No Monkeys Around Here...

Just barrels of fun.

That’s what we have around here. Grab a cuppa as my friends 'down under' would say... This is a longer than usual post but I hope you enjoy it. I had fun getting this one together.

Let’s talk recycling and re-purposing. You’ve seen the tree branches we used in the garden for our pole beans. We also use them for gourds and I’ll be putting some more up for the cucumbers. Carol came up with the idea to keep and use them instead of burning them. I just executed the idea.







Here’s another idea or two…



Old dryer tubs. This one Carol took the spray paint can to it so it would add some color. This one has a tomato plant in it.



Old washer tubs... which I don't have any of yet. I'm looking though. I think you could make them look really neat with the all the drain holes that are in them.










Old or new wash tubs. This one Carol planted petunias in and it's looking good.











An old plastic barrel that was cut down for use as a water barrel for horses. It was here when we moved on to the place and we don’t have horses, so…

This horse watering barrel is now producing tomatoes. The first ripe tomatoes came out of this barrel. Notice the marigolds in with the tomato plant. Adds a touch of color and the marigolds are good to run the bad bugs away from the tomatoes.

You can see some more of the tree limbs laying in the background waiting for me to think of some fun way to use them.




Large plastic tubs. My cousin and her son gathered up a bunch of these for me. They have a cattle operation and these tubs are what they get their minerals in that they feed the cattle in the fall and winter. These are a great size, as you can see, and they are easy for Carol to tend from her wheelchair.

I still would like to build some raised beds, but as you know, money has been tight all over and there were other needs that needed to be met first. That is the beauty of these tubs. You can use them as your primary garden or when I get one of those “round-to-its” we can use them to expand and/or compliment our yet to be built raised beds.







When I brought these tubs home I flipped them over and drilled drain holes in the bottom so when we water or it rains the water doesn’t just stand in the tubs. We had some old chunks of styrofoam that we had saved from different things we had purchased and that I had gotten out of dumpsters.

Yep, folks, I have been known to dumpster dive… anyway we have used it before as filler in some of our larger flower pots and I had a bunch stashed in our goat shed. Most of it went into the dryers, but I had just a bit left over that I used to start our tubs. Then I ran out of it. Head scratchin’ time…


As you can tell, we do like to recycle and repurpose. From where we live to recycle pop cans is about 12 miles. In order to recycle plastic we have to drive almost 20 miles. So why not use them here on the plantation for now? Seemed reasonable to me. So I filled up tubs with our soda cans and plastic bottles to about the halfway mark and then we filled the rest with our planting dirt and the results have been great.

The plants are easy for Carol to tend from her wheelchair and easy for me to water and weed, too. I don’t have to bend over so far and if the next injury is a knee or an ankle I have a scooter I can get around on and they are the right height for me as well. It affords us ways to use cans and plastic bottles that we either had to drive to dispose of or put them in the trash where they’d end up in landfills so I consider it a win-win solution. And while you may not know any cattle ranchers it might be a good excuse to hang out at a feed store and meet some and beg for tubs… or watch for yard sales that might have something useful for cheap.

Those of you that don’t have room for a garden “in the ground” could always use planters for a patio garden. Or a balcony garden in apartments. Anywhere you might have a small amount of space.


So this is my tip for today. But I do think it’s fun and we all have those things we love to eat fresh so I thought I’d share what we are doing around here… in the red dirt land.

Yes, I Did...

I ran away from home... but only for a few days. My Bro drove me to Ft. Worth Friday night for a visit with our baby brother and his sweet wife. Ben had called Wednesday and said why don't you run down this weekend. I told him it hurt yet to drive and I was trying to be mindful of what the doctor said about if it hurts, don't do it. Well, he called back Thursday and said he was going to twist my arm a bit. Who wants to add injury to injury?

He was off Friday through Sunday and was kicking on the smoker and the grill Saturday with the kids and grandkids coming to visit, swim and eat, and eat, and eat some more. I will say that Ben can smoke up some good meat. And he and Diane, his wife, can both grill a hamburger and hot dogs. Then there are the things for the sides... My niece's husband is an excellent cook and made up a big batch of baked beans, my niece is no slouch in the kitchen either and she made buttermilk pie. The grocery deli made the potato salad, but Ben's oldest son Wil made homemade cookies, chocolate chip-oatmeal-peanut butter cookies. Oh.my.goodness. I felt like I had been stuffed by the taxidermist. You want to talk about feeling like a waddle princess.

I just sat around and groaned. From too much good food instead of pain. It was almost worth the drive down. Ribs, smoked sausage and all the stuff to stuff along with them. Well, yeah, it really was worth the discomfort from the drive. I mean, after all, what else do I have to do but pull weeds and water and sit around and read blogs and write a bit and just recuperate?

Thanks Ben for twisting my arm. Thanks Diane for making sure I was comfortable and keeping me from doing stuff I shouldn't be doing. And a major thank you to my Bro for doing the driving. I felt like I was the star of the old Greyhound bus commercial... Leave the driving to us.

It was great.

What I Have Been Up To...

In all this heat.

Garden is underway. If you click on the photo to "embiggen" it, as Laura says, it is a bit easier to see. Of course, I recognize that not all people are as blind as I am...

This photo the bushy plants are black-eyed peas. In back of them, the taller plants are zucchini. Please note that there is very little grass mixed in with them, thank you very much. I've been working on cleaning out the grass and the weeds from around the veggies. With the wet spring, all the weeds and grass almost got the better of me.



Yep, those are my dirty fingers you see... it's what happens when I pull weeds and grass. As you can see, I'm showing off baby yellow crook neck squash. And yes, there is some grass there, but not like it was even a week ago.









This is one of the zucchini plants. They are BIG this year. I'm either going to have to eat a lot of squash or freeze some because I think I'm going to have bumper crops this year.












Especially if I can keep pouring the water on... The zucchini plants are on the right edge of the picture. In the foreground are the bush green beans and where you see the sprinkler going are the pole green beans. The poles are from limbs out of the creek willows along the road that were cut back hard in the spring a year ago when the storms, both ice and thunderstorms, broke off part of the trees into the power lines and knocked out power for several hours. The power company cuts the trees under the lines back, but they don't cart off the branches so we trimmed the little limbs off and kept the long pieces to use around the place.








Here's a view from the other end of the row. The plant on the lower right part of the picture are some of the yellow crook neck squash plants.

















All the feathery stuff are asparagus plants. This was their second spring so next spring we will be able to lightly harvest some. The fourth year they say you can harvest heavier and then after that if cared for I should be able to enjoy asparagus for a long time.






Aren't these beautiful.












And this is the beginning of the corn experiment. This row are the ones I planted on the best day according to the zodiac planting signs. Tipper, over at Blind Pig And The Acorn, enlisted some of her readers to try out planting according to the signs. On June 23rd, which was deemed the best day of the month we planted half (10) of the seeds that Tipper shared with us. Then on the 26th which was deemed the worst for planting corn, we planted the other 10 kernels. I'll be posting pictures along so we can see if things really do better by the signs. So you all will probably be tired of 'corn' by the time this experiment is done.

All this is why I've been going outside early instead of going back to bed. With the 100 degree temps we've started having the only smart time to garden is early. I guess I'm getting smarter in my old age...

We Feed The Birds...

And they feed our souls.


I've posted pictures of the birds before but today I wanted to share some of what the birds gave us back on this post today.


Lots of sunflowers.




I love watching them grow. Sunflowers are beautiful to watch grow no matter whether I plant them or the birds gift them back to me.

Each little step that these wonderful flowers go through to show off their glory is so artistic to my eye.

I don't know if I ever told you all that the reason I take photos is that I wanted to have my own pictures to work from when I paint.





I want to be able to see it through my eyes and try to create a picture that shows what I see and take it a step further...










To what I think it could be and perhaps even more.


And, it seems the underline poltergeist jumped into this computer, too...maybe to keep me humble? God does have a sense of humor He shares with me when I seem to be getting too full of myself.



One of these days I'll learn how to do the underline on purpose. Or how to turn it off. Oh well...
Back to the drawing board.

Look What Landed At My Home...

I had laid down for a bit of a nap and when I got up this box was in my chair.

Instead of the Christmas/birthday rip it open quick, I forced myself to open the box carefully so I wouldn't do damage anything inside.

WooooooHoooooo!!!!!







My brand spanking new laptop.



Ain't she purdy?!! I love purple.


OBVIOUSLY!!! duh.







This is a Dell Studio 17.

A seventeen inch screen for this old blind woman.

It has all it's keys, too.

There is a place on the side where I can put in my camera card and it reads my pictures. I don't have to hook up any camera docking cords.

Guess what else it has.... A built in WEB CAM!


>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>




Good Morning! Aren't you glad you don't have to wake up to this site every morning.

If I learn about using it maybe I can do a better photo for you and erase the image of the 'woman in the mirror' that I get to see every day.

I'M DOIN' THE HAPPY DANCE ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!

It's Hotter Than H.E. Double Hockey Sticks...

It seems like only yesterday we, as in me, myself and I, were fretting because we had another wet, cool spring that stayed that way longer than usual. This week the predictions are for 100 degree + weather all week long. I have said many times that I am not an early riser. I don't enjoy getting up at God-thirty in the morning and sipping my Diet Pepsi in quiet solitude and watching the sun rise. The only times that I have willingly watched the sun rise was back in the olden days when I stayed up all night. Doing whatever I did all night... The good thing about losing your memory is X-ing out the wild child days.

As I told you in my post on Father's Day the two times I heard my father swear was at me and because of me and those incidents were both related to not getting up and being ready to go to school. My sweet little mom would ask me if she needed to get the washcloth when she would wake me for the second, third or umpteenth time. She was a very smart woman. She wouldn't pour a glass of water on me but she would, and did, wet down a washcloth, pull back the covers and slap that puppy on my tummy... once. That was all it took. After the first time she would ask me if she needed to get it and I would be on my feet... "No, ma'am! I'm up."

The first semester that I went away to college I was assigned a roommate. I didn't think anything about it because I can get along pretty well with most anybody. That changed the first time she woke me up at 6 freakin' 30 in the morning to ask me if I wanted to pray with her. Bless her Southern Baptist heart... I kind of... sort of maybe implied if she woke me up again at that time in the morning she just might be looking at talking to Jesus in person. Don't get me wrong I don't have anything against prayer, in fact I pray often. Just not at 6:30 in the morning except maybe to ask the good Lord to help me, to keep me from killing somebody.

But I digress... what I wanted to tell you was that it has been so hot that when either my bladder, thank you menopause, or the dogs wake me up to go out I just pull on my shorts and go out to work in the garden or the flower beds. Yep... even if it's 6 freakin'30. I work for an hour or two or until my eyelids start to sweat. After that first burst I'll go out for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, doing a little bit of planting or weeding or moving sprinklers and/or soaker hoses around. After 3 weeks of rain every day I'm now having to water pretty much every day in some portion of the flower beds or the veggie garden.

Because is it hotter than h-e-double hockey sticks. Just thought I'd pass that little tidbit on to all of you that are having 90 degree and under weather. You lucky stiffs...

Six And Six...

Darlene, over at RamblingsAboutWhy, tagged me a while back and I'm just now getting to it. The instructions are to pick the sixth folder in my pictures and pick and post the sixth picture. So here it is:

This was taken when we lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in our front. flower bed. That bee was very busy this particular day. I watched him working away until he got closer to the front of the flower bed so I could get this photo.

Not bad for a rank amateur with a point and shoot camera and no idea about editing. This was straight out of the camera.

I know I'm supposed to pick six people to do this little exercise, but I'm just going to say if it looks like something fun to you, go and have fun with the Six And Six.

Have a marvelous Monday.