Waiting on Chickens

Coming in from using my new Bolens weeder, after all those days of rain, wanting a shower or at least to get rid of the bits of grass down my shirt. It's nearly nine p.m. and I'm hungry. What I'm waiting on is for the chickens to get in their coop.

Betty and Rupert now have a nice fenced run, but they need to be tucked into Fort Flocks for the night. The sun is setting later and later and they stay out until it's nearly dark. I can chase them around the yard but it upsets them and frustrates me. Threats that I will leave the door open and let the raccoon bite off their heads doesn't seem to faze them.

Before I made their run, I tried to catch the rooster once to take him up to the garden U-Scratch cage. He squawked and flew around the coop hysterically. He's really too big for flight in close quarters.

Only once has he flown out of the run. I was able to leave the gate open and entice Betty back into the coop, so he strutted around and rejoined us there.

One night shortly after that I thought I heard him fly completely away, but it turned out to be a pair of Mourning Doves exiting the nearby tree.

                                       So, here they are  without the flash

and with the flash. My camera indicated it would be using Red-Eye Protection, which seemed pointless with chickens, who have red eyes. They never use the nice roost I built for them, preferring to cuddle in the corner.

I do have to go out later and feed the wild cat who comes after dark, but I can always do that in my nightgown and rubber boots. A plus of living in the country is I can hear cars coming for miles, and out back there are no houses, roads or people.

Once Again to the Remote Garden

A year ago February, my daughter Izzy gave me the idea to reclaim the garden that once existed here. She took this pic of me surveying the great clumps of grasses. The drawback was it was some distance from the house and  it had no water supply.

First, I mowed and then scalped the grass down with the weed-eater.

                             There were some sapling tree roots to dig out.

                                        Then I dug up half of it with a shovel.

                  Then I ran Tillie over it and planted some tomatoes up there.

 Then came the drought that finished off all that work.

So, last week, before the rains came, I went up there again and considered starting over. My kitchen garden has limited space now that the old strawberries are still there and grasses and weeds are fighting for control of the neighborhood.

My big old Troy-Bilt had been unused for about three years, on account of limited turning space in the kitchen garden. I wanted it up in the other garden but the path up through the woods was too steep.

It dawned on me that whatever work it took to get the Horse up there would be less effort than more digging with a shovel. Half of the garden had been tilled but the other half needed to be worked.

There was the possibility of taking the tiller along the road and down through the Yeller's abandoned place, but that would require disconnecting a chain link fence that had overgrown with enormous poison ivy vines.

My self-propelled mower, named Fearless, was called into service to mow up the steep hill, over the plot and adjacent to it. Then I mowed a path through the grass and poison ivy down past the old falling-down fishing shack, where a section of fallen tree had finally rotted enough to make passage possible. Then it was down the slope to the big hill back to the house.

With fresh gas, the big tiller surprised me by starting right up. I drove it up the hill (the place is all hills) to the house, where I gave it oil and grease and aired up the tires. We set off down the big hill and up the new path to the Remote Garden. It was like moving a house: all prep and a very slow journey.

For years at the farm, Izzy and I used that powerful tiller to have a wonderful 90x90 foot garden of fabulous loam. After that, I used it to create better soil for a garden at my house in town. Even though the tiller is now 35 years old, it is still a hard worker. That's the fishing shack in the distance.

The far end does need more tilling, but the rest of the 8x20 plot was lovely loam after a few passes. I planted green and wax beans, onion sets, cucumbers, dill, butternut squash, sweet potato slips and zucchini in the best part. Some scraggly tomato plants were relegated to the turfy part, where they will probably not flourish.

There is a slight slope to the land there, but uphill there is lots of room for expansion. I left the Troy-Bilt there, carefully covered and ready to go. I just have to cut down a few more sapling trees with the chain saw and dig the roots out with a shovel. Big Red and I will make those grasses sorry they ever invaded our turf.

Who'll Stop the Rain?

Right after I watered the garden and flowers, there was a big thunderstorm. Four and a half inches of rain were dumped on my efforts.  The following night, we got another inch and a half, and last night another half inch. Seems a bit excessive and was no doubt caused by me watering.

So, with that in mind, I rushed to get the rain barrel in service. I'd put off drilling holes in the beautiful new barrel and the aluminum downspout out of fear of messing them up forever. I got this neat kit with everything I needed to get it done, except courage.                                                                                                                                                          

The old barrel was shoved aside as being too ugly to use and probably a dumb idea for a support. Sometimes, I have to think these things through for a couple of months before slowly getting into action. The old wash tub rain catcher was overflowing, so I dipped some of the water out of it to give the barrel enough weight that today's strong winds didn't budge it.

That should put an end to those nightly showers. Also questions about why I had a barrel in the living room.

Planting is Easy

When gardening is illustrated, the planting part is shown. By Gosh, it does look easy!

In the interest of truth in gardening, I feel obliged to expose what goes before the planting. It is not the work of an instant. Here is the bed that has gotten overgrown with  Bermuda grass. I thought that the yew shrub died from the drought, but perhaps it was the horrible weeds. The sage plant on the right looks fine.

The motivation for working the bed out front was two gift perennials and several more seedlings looking for a home.

Earlier, I had to rake up bushels of the hickory hulls because they made a terrible mulch.  Tossed them down an eroding hillside crevice.

Then, on a sunny day, I sprayed Roundup over the grasses. The first step in any exhausting project must always be quite effortless.  Drew up a plan for what to plant in the 5 by 10 foot plot.

Waited days for the foliage to die.  Occupied self with myriad other gardening chores.

Next: sliced open the places where the grass apparently died. Took small shovel bites. Resprayed any remaining green weeds with Roundup.

Following day: Ran small tiller over the dead grasses. Hand sorted clumps, saving as much dirt as possible. Lugged bushels of grass roots to a pile outside the yard, not the compost heap.

Working close to the fragrant sage plant, now in bloom, I was encouraged to make sage tea, a lovely sweetened tea with lemon.

Cleaned Tillie's tines with my favorite tool for the task, a cotter pin puller.

Used the shovel to slice the ground where the Roundup was still working. One of  my hidden talents is the ability to hop up on the shovel with both feet and then hop again, driving it into the thick turf layer and down as far as possible. It's quite a trick. Surprisingly, no one cares to see it.

Days later, ran Tillie over the mess yet again. Plucked out several more buckets of dead Bermuda grass. Added granulated gypsum and tilled some more. Planted the awaiting plants on a too-sunny, unseasonably hot 85 degree day, with every promise of rain. Much traffic on the nearby gravel road created billows of dust.

Last step: dragged the hoses around and watered the bed when the forecast rain failed to show up.

Posing for their first group photo are the pincushion plant,  gazanias  and gaillardias. Not shown: Mammoth Russian Sunflowers, which will be up later,  rudbeckias, perennial butterfly weed plants, purple and red big zinnias. Also, a small hollyhock that resented being transplanted and refused to be in the picture.

In the foreground are still more bits of the Bermuda grass for me to grapple with later.

Two-Fisted Weeding

All the recent rains have delayed planting, but given a great boost to weeds of all descriptions. While grabbing them by the handfuls, which they are,  I had plenty of time to consider the subject of weeding. First of all, I admitted that I will never win this battle. If a body cannot accept overwhelming odds, cruel disappointments and death of favorite plants, a person should not consider gardening.

Some grassy weeds can be pulled up by the roots. Unfortunately, it is only when they are full grown and have set seeds. Also, the soil has to be in the exact right condition, neither too wet nor too dry. This ideal state lasts sometimes for an entire afternoon. The tall grasses relinquish the stage graciously at that point, smug in the knowledge that their progeny will carry on.

Then there is Bermuda grass, which never lets itself be pulled under any circumstance. Also called devil's grass, it grows along an underground rhizome, then shoots up with spiky green spears that can poke through any mulch. There is no recourse but to dig up the perennials harboring this enemy, spray the invaders with Roundup and start all over again.

Dandelions' yellow blossoms carpeted the area this spring. The huge-rooted plants seemed to not mind last summer's drought and came back even stronger. I have learned that it is pure folly to try and dig them up. That is, I finally learned it, after I tried to do it for too many years. The fact that dandelion weeders are even manufactured is a great joke. You can never get the entire root.

In the iris bed, dandelions get in among the iris rhizomes, where the weeder can't go.  It's best to grab the leaves and gone-to-seed head and yank to the breaking point, of the weed, that is.  It only sets them back briefly, but the beds appreciate the effort and makes them look nice while in bloom, which lasts a very short time.

                                                     Square Yard Gardening

The only way for me to  begin weeding my vast plantings is to keep my efforts focused on the immediate square yard of ground. "Don't look up!" is my motto when working.

Last fall, I dug up the entire lily bed, carefully removed every bit of grass root, tilled it and the surrounding ground where I relocated the lilies. This spring, I tilled the spot again and planted Bonfire Salvias that I'd started indoors from seed. One of my most successful starts, I had high hopes for them. They didn't have a chance to appreciate all my efforts, because they were killed by an unusually late frost a few days later, on Mother's Day, yet.

"Bummer!" I said, replanting with butterfly weed plants. Later, some of them were dug up by the cats, who always appreciate freshly-turned earth. So it goes with gardening.

Secret Morel Enclave Found

Living undisturbed for lo' these many years, a mushroom colony has been discovered at an undisclosed location near the Grand River. No GPS coordinates were given.

It would be nice if I could say that my superior fungi-spotting skills came into play. Everything I thought I knew about finding morels was apparently wrong. We had rare snows on May 2 and 3, which left slushy snow on the ground. The river came up, so I hiked back to where the land was gradually sinking to see how far down it had gone. Right on the path was the first morel.

Always before, I thought it was steamy hot days in spring that brought out the morels. Right after a late snow was not when I started looking. My son Chris had been telling me of finds down by Kansas City.

Having  found one, I was on a hunt. Since I didn't have a mesh bag along to capture any, I wound up using my windbreaker for an apron and carrying the five back for dinner.

The next day, I found all of these in the same area.

 The days got warmer and the undergrowth got drier until that seemed the end of them.

Chris told me they were still being found. After a morning rain, I went back down to the spot. I  got another mess of them for dinner, six biggies.

What I've learned about morels is they are not everywhere. Looking harder in the wrong spots doesn't help and makes my eyes bug out. Now that the  morel hideout has been found, that's where I'll  look in the future. People refer to it as their Hot Spot, or their Sweet Spot. I'm calling mine the Remote  Morel Settlement. I know where they live.

There was even another one in the yard where I found one last year. I added it to the bag of  more biggies I found yesterday morning.

I don't know how fast mushrooms mushroom up out of the ground. Is it like a rocket leaving the launch pad or somewhat slower? It was raining slightly on my morning hunt. Then the sun came out. There weren't any more, but I did find some in another spot, where I cut wood last winter.

The morel season doesn't last long, so I feel obliged to stuff myself  with those tasty morsels. This is the first time ever that I've found more than I can eat, making up for the years without a one. This 7 inch one was practically a meal in itself.

Looking for morels is the same kind of searching that I do when looking for a puzzle piece. It's just a glazed-over staring, thinking about something else, until the right brain finds the missing pattern and elbows the left brain, "Here is is!"