Today I finally finished dumping all the dead plants in the greenhouse. It was such a nice day that I just parked the wheelbarrow outside the greenhouse door and started carrying pots outside. I filled it with the soil, took that to a flower bed and used it to fill a low spot. I found another plant with little live shoots under the frozen leaves, so repotted those and hope they will grow. All the dead tops went on a trash pile. Somehow working on that project on a sunny day was not as bad as the shorter sessions I found depressing a month ago.
Tomorrow I need to wash a bunch of pots and then dunk them in bleach water. It's time to start some seeds and I am sure my neighbor will be borrowing greenhouse space from me again this year. He pays me back by providing fresh eggs! His chickens get outside to scratch around and find green grass and bugs so the eggs have very bright yellow/orange yolks.
We used to let our chickens and mallard ducks out in the back fenced in yard when we had our wonderful female German Shepherd dog to watch over them. The eggs that they produced were wonderful with the darkest yellow yokes imaginable. Ah, those were the days. Now we eat "store bought" eggs that are probably not half as healthy for us.
Yesterday the annual war on wasps began. The day before I had killed 3 wasps right outside my back door. Yesterday there were half a dozen so I started looking to see where they were hiding and discovered that the porch roof support board on the house was apparently the source, and they were crawling out through a little space between that and the siding. Sixteen years ago we covered the old horizontal beveled lap siding with a housewrap product, then put plywood siding over that with vertical boards to make it look like board and bat. The spaces under the edges of the old siding apparently make good places for wasp nests. I had never thought of that!
And so, having located the source, and having a few cans of Raid left in the shop from last year (we stocked up when they were on sale) it was time to attack them before they have a chance to multiply or attack me. I spread out some newspapers to catch the drips and the sick wasps when they fell, and had an old chair to stand on and my trusty fly swatter to finish them off. I expected to have a few wasps fall out, but that's not what I got. There were at least a couple of hundred, some full grown and many youngsters. After I thought I had them all, I carefully folded up the paper and burned it with the household paper trash. I killed at least a dozen in the hour or so after that and this morning I found more that had crawled out overnight. Today I got out the canister type vacuum and slurped up about 15 that were crawling out as the sun warmed the side of the house!
I may have to spray more Raid in the crack, but won't do it today because the wind is blowing and I don't want the spray in my face or sick wasps all over, including on me! Yesterday they fell almost straight down. Some things just work better when it is calm.
Well, the day is pretty much shot. My neighbor called and asked if I could help him get a cow in that wasn't claiming her calf. It was easier said than done, and took us a couple of hours. If she had been cooperative we could have had her to the corral where her calf was waiting in about 20 minutes. As it was we ended up bringing in all the cows and their calves, and after a lot of zig zags and start overs we got them to the corral. The cow we wanted was the first one through the gate, as if to say, "see you didn't need to bring everybody", but yes, we did, because she wouldn't leave them.
The trouble started yesterday morning when she and another cow both gave birth near each other and their calves got together. When my neighbor came by at daylight he tried to decide which calf went with which cow. He paired them up in a way that made sense to him because one cow seemed to like one of the calves better than the other, so he ear tagged both calves, wrote the info in his little notebook and left. Later he found one calf way up the hill by itself and this cow we brought in today not even looking for it. He brought it to her, she walked away.
Since it was cold and windy, he loaded the calf in his pickup and took it to the barn to get it warm, then later took it back to her and put it in a sheltered spot. She ignored it, and hours later he found the calf way up the hill again. So, he took the calf back for another warm up, then put it in a small sheltered corral and came to get me to help get the cow to the same spot.
When we got her into the pen with the calf, she just stood there and let the calf get a good drink of milk, like nothing had ever been wrong. She needs to stay in with it for at least a week to really bond with it. We think the other cow took over so quickly and kept her away from it that she didn't really realize she had one, and maybe thought it belonged to the other cow. This cow has a kind of timid nature so wouldn't challenge another, more dominant cow.
This afternoon we went to a town about 40 miles away to get something that is not available in our town. We also had lunch there, then bought a few groceries at a discount store that sells overstock items and dented cans, or ones that have had label changes. It's all good food, and cheaper than other places IF you can find what you want. I need to make an apple crisp because the bag of apples we bought today broke just as we reached the car and they went bouncing and rolling in all directions and will be a mess of bruises if they aren't cooked soon.
Do you have a recipe for the apple crisp? That sounds good. I love apples and hope to make some old fashioned small fried apple pies in a couple of days. I am soaking the dried apples tonight. They were dried by our mutual friend Melody.
Elena, I just kind of guess at the ingredients for my apple crisp. Make the apple part just like you are making pie, and then for an 8x8 inch pan I use a generous cup of quick oats, about 3/4 cube of butter, about 3/4 cup of brown sugar, a shake or two of cinnamon and cloves, sometimes some grated orange peel if I have it. Mix all that together with a pastry blender and put it on top of the apples. Bake at 300 until the top is crispy, about an hour. Lots of guesswork here. I make rhubarb or peach crisp the same way.
In a week our weather has gone from beautiful to nasty, to snow covering everything 2 mornings ago, to another beautiful calm sunny day yesterday. I hauled about 10 wheelbarrow loads of old manure and put it down in stripes where the garden rows will go, then rototilled a few rows. My onion sets need to be planted, but that won't happen today as planned because the wind is howling again and although the sun is shining, it is most unpleasant to be out in it. I had also planned to plant some Swiss chard, spinach, and beets today, but the seeds would surely be gone with the wind.
One day last week I walked way down into our hilly pasture to see why I had been only seeing one horse when I should have been seeing two. I headed for a place where I could see a lot of bird activity, the kind of birds that gather when something has died. Bad news, it was my oldest horse who had probably died a day or two before. He would have been 30 years old in a couple more months. We left him where he was, the scavengers will clean his bones. This may sound heartless to some, but that's what we do here. Burying a large animal is very difficult and the scavengers just dig them up anyway. He is in a spot where the winds carry the smells away from houses. If he had died in a bad place we would have had to move him with a tractor and chain. He was my original endurance horse, retired now for about 11 years after carrying me over 5000 miles on the endurance trails.
Mary,
I am so sorry about your horse. Even when they have led a long, full and happy life we miss them when they are gone and hate to see them go. It's nice you have had so many years to make memories with your friend. 5000 miles is a lot of together time. I'd love to see some pics if you have any.
I am sorry about your horse dying but it is good that he lived a very long and happy life. It is hard to part with any of our much loved pets but making sure that we give them the best of care is something that we can feel good about even when they depart.
Thanks for the recipe. That is something that I want to make right away. You have recipes much like mine. I guess at most of the recipes that I prepare unless they are new ones that I am trying. Once I get finished changing the ingredients in recipes it woud be hard for someone else to recognize the originals.
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