Visitors

Amy and Tom (sister and her husband) came to visit last weekend. It was a really nice day, we had brunch and I made pancakes, cooked up some homemade venison breakfast sausage and eggs from my chickens. Amy brought some maple syrup from a farm down the road from her. YUMMY!

We went for a long walk, first across the street where there is 100 acres of what used to big old trees. Well, for about, it seems, like a year, they have been logging it. Kinda depressing. The property is owned by a lawyer that lives in a town about a half an hour from here, I guess it's been in their family for a long time. There is a church camp there on the property somewhere. And there used to be huge old trees everywhere but now only small spindly ones survived the massacre. In this case it pays to be puny. I hope they're not going to sell the property.

Then we walked out back and I took that picture of the rock with the moss growing on it.

We went back to the tree stand that Kevin and Tom refurbished a while ago. Tom got up there and spruced it up a little. Swept it with a broom that I was very surprised that they had in there. Re-hung up the tarp that had had half fallen down and decided that they need to do a little more work to it before hunting season this fall.

Then he started playing air guitar with the broom.

ROCK ON!

He had the camera and took some pictures while Amy and I were walking around the pond hoping to see all kinds of things that we didn't, like water lilys, frogs, fish, flowers, maybe a turtle or I'll even take a snake at this point.

Then I spotted him with the camera so Amy and I posed for some pictures that I will not share here. Posed pictures sometimes are not very pretty.

He decided to take Amy for a ride and try out the paddle boat that Eileen gave us last fall. This is the first time it has been warm enough with no ice on the lake to try it out. Puppy decided to take a ride with them. She loves to get on the water as long as she doesn't get wet.

Who's taking whom for the ride, I don't think he is paddling.

She is of course.

I found these next two pictures when I downloaded them from my camera onto my computer. I knew I should have worried when I saw him with the camera

With Tom and a camera you never know what will show up on the film.... or I guess, show up on the hard drive is more correct.

Can you guess?

Til next time,

Beth

Flower Explosion, Farm Stuff and a Birthday Party!

What started out as a pretty little Moonflower (one of my all time favorites so I bought one for Kevin for his birthday last year) has turned into a monster!

Check the size of it here in this picture. The Butterfly Bush behind it looks really big in comparison. Now look at it, the Butterfly Bush doesn't stand a chance! I had to trim back three or four feet just so we could get up the steps. The picture does not do it justice. The flowers are beautiful. It has taken over the whole garden. We are going to encourage it to grow more and scatter the seeds all over. It is a really good way to discourage the weeds. Kevin split open the thick leaves to show his dad the base of the plant and look below what is hiding in there.

Our beautiful Polish Crested chicken!

She is hiding her head because she thinks I can't see her. He moved the chicken to try and shoo her away but she has about 20 eggs under her and we have no idea how long she has been sitting on them. We will let her go and see if any hatch. I hope they do, it will be really fun to watch them. We have three of this breed and two of them are so broody. The other broody one has been sitting in a nesting box all summer, to no avail because I take the eggs every day.

Here is our other flower explosion. What started out as a few day lily starts has turned into huge plants. I like the background so much better! A chicken house instead of a pool. I'm going to cut the flower tops off soon. I'd rather be able to see the rock and the trellis instead of the flowers. Kevin wanted me to wait because there are still so many buds but it looks too messy to me. I'll put a before and after when I do it.
Here is the trellis I want a clear view of. It has a passion vine on it that we transplanted a few weeks ago and it is getting ready to bloom already. They are such fast growers. I hope it has time to fill in a little. I have been waiting since last year to transplant this. I finally found a really reasonably priced trellis, only about $20.00 so we finally transplanted it.Here are my sweet water lilys. Not a very good picture though, the camera wanted to focus on the cattails and not the lilys. When I was in Sugarcreek (Amish Country) a couple weeks ago I picked up three Amurs for our pond. (Grass eating carp if you didn't know) I was really worried about them eating my lilys but the lady at the fish hatchery said that the lilys are probably not hardy and won't make it through the winter anyway. They look nothing like anything we had in our lake when we were growing up so she may be right.




When we in Sugarcreek I found this really well made napkin holder. There is an Amish family that makes these and the kids sign and date them. Really cute don't ya think?

I also found this awesome buzzard to put by my pond.

Pretty creepy don't ya think. I love him!

While online looking for ways to water the food eating, water drinking demons that they call meat birds, Kevin found this amazing Bell Waterer. He ran a garden hose from our pond and it works great. It's a low pressure kind of thing that uses gravity to get water.

You can see the hose coming down the bank from the pond. We had to get the birds away from the house cause they are pretty stinky and ruin grass pretty fast. We really should move them a couple times a day but it's too much, working 10 hours a day. We do move them more on the weekends though. Here is my garden, all of it! Only one plant survived, all the rest were scratched up by the escapee chickens. I didn't have very much to start with though. There is a tomato with two leaves left on it but I'm sure it's days are numbered. I only have this one extra fence section.We had a birthday party for the youngest yesterday, 10 years old! Lots of Hannah Montana and pink stuff. We found this ice cream maker and I made frozen custard. Loved it!


I'm such a loser, I had to wrap her presents in used gift bags (they looked new though) and had to turn Christmas paper inside out for the big one. I covered it all up in a bunch of bows, girls love bows! We got her a Ladderball game (aka Hillybilly Golf) and Kevin, me, the youngest and her big brother played it all day today. She was at her Grandpa Mikes for the Fourth of July and played it there and loved it. She said she rocked at it. That was great but she and I were on a team and let's just say that neither of us rocked at it. The guys beat us two games to one. We will get our revenge though.



If any ones feeling bad about the heat take a look at this and be happy!

Til next time,

stay cool!

Beth

Baby Turkeys, Meat Birds and Flowers

I was able to catch the moms with the babies in the short grass and got to film them for a couple minutes until the entourage of miscellaneous farm yard birds followed me and scared them off into the high grass. I go back and peek at them almost every half hour. They look exactly the same every time I look but now the moms think I'm a stalker and walk away when they see me coming.

It's Sunday morning and I am doing laundry and blogging. I feel guilty if I don't blog but I don't feel guilty if I don't do laundry. What's up with that?

Last night when I went into the laundry room to start, I flipped on the light and no light. I asked Kevin to put in a new bulb because he can reach it and I have to go and get a chair and yada yada. When he reached up to unscrew it it came on, only loose bulb, problem solved. Anyhoo, this morning when I flip it on, as mentioned before, no light so I wiggled it and it came on. Not loose bulb, bad fixture, another can of worms altogether.

So I would wiggle, light comes on, two seconds later, light off, and on and on til I gave up and did laundry in the almost pitch dark. Go get a lamp you say? I am trying to get this blog done and don't have time to go get a lamp especially when I am obsessed with all the birds outside and check on them constantly. So I blindly put clothes in the washer. White stuff with dark stuff, colors with whatever. Not important, it's laundry, I don't care. Right now I'm not really sure what's in there, I think it's the kids beach towels and some jeans.

I don't have any fancy clothes at all, I had to go out for dinner Friday night and had not even a nicer T-shirt to wear, looked everywhere too. It was either wear the T-shirt that has the Piggly Wiggly logo on it or one of the kids' Halo 3 shirts. I opted for one of my = sleeveless T's that wasn't too wrinkled form off my shelf.

So, back to the blog, I need to focus. If I could type faster this would be 10,000 words longer.

Yesterday I walked around and took some random photos as I typically do when my camera is working and here are a few shots of what's doing at my house.

I have planted a passion flower at the base of the trellis, can't wait for it to grow, hope it gets big enough to bloom this year.

Here is the ever watchful Dominick and his girls.

One of my young Narragansett turkeys. They are the most beautiful birds. If all goes as planned we will have Narri poults for sale next spring.

Behind him is my Palm tom. Someone pulled out all his tail feathers so he looks funny strutting. Actually, he has not stopped strutting since he started last spring. The Bronze tom does not strut at all now, just follows this one around all day.

My Palm hen sitting on a clutch. She thinks I can't see her if she hides her head.

My broody Orpington hens. Don't even try to get an egg out from under these two. One of them bruised my hand one day. It's Kevin's job to collect eggs from this spot. We have marked 10 eggs and left them under them. We just take any new ones.

A pretty reflection on the pond.

I'm not sure if I put in a picture of my swing before or not. This is where I found the two clovers.

The meat birds. They are always very hungry! It's actually kinda scary.

My favorite Rhode Island Red hen. Her name is Red, not very original but for some reason it fits her.

I carry her around the like this whenever I am out by the chicken house. We both love it. If I pet her, especially under her wing, she goes to sleep.

The flowers by the pond.

(I just heard distress peeping coming from the front room and had to go check and there was a newly hatched poult. This is the fifth one to hatch from this group. I can't wait until they're done. We only have a few more to go.)
The bigger picture.
My Snow in Summer, one of my all time favorite perennials.


Daylilies, I love these colors.


An old favorite.
Some sort of weed but looks pretty.
Another sort of weed, the noxious type!
My poor pampas grass, not doing so good.
Really happy Black Eyed Susans.

Now it's time to go fumble around in the dark again and then I think I will have to go out and check on the baby turkeys!

See y'all,

Beth

Of Four Leaf Clovers and Luck

On the fourth of July we were at Kevin's Dad house and one of the kids ran up and showed me a four leaf clover that their cousin had found. Of course I had to inspect it and it was indeed, a real life, four leaf clover. Their cousin, who is in their upper teens, walked up behind them and casually said "Oh, I find them all the time".

I have, all my life since I was a kid, looked for four leafed clovers and have NEVER found one! I grew up in the country and have always played outside and spent many hours sitting in the grass and looked and looked for them. I have always envied the kids who have found them, knowing I was missing out on a lot of good luck.

Well, Friday I was sitting on my new swing all by myself, over by the pond watching Flipper and Buddy swimming. Kevin was running an errand or something, I don't remember. I was looking at the clover at my feet and wishing I could find a four leafed one and all of a sudden I said "Wait a minute...", reached down and picked a suspicious looking clover and there it was!!

A FOUR LEAF CLOVER! MY LUCK DAY!!!!!!

I ran in to get my cell phoneto take a picture, because my camera has been broken for MONTHS and I happily snapped away, thoroughly enjoying what would be my next post, explaining how lucky I was and how the tide had turned, good luck for me from now on!

Then, I looked down and low and behold...THERE WAS ANOTHER ONE!!! Oh my gosh, it doesn't get any better that this I thought! I grabbed my phone and snapped away again, carefully choosing how to get both clovers in the shot. Holding them up in the air, with the sky as the background, then holding them lower, with the pond as the backdrop, hoping you could see each leaf really well.

Then I continued taking pictures, a few of the pond and our new bubbler in action (more on that later) and some of our really beautiful yellow day lilies blooming by the beach. I could not wait to go in and upload these awesome photos. I took the clovers into the house and put them in one of my favorite books to press them so I could save them.

I got my camera and went to my computer and this is when my luck ran out. No pictures anywhere in my camera. None in the "phone memory area and none in the "memory card" area. The memory card had been acting funny, I should have known. Earlier in the week I wanted to download some pictures. At the time I had over 180 on the memory card. All of a sudden, poof they were gone. There were still a few but most were gone. I had already copied them to my computer so it was no big deal. It was kind of good because it was really tedious to delete pictures from my phone cause I had to do it one by one (that was why I had 180 on there, never wanted to sit and go through 20 steps to delete each one).

The pictures were gone because the camera was not set to save them. It had somehow been set to save the pictures to an "external memory". What the heck was that! I could not find them anywhere. I finally figured out how to reset it to save the pictures to the phone memory but they will not transfer to the memory card and so I have no way to download them to my computer. I guess I need a USB cord for that. I looked in Walmart the other day and they had nothing. CRAP!

Anyway, back to my "good luck"clovers. I had already squished them in my book and I had no way to recreate those shots even if i could save them and download them. I even thought about faking it (seriously, I did) and using three leafed ones, holding them far away so you couldn't tell but I couldn't do it. I was starting to think that the second clover had cancelled out the first. I was back in the "no luck" category.

We had finished most of the house painting and the baby turkeys had hatched out in the pasture, we had gotten sand for the beach and our new bubbler and no way to take pictures. I have been whining to Kevin about a new camera for a month now and he is not picking up on it. I will have to wait for Christmas or my birthday or something I guess. I do not like to post without pictures because I think it is kinda boring so my blogging days would be over with no way to upload pictures. I am seriously having withdrawal and panic attacks. I love to take pictures. Always have. My sister in Cleveland checks everyday to see if there is a new blog with pictures of what has happened next at our house. She even makes requests.

I have been using my Canon for years and loved it but it has gone bad again. I sent it to them to have them fix it a year ago but it has done the same thing again. Some electronic problem. They fixed it before, no charge but what a hassle. Emailing them back and forth, mailing it in, waiting for it to get back and on and on. I have no patience for all that.

So, in desperation I got out my camera just to check if maybe it would work and HAPPY DAYS, it was working. I didn't dare turn it off, I just hurried up, put on a jacket cause it had just stopped raining and ran out to try to get some pictures of all the new stuff. No way to recreate the clover shot so I had to take one of them squished in my book. Check it out!

Can you find the new turkey babies in the grass? There are seven of them. These are the moms, they shared sitting on the eggs for a month.

Look closer......

And closer.....

And closer.....

And really closer....at first did you see all three?

Above is a crop of the previous picture. Look how adorable! I am so worried about them. They are soooo tiny. Kevin had to tell me to leave them alone. I wanted to take a chair out there and keep an eye on them. I think I would even pitch a tent out there and bring them in the tent with me for the night if they would come. (I just snuck out there and peeked at them without Kevin knowing, they are hiding in the back of the pasture, probably from me.)

Here is our new bubbler in the next picture. It took a while for Kevin to decide on how he wanted to manage the ponds aeration. He had considered a windmill but the price was high and our wind is iffy. He even bought the turbine blades. This seems the best route. It works really well and when he first turned it on you could smell all the rotten water being moved up from the bottom. Now it smells fine. The kids love to swim through the bubbles.

Here is a close-up of the water moving. This is probably boring if you don't see it in person. The bubbles are really strong though.
Before and after of our house again only this time the bottom is painted and the porch is almost done.

We still have to attach the hand rail, add ballasters or whatever you call them, paint the door, put up the new screen door and make a cover for the awful looking air conditioner. We are going to make some kind of arbor or something and get something to grow up it.

Here is our new sand pile. The kids love it. I talked Kevin into leaving it in a pile so the kids can play in it. He really wanted to smooth it out so it would look better.

And the birdhouse I belatedly got Kevin for his birthday. We are hoping the Purple Martins like it as much as we do.
Closer up.

So, that is what has been happening here. Oh... as far as my luck getting better, the batteries in my camera died before I could take all the pictures that I wanted to.

Here's hoping the camera fairy makes a stop at my house soon. I'm not putting all my money on the clovers.

Beth

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