More garden dirt...

First, a couple updates for my garden geek friends who truly and actually care about this stuff....
(Yes! They wait for these updates and comment as soon as they get them! Bless their frazzled little hearts....)

The yarrow seeds have not sprouted.
You read that right...have NOT sprouted.  Which baffles me beyond anything, because the seeds from the wicked plants in my flower beds where I DON'T want them have come in like a carpet in my lawn.

Fontie, I'm working on a picture of the hairy-legged weed.  It's not easy to capture the nuances of such a beast in a manner worthy of its reputation. 

In other garden news:

I have World! Champion! Dandelions!  They are so big in one bed that I contemplated having the Farmer take my picture with one, like those old ads you see in Gurney's catalogs where Grandpa G. Whillikers is holding a 10 lb tomato. (Below is an example...actual image from Gurney's catalog)

I resisted the temptation to have that picture taken in sensitivity to my in-laws who already suffer enough having me in the family without their good gardening reputation ruined by association.

I gave my kids seeds to plant, this spring, in the hopes that they'd:

A. leave MY expensive seeds alone, or

B. grow something that would make them want to garden for the rest of their lives.

Angus had peas. He dug a hole about 2 inches deep and 3 inches in diameter, dumped the ENTIRE packet of seeds in it (no amount of pleading could dissuade him) and covered them up with his little spade.

They are growing. In a big old pea wad, but they are growing! 

My friend Denise sent me gladiola bulbs! I've never planted glads before, but doesn't it just sound joyful to say, "You should SEE my glads!" ? (There was no good way to punctuate that...)

I planted zinnias in a flower bed that had previously held sunflowers and now have a dilemma....zinnia seedlings APPARENTLY look exactly like sunflower seedlings! Which brings me to a point that has driven me crazy since I started trying to grow things.  Does anyone besides me think it's absolutely pointless for seed companies to print that little picture of what your seedling will look like when it sprouts? They all look the same when they have two leaves! Seriously.  Go grab a couple seed packets and take a look. 

So now I can't pluck all the rotten sunflower seedlings out until I know for SURE they are rotten sunflower seedlings....probably when they bolt to 5 feet high in a week.  And then I'm not sure I'll have the heart to by then.

We've had so much rain in the last couple weeks that it's been pretty easy gardening.  It's so damp that I found a slug, for the very first time ever! Maggie thought he was a naked snail, which technically he was.  After all the horrors I've read about what snails can do to plants, I cheerfully squooshed him and it must've deterred all his slimy little friends from living here because I haven't seen another one.

My pergola went up last night! We still have to add the wood for shade slats, but the structure is up and I'm so excited!

That's all the dirt from the garden at the Chronicles. 

Stay tuned for more scintillating posts....

Cow Tales

We've been doing little cow projects this last week, like branding the 16 pairs of late calvers.  We did those 16 with just the Farmer, his father and me and it was surprisingly calm and uneventful. (Translation: I didn't get yelled at.)  After we finished, we dispersed the cows and calves to the different pastures they belong.  My father-in-law hauled 8 pair to the Jacobsen place with a horse trailer (2 loads) and the assistance of the little bosses, Maggie and Angus.  The Farmer and I trailed the other pairs north to Thelma's.

*Little note, here.  Pastures are named for the people who USED to own them. Or for what grows in them.  Or for a land feature. 

Anyway, the bunch we were trailing took off confidently to the north, at a good clip.  When they got to the first gate (not the one they needed to go through) the lead cow pulled up and looked at me with that "Open the dang gate, already! We're here!" look and I had to deny her. She was extremely disgusted and with great reluctance turned to the west where the right gate was.  And appeared to pout a little the rest of the trip. 

In the next pasture, we encountered a cow-eating salt trough that had been tipped upside down to keep the water out.  One cow could NOT stop looking at it, circling gingerly with her calf, nose pointed at the salt trough, ears forward.  She was convinced it was gonna "get her".  It was just wrong and she knew it. 

At the next gate, it was as though we had given them a break off the freeway at a rest area.  But when they got through that gate, they were close to the pasture they needed to be in and finally staggered up to the final gate with a whole lot less ginger than they'd started out with.

Last night, we moved the yearling heifers to thier breeding pasture.  As I've mentioned before, anything to do with yearling heifers is like junior high girls....extreme.  High speed or dead stop.  They don't just slightly turn, they do a 180 degree turn.  And whatever the FIRST heifer does, they ALL do. 

They are in good shape and they should be....all the green grass they can eat in a day and mild weather (for cows).  I was excited that we couldn't pick Daisy, my yearling bum, out of the herd! She fits right in, which is amazing. 

Once those girls were moved, we went back and sorted off the little bulls that will join them today to (as Maggie puts it) "get married".  Maggie is completely mystified as to why we don't have a bull for each heifer.  How does THAT work? She already knows quite a bit about the birds and the bees at age 5, but she still thinks it's a bit unfair that there's only one bull for 30 heifers. 

So this is Daisy's big moment.  If she doesn't breed up, she's down the road and that's the end of the OC herd for a while.  Pray that she's alluring.  And fertile.  (It's terrible to have one heifer that carries the brand. And she won't even GET her brand until we're SURE she's bred.)

And finally, my two bum calves for this year, Cosmo and Linnie are doing just fine.  The Farmer and I had to doctor them this last week for scours, give them the Ivermectin treatment and put fly-tags in their ears.  The Farmer got Linnie's tag a little close to the end of her ear, on the same side as the number tag, and she has a goofy, loppy-eared look now.  It makes me laugh every time I see her, but she's embarrassed and feels silly. 

That's about all the cow news you can handle...and more. 

Adventures on the high seas....or plains....

This week is vacation Bible school week in Jordan for the kids and I, and the theme is nautical! God was watching out for our VBS crew, because the prom theme this spring was ALSO nautical and we snagged all the decorations to use. The church has a big old cardboard ship in the santuary, now, and nets and fish tacked up all over the place. 

I have the drama portion of the program and have elaborate sets and action that changes DAILY.  Today is a Bible times house, tomorrow a ship with water all around, the next day a Biblical city and so forth.  It's great fun for the kids, but always a little dicey for the person setting up because I'm never really sure the ship will hold together through four groups or that the walls will stay up.

I don't have a helper this year, unless someone shows up from Michigan or Iowa or someplace, so it will be tricky to do.  But, it's not like I'm putting on a Broadway play or anything, so it doesn't have to be professional!

Please pray for our little VBS if you get a chance, today.  Especially that I'll make it to town without mishap, because it rained ALL NIGHT, 4/10ths of an inch at 5 a.m.! A blessing for the crops and grass, a serious challenge for someone driving in mud to town.....

Thoughts on weeds....

Yes, you can tell from the title of the post this is going to be an absolutely riveting piece of writing.  Well, actually, it's better than you might imagine.....(Sara H., put down your coffee.)

I have weeds with hairy legs. 

They DO!

I don't have any idea what sort of weeds they are, but they are bountiful and sly and I've been pulling them by the truckload. 

They hide in amongst the daylilies and the iris and try to masquerade as such.  In some spots I can't see them very well, but I can feel their stems and that's how I figured out they have hairy legs.  It makes me feel better about ripping them out of the ground to know this; I feel I'm sparing them some embarrassing moments in the horticultural arena.  They hang out with the smooth stalked daylillies, who are elegant and grass-like.  They rub shoulders with the stately iris, efficient and strong. 

Of course, I think they are sort of like the people of Walmart and don't really care how they look, as long as they get a good deal on soil and water. 

Weeding with children is tricky, because they want to "help".  Kids are absolutely indiscriminate when weeding....if it's green, they pull it. 

Which reminds me of the time Karen Yost asked me to weed her daisy patch and I ignorantly pulled every single plant out, thinking I was doing the best weeding job ever.  (I was 22 at the time and didn't know a daisy from a dandelion. How sad is that?) Karen graciously forgave me, saying that she was getting tired of those daisies anyway, but I still apologize to her every spring and wake up in the middle of the night with weeding nightmares from the incident.....

Some weeds are just well-meaning flowers that happily seed and sow on any quarter-sized patch of soil.  These are the tough weeds for anyone who has ever struggled to try to get anything to grow.  I still have a horrible time pulling them, but they will take advantage of a sentimental garden.  Pretty soon, they will have overtaken every bed, like little colonies of cheerful pirates.  Plants as pirates....bet you never put the two things together, huh?!

Weeding is contemplative work, so I've been thinking of this post for quite a while.  And now I have to get back to the philosophical task....