When the week is full of crazy you can hardly believe, take a moment and contemplate God’s creation. If He cares for these does he not care for you as well?
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NOTE: The lavender colored blooms are Monarda fistulosa a native or wild Bergamot. It grows natively almost everywhere in the continental US and Canada.
Learn more about the plant, its uses and benefits in the garden HERE.
“When the weather is cold, and never goes above 32 degrees, we are stuck in the mudroom all day just to avoid freezing our whiskers off. We’re so bored.”
You are not seeing double. Kitty on the left is Pickle and on the right is Peanut. They are brothers from a litter who arrived all the way from Tuscaloosa riding in the grille of a pickup truck. That is a 2 hr 28 min or 169.3 mile trip. When the driver discovered them, he extracted them and then took them to our local vet’s office.
On entering, with Walker and Noodle in tow, I spied the assistant feeding them behind the counter and asked if they were available. They were.
“I’ll take them both!” I exclaimed. Bob cocked an eyebrow at me, but I held firm.
Peanut has since become Bob’s favorite and Pickle is mine. I do love a good Ginger cat and having two ginger cats is twice a nice.
Although, perhaps not so nice if you are a mousie or a vole.
I have spent the past (almost) two years working in my garden. No quilting, sewing or blog posting. This means that I haven’t found my way to posting for Scrap Happy posts either.
Today I break that silence, albeit unconventionally, and bring you alternative scraps which I have made into useful items for my garden…
and my mud/laundry room!
*I took one old table, removed two legs, cut the edge off, and attached it vertically to the cut edge of the table. This provided an old fashioned look, but more importantly it camouflaged the uneven wall plaster. The newly modified table was then leveled and screwed to the wall. I now have a long needed laundry folding table!
But I didn’t toss those extra legs!
By drilling a half inch hole into each of the centers. Then, using a 2 lb. mallet, I drove in some leftover 1/2 inch rebar into the holes.
With these two table legs, and four others from an old topless table frame, I was able to make functional hose guides for in the garden and orchard.
I haven’t actually measured, but I think the garden and orchard areas are equal to about 1/4 acre. It takes two 100 ft hoses to get around everything. One is connected to a hose station with quick connectors on the backside to facilitate the primary hose from the house. House hose gives me N & S access, and the hose station gives me E & W access which keeps my poultry in water.
A 100 ft hose has a lot of drag when going around corners of the raised beds and my blueberry bushes. These oversized hose guides won’t budge even with the a 200 ft combined length!
I should probably paint them all,
But I couldn’t decide on a solid color for all of them, or if I wanted party-colored for fun.
This one is guarding a new blueberry bush.
I also had some old planks from the walls inside the 1840 cabin at the Mountain Farmlet. I could never decide what to do with them. So I went with functional and attached them to some left over cuts of galvanized electrical conduit. I now have barriers to keep the ducks and (maybe) the chickens out of any newly planted and conventional beds of vegetables.
NOTE: These legs will need to be shortened! It was very hard to remove these barriers until we’d had a good soaking rain!
Scrap Happy is sponsored via Kate and Gun. The participants use/reuse leftover fabric scraps to create new and wonderful items. I have done a similar thing with my wood and metal scraps to share this time.
Please do visit these other creative participants and see their lovely work!
Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynn , Lynda (Me),
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Tracy, Jill,
Claire, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Jule, Gwen,
Bekki, Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera,
Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2, Bear, Carol,
Preeti, Edith, Debbierose and Esther
*GIVING CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: While the idea and design was mine, I did need the help of Bob in the muscle work. Carrying, leveling and attaching the new folding table to the wall. I wouldn’t be able to do it without his help. ❤
I haven’t been here for almost a year, and I could boor you with all the reasons, but you’ve probably heard them from others, or more likely felt them yourself. Depression and the Covid mess should about cover it. So onward and forward with last month:
Having realized that by the 20th of November it will have been a whole year to the day, I tried last month to write a new post… Block wall… Fish out of water…
SUDDEN REALIZATION:
Um, the old editor is really gone for good? Argh…(angry words -delete-delete-delete) Bad news!
But, I’m forging ahead this month in the hope it goes well when I do hit the post button.
In early summer I ordered ten baby ducklings, the minimum order, and they arrived in August. I lost two in the delivery process and one, about a month later, due to failure to thrive . When they were feathered and large enough for a daily romp in the garden, I then made sure to shore up the spaces between the gates and fence with three gallon painter buckets from Home Depot. Runner ducks are tall and very svelte. October gave us a very blustery night with raging wind and a bit of rain. Unbeknownst to me, the wind had picked up one of the buckets and blew it away. And so it was that one wayward soul, discovering the space between the gate and fence, went through that space looking for greener pastures, and found Walker instead. The buckets are now weighted down with a very heavy stone in the bottom!
My garden was a bust. Tomatoes never set fruit, potatoes, sweets, red and russet just didn’t grow. I did get tons of green beans as well as a new Jalapeno called “Nadapeno” which has no fire. Although the fruits of this pepper were many, they weren’t very exciting. Yet, my face did not turn red, so I guess there is that.
Last year I closed the middle finger on my right hand in the kitchen drawer. It hurt, but never blackened or fell off. Good I thought. But then, over the summer, a strange lump grew out from under my cuticle and it was large enough to cause a great groove in my fingernail. My Primary Dr. freaked out and sent me to have it checked for cancer. The Derm/cancer specialist said it was just a cyst and sent me to my hand surgeon. He explained that the drawer exacerbated the osteoarthritis in the joint, caused a leak of fluid at the base of my nail, which caused the cyst, which deformed the nail. He ordered surgery. The cyst was cut and will grow out with my nail, and the bone was cleaned of the arthritic bits. My finger looks like it belongs to Frankenstein’s monster at the moment and now has a titanium screw through that offending joint. The following image is the ex-ray of the offending and hugely swollen finger.
Apologies if you find it offensive, but the position provided the best imaging for the surgeon and shows the swelling as well. This was on October 28th. The swelling is now greatly reduced, and some of the feeling is coming back to the tip of my finger, but not yet to the bit behind the cuticle.
So far this month, Bob is building the ducks a hut to sleep in at night. Currently, they are still in the barn at night and sleeping in a 4ft. wide kiddie pool with straw in the bottom and wire fencing to keep them in.
If it doesn’t rain I’ll show you how I get them from the barn to the other side of the house in the morning! I find it very entertaining
Life on the Farmlet 