Shanty Town Garden

First of all, I just had to share this picture of my Grand-daughter, Sarah. Isn't she just beautiful? She was all gussied up to go to her boyfriend's senior prom. Seeing this picture just took my breath away.

 We have our first hummingbird of the season. I can hear you thinking, "Oh no, another summer of hummingbird pictures!"  Ha, ha, you are probably right.

 Since this was the first one, he/she can claim property rights and spend the entire summer chasing the other hummers away. We've already seen another one. Pa said they buzz his hat that has a red brim when he is puttering around outside.

 We tore out part of the garden fence to haul all the sand out of it. Wayne came over to drill some holes with his auger to help Pa fence the front of the property to make the POA happy. I asked him if he would take a few minutes to scrape the sand out of the garden.

 You can see how deep the sand is by where the shovel sits in the ditch where the fence was.

 Kind of hard to get any sense of depth, but just think at least 6 inches deep.

 We wanted to just scoop some sand  up but Wayne had other ideas.

 He used the back end of the tractor and scrapped out way more than 6 inches. A lot of my garden soil went with it. He dragged it over to the field. So I am back to square one with the garden.

 He dumped a couple buckets of horse poo in after he was done. I raked it all over and will roto till it after we get the front fencing done to our property. Won't do much good to plant yet because it is supposed to freeze tonight. My new strawberries are really doing well tho. If it freezes, my asparagus will freeze again.

 We decided to line two sides of the garden with corrugated roofing, hoping that would keep some of the sand from blowing in. Not too pretty but if it works, I don't care.

 Remember when you were a kid and went on Sunday drives and you would see junk yards or those road side zoos? They were always surrounded by corrugated roofing, rust and all.

 Pa said it reminded him of Shanty Town so I will have to make a sign saying "Shanty Town Garden".

With my expert help......we got two strands of barbed wire strung on the short side of the fence along with rehanging the gate. It now goes across our drive way. We are going to keep it locked and give keys to a couple of friends. Don't know what is going on in Wayne's head but as soon as he drilled holes for the pipes and rail road ties, he took off like he was on fire. I had planned on inviting him for dinner but he didn't even stop in to say bye. I told Pa that I felt weird feelings coming off him in waves like he really didn't want to help or even be here. I think the only reason he helped was because we've done so much for him. People are so strange out here. One minute they are your best friend and the next minute they don't want to have anything to do with you. I told Pa I am done helping people. DONE, DONE, DONE. Ok, there are a couple , three exceptions but I'm done being used.

 For the past couple of weeks, I've been making a bouquet for my mom for Mother's Day. Everything except the Spanish Moss is made from card stock, even the ferns and vase.

 I've got it all wrapped up and ready to send. I'll probably faint when I go to the post office to mail it but heck, my mom is worth it.

All the flowers were so time consuming! I got to the point where if I saw another flower, I was going to scream! But I had to keep going so I had enough to fill the vase. I hope it goes thru the mail ok. She may have to fluff the bouquet out a bit.

Pa and I celebrated out 18th wedding anniversary on the 26th of April. We made each other a card and neither one of us even put it in an envelope. Celebrated is stretching it a bit as it was just another day in paradise. He did his thing and I did mine. I cooked dinner, he did the dishes and that was that. Having never been married this long, is this normal? Oh well, it works for us.

Since starting seeds in the house, we have little fruit type flies all over the place! They came with the planting soil. I will be so glad when I can plant everything in the garden and get it out of the house. Usually I put a flea collar on top of the soil and that kills them off but we have so many trays of seeds, it just isn't possible. So when the time comes, I'll gently take the trays out side along with the majority of the flies and that will get rid of a lot of them. I usually bake the soil in the oven first but I had too much soil and didn't want to take the time to do it. Maybe we'll get a bug bomb and set it off in the house after I get the seedlings planted.

Poor Pa, this fencing business is exhausting him! We have to get it done as soon as possible so the cows can't get in and eat my fruit trees. The cows have so over grazed the ranch, there are very few places that still have any grass standing so I know they are just waiting for the chance to come and eat ours. Not as long as I have a pellet gun and Pa has his sling shot!

Alrighty then, that catches us up for now. Toodles!