Lazy Me!!!

Yes. I've been a lazy poster. It's not because I haven't been busy. It's because I've been lazy.

I promised pics of a craft I was working on. I'm still working on it. Lazy me!

I've been meaning to post on the goings-on about our small acreage. Lazy me!

I've been meaning to tell all of you what I've been cooking for the holidays. Lazy me!

Well...I have to get back into the swing of things. I enjoy reading everyone else's blog and seeing what they've been up to in small farmville. Just maybe someone wants to keep up with us?

For some reason, I cannot download pics today. Every once in a while this happens. Sorry.

I can now upload photos. Much thanks to the computer guru at work! Go Bob!

So...in November, for Thanksgiving, we had some company come up from Florida. It was hubby's brother and his daughter and family. It was great to spend some time with them. I especially enjoyed it since I really didn't know them that well. One thing my niece and I had in common was SHOPPING! If you don't know someone that well, go shopping. It's a great conversation starter and an all-around fun olympic sport. ; ) We spent a day bargain shopping! No guys, just us girls. I treated them to some homemade pizza when we returned. I made dough in the morning and we had two very large pizzas in the evening. YUM!

For Thanksgiving dinner we had loads of food. My brother-in-law wanted to treat us to a dinner. So he had his daughter cook. What he didn't know was that when the rest of the family came over, there was more food coming in. I did my usual desserts and breads. Everyone else brought sides. It was great!

Pumpkin Pie, Cornbread, Rolls

Biscuits, Cookies, Banana Cream Pie, Lemon Cranberry Bundt Cake, Honey Butter

 Then in December, I still had flowers blooming in my garden. My lantana was busting out with flowers because it was still warm. The butterflies were everywhere! There were some yellow flowers growing up into my weeping holly bush. They were really outstanding with the red berries from the holly bush. Crimson and yellow together were really pretty for fall.

Lantana

Unknown Pretty Flower

 Then, we were invited to go to my Florida brother-in-law's place for Christmas. It is a pretty short trip and we had great weather. Sunshine all of the way down. : )  We spent a day at BIL's house then went to his daughter's house in Palm Harbor, clear on the other side of Florida. It only took about 1-1/2 hours to drive. It was a really nice drive. We had great weather the whole time we were there and stayed in Palm Harbor until the day after Christmas. Then it was home again.

In January, we started planning for our spring garden. This meant getting seeds germinated and a strawberry patch ready. Last week, I finally transplanted the last of the strawberry plants that I was going to plant. In the large patch, we have 1110 plants transplanted. In the nursery patch, we have 135 plants planted. Were we busy? You bet! We're experimenting with a watering system this year since we have such a large patch. Wish us luck with that! But we still have somewhere between 200 and 400 plants left to get out of our other garden before we can plant tomatoes, beans, peppers and such. All of those left over strawberry plants will be lifted and I'll take them to work for the guys there.

Hopefully, I'll be able to insert photos again by the next post.

I wish you all well.

Michelle

Gardening for Food

Ever since we've been married, we've been putting in a food garden every year. It all started with a couple of tomato plants and a couple of jalapeno plants. Our first garden gave us the biggest and best tomatos we've ever had. I also had so many jalapenos from two plants that I had to either freeze or can them. Here is another glimpse of what we have going this year.

Strawberry Patch - before weeding

Here is the strawberry patch before the second weeding. We have about 300 plants total among this and the raised beds. We have Ozark Beauty plants and they are everbearers. However, our weather in SC is too hot for them to bear as much as they are supposed to. But this year we've had a bang-up crop of berries. We've had two bearings and a third smaller bearing is coming up. We ate most of the berries and the birds and slugs had some too. I have enough berries in the freezer to make about 8 pints of jam. That is a favorite thing for me to eat with my homemade biscuits and a cup of freshly-brewed coffee. Yummmmm. Back to gardening.

Strawberry Patch - after weeding

Here are some of the lovely plants growing in the Back 40 garden.

Zucchini and Summer (Crookneck) Squash

Pattypan Squash

We finally got zucchini to grow. We had six summer squash plants last year and just three made it this year. One or two zucchini and two Pattypan plants. I guess the zucchini makes up for not having so any summer and pattypan squash this year. If you've never eaten Pattypan squash, you'd really love it because it is a nice fresh flavored squash. It is best eaten when the fruit is about 6" in diameter or the green tinge has just gone off of the white skin. If it grows too big, you have to peel it to eat it. The skin becomes very hard.

Cherry and Grape Tomatos

Cherry tomatos on the top right and grape tomatos on bottom left. We have eight plants of cherry tomatos and two plants of grape tomatos. Our other tomatos are a mixture of Mortgage Lifter and Better Boy plants. They are all doing well but we are having a few problems. Blossom end rot and rust. We've pulled about six plants already. We probably should pull at least two more with rust, but they have nice tomatos growing on them. I don't know how that will affect anything, but we have to be careful not to touch other plants when we've pulled leaves from the rusty plants. Don't compost rusted leaves. That's not good for the next round of tomato plants.

Beans (squash to the left)

Here are our green, pole and speckled beans. They are all bearing well, right now. It is so wonderful to have fresh veggies on the table. They taste so good! I will have to freeze some of the green beans. They are really producing.

Now, all of these plants can be planted again in our zone beginning in July. We've never done a second planting, but we will this year. Then we'll figure out our fall crop for the winter growing season. It's three season gardening down here.

Herbs and Nursery Garden

I love my fresh herbs. This is what I have growing this year. Garlic chives in the front right and oregano behind it. The small patch in the middle is thyme and basil is the large-leaved things behind that. Dill is the ferny stuff you see to the back left. My nursery items are a very small strawberry plant which grew to a massive plant with babies. Little pieces of sedum (variegated and green) and a lantana plant that I didn't think would amount to much. I'm considering one whole box of herbs for next year and one for the nursery items.

Well, I have dinner to make and a lot of housework to do. You betcha we're having green beans for dinner tonight!

Take care.

Our Gardens

Here are a few pics of things going on in our gardens right now.

Driveway Garden

This garden is by our driveway. There are dwarf daylilies in the front. Standard orange ones further down. To the left, near the truck's bumper, is a perennial sage. The fragrance of the leaves is really great. The purplish flowers don't have much of a smell. I think I have had this one for about 5 years in this spot. I trim it down every year to new growth and it gets better and better. Between the hoses, you can barely see the yarrow. Behind the standard orange daylilies is a Weeping Holly.

Back Fence Garden

From the driveway garden, if you follow around a little, this is the birdbath garden between willows. Yarrow is in front of the birdbath. The white flowered vine is Confederate Jasmine. It has a really pungent fragrance. The grassy stuff in front is something that grows wild here. It stays in a clump and seeds very well from the spent flowers. I don't know what it's called. It is also sold in the garden centers for quite a few dollars. Hmmm. I got lots of these free flowers. I give credit to the birds for helping spread the flowers, too!

Back 40 Garden

Way in the back of our property, we have a very large garden. Peppers to the left. Tomatos in the center. Cucumbers to the right. There are beans, squash, radishes, lettuce, onions and potatos in here as well. We're anxiously waiting to see what we get from here. Gardening in SC sure is a challenge! We have 3 seasons for gardening. We've only had 15 years of trying to figure it out. It's crazy!

Take care, for now.

Strawberries!!!

In February, we were busy transplanting our strawberries into new soil. We should have done this last December and we had a lot of babies to transplant.

About 250 Plants

This is our old garden. We planted a couple of rows last year to see how they would do in this area. They did really well so we decided to plant the strawberries here.

About 90 More

Well...we had leftovers. This is where I usually plant the strawberries. There are still 50-100 plants in the box you can barely see in the top left of this photo. I didn't get to amend the soil and transplant them. They are doing really well anyway.

What's Growing in My Garden?

Here are some things growing in my flower garden.

The red flowers are spider lilys of some sort. A friend of mine gave some of these bulbs to me a couple of years ago and said they are fall blooming flowers. Well, I never saw them for the past two years and almost gave up on them. I was very pleasantly surprised to see them this fall. They are so pretty.

The purplish flowers are my Joe Pye Weed. It is just that...a weed! If you plant them in a five gallon bucket and then plant the bucket in the soil, you won't be invaded. I end up pulling and burning most of the runners. It is very invasive, but I like them.  The butterflies and hummingbirds like them. They smell kind of like fake grape soda or something like that. They have a very light and sweet smell. 

For some reason, I can't access any more photos for this post. So, I'll say 'see ya!' for now.

I hope some pretty things are growing in YOUR garden this fall.

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.

First Entry

Welcome to our life!

My husband and I live on a few acres in South Carolina. We are trying to make a nice little life here and we're doing well.

We enjoy making things like our barn, out-buildings, fencing, chicken coops, etc. I like to putter in the barn making small bird feeders and other such things.

We garden and have flower gardens, too. It is very nice and relaxing where we live.

One of our favorite past times is sitting out back at the fire pit and cooking. We linger over the fire and talk for hours. Another thing we do is watch the water sprinklers water the garden. We talk about the happenings of the work day and relax. We'll sit and watch the chickens run around the chicken yard, too. They are so funny to watch.

Yes, we're a little boring, but we like what we do. We put on no airs and don't keep up with the Joneses. I hope you find us a bit interesting in our simple ways.

Later!