Garden update

The soil is still cold a few inches down.  But I bought some flowers anyway, and put them out in the garden.  I'm sure I'll have a sun burn tomorrow.   I reserved the sweet pepper we bought for later in the week.  The biggest thing is I got down on my hands and knees and cleared out all of the weeds from the flower garden and located all the actual 'plants'.  Some of the weeds I tend to actually like - but I cleared them, too, this year. I replanted cucumbers and prepared the lettuce pots for a second go (but they got too watered down, so plant them another day).  I planted lettuce and purslane in the raised beds.  I also bought a hosta and Mark bought a coleus for the shade garden.  We are loving our clover!

 There is a wild chicken alert to the left.  And a 'Take me Home because I Said So' hosta to the right.

 planted lantana, pink petunias, pink dianthus (porkchop plants), red and yellow marigolds and a Snapdragon is hiding behind one of those white pipes.  The pipes are marking what might be an Asiatic lily and another set of dianthus that could have seeded itself last year... it sure looks like it, and there isn't any other elsewhere to say this is a common weed.

 We had planted seed marigolds in the places where I now put store bought ones, as none had sprouted.

 Our lush field of clover..

 mint and lemon balm and oregano (which is the green mass in the flower bed)

Something - I have to guess the wind, tore the roof off the chicken house.  We have to think a bit about how to fix it best.

bit o bits

I've increased my Welsh tv watching (via Youtube) to four :
Abadas (the children's show)
Hinterland (British crime drama, but mostly what is on Youtube are interviews)
Tecwyn y Tractor another kids show
and Codi Hwyl, a show about two guys sailing together on a tiny boat around Wales and Ireland.

Several of the chicks died because Gennet would not take to them and they got outside the henhouse and got cold and wet.  Two of those five survived and we warmed them up, dried them off and then Mark went and bought six more.  They are in a cage in Esme's room for now.  I have some wood and chicken wire we can build them a rabbit hutch type coop with.

I get tomorrow and the next day off.  And the weather is supposed to break - at least temporarily  into the 70s and 80s again.  I'm getting a little better with this cold stuff but it is still not giving up on the nose... which works its way to everywhere.

Making yellow split pea soup with kielbasa today to add that to my lunch (and then some it is a big pot)

Yellow split peas, handful of green (washed)
Chicken broth, then enough water to cover
2 potatoes, diced
1 yellow onion, diced

That is bubbling on low heat in the kitchen right now.
I'll add carrots and kielbasa to it later when it has reduced some.
I close at work one more time tonight.

Esme had no idea what I meant by 'closing' ... she was just thoroughly confused even after I tried to explain it twice.  She was having a crisis, though - her clothes weren't washed and I've been sick and closing at work this week and just haven't had time to go dig through her room and pull her laundry out - I did the laundry in the bathroom and our laundry but I don't see hers so I don't get to it until I have time or she tells me needs it.  She had to go to school in a pair with a torn knee this morning because I couldn't get a pair washed and dried in time... I know that is against school dress code but I didn't know what else to do.

Someone was hiding eggs

Our wild chicken - that wasn't laying eggs last year - started again.. and she wasn't using the chicken house (so much that we thought about changing it into a toolshed) and now she has a 'storybook nest' as Mark called it.  However, we have no rooster, so none of these are viable.  But we got an idea that could be terrible, (and sad) or it could work... so we paid twelve dollars for a half a dozen chicks and put them in right after taking the eggs out.

We got water and food for them in the house and a big log they can climb up to get back in the house if they fall out.  We'll see.... a few minutes ago Mark went out there and said she was back on the empty nest and they were drinking from the water container so she didn't kill them outright...

 

 

I put up this short fence around the beds to keep things out of it some..  We also have cataloupe (shown above) and watermelon and a few other seedlings coming up.

Esme and I planted cucumbers and catnip in the greenhouse today.

bits

I have a dentist appointment and a math tutor session (I'm the tutor) tomorrow... I'm still coughing from the sinus infection that just doesn't want to go away.  I'm doing even more Welsh.  I've found a children's program called 'Abadas' that has a Welsh version, and it is so cute and very good at teaching new words.  I tried to watch a Spanish language learning program again - and most of the time I could track what they were saying, but I don't think I'd really *get* Spanish in the way I *get* Welsh unless I had to deal with it every single day.  I *get* Welsh on some 'closer to home' level and the words echo for me long after I hear them.  Spanish it is tough - more sifting.. less certainty.  I know Spanish would be more of a 'hire-able skill'. 

Working the longer hours and with less help is not doing well at work.  They are doing this 'prescriptive scheduling' nationwide.  And it sucks, nationwide - even people who work at another box are telling me that.  Customers are telling me this.  There are fewer people for them to talk to during the times they want to be there - weekdays etc.  The most of the 'weekend shoppers' are what they are aiming for, but they are missing all of the professionals and contractors now that they were trying to woo for so long.

Something has been digging in our raised bed in the garden.  We're going to put a bit of fence around it.  Hopefully it will warm up soon.  Cantaloupe plants began to sprout today in the greenhouse.  I knocked over the asparagus starting trough the other day but it looks like I didn't kill all of them.  There are a few spikes still trying to come through it.

full speed Catahoula leopard dogs

 Catahoulas go full speed.  They jump, they play, they lick each other's ears and then go after each other to lick them back. I caught a whirlwind spin with four of ours at the top of the stairs today.  Then they all acted like it didn't happen and no, who?  us?  We're dignified.  Really.  We are.

Now we have a water heater to fix... the human ones of us, that is.

Garden day Easter

 we planted several of these pots with lettuce

 the radishes are coming up

 different zones in the garden

 honeysuckle vines behind the garden

red maple copters down in the woods


Esme had a great Easter visit with her friend, walking in the woods, and playing with some of the things she got in her Easter basket.  I found a very cute green llama for her :)