it immediately starts to sink into itself since snow flakes are very delicate.  This is my scientific description, by the way.

Well, kiddies, I got up this morning with a headache, so I am going to cut this short, go deal with my eBay stuff, print a label and start my day.  We are off to an apron class this afternoon.  Not because I want to, but because Patty wants to and I do not think Garden City is conducive to new sewers.  So tomorrow I will try to post about our class, unless of course, I get side tracked which has been known to happen.

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Well, let's start up a community garden. Want to?

I have often heard of Community Gardens and when SCAP was located on 4th and Glendale right next door to the Liquor Store and the Porn shop before the police took the building for their substation, we had one.  It was really nice.  Some one tilled the area and one of the places, Lowe's I think, donated a bunch of plants. The clients would come by and water and weed and then later pick the harvest.  We all got a kick out of it and it kept them in touch with nature.  But now we are located in the Corona building and all we have is concrete and asphalt.  Enter a stranger on a Suzuki motorcycle who stands 6'7" and a Community Garden appears on the horizon.
Meet Richard.  We have a mutual friend and I found him one Sunday morning digging around in the dirt.  Well, you know me.  Nobody gets away with anything on my watch and it just looked suspicious to see this big tall guy digging in my friends yard. Nobody ever comes and digs in my yard.  So I asked my friend, "What is going on over there?"  And he told me.  So I got his number and set out on my quest for knowledge.  Soon you will know all that I know.
Richard is new to this business, but he knows what he wants to do.  He has this garden and another at his house.  His vision is to grow organic food and produce enough to feed 400 people.  And here is where it gets a little hairy.  A community garden is a community effort.  We all know that.  This is his first venture into this and this first year will entail putting a lot of ground work into place.  He has made a wish list and it seems fairly simple. So we will lay it out and look at it and see if this is feasible.
1.  He needs manure preferably Rabbit, Poultry, Cow or Horse.  Now he knows that most people raising animals give them antibotics.  These should leech out in a year or so.  He will check to see how that plays out with the people who certify the stuff to be organic.
2.  Compost.  Any chance you have a pile of that laying around that you do not use and do not need?
3.  He is going to need a tiller.  He would prefer to do this with a horse and plow, but he has no harness for the horse.  Got any of that laying around?
4.  Now hauling is going to be a problem unless he has a pick up.  He is willing to trade his bike for a small pickup preferably a Toyota or Nissan.  At least I think that is what he said.  So, if you happen to have one of those setting in the drive, let me know.

I do not know Richard very well, but from the two brief visits I had with him I found him to be very personable and very caring about the environment.  That carries a lot of weight with me.  We discussed politics briefly and I am not sure which of us is the more radical, but I do not know what that has to do with growing a watermelon, which I will depend on him to grow because I done lost my package of seeds!

So if any of you out there have any of the items he needs, suggestions that could possibly help Richard, or an idea on how to proceed with this venture,  please leave a comment or email me and I will see that he gets the information.  He is just kind of between computers at the present time.

Course I might have tried to get even with my little Ryan subconsiously !

Well, if you read the last post you will know Ryan tried to kill me albeit quite by accident and he did not succeed.  What the little fellow does not know, and Grandma does, is that I almost did him in and it was with absolutely no malice of forethought.

It was a year or so later that I decided I was sick to death of the cast iron bathtub that was in my powder room.  You know the one that would have lasted forever and was gleaming white with very little effort?  Yeah, that one that was installed and then the room built around it.  So off I went with Kenny in tow to the city to find the perfect set up.  And there it was at that place on the hill.  Forgot the name.  Nice white plastic tub and the nice white plastic surround.  Little pricey, but what the hey!

Enter son-in-law that I did not particular like, but he worked cheap.  Rip out the wall, rip out the tub and haul it out back.  I will not go into the particulars of how many days it took to get that bathroom back in working order or how frustrated we got before we decided that son-in-law had to go.  Nor will I go into the time frame of how long it took Bret to get a chair in the tub and poke a hole in the side of the new plastic POS.  This story is about Ryan!

It took 4 men and a horse to drag that cast iron tub out back.  And there it set.  Trash man did not want it.  Scrap man did not want it.  So it set there.  Looking back I can now think of many things I could have used it for.  Could have been a strawberry bed.  I could have become Catholic and it could have been a great grotto or what ever those things are.  But it set there.  Enter frustrated grandson with a sledge hammer and it became something to relieve said frustration.  Now cast iron can be broken if it is hit just right.  First it was in two pieces and then three and you know the routine.

At that time I also had a chicken pen I wanted ripped out so I could make that area a garden.   I was trying to pull one of the t-posts out of the ground and having no luck at all.  Enter Ryan.  He thought he was way bigger than he was.  I might interject here that the easiest way to remove a t-post is with a jack and a chain, but that was in the garage and there was Ryan.  So the little fellow braced his feet, grabbed the post and jerked.  He did that several times and nothing happened.  Then he decided it was do or die and made one final attempt.  At the point when I thought he was going to pop a blood vessel, it came loose.  As the law of momentum is want to do, Ryan fell backwards and landed flat on his back with the t-post still firmly in his grasp.

And protruding into the air, barely one inch from his left shoulder blade was a foot long piece of cast iron the shape of a stiletto!  My life flashed before my eyes as he lay there with the biggest grin on his face!  He was so proud that he had removed that post by brute force.  All I could think of was what the scene would have been had he been turned just slightly, or the post had been over 8 inches, or this, or that.

When I said my prayers that night and for many nights thereafter, I thanked my omnipotent God for knowing way more than me and for thinking ahead more than this old woman, and for keeping his arm around Ryan and keeping him safe.  Do you remember this, my little Ryan?  That is one I am not going to forget in this lifetime.

So now go vote in the poll up there on the left.  It is no wonder you never come over and want to help old Granny anymore!

There is a genius inside me and it wants to be free!

Every time I set at this keyboard I think, "This  is the day I shall write something  that will actually change the world!"  Maybe not so much change the world, but at least make a little bit of difference in someones way of thinking.  I keep thinking that today is the day that I will write something that will at least be remembered, if not for a long time at least until you are through reading what I have written.

Maybe I have writer's block!  I have heard of that and I guess it could be possible.  I set here looking at the leaves on the Cherry Tree, sipping my coffee, staring at the screen and nothing happens. Well, actually something is happening!  What is happening is that I am typing like a fool  and the letters are appearing very slowly.  See I am done typing this line and it is just now putting up the word "fool".  Now I wait for it to finish so I can go back and redo the words I spelled wrong or where I hit the wrong key, which happens with amazing regularity.  No wonder I am frustrated!  The best part of all of this is if I will just walk away, when I come back it will no doubt be functioning like it is meant to and all my stress will have been for nothing.

Instead I set here like an idiot and continue beating my brains over nothing.  I give up!  We had quite a little storm out here last night.  Scared the ducks and geese and, beat my trees, bushes and garden to a pulp.  At least it did all this before I had vegetables that were almost ready to eat.  That is what usually happens!

Ok, I am off to get ready for church.   You all have a nice day and I shall check in tomorrow or the next day.

The Llama's are eating my Asparagus!!

Do you see those two innocent looking Llama's there?   Well, do not let them fool you!  They are evil.  They lean their very long necks over the fence and eat my Asparagus.  Now I love Asparagus and getting a crop of it is usually iffy to say the very least.  First there is the problem of freezing and then as soon as I think it may actually have a chance to grow it gets too hot and it bolts.   Now this new wrinkle has me pretty much perplexed!

I do not go to their field and eat their stuff, so why do they think they can just hang their shaggy little heads over the fence and eat my food?  I was happy to see that they seem to be kind of housebroken.  I seen a big pile of stuff over there and seen the brown and white one contribute to the height of the pile.  So that is a good thing.  I do wish they would move the pile away from my bedroom window.  For the most part they are pretty neat animals, but woe unto the animal who comes between me and my vittles!

See I don't know if you realize how long it takes to get an Asparagus bed established.  This one has been there for about 5 years and is just now showing signs of being able to produce enough for a "mess".  A few of the remains of the stalks I seen were as big as my thumb!  Yummers!!  At least I hope that is what the furry creatures are saying.

See, I also wanted to plant a few gourds along that fence.  I suppose they eat gourds also.  As I set here contemplating this latest dilemma I just thought of something.  I never get a garden anyway, so why am I so worried?  The hail always comes and wipes me out and I wind up eating out of the farmers market, so why fight it?  If those little Llama's want to eat my stuff, I say let them!  At least this way, something got something out of my garden.

Life is Good!!