Sparrow’s Nest

We were delighted to find a sparrow’s nest hiding in my rose bush by the back door this week.

This minature rose bush was one of those that my husband bought for me years ago at the grocery store. It has hundreds of blooms and continues to spread/ climb across our porch railing. I just love it!

Look how beautiful those little eggs are!

Kids Time 2012

On Sunday we drove up to Thompsonville, Illinois to help with the production of the Kids Time Bible Story segments for 2012. We’ll be here all week!

This photo was taken yesterday. You can see Hannah and Laura (wearing green, white, and brown colors) sitting in the front of the tent next to each other.

My husband was cast as Laban. I was cast as Leah despite my protest that I cannot act! Linda says I don’t have to say anything just look sad. I’m not sure I can even do that!

Here’s my husband dressed as Laban yesterday. This isn’t exactly the best photo. I’ll try to get some better ones later.

Discover the Forest

Have you seen this billboard?

I love it.

We have always been a nature loving family. Backyard adventures are common place in our household. From finding snakes and turtles to digging for salamanders, to catching skinks, to feeding the birds and checking our field guides to learn about the different birds in our yard – we love the outdoors.

I’ve been seeing this billboard around our area for a few weeks now. I really, really agree! UNPLUG. We recently disconnected the internet in our house. The first week, the kids were bored during their “free time” that would have otherwise been spent on facebook or youtube. But guess what? Now that a few weeks have passed, they’ve discovered a whole new world of possibilities! My teenagers are riding their bikes again! They take walks and read books. They browse through cookbooks looking for new recipes to try. They aren’t bored.

So even if you were like us and limited the amount of time on the internet or video games, etc. perhaps your family would benefit from unplugging from technology and experiencing life again. The world is a beautiful, amazing place! Don’t deprive your children. Give them nature.

And by the way, Discover the Forest has ideas, activities, and free printables for teachers and kids! Be sure to check it out!

Here’s a few ideas to get you started:

• Book of Stuff to Do Outside
• Become a Junior Forest Ranger
• Finding My Forest for Educators

Planting Vegetables in the Shade

We live on a mountain. We have lots of really big trees. That means we have a lot of shade. I did some research about which plants do well grown in partial shade and here is the list I found:

1. salad greens
2. arugula, endive, and cress
3. broccoli
4. cauliflower
5. peas
6. beets
7. Brussels sprouts
8. radishes
9. Swiss chard
10. leafy greens
11. beans

I am hoping to plant beans in our front flower bed (which doesn’t get a whole lot of sunshine) with a border of cabbage and beets. Maybe it will even look pretty!

Some of these plants do well in containers, too. Salad greens, broccoli, beets, and more can all be grown in large containers.

Tidbits from My Week

It never fails. You think you’ve got it covered. But you don’t. Yesterday, I went out to feed the horses and tend to one of the horse’s injuries. It had rained quite a bit and I knew there would be lots of mud. So, after getting dressed, I doned an apron to keep my clean clothes clean and my muck boots. I was covered up except for about six inches around the knee area.

I was walking Melody over to the barn to tend to her wound and it is especially muddy just outside the barn. And I’m not just talking about mud. I mean, there is a lot of muddy horse poo around the barn. But I was still shocked when she stepped into a puddle and the muddy poopy water shot up like a volcano all over my knee. Not on my apron. On my nice clean knee. The picture doesn’t even do this justice.

Speaking of injuries. Oh my. Sarah’s horse, Melody did a doozy on herself. When I first saw it all I could think was, “She’s going to need reconstructive surgery!!!!” We’ve had our share of scary injuries over the last few years, but this, this was beyond horrible, I thought.

Melody ripped open her hiney. Her her lovely female parts. All torn up. The vet didn’t seem concerned. In fact, she didn’t even feel the need to come out and look at it. Despite my horror. Apparently this happens more than I realized, usually when a mare goes to itch a scratch on the nearest available surface. She’s been amazing when I go to rub the miracle ointment on her. She doesn’t get skittish or jumpy, and hasn’t tried to kick me for rubbing sulfur stuff all over her stuff.

Here’s a graphic photo. You can share my pain. Don’t look if you are weak in the stomach. The wound is swollen three times bigger than normal. She’s supposed to be all nice and tight and pretty down there.

We had a tragedy this week. Our calico bunnies were killed. We don’t know how it happened. Dogs were probably involved. We know which dogs were NOT involved, but not those who were involved. We also don’t know how the door to the rabbit hutch got opened and there werre no apparent scratch marks or other indications that anything tried to open the door. But somehow the door fell open and the bunnies got out and were killed.

We came home from church. I went in the house. Minutes later I heard my youngest child wailing. I thought she had been mauled by a neighbor dog or something, the crying was so bad. She’d found her bunny on the ground. Thankfully it wasn’t half eaten. She looked perfect except, she wasn’t moving.

The girls painted a beautiful stone for the grave. Their friend from next door helped. My son dug the grave. We buried the rabbits and placed the stone and a bouquet of daffodils from the yard on top.

It was a very, very sad day. The girls cried for hours. Laura, my youngest (age 8), said to me, “Mom, I think this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through.”

I’ve thought about that statement. It was probably true. My kids have had a pretty good life. But this really hurt. We’re gonna miss Butterscotch and Clover. Makes us all the more ready to see Jesus come back too take us home to heaven.

In happier news, my seedlings are coming up nicely. My tomato plants are even getting their real leaves!

We also had four monster trees cut down this week. One of the trees, a massive oak, was about 120 feet tall, 19 feet around at the base and I counted 109 rings after it was cut down. You can’t even imagine how big those trees were! The branches on this tree were as long as the trunk of the tree was tall! I think we’ll have enough firewood to last us for the next five years or more. My front yard looks like a tornado hit it. It’ll probably take us six months to get the trees chopped up and all the wood stacked. Here’s a photo of just some of the wood from a few of the branches from the oak I was just talking about.

Notice little Nikki sleeping in the pile of leaves beneath the stack of wood.

 

So, what’s going on in your neck of the woods?

Preparing to Plant Seeds

I love this time of year. When the weather warms up just enough that you know spring is coming and the itch to dig in the dirt and grow something gets under your skin.

In the past I have used yogurt cups, egg cartons, butter dishes, and more to start my seeds in. This year I am almost exclusively using old cans and old butter dishes. In fact, now I am kicking myself for not saving every can I’ve used in the last six months. This isn’t nearly enough for what I have planned.

So, I’ve been scrounging around trying to find any empty container that will suffice for seed starting. Every year I start my seeds in my favorite room in the house – my sun room. For a few months out of the year the room is crowded with two tables full of seeds and the windowsills fill up, too.

The down side is… my beautiful room isn’t quite so lovely with all the seed packets and garden clutter. (Actually, the room needed to be straightened up a bit when I took this photo. )

Side note: See my darling dragonfly lights? We found them at Target!

I have LOTS of seeds!

The upside is… this room has the most sunshine in the house and warms up beautifully everyday if I keep the doors closed. Kind of like a green house. Wish I had one of those!

 

 

Laura’s Garden 2011

My daughter, Laura – age 8, surprised me by planting her own garden and working the soil, right in the middle of our front yard in an old stump we had been filling in with dirt. I didn’t even know she had planted the garden until she came running in one day after campmeeting and told me her cantaloupe seeds (that she planted before Campmeeting) had come up! She also planted a beautiful sunflower. She also planted Tommy Toe Tomatoes (Yellow Grape Tomatoes) and Watermelon. Everything did very well. You can see how proud Laura was in the photos below:

Last Year’s Garden – 2011

I was so proud of my garden last year. For the first time my tomato plants did not get blight and grew so big and beautiful! Some of the plants were five feet tall! I had 17 of them in all. Plus, I grew squash, cucumbers, strawberries, radishes, potatoes, peppers, and herbs. I didn’t get everything planted that I had wanted to grow, but everything I planted did fantastic. I am hoping for another (even better) year.

I never had a chance to post the photos, so here are a few photos of some of my plants: (wish the photos were better quality – the garden looked much nicer in person, despite the weeds!)

I started these tomato plants from seeds I purchased from Baker Creek Seed Company!

 

My squash ended up with a fungus, but it didn’t seem to affect the production too much.

The basil did nicely.

Mulching kept most of the weeds at bay all summer. There were a few stragglers.

I wish I had more photos of ripe fruit, the harvest vegetables, and my other plants. Oh well, I’ll try to remember this year to take more/ better photos!

I’ve had this mint plant for several years now. And the oregano, too:

And in honor of Bare Face Day, here is a photo of me in the garden, working with no make-up.

Yes, I took the photo of myself, hence my weird posture.

The view from my back porch this morning…

…was incredibly beautiful. Despite the fact that this winter has been unseasonably warm, and we are used to getting snow every week during the winter… yesterday it snowed and snowed. I think we got about five inches or so accumulated.

The girls went sledding yesterday afternoon and are currently out there enjoying the snow and their sleds. Hmm. They asked for a carrot and some raisins – to build a snowman, I suspect.

Here’s me, the height of fashion wearing pink, green, and blue stripped pajama bottoms, a green and brown flannel shirt, and green muck boots – standing on the back porch with Lucy who looks like she is kissing Charlie, the next door neighbor’s pup. Lucy is our sweet, sad little dog. She’s mostly blind and deaf (and dumb.)  Charlie likes to spend her days at my house. See how she’s sitting on the porch next to me, like she belongs??? That’s okay, we like Charlie. You can also see some of our firewood ready to be burnt up today.

Here’s my husband scraping the snow off the rental car so he can go visit his brother Steve in ICU this morning: (No, he wasn’t too keen on my taking his photo, hehe.)

So while I was standing there taking pictures of Mykal, I noticed over next to the driveway, my first flowers of spring peeking out of the snow!

Hannah and Laura have been spending warm days building this fort:

They have a lot more planned for their fort, but it stayed pretty dry in there:

Here is our little bridge that leads over the path to the fort:

One of these days maybe there will be a little fish pond under the bridge!

And finally here are some more random pictures from around my yard:

 

 

New Baby Chicks

Oh, and today was the first day we found two eggs in the chicken coop laid by… I don’t know, by I suspect that the two Golden Comets, Pixie and Peep, were the first to lay beautiful brown eggs! Even my husband was excited about it. He loves eggs. Especially beautiful brown free range chicken eggs.

If you remember, when we originally got the chickens, I had a total of fourteen. Unfortunately about two months into that, something forced its way into the coop and slaughtered ten of them in one night. The one “hen” who survived (three of the chickens were on a road trip to campmeeting with me) has now turned out to be a rooster. His name is Lucky. We then got five more chicks, one of which got sick and died of a respiratory illness, so were ended up with a total of eight chickens who are all getting ready to start laying any time.

You can see my girls here roosting on my back porch. Not necessarily a good thing. But they are just so cute!

Of the eight pictured above we have…
2 Buff Orpingtons (one is a rooster) – Buttercup, Lucky
2 Golden Comets – Pixie, Peep
3 Rhode Island Reds – Penny, Violet, K.C. (short for Kentucky Chicken)
1 Amberlink – Speckles

Now, for our new baby chicks hatched October 5, 2011…

3 Americanas (the brown striped chicks) – pink, blue, and green eggs
5 Marans (the black chicks) – dark chocolate eggs
1 Golden Comet (the yellow chick with red stripes on back) – brown eggs
2 Buff Orpingtons (the yellow chicks) – brown eggs
3 California Spotted Whites (the yellow chicks with black polka dots) – white eggs

Not sure what we’ll name these adorable little ones. I like to wait until they get their feathers and I learn more about each individual hen. Although, amazingly enough, they look different enough we can tell them apart. Hannah and Laura are already trying to come up with names for the ones they claimed as their own. It’s just so much fun!

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