Marking Thyme

Flattened Flatware. Closer photo
appears below

At the Sunset annual open house, I fell in love with recycled silver that had been flattened and herb names stamped in the center. 

Christmas brought two sets of stamps to make them ourselves, and that has been a fun excuse to hunt around yard sales and junk stores for cast-offs.

Spoons are not flattened

While doing that, we stumbled into a Frank & Mike style pick in the backyard of the SkeeterVac guy. We found an old, woodburning box stove in pretty good shape for the Shop.

There are so many clever ideas. For instance, we are now using 3x5 cards in a ziploc bag with a Miniature Golf pencil to hang from a limb of our fruit trees, to chart fertilizer and deep waterings. We take notes, and learn about our trees as they grow.

Love the learning curve. Here are more veggie marker ideas.

Great Cub Scout project idea. Popsicle sticks, ziploc bag, artwork

Raffia, twigs, veggie pictures & glass beads
that are flat on one side. And waterproof glue.

This would be an easy kid project whittling one side down



Any crafts store would have these supplies

They make really wonderful gifts.
Flattened flatware
(close up)

Limb rounds, burned design with a quick coat of varathane

You can repurpose anything, even wine corks and old bbq skewers

More elaborate flatware can be put out utensil side down  

Or re-use your old wooden spoons

Or just grab a rock and let the kids go to town

Learning to Share

The fields to the west and southwest are planted now, in alfalfa, and to the south there are miles and miles of tiny trees wrapped with white protective sleeves. In the field next door, it will be corn. Established almond orchards are to the southeast. Yellow crates of honeybees dot the edges all around, and we work right beside them as they happily explore the flats of groundcover. They own us and they know it.

 

A crop duster came through yesterday morning, moments after a farmhand rang the bell to tell us they were spraying for pests. Light and agile, the plane came in with low sweeping strokes as we watched from the window. WooHoo! No mosquitos tonight!

There hasn't been the right kind of rain for the farmers to self irrigate their crops, and we are feeling it.  All around the irrigation pumps work overtime and for us that means a significant drop in water pressure @ the homestead.

 

We noticed it first in the garden hose, which started off strong and just whimped out. Hmmm. The house pressure was reasonably good, and for a second we thought maybe an underground pipe burst in the yard.

No, wait. Out here, we share. When our neighbors have to tap into the underground reservoir significantly, the water table drops until it replenishs itself. We have to be patient.

The alfalfa crop is in its 3rd week and already the night harvesters were out. The dog sat on my lap as we peered together into the darkness, watching the huge machines with bright lights go up and down the rows.

I'll be hauling buckets of water from the laundry room out to our new plants and trees if necessary. Oh, and praying for rain.

Magic Elixir

Why it's ...

Amazing! Fantastic! Stupendous!

    

It started as a random post about organic mosquito repellent that really sparked our imagination. We rounded up the ingredients and mixed up a batch. 

Today was a garden day anyway so we sprayed ourselves down liberally and headed out around 9:30. The rule of thumb here in Zamora is -- if the sun is up, the skeeters are out. We hauled out the Skin So Soft back up units just in case.

First day impressions: The scent is wonderful. The sweet, light lavendar vanilla does not attract bees, and it does not dry sticky on the skin. For those with a cut or a sunburn, though, it will sting a little going on.

We were forced inside at 3pm because someone rolled in critter poop out in the field and nothing can make a dent in that smell but a bath. After that, we sprayed down again and were outside well past the mosquito witching hour.

IT WORKED! We had no mosquito bites all day and just a few at dusk. The recipe is cheap, easy to assemble and uses wholesome ingredients. You can bet we'll be stocking up on personal sized spray bottles to hand out at our next get-together. We even used it on the dog.  

 

Three cheers to Farmer Blue Coral on FB!

https://www.facebook.com/#!/farmer.coral



L to R: Lavendar oil, Vanilla, Lemon
Juice, water, & spray bottle

Magic Elixir
3 - 4 tablespoons vanilla
1/4 cup lemon juice
15 drops lavendar oil
fill the rest of a 16 oz water bottle sprayer with water



Night Gardening

On Friday after a long week , I came home to a still house.

We had rented a small earth moving piece of equipment where the operator stands on the back and uses the levers to motivate the front scoop. The equipment was there, the garage was open, the dog was in the house, and the truck was in the drive, but no Hubs.

Ten minutes later he came cruising down the road and up the drive in one of those big front end loaders with a back scoop in a chair you can swivel to use either set of levers which had been lent to us by a neighbor just for the night.  It was 6:30 now, and just an hour of light left, so we wolfed down some dinner and got to work.

 

This is what was rented. It was adequate but the process was slow going.

 

This was what our neighbor lent Randy for the evening.

 

 

He got the hang of it pretty fast, as you see.

I was gesturing like a traffic cop because it is hard

for the operator to see over the scoop.

 

 

He did a great job leveling the garden.

 

And then he scooped and leveled a hump by one of the oaks.

We will harvest the loose dirt for the garden boxes.

 

 

 

 By the time it was dark, we had located the lights on the unit. He leveled

the ground squirrel condos to my shouts of joy. We will use that dirt, too.

 

 

The last project of the night was clearing space for the boysenberry and kiwi bushes.

 Hearty thanks to our neighbor and friend! And to my clever and talented husband.


Hump Day

The definition of insanity is even contemplating doing something about all the leaves on the ground. I mean, really.

While fishing around last fall in the outskirts out back, I noticed some fig leaves on the ground near this stand of gangly looking shrubs clustered close together.

The smooth light grey bark. The jointed looking limbs. The shape of its upward slope. Wait: I know this! Figs!!

After that weekend empowerment session by cousin Barbara in February and additional online research in pruning, I'm ready to add it to the Things To Do list for the weekend, and tackle the pruning into recognizable Fig-like trees. Figaro has a big wound on one side which we sealed a couple of weeks ago, but we are never sure it will save him. So it's nice to know we have a Fig back up unit.

It's a weekend of new tires for the car and Tripoley with friends, but also a buying spree for the required accessory equipment for Old Abe to clear and place the garden boxes. So that's on the goals list for Sunday.

It's now or never, we figure. Time to dive right in.

Is it Friday yet?

Spring Forward

I am so grateful for Spring Forward 2013. It's just now 7:24 am and the sun is rising, which means at 6 when I get home, there'll be time outside before it gets dark. We are in a rush for the garden prep and it is hard to devote just weekends. A little each day will make a big difference.

We keep telling ourselves once the initial prep is done, next year won't be this much of a push. That may be a lie, but please don't say.

The boxes were built last weekend: 2 4x8s, 2 4x4s, and we already have several freestanding lg containers to hold the wanderers of Rosemary and Basil. 

Not sure where the lovely vertical garden will go: that's waiting for a relocation spot for probably flowers.

The garden is staked in a somewhat level part of the yard, past the break of the oaks and pines and not too far from water or the fruit trees.  In full sun.

Choosing what to plant is like shopping for groceries when you're hungry... everything sounds good. We've added some grape vines on the inside perimeter because they need to be out of Sam's reach.  Zucchini and tomatoes and garlic chives, for sure. Eggplant and carrots and kale. Bell peppers and artichokes and lemon cucumbers. Pickling cukes and green beans.

As the perimeter grows, we look at what is staked out - 17x21, 21x24, 24x24 - which will fit everything and have 3' walkways between and room for a bench, and it still looks small compared to the yard. The Hubs will design an extendable fence.

But first: staking, clearing, laying chickenwire, leveling boxes and ordering soil. This is the most wonderful soil, and hiring someone to level it out and use what we have is really expensive. Topsoil is really expensive. So -- after a weekend out there, and talking it through, we'll need to pick up a scraper levelling blade and maybe a front scoop to really do the job.

Until then, it's the hoe, flat shovels, the garden weasel and the weed cutter tools. Old School.

There are a dozen container daisies waiting their turn, as slooowly the bedding areas around the grass are cleared of clover weed. My chore. Daisies will cover the floor where the last 3 citrus are situated - a lime tree in center, and two lemons flanking it (a Meyer improved and a Eureka).

That planting bed faces South, in the hottest part of the afternoon, and should do well, especially with the automatic sprinklers from the lawn.


We've been checking out low cost irrigation options for out back - roller sprinklers for spot watering, and surface mount pvc pipes that run along the perimeter and T in to water what is close by. Somewhere on the web had this Gorgeous and Ingenious garden irrigation system. Not our design but we sure wish it were.  Maybe someday, right?

Happy Monday.

In Place

I wake up dreaming about composting bins made of old wine barrels, on a metal stand with a side trap door, which rotates with an old wooden crank.  Not only that, I am dream-scheming ways to entice The Hubs into building one of those.

I am sick, I tell you.

Ideas are bursting out like a popcorn popper, and it is driving The Hubs out of his mind. One thing at a time! he pleads. I would lovvvvve to. But my brain just spills out thoughts and ideas willy-nilly, and everything flows together, and once imagination starts percolating - truly, it is out of my hands.

I bought a bag of butterfly and hummingbird flower seeds today with the Hubs. I realized that although we have nowhere to plant and nothing cleared, he could imagine a day when we will, and he will enjoy the bright bursts of lively color and life that it will draw.

He is the tactile, methodical, organized part of my free spirited anything-is-possible world. I like thinking that maybe we are not so far apart after all. I will try to calm myself, for you.

Yet ... we stalk the farm and garden online postings for cast-offs.  Some of the property must be fenced for practicality, and some of it will be partially fenced to add textural beauty and interest.  The latter idea is not an easy sell, with so many actual things to do, and that of course is what projects I am obsessed about starting.

The Hubs' brain is rooted in actual projects, like figuring out irrigation and how much soil for the garden boxes. Or eventual repairs to the house siding and installing french drains and gutters on the WorkShopGarage. Me? That old skinny fence covered in mossy crud hums to me, repurpose and repair me, yes please? I weakly give in to it, celebrate what a treasure there is each day and the joy of transformation. 

These days we toss out ideas over dinner, and let them come to rest on the Brilliant Ideas List.  I can imagine in years to come the BIL will be many pages, ideas scrawled in all sorts of pens, some with diagrams and flushed out thoughts. It will chronicle the exciting first year of novice rural homeownership ~ and we will think to ourselves as we read it years from now, we have come such a long way! Remember when these ideas were so exciting and new? And if we are extraordinarily lucky, eventually some of the BIL ideas will become part of the living tapestry here, and we will remember our gratitude.