Elena, yes, I can do that. Right now I don't have much information and they are due back in the US late this week. I'll be making that trip back to Portland to get them around 8:30 pm and we plan to take turns driving on the way home instead of getting a motel. It's gonna be another very long day!
I've been working on the bad, weedy flower bed and being told by a pair of Western King Birds that I am not welcome in their territory. While they are swooping at me and the cats to try to get us to leave, I try to ignore them, but their noise gets to me. We all get a break after about 45 minutes and I go do something else while they get back to feeding their babies. I'm not finished but I am making progress. Last week I got a pickup load of shredded tree trimmings to use for mulch, so I have mulched what I have cleaned and it looks great.
Another project that I have been doing is another flower bed which I started 2 years ago. It is behind my greenhouse, about 12x17 feet, surrounded on one side by a very large limb that fell from one of our cottonwood trees several years ago, and on the other sides by the greenhouse foundation and 2 long pieces of a former power pole. I filled it with dirt and manure from the old homestead house we tore down. The house had been used as a barn for decades after a new house was built (we live in the "new" one). After the old house was torn down and the salvageable lumber removed, the rest was bulldozed into a big pile. I have been using it on flower beds for years, and find all sorts of treasures in it, things like bottles and old tools, but also lots of wire, pieces of pipe, rotted boards, big rocks, broken glass, etc. It's messy and time consuming to work with, but always interesting.
This week I planted a few shrubs and a mixture of annuals and perennials in the new bed, and then mulched it with the tree trimmings. The poor little plants wilt every day in the sun but they perk up overnight, so I think they will all live. First thing in the morning when the plants are standing up looking good, it looks real nice. At some point (maybe this year?) I plan to add a low rustic rail fence made of old fenceposts. So far they are in a pile next to it.
I have mulch left over so I am putting it into another large flower bed that I call my lasagna garden. Several years ago we moved the pasture fence out about 20 feet and I layered cardboard and newspapers, sheep barn cleanings and soil, then watered it and let it sit and rot down over the winter. It's called a lasagna bed because it it made in layers and never stirred. In the spring I dug holes in it and planted things. Volunteer squash came up in it the first year because I buried the contents of my compost bucket in it all winter, and I let them grow and had a bumper crop. The big squash leaves gave some struggling transplanted flowers some shade.
I will be looking forward to hearing about his trip to Romania.
I enjoyed your gardening stories in that last post. You are so smart using all of your available materials in your endeavors. All of the available manure you have on hand is fabulous. We city people would almost kill for having that. Then....to be able to use the old items that you have makes for such an imaginative and sensible mix of things to create super plant beds. I can just see you sifting through all of that dirt and rubbish like an archeologist at an ancient site. COOL!
Praise the Lord! Yesterday I found a supply of hay for the winter. We are in a serious drought situation here and everybody has a short hay crop. Hay dealers are buying up all the available hay for selling later. The price is already about double what it usually is. I was planning to buy another horse, but have put that off for the time being because I was concerned about getting enough hay to feed the ones I already have.
Today I rode Patch out into the hills to give him some exercise and look for some missing cattle. Didn't find the cattle or any fresh tracks or manure, so I think possibly the owner miscounted, (he has several hundred and just did a rough count when he moved them), or maybe they went through a fence and joined another herd. The fences on a couple of sides of that pasture aren't the best. When everybody brings their cattle in from the hills there are often stray cattle in a herd, and they usually get back to their owners because they are branded. We still do have cattle rustlers out here so a few disappear but then some of the rustlers also disappear into jail for a few years. They don't hang 'em anymore so I guess the west is getting tamer.
My pickup is full of old moldy hay that I salvaged from my neighbor's huge compost pile that mostly comes out of the sheep pens at lambing time. Also, through the winter when he has hay that has become moldy he adds that. I'm going to heavily mulch my old asparagus bed and along the grape row to control weeds and help hold in moisture. I had planned to empty the truck today and also mow the lawn, but I have been in fast forward for too many days now and today I just ran out of steam. Tomorrow's another day!
This morning several of the churches in town had a combined service at the city park. The Liberty Quartet was there and we enjoyed some good gospel songs, a bit of humor, and a good sermon given by one of the local pastors, followed by a barbeque put on by the youth group from one of the churches. This event was started 15 years ago and just keeps getting bigger every year. Having church in the park on a pleasant Sunday morning is a good way to reach people.
I've been picking up broken hay bales in the neighbor's field to feed my horses. Today I needed to get another load so I waited until the sun was getting low and the day was cooling off, and went to get it. There was a gate to open, so I got out of the pickup and walked toward the gate and was alerted by a buzz, a rattlesnake coiled up and just out of striking range. I quickly went back to the truck to get the pitchfork and tried to get him out into the open where I could kill him but he was quick and got away from me and went down a hole. I thanked the Lord that I hadn't taken a couple more steps.
I thank the Lord you weren't bitten. Also, I thank Him for giving that snake rattlers that warned you! I'm not a big fan of snakes so that is particularly spooky for me to even think of that situation.
Wow, it is hot! The thermometer on our porch reads 96 at 3pm, tomorrow they are forecasting 102. I won't be getting much of anything done outside except in the early mornings. We are thankful that our nights are cool, and we usually have a breeze because we live on a hill. Our air conditioning system is open windows at night, and we close the house in the daytime to keep the cooler air inside.
Missions trip report:
I've been getting some details of my hubby's and son's trip to Romania. After being met by our missionary friends, they went in different directions for most of the trip. Hubby met with several missionaries to discuss their work, challenges and successes. He preached at a Gypsy village church where the daughters of our missionary friends started a children's ministry several years ago. One of the Bible College graduates and his wife are the pastors there. Our son also went to the Gypsy village and whenever anybody comes from anywhere, they always expect to have a teaching from them, so our son had an opportunity to bring a message of encouragement to them as well.
Our son was working on several carpentry projects at the conference center where youth and family camps will be held for the rest of the summer. He also built a staircase in a missionary's home which replaced the ladder they were using to get to the bedrooms. The second week he went to put a roof on a church in a community that had been badly flooded last year. And of course the people there expected and got a gospel message when he was finished.
Having a law enforcement background has provided some interesting opportunities for my hubby to minister to police officers in Romania. He met with some of them while he was there.
Hubby, our son, and our missionary family visited other churches that were started by Romanian Bible College graduates and were able to speak at several services, sometimes 2 or 3 in one day. Three hour or longer church services are not considered long there because most of the people have walked several miles to church and they want to get a lot of teaching for their effort. The freedom of being able to practice Christianity openly after so many years under communist rule is still an exciting event for many of the older parishioners. One village where they visited has this story:
A lady who was an underground Christian during the communist years went to an empty building with a dirt floor every day for 25 years, swept the floor and prayed that God would send them a pastor. When the founder of the ministry came to that village the year after the communist rule ended, she wept with joy and thanked God. The first services were held in that dirt floored building with no heat. When the missionary finished his sermon and attempted to close the service, the people wouldn't let him stop preaching, they were so hungry for the Word of God. The village now has a pastor who was one of the graduates from the first graduating class at the Bible College, and a nice church building with a floor, a roof, painted stucco exterior, windows and heat!
Our missionary family has been working with the Bible College for several years, teaching and administering, as well as reaching out to villages where there are no evangelical churches and helping Bible College graduates start churches in remote places. At times the Orthodox priests have riled up their people to attack the "repenters". God has been faithful with His protection.
Living conditions in rural Romania are about 100 years behind America and western Europe. They are mostly farmers, but there is also some industry. In the town where our missionary family lives there is a steel mill. The pollution is very evident, and between that and the mold in the concrete house where they have lived for several years, and similiar conditions at the school, the father of the family has been diagnosed with a serious lung condition.
All these years they have been preparing Romanian workers to take over the work, and that will continue to be accelerated so they can be directing the work from America except for short trips to Romania in the summer for the camps. The family has been supported by donations for several years while they have been spending most of their time in Romania, and now they will need employment in the states again. God has provided a teaching position starting this fall at a Christian College near the family's home in the US.
Without a doubt, summer is here! We've had a couple of weeks in the mid 90's and the forecast looks about the same for as long as the weather people can see. Thankfully the nights are usually cool for sleeping. Last night when I went to bed it was still 80 outside but in the 60's by this morning. The ceiling fan is a real blessing even though it makes wierd noises and has since it was new.
Today's tasks: mow the lawn before it gets hot, water the veggie garden and continue the migration of the sprinkler in the yard around the house, then process veggies for the freezer. Some of the flowers really look stressed this year and have even gone into summer dormancy already, about 6 weeks ahead of normal, probably due to the dry spring we had and the fact that I should have started watering them much sooner than I did. Some of the weeds also look stressed, but they are busy making seeds.
My neighbor has already contacted the buyer for the lambs who will be coming any day to get them, depending on the availability of a semi with a livestock trailer to haul 100 in one trip. At this point he is not sure if he is going to keep any ewe lambs for replacements or just sell them all and shrink the size of the flock. Some lambs will be hauled to a local buyer. Good pasture is getting scarce and the steers will also be sold early. The irrigation water is off and so the pastures will dry up. Actually they already look like they do in late summer.
Fire season has started, there are half a dozen within 200 miles of us just in Oregon, one was over 20,000 acres as of a couple of days ago. Thankfully none of them are close to us although we have had some smoke. I haven't heard what is happening in Idaho but there is smoke in the air in that direction. We can see into Idaho from our place.
We had a lightning storm this aftermoon and now I can see smoke from a fire in the Wallowa Mountains north of us. The smoke is dark so it is a hot fire, I hope it doesn't turn into a monster.
Today was cloudy, hot and muggy. The barometric pressure was falling all day and I was sweating just standing in one place doing nothing. I'm not used to this, usually our humidity is between 10 and 20%. We had a few drops of rain but mostly it is evaporting before it reaches the ground. I can see showers hanging from the clouds but then they just disappear way up there above the horizon.
The steers and most of the lambs were sold and shipped yesterday. The pastures look kind of empty, but this will make the available feed last longer. The area where the steers and lambs went has better pasture conditions than we do. Our county has been declared a drought disater area, so people here who make their living off the land will have access to loans with better interest rates to help keep them in business until conditions improve.
My sister was going to come today and pick peas, but she called about mid morning and said she was having problems with her car and wouldn't be coming. And so, tomorrow I need to pick peas again. Beets are ready to process into pickled beets, that makes the house smell so good but I would prefer to have a cool day to do it, so I will leave them in the ground a while longer, they'll be ok.
Hubby is across the state on the Oregon coast at a beautiful facility that is owned by some Christian couples that we know from many years ago. They built this for the purpose of hosting small Christian groups for retreats, business meetings, short term R and R for pastors and missionaries, and things like that. He is at the semi annual missions committee meeting for the Romanian missionary work and will give a report on his trip, and request some help for some of the missionaries and their work. The temperatures are about 20 degrees cooler than here so I'm sure he is enjoying that.
We have one load of hay in the barn! That is about 4 1/2 tons. We should get the other load in a few days. This was delivered last evening by our neighbor who baled it on another neighbor's field so that I will have small bales to handle. Small is a relative term, small bales are 56"x18"x20" and weigh about 100 pounds. Big bales come in several sizes, the biggest weigh about 1000 pounds and one of them pretty much fills the bed of a full sized pickup truck and the flakes that come off it are hard to handle.
After many days of 90's and up to 100 degrees, we got some rain and a cold front last night. Our humidity is 42% this morning and our clothes felt clammy when we put them on. Our normal summer humidity is between 10 and 20%. The rain has washed the smokey smell out of the air. We have forest fires burning in all directions around us, nothing really close but we get the smoke drifting on the wind. Yesterday I could smell smoke and could not see the mountains at all.
Yesterday I rode Patch out in the hills for a couple of hours. The soreness in his back is gone now, I checked it before I saddled him and after I unsaddled. The last endurance ride we did had a lot of steep downhill trails near the end of the ride, his back was ok at 37 miles but sore at the finish of the 50 mile ride. I used a homemade ice pack after the ride, the refreezeable ice packs from my ice chest laid out flat in a t-shirt. I tied the shirt neck and bottom edge with baling twine, and laid it over his back. It looked funny but it did the job of pulling the heat out of his sore muscles. I gave him about 10 days to heal up and work the soreness out just moving around in the pasture before I rode him again.
This morning I spotted 2 coyotes in the neighbors field, one was running and when I looked to see why I saw another one just standing. I think the first one may have been startled by a passing car. After a minute or so I decided that the other one was standing near a killed lamb. He circled something a couple of times and lowered his head to sniff or eat, and then he followed the other coyote. When he left the ravens moved in, it doesn't take them long to find an easy meal. I haven't walked up there to see for sure but I know the neighbor has been bringing the lambs nearer to the house every evening because the coyotes killed one farther out in a field several days ago. He might have to put them in the corral overnight. I need to call him and tell him what I see, but first I had better walk up there and have a closer look. He might already know about it.
Post script on the incident from a couple of days ago. Before I could walk up into the neighbor's field and have a look at what the coyotes and birds were eating, I looked again and there were at least 4 coyotes there. Without a doubt it was a fresh kill, so I called the neighbor to tell him what I was seeing. By the time he got there the coyotes had gone again. He went close enough to see that it was a nice big lamb but didn't go too close because he knew they would return to finish it off and he didn't want fresh human scent in the area.
Before the sun went down I saw a coyote returning to the kill, so my hubby got his rifle and a few minutes later that one was history. The others probably would not come to eat until after dark because of the gunfire.
Our neighbor came by just at dark and said he had planned to be watching the kill in the evening to shoot the coyotes when they came back to eat, but his dog was bitten by a rattlesnake and he had to make an emergency trip to the vet with her. She apparently didn't get a direct bite, the vet could only find one puncture mark. Antivenom costs $1400! There are other treatments, antihistamines, antibiotics, painkillers and time. The dog is recovering nicely, but last evening they also discovered that their old guard dog, a large, lazy and very hairy dog, had apparently also been bitten. Having a heavy haircoat apparently helped protect her and also hid the evidence of her problem.
Our son came out yesterday and spent all day on the tractor mowing thistles in our pasture. We are late getting to them this year and a lot of them have already gone to seed, so we may be seeing a lot more of thistles in next two years. Timing to control them is very important since the plant uses a lot of energy trying to make seeds. We try to interrupt that at just the right time and they don't have enough energy or time to do it again before the frost kills the plant. They have a 2 year cycle, making a flat rosette the first year and storing energy for the big effort of making a seed stalk and seed head the second year.
Lunch was taken down to him by my hubby in an ice chest on the 4-wheeler, and then in mid afternoon he took ice cream. I had chilled bowls for about half an hour in the freezer, put several cold packs in the ice chest, quickly filled 2 bowls, stuck a spoon in each, covered them with plastic wrap and put them into the ice chest. The ice cream was still nice and firm when the guys ate them about 10 minutes later out in 90 degree heat! That 4-wheeler should have a bell and we could call it an ice cream wagon.
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