My Bad…

To use a phrase that I don’t even like because of it’s imbecilic over use but it seems to work in this context. 

To be real honest… I hit the wall.  And then the wall fell on me.  And then I had to cart the left-over garage sale stuff home and I was wiped O.U.T.  On the bright side I did get a bath.  The dogs haven’t yet gotten a bath but that’s good news for them.  They don’t like a bath.  Oh, they put up with it because I’m bigger than they are but they look at me like I’m beating them.  You want to talk hang dawg lookin’.  They love me when it’s over though.

I’ll get back on my family roll next time.  I had to do this special post for my regulars of 4 or 6 people that have heard about and watched (in a manner of speaking) my garden grow… from squash to tomatoes to my infamous okra. This is a guinea photo and an okra report…

Bro got a photos of the new guineas when they stopped by for a visit…

 

The new guineas, in making their rounds every day, like to come to the back porch and stop by for a visit.  They perch up on the railing and preen and visit a bit.  (First Photo)  The second group felt the railing was full so they fluffed and preened on the back steps.  They are so much fun to watch.  You some times think they don’t have a brain between them when they get startled and scatter like Henny Penny except they start yelling ‘chook, chook, chook’ like guineas on speed or what ever they call speed nowadays instead of Henny Penny’s famous spiel “ The sky is falling, the sky is falling!!!”…  And Debbie you don’t need to tease me about nowadays… I do use it often and naturally if the situation warrants.  I sometimes feel as if I’m a dual personalitied person , part higher educated with very good English sliced and diced and mixed in with Okie idioms that can rear their ornery head at any moment… sometimes called up and sometimes they slip in the conversation on their own whim, unannounced.  I surprise my own self sometimes.  Usually it only happens when I’m tired, though.  I know, I know I’ve been tired a lot lately.

Meanwhile, check out this okra… Almost big enough to think about marrying…but not quite.  Okra this large is generally bad, woody and fiberous.  The marrying phrase is just a flip remark but look at the size of these puppies….

The okra has gotten this large in just a week.  Nobody has picked since I was out there last week and the okra up top is so big and heavy that it’s bending the stalks over.

Makes it easy to pick those 8 foot tall stalks without a ladder. This is my redneck crown molding in the process of getting prettified, you know, fancyied up. First I put up 1”X8’  pine boards around the top of the walls, butted against the roof.  I personally like the simplicity of it but Cuz wanted to fancy it up a bit so she and Bro went to Lowe’s and decided on   3/4”  cove molding at the top and underneath the bottom of the board. No step for a stepper.  Got it up and cut and only hit one finger with a hammer hard enough to squirt blood… but not on the new paint job, thank God.

  In this corner you can see the border with trim on the left… unfancied on the right.  It’s  going to look awesome when finished and I need to get it finished to get off Cuz’s list.  She doesn’t like when jobs get drug out.  She one of those intelligent people that like some sense of order in her home.  Cuz, it’s almost over and I love you, even if I am slow. But I don’t want you to ever have to redo anything I fix and paint.  I like doing things as right as I know how and sometimes that takes longer… 

 

The green trim of the baseboard will be white, as will the window sills and the door facings and the crown.And the next time you get a ‘room’ report the floor will be clean.

Okay!  Carol and I are going to the fair tomorrow in OKC and I plan on getting my camera charged up to get photos to use at some point down the road.  So I hope this post has enough interest for you to forgive me for failing and falling outfor a couple of days of my challenge…

Remember These Babies?

The new guinea babies…  These pictures were taken 7/27/2010.

Look at them now! These photos I took today.

They’ve almost shed all their baby feathers…

They patrol the fields around the house…

Always pretty much in a pack,

Then into the yard, patrolling for any little bug, grasshoppers, ticks and any other buglet that they can find.

Once in a while they will perch on the fence out the back door… lined up for a Spud inspection.

Stopping by to say hello and to preen a bit.

Then it’s time to settle in for the night…

They are grown up enough to be able to fly up into the big oak tree by the house, roosting up high where they are safe from wandering dogs and predators like coyotes.

There are scraps and tussles for “THE” best roosting spot in a guineas mind, kind of like us kids playing king of the hill on a dirt pile.

As it gets darker they get harder to spot… but if you go outside to go to your car or to walk to the workshop you are treated to what I fondly have named… “The Guinea Hallelujah Chorus”.  I mean the chooks (in deference to my friends ‘down under’) tune up and start to set up the alarm… I’m talking they are better than any alarm set-up you could go out and buy.

It’s 11:54 p.m. and I’ve got to get this posted… 

What will come tomorrow?

It’s A Jungle Out There…

A world of heros and villains, pesticides and matricides, guinea temptations and pupster massacres… but then the incredible beauty of growing something that is edible and beautiful.  The circle of life.

First the long overdue garden report that has been sorely neglected of late due to a certain someone… me… running  up and down the road but more about that later.

Walking out of the house the garden looks like a mini jungle. The okra, Rick, is over my head tall and like everything else, thanks  to all the rain we’ve received, is loaded with buds, flowers and okra pods ready to be picked, cooked and eaten.  

I had to throw these two photos in because I walk by them going to take the squash photos and their color just stopped me cold.  Any of you that have read me for any time at all know that, while I love my veggie garden, my true heart of hearts are my flowers.  These are in the south east corner of the big garden.  Had to have a spot of color, don’t ‘cha know…

Let’s talk squash.

We have had a battle royal with first with the Colorado potato beetles, then the squash bugs.  I say we but mostly my Cuz has been on the battlefront.  I put powered pesticide on the squash and potato plants and also the cabbage because the Colorado potato bug likes them all and they are voracious little buggers.  The next thing we knew we were beset by squash bugs.  Cuz was after them with clorox and water mixtue, spraying the bugs and the eggs on the underside of the leafs with that.  It slowed them down some but she ended up having to bring out the heavy artillery… liquid sevin. She is one mean mother when it comes to protecting the squash babies that she was growing.  When I came back yesterday she said she had gotten some squash and shared with one of her church friends.  Turns out the only squash plant survivors of the battle of the beetles were two of the good day squash and the larger of the bad day squash and they are still sitting on flowers and squash.  Yea!!!  for the g.d./b.d. squash.

I was watching “Chopped!” on the Food Channel this weekend and in one of the challenges of food to cook was squash blossoms.  I was so excited to see what the chefs would do with them because I had just learned this year that people often cook and eat them.  The show, while very interesting, didn’t inspire me enough to try to cook them but then nothing very often inspires me to cook… I just enjoy growing the different veggies and sharing photos in various stages of growth with you all.

The news from the bad part of the jungle… It’s kind of Quixotic that a hero can also be a villain.

Yep… the pupster Spud…  The same little guy that grabbed and killed a snake (though it was small it was still a snake to me) when I was working in the pen to make it secure enough for the guinea chicks broke into that same pen while I was out of town and wreaked havoc on the baby guineas…

The wire you see in this photo is now hot.  When I got back from Norman I saw Scott’s truck pulled up by the cage and I just figured that he was working on reinforcing some places that I had noticed before I left.  I had not yet heard of the massacre that occurred while I was gone.   I went in and made a comment about Scott working on the pen and Bro realized I hadn’t heard the story…  While the girls and I were gone, Cuz had let the Spud puppy out to go to the bathroom before bedtime.  When he hadn’t come back in his usual short time she went looking for him.  She found him red-handed or red-footed as it were… I guess without the girls to play with he was bored and had busted a hole in the chicken wire and played chase guineas with unfortunate murderous results.  When Scott and Merri arrived to help Cuz and to begin the reinforcing of the pen they did manage to find and round up two of the original 16 guineas.  We are now on the lookout for other escapees of the tragedy.  Bro met up with the breeder and brought ten more guineas back to the house.  Merri was hot wiring the pen when I got here and after she was finished she came in to tell Cuz that she could let the chicklets out of their respective small pens into the now multi-fortified and hot-wired big pen.

So these will be the closest watched babies until such time as they are big enough to be turned out to run with the other “survivors” that I have posted about previously.  And on that subject another grown guinea has turned up making the rounds with the Cuz’s grown guineas.

The guinea closer to the middle is the new one… it is more brownish colored than the Survivors but is full grown and now enjoying making the rounds of the grounds with the Survivors. No one knows where it came from but Merri said she had seen it up by the silos before but it is now making the rounds around the place helping to eat the bugs before they eat us.

So the circle of life goes on… the good and the bad, the kind and the cruel circles of life.  All go towards making this world that we live in such a strange and wonderful place…

Oh, and yes, the hot wire does work… I found that out today when I went to check out the babies and forgot about the wire and brushed my bare leg on it.  I’m sure it will prove to be an excellent deterrent.

A Little Of This And A Little Of That…

I have been trying since I’ve been here to get a picture of the guineas.  These three are called “The Survivors”.  They are the only ones out of fourteen that survived an attack by dogs that were running in the area.  They are pretty shy of anything and anybody which is probably why they are the Survivors. This morning as I was leaving to go help Bro get his place cleaned up so we can start moving things from storage, the guineas were marchin’… see how they are all in step? The left foot on the ground and all three have the right foot steppin’ out across the drive.

They have a little route that they follow every day.  They peck around the back yard then they go around to the front, then across the road to the neighbors and wander around there for a bit then make their way back to the home place.

      They are never very far from each other as they trek around.  And after their day is done I think they roost in the hay barn just a couple of hundred feet south of the house.  They are fascinating to watch because they are flat intent on their mission unless interrupted by people or dogs that get too close… then they are off and going until they feel safe then it’s back to work.

Today has been just one of those gray, misty rainy days that you get tired of in the winter.  The temperature has been mild this last couple of days, in the mid forties, but there is just enough moisture in the air to make you want to stay inside.  Unless you are like me and something catches your eye and out you go into it in a tee shirt and jeans without a coat.  I thought these would be interesting pictures to share with you all on this gray day…

  Quiet reflections on the pond just northeast of the house…

This one there was just the slightest breeze to soften the sharpness around the edges a bit.

This was what I spotted that made me grab my camera in the first place.  This mimosa tree is just about ten feet from the back deck.  I loved the textures and the colors and on a gray misty day they seem to be so much brighter.

So this is the entertainment in my world.  And I love it.  Makes me want to get my paints out again and I haven’t wanted to do that in a long time.

On another note I would like to ask all of you for prayers for my sister and her husband.  Bill has been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and he has elected to buy a little more time to be with his family by taking chemo.  They switched to a new chemo this week because the tumors had grown even while taking the first rounds of chemo.  Anyway, they have been married for 48 years and he and Sue have four boys that live close enough to help out but it looks like it’s going to be a hard fight.  Sue is a nurse practitioner so she totally understands what’s going on, but your husband is different from your patients.  You can’t separate your emotions from your husband as you must do with your patients. So I just thought I’d ask you to keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

Enjoy your weekend and be sure to tell someone you love that you do love them.  You never know how long you will have them around.