Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

Frankly I am not as enthused about gardening this year as I usually am. I am hoping my enthusiasm will grow as the weather warms.  I have a row of onion slips planted out in the big fenced garden.  In the closest garden bed by the house I’ve got onion bulbs, two kinds of radishes and some lettuce planted. Today I got another bunch of onion slips and beet and okra seed. Oh, and some Top Crop green bean seeds.  It has the potential yet to freeze, so I haven’t bought anything in the way of flowers or other plants to set out yet.   Last week I went to visit a friend and ended up getting some iris bulbs from her. I did set those out. They won’t bloom til next year, or even later, but they will be fun to watch bloom and see what colors I got.  Here’s a daffodil bloom from last month because I don’t really have any other interesting garden pics to share; dirt with green onion stems poking up aren’t really thrilling, I guess. Although I am pleased that they all seem to ...

 This kitten is liable to be the end of my very last nerve.  A couple of nights ago I had just gone to bed and was at that blessed brief moment before unconsciousness sweeps you away into the land of Nod, when I heard this dreadful chewing sound.  I knew straight off that it was the kitten, but what in the world?  I fumbled for the flashlight and went to inspect the living room.  Not a cat in sight.  So I crawled back in bed, only to hear it again almost immediately. Further inspection showed this:   Chica had crawled completely inside this box Ellen had abandoned and was chewing on the inner flaps. She lives to chew on cardboard. I deliberately keep one out for her to play with and chew on, because it saves the furniture. But 10:30 at night isn’t the best time to sound like a rat on steroids, no matter if you are a cute teething kitten. Ha!  

To continue my tree felling story: The first one came down, but only after a chain broke.  To get the first one down Gary sat a ladder against it, climbed up and put a chain on it, then attached lengths of heavy chain out 60 ft or more and attached it to the dozer. Then he sawed notches on the tree; a wedge from the front and a straight cut partway across the back.  His words: “Getting the cuts in the right place is the trick.” The first tree above…well, he didn’t get the back cut through far enough, so when he went to pull it the chain broke. So he cut a bit further, found another chain and down it came.  The second one was a bit trickier; he decided to just push it over with the dozer instead of using chains on it.  So below you can see the dozer bucket is against it, putting a bit of pressure on it to get it to fall away from the building   You can see him up there making the cuts. Take note of the positions of the barn, tree and dozer.  This time he got...

 It has been a busy and distracting past few days, so sorry there had been radio silence on my blog. And I had been doing so well for the past year or so.  Well. I have a tale to tell. Read on… For the part 3 or 4 years or so our trees have been dying off, out in the fields and around the house and outbuildings.  Around the former milk barn we had a couple of trees die. Well, one died a couple of years ago and one was in the process.  This one was the worst one Then there was this one right at the front corner.  I didn’t get a close up of it, but it’s at the corner of the building on the left   And now I have to get ready for church so I will finish this later. I guess it’s been a couple three weeks since I blogged, another day won’t make much difference.