Again with the Updatery
May. 4th, 2011 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clarentineThe chicken house is finished! Well, next to finished. Roof’s on, windows and doors are in place (lacking only the exterior flap on the chicken hatch into the run), wire’s up on the inside and the interior furniture’s in place as well.
(You’d call your bed and chairs furniture, right? So, chickens have furniture, otherwise known as nesting boxes and roosts. >:-) )
We also got the fence poles in for the run and stretched out the wire to fence that in. Hopefully it’ll all be done by the time we collapse tonight. Chicken D-Day is Saturday.
(Some photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8556491@N07/. Many are from our trip to Cheekwood Botanical Garden in Nashville a couple of weeks ago. I still need to download more snaps taken since then – you know, in my copious spare time.)
The veggies are in for the most part. As one might anticipate, I bought way more tomato plants than we actually needed, but selection was so weird at the nursery where we got our plants – singles of some plants, four packs of others. I could have gone to the local herb show, where I would have found a much better selection, but that was clear across town on a day when I was already swamped with things to do (see above re chicken house). Hopefully the varieties I ended up with will be worthwhile.
One of the beds is mostly filled with strawberry plants we brought back from my parents’ farm in Tennessee. They’re perking back up, poor things, and have new leaves, so I think the transplanting has thus far been a success. They’ll eventually be moved to permanent beds to one side of the vegetable area - a project for the autumn.
I still need to put in the winter squash seeds (couldn’t find starts) and wait for the sweet potato slips to arrive before tucking them in. All in all, though, the garden’s in.
***
I do not like these new glasses. Or maybe it’s my aging eyes. Either way, I do not like not being able to see up close.
Sure, yes, I could have gotten bifocals and had a stronger, up-close prescription put in there, but I do not like bifocals. I don’t like giving up part of my regular reading area to something I don’t always use. I’ll stick with single vision for as long as I can.
***
The other project that’s been completed this week is a pair of large gates for the end of the dog yard, both to give access to the area beyond the fence where I’m going to put up a clothesline and to ensure vehicular access to the dog yard, where our well is located.
The clothesline poles came in the mail, too – in the mail, because no one local carries them. I ordered wires for the lines, as well, and those should be here this weekend or early next week.
***
The satellite dish, and its reception of local channels, is giving us fits. A technician came today and told us that one of the trees in the front yard was blocking the signal for the local channels, which are carried on a different satellite signal than the rest of the channels. Bah. The suggestions we were given were to top the tree or remove it. Double bah! What happens when the rest of those trees out there grow more? I’m not wrecking my trees one after another.
***
Good things? The woods and grounds around the house are a haze of green that looks too bright to be real. Turkeys keep calling in the bottom land behind our property, and there’s a whipporwill in the woods and frogs out there somewhere, too.
I have located not just one but four Carpinus trees on the property. You may know this plant better as Ironwood, a muscular-trunked tree with small, serrated leaves and, in the spring, tiny catkins that dangle below the barely opened buds. The forms taken by the trunks are a wonder. There’s probably a hazel, too, but the deer grazed it back to twigs just after I noticed it, so I’m not really sure where it is along the road frontage. It’s been exciting watching the trees and shrubs resolve into blackhaw viburnum (I think), black gum (ditto), maples and beech – oh, the beech trees! There’s blue-eyed grass all over the fields.
The deer have thus far let the new vegetables alone. Hopefully letting Kay roam around down there in the afternoons is keeping her scent strong enough to discourage exploration...either that, or they don’t like tomatoes!
(You’d call your bed and chairs furniture, right? So, chickens have furniture, otherwise known as nesting boxes and roosts. >:-) )
We also got the fence poles in for the run and stretched out the wire to fence that in. Hopefully it’ll all be done by the time we collapse tonight. Chicken D-Day is Saturday.
(Some photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8556491@N07/. Many are from our trip to Cheekwood Botanical Garden in Nashville a couple of weeks ago. I still need to download more snaps taken since then – you know, in my copious spare time.)
The veggies are in for the most part. As one might anticipate, I bought way more tomato plants than we actually needed, but selection was so weird at the nursery where we got our plants – singles of some plants, four packs of others. I could have gone to the local herb show, where I would have found a much better selection, but that was clear across town on a day when I was already swamped with things to do (see above re chicken house). Hopefully the varieties I ended up with will be worthwhile.
One of the beds is mostly filled with strawberry plants we brought back from my parents’ farm in Tennessee. They’re perking back up, poor things, and have new leaves, so I think the transplanting has thus far been a success. They’ll eventually be moved to permanent beds to one side of the vegetable area - a project for the autumn.
I still need to put in the winter squash seeds (couldn’t find starts) and wait for the sweet potato slips to arrive before tucking them in. All in all, though, the garden’s in.
***
I do not like these new glasses. Or maybe it’s my aging eyes. Either way, I do not like not being able to see up close.
Sure, yes, I could have gotten bifocals and had a stronger, up-close prescription put in there, but I do not like bifocals. I don’t like giving up part of my regular reading area to something I don’t always use. I’ll stick with single vision for as long as I can.
***
The other project that’s been completed this week is a pair of large gates for the end of the dog yard, both to give access to the area beyond the fence where I’m going to put up a clothesline and to ensure vehicular access to the dog yard, where our well is located.
The clothesline poles came in the mail, too – in the mail, because no one local carries them. I ordered wires for the lines, as well, and those should be here this weekend or early next week.
***
The satellite dish, and its reception of local channels, is giving us fits. A technician came today and told us that one of the trees in the front yard was blocking the signal for the local channels, which are carried on a different satellite signal than the rest of the channels. Bah. The suggestions we were given were to top the tree or remove it. Double bah! What happens when the rest of those trees out there grow more? I’m not wrecking my trees one after another.
***
Good things? The woods and grounds around the house are a haze of green that looks too bright to be real. Turkeys keep calling in the bottom land behind our property, and there’s a whipporwill in the woods and frogs out there somewhere, too.
I have located not just one but four Carpinus trees on the property. You may know this plant better as Ironwood, a muscular-trunked tree with small, serrated leaves and, in the spring, tiny catkins that dangle below the barely opened buds. The forms taken by the trunks are a wonder. There’s probably a hazel, too, but the deer grazed it back to twigs just after I noticed it, so I’m not really sure where it is along the road frontage. It’s been exciting watching the trees and shrubs resolve into blackhaw viburnum (I think), black gum (ditto), maples and beech – oh, the beech trees! There’s blue-eyed grass all over the fields.
The deer have thus far let the new vegetables alone. Hopefully letting Kay roam around down there in the afternoons is keeping her scent strong enough to discourage exploration...either that, or they don’t like tomatoes!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-05-04 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-05 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-06 01:59 am (UTC)Would you be the wolf with the punk fur?
no subject
Date: 2011-05-05 01:12 am (UTC)One of the few drawbacks to my otherwise fabulous apartment is not being able to garden. I'd love to grow tomatoes and can them again. I may be able to plant some at a friend's house, but we'll see.
It's always something, isn't it?
no subject
Date: 2011-05-05 12:13 pm (UTC)That's what my son has taken to calling this place - Always Something Farm. *g*