No More Weeping, My Willow.

The little green haze on our willow tree is a very welcome sight! This is a sure sign spring is almost here.

Greening of the Willow

This is my favorite tree to hide in. Every year I climb into the tree and prune out all of the dead branches. Dead is dead and it has to come out sometime. It may as well be at my hand...or, should I say possibly broken neck. LOL! I'm over 50 and you still can't keep me out of the tree. I love climbing trees!!!

Sometimes, when it is in full leaf, I go up there to trim and hubby doesn't see me. He couldn't if he tried because it's so dense with leaves. I watch him go from here to there to the neighbor's house and back. It is too funny, but I let him go. Then I'll call him from up in the tree. 'Where are you?' he says. 'I'm up here!' I say. He just shakes his head and lets me do my thing. This tree, in the pic, is about 30' high. I only go as high as I can before the branches sway. As it gets older, I'll go up higher!

We planted the tree about 8 or 9 years ago. This spot got a lot of water and you can see the tree loves it here. We bought a companion for it about 5 years ago and the smaller tree is still small. It grew a little bit, but not like this one. If you look closely, I have a small white bird feeder in it. I build these out of scrap wood and place them in a lot of my trees. I have about 7 around the yard. I have another one that was given to me and one I bought. I'll be making more feeders soon because these ones are starting to rot a bit. The birds don't care. They've been asking for seed and I've been procrastinating about filling the feeders. I'll make a note to do it tomorrow.

That's it for today. Take care. Climb safely! ; )

Sunday Musings

It's been a while since I've posted. We've been busy here.

First of all, we're trying to keep our gardens alive. We haven't had a productive rain in a long while. Last week, we had 5 minutes of rain one day. Then we had a short thunderstorm one night. A guy who I work with lives about 3 miles away. He only got the thunder.

This is in the shade. This is what we've been having for weeks! This was taken around 5pm yesterday. By 8pm, it was still in the 80's. Right now, it's 78 on my thermometer.

 The weatherman says that we have temperatures in the 90's F. The weatherman lives 35 miles away and closer to the ocean where they have breezes. I think they should live where I do. We pray for rain.

Here's a plant that is doing really well. It's Joe Pye Weed. It is really invasive and needs planted in a 5 gallon bucket to keep under control. I didn't control it, so I have to pull out the shoots from all over. On the right of the picture is why I even have this plant. Butterflies and hummingbirds love it! The flowers smell like concord grape juice, to me. The leaves are a bit stinky, though.

Here's Nuts! She got her name when she was a chick, about a month ago. Yes! A month ago. I have never seen a chicken grow this fast. She's a Cornish Rock, which is a fast growing chicken. She was acting goofy one day, playing. So I called her nuts. For some reason, the other chickens pick on her something fierce. They bloodied her comb and head around the comb. She's always been healthy, but she was the runt of the batch I bought. That may have something to do with it. Right now, she's segregated from the rest because she can't walk really well. I know that's from the beatings she's received. I don't know if anything is broken, but she can stand a bit. Her appetite is good. She drinks. She does chicken things. Oh, well. Here's another pet for me!

Here's our experimental garden in the 'back 40'. It is doing really well for not having amended soil. We were a little late planting this year. Closest plants are watermelons and cucumbers. You can barely see the cuke plants because they intertwined with the melons. Next are the squash. I have summer and patty pan. Yummy! Then green beans. Then corn. All is doing well. We are watering this enough to keep it alive.

Here's a watermelon in my hand, for reference.

Here's one of my crafts. I make crappy bird feeders. The birds love them. Probably for the food, but I have them all over the back yard. I make them once every few years because they are not pressure treated and they rot. I don't use pressure treated lumber so I don't kill the birds with chemicals. We have bits of wood laying around from other projects and my hubby gets a kick out of me using power tools, air guns and the like to make yard trinkets. Quite a few years ago, I made a pretty nice potting bench. That was a large project for me. It turned out well. It's rotting and will need replacing.

That little red building in the background was our first chicken coop. We started with 12 and went up from there. We only have twenty-some right now. Now this shed is our wood shed. We store hardwood in there to burn indoors in the winter. Yes. It does get that cold in South Carolina.

Take care, everyone. Have a nice simple life.