It's the Dirt

I Know, I Know

2010-04-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

I need to get myself completely transfered over to my new blog so that you don't have to come here and/or go there. But if I could just beg your patience a little longer? My actual post for the day, uh week actually, is over at It's_the_Dirt_dot_com.. I'm not going to double publish, mostly because.. well you don't need to know all my troubles do you Dear Reader?

And if you've got time while you're over there could you take a peak at some of my other pages? They are all in rough modes, really rough, but you could tell me what you think and then.... Just thinkin'.

The Crazy Life of Dirt

2010-04-22T16:13:00.001-07:00

Dirt isn't just a sheep shearin' lawn mowing man, during the daylight hours on weekdays he is a school teacher, aviation mechanics to be precise, at Clover Park Technical College. And sometimes, just sometimes, that job calls for him to do something other than lecture to his students or hover over them in the lab. This week they asked him to be part of looking at the aviation curriculums throughout the state of Washington and brainstorm how Washington State can continue to retain their claim on being the place to come for the best in aviation education.

I on the other hand am an interloper for the week, I snuck myself into his duffle bag and came along for the ride. The state isn't paying for me, I'm cheap, well my finance manager is tight, so I am eating out of a cooler instead of enjoying the beautiful dining room that this group is. Had I known my first meal that Dirt bought me down at the dining hall was going to be my last I would have eaten more. Maybe not knowing was a good thing, because as it was I was bloated to the size of the Goodyear Blimp!

This is their meeting room, I crashed it this morning to take pictures. Everyone has been really nice to Dirt's wife, me, I feel bad because I am the only spouse along for the ride. Ummmm other spouses must actually have important things to do at home. Me, on the other hand? I think the girls and their helper were glad to see me drive out the driveway, now they can actually get some work done.

This is Laura, she is with AJAC, the folks that put this thing together for the guvner of our humble state. She's in charge. How do I know? She was the one who gracefully started the meeting.

But before she did, I managed to get in a few pics of the folks Dirts hangin' with this week.

This is Reckless Raymond, (I got the reckless part from a story he told the first night we were here, the first night Dirt splurged and let me eat in the restaurant here at the resort) he doesn't seem reckless to me. And in fact is very nice, he is from the Spokane area and has two small children, so small that he doesn't know about The Fantastic Mr. Fox. He should watch it any way.

This is Bonnie, she is very sweet, but then she is from Texas, and it seems everything from Texas is sweet.

This is Alex, he teaches in Everett and is a fellow motersickle rider.

The place where this is all happening is a nice resort just outside of Leavenworth, I'll show pics of the town and surroundings soon, but for now just know that as you drive through town you suddenly have an urge to braid your hair and start yodeling.

Nice eh? What image do you see in the silhouette of those hills? If you can figure it out, you know the name of the place we're staying.

Dear Reader, I am off for another adventure into this little slice of God's amazing creation. Poor Dirt, he has to stay in meetings all day, but he gets juice and cookies and everyone is very nice so I won't feel too bad for him. I am going off to see some more wildflowers...

The hillsides of Central Washington are covered with these beauties, Arrowleaf balsamroot - Balsamorhiza sagittata. Not sure how fond the locals are of them as they seem to grow anywhere and everywhere, but they sure caught my eye and my appreciation.

Have as sunny a day as this flower and I am today Dear Reader, stay workin' in the spirit and not in the flesh, do so as if you were doin' all unto the Lord our God, and I'll do my best to be right there with you.

Ah, the irony of it all, now that I have a WordPress, Blogger cooperates and WordPress throws a fit. Aww I'm chuckling at that! Now I need a nuther vacation to work out all my new kinks and a nuther one to set up a web site for Vicktory Farm & Gardens

Wart Doin?

2010-04-21T00:33:00.001-07:00

We're keepin' our heads down and pluggin' away at the spring work. Glad for the new head space of no opening day, I seem to be working faster and harder even, just wish my lungs would keep up.

North Garden will be turning into my cut flower and or bouquet garden. I won't be changing the name 'cause in a year or two it is possible that I might change it to something else. For now, because of the soil we have built here it will be where I sow carrot and parsnip seed. But I think carrots and parsnips could look really cool in an arrangement, so I don't think that is fudging on the rules at all, besides they're not really rules, more like guidelines really.

Because Dirt is such a wise man and has come up with the idea for us to have one central killer compost area just inside the pasture gate partitioned off by ecology blocks, we are eliminating all our little compost piles. The girls are sifting through this one right now, using Dirt's and my old sod sifter from when we were first married and gardening new spaces together.

I'm a cold compost-er, I just throw it on as it comes, everything, I don't turn, I don't mess, so to keep the air that the aerobic microbes need to munch it all up, I mindfully toss in enough stuff the likes of this. I find it easier to sift a compost pile when all is said and done than to turn and toss, wet and fuss, and check its temperature all the time. Economy model mother, economy model gardener.

This particular compost pile was started when this garden was started and its true purpose was to cover the ginormous rock that lay on the edge of center in the garden. The rock seems to have moved, and shrunk, odd, very odd, Do you think I am so good that I can compost a giant rock?

It appears that I am, because this is all that is left of it and this wasn't even under the pile any more. Mind you, we had metal T-posts sunk around the edges of the rock, they held up palettes that held in the compost and they marked the edge of the rock for when Dirt came in with the tiller.

So Dear Reader, I am not of my rocker or rock, I know of what I speak! This rock has rolled, unless steel T-post go pogo stick at night, and in unison!

The area that was once a rock and then a compost pile is going to be scraped flat along with adjoining spaces, level with the major pathways. This area will become a table and chairs area, to set and ponder the flowers. I'm thinkin' I want to have the table and chairs bar height so that it can also be an outdoor work area to do up bouquets and such right in the garden.

Here's a quick shot of my little tulip crop, these were just babies last year, most weren't large enough to bloom even and just tiny buds on one or two. I need to come and give them a little foliar spray to boost their nutrition.

The lettuces and mustards are getting spread out this week by the girls, planted equidistance apart. I don't thin well, when I come across a seedling that looks poorly, I always find a spot for it.

Planting out the onion plants has been a challenge in that regard, it is hard to toss the silly little ones that most likely won't grow nice.

Oh by the way Dear Reader, I just teleported you out to Market Garden at the north end of the pastures down by the highway. Just beyond the tilled soil is the old pumpkin patch, we've decided to create a buffer zone hedge row sort of area. It is seventy feet from fence to fence and we'll come in quite a ways from the highway fence just to make sure it all stays, all our work, nature can then have the space between the highway and our hedge row.

A place where people, determined to drive while sleeping can fly into with their trucks and not make me too crazy. Or if the highway department ever widens the now well traveled highway, well be ready for it.

Fruit trees, nut trees, flowery berry laden bushes for our little flighty friends and such, we'll most likely get to that in the fall or late winter. Bet and I might toss some wild flower seed in there for now just for the fun of it.

Here's a better view of the onions, the first crop to go in our Market Garden. They could be bigger that would be nice, but they have been on hold a little too long. Don't know what this crew was thinkin' last fall when we knew we were going to come over sometimes our brains are mush.

But all is well, they seem to be bouncing back just fine, our onions might be on the small side this year but what the heck we've planted about a thousand so far and are only half way through, so we'll have onions.

Bet and I perfected the furrow thing, I don't often plant in furrows so I forget often what really needs to happen. The dirt, soil, needs to stay, be pressed a bit to squish out some of the air, and an impression made for the seed or seedling. I usually make little holes, equidistance apart for optimum space usage. But I wasn't into making two-thousand little holes by hand.

But pulling a hoe across the soil to make a furrow causes soil loss at the edge of the bed. So we used the outside edge of our hands to just press in the furrow lines. It went way quicker, the soil stayed put and all is well.

Thought I'd show you a bit of how we are making the beds in Market Garden, not too different from how I always put together a first time bed.

Bet and Dirt had gone over the whole area seventy by four-hundred feet, with the pto tiller behind Orange Tractor. But due to time and hard sod and precious worms and such, we did not opt to till it to a fine powder, not even close really.

We mark out the beds with stakes and baling twined, scoop the busted sod and the soil from the path areas, heap it on the bed areas and then because the sod is still fairly clumpy and in need of being broke we just put straight barn cleanings right on the top of the soddy soil.

That straw you see is well soaked in urine and lots of dung is in there so it will rot in no time and it will break down the sod. That of course makes for a bit less nutrition available to the plant so we'll be foliar spraying with manure tea a lot this year.

Next year these beds will be ready to handle carrots and parsnips. With all this work going into the prep of the beds and changing up the focus of the other garden areas some ideas have changed quite a bit, but heck Dear Reader, you knew I was queen of change didn't you?

Well, I got some stuff a callin' my name, I'd love to stay and chat, let my lungs rest a bit longer, but my brain has gotta get out and do some real work, But you're right Dear Reader, I do need to keep better records than I have in the past, it's time, and all this plannin' and stuff takes up a bit of writin' space.

Have an excellent week, we've got a pile of things on our wanna do list so we won't be wandering the streets and carousing this weekend, maybe next weekend. Dear Reader, stay well, let's stay tuned to the Holy Spirit channel instead of the ol' flesh and we'll get on down the road lots better together.

By the way, This was the post that wouldn't load from Live Writer and has started all this shenanigans with getting a dot com and WordPress-ing it. But I think the problem was with my internet connection at my house.

Oh, and, Wart Doin' is a grandboyism for, what are you doing?

Oh yeah, and another thing, I'm now found at http://www.itsthedirt.com/ Plain and simple, itsthedirt.com. It is a WordPress blog on my own domain, looking forward to where this new step takes me. It is still a little rough but I thought maybe you'd like to watch my progess over there.

I Ran a Test

2010-04-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't catch it, I've been feelin' lousy, so I guess I hope you didn't.

I've been coffin' and wheezen' up a storm for a couple of weeks now. I couldn't tell if it was a real life cold, knew some folks who had one, or just allergies. So I tried my darnedest to give it to those closest to me, Dirt, EBet, Anna Coleen. And nothin' nobody has so much as sneezed.

Test over. Now for the cure.

And because I am a bit preoccupied (with spring) and already feeling super lousy (with spring) and can barely get my regular work half done, nah, lets say I'm getting about a quarter done and that would be generous, well then Dear Reader I'm ditching my hippy and I'm reachin' for the quick and mainstream chemical cures. Seventeen bucks for forty days of breathing, works for me. Even as we speak it's workin', I can actually breathe and I think I might get to sleep not sitting upright tonight!

Live Writer, my new favorite way to prep my posts no longer works for me, unless I want my posts to be three sentences long. Uhhhh that's what I have FaceBook for (and why I secretly hate it). So... I may be goin' Word Press, we'll see. But I think I need a degree in something or perhaps this process will give me a degree or two, of increased body temperature, it doesn't appear so easy as blogger, hope that means it is more reliable.

Oh For Cryin' Out Loud!

2010-04-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

Just when you learn to say. "jelly" they change it to jam!

I've been using Windows Live Writer for a while now, digin' it for so many reasons, 'cept now it is givin' me a "timed out" message when I go to publish. Live Writer help says it's an issue with the server, to wait and publish later.

I'm hooked on Live Writer and I will only come back here to publish straight from Blogger if I absolutely have to.

When I can stop getting "timed out" you will see my latest post, nothin' special to wait around for and I don't know when that will be, so by all means head off to the park with great Aunt Lucy and maybe when you get back...

Hand Wringing and Doom and Gloomers

2010-04-14T08:51:00.001-07:00

If it is a sin to worry... oh, wait.. you may not know that, let me set my premise to this whole chat then.

Worry:
In Matthew, chapter six, Jesus speaks a good deal of worry, he asks us if it really gets us any where and in a way answers that and then says to not worry because He will take care of us.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Worry and being anxious is in direct opposition to faith, anxiety is the opposite of what Christ calls us to, He calls us to have faith in Him, not in our strength, not in dates and opinion polls, not in our ability to fuss and worry over all things in life, but to have faith in His strength, to rely on Him.

Christ tells us not to worry about earthly things, clothes, food, friends, He even tells us not to worry about what would be terribly important, our testimony when we are arrested because we know Him.

Even modern science tell us that worry, stress, robs from us. It makes us age faster. Like Christ says, today has enough trouble of its own, like the poor, there will always be stresses, ones that we cannot escape, ones that are not a result of faith breaking worry and fear. But we are not to heap on the troubles of today and worry and fear our tomorrows. Worry certainly does not buy us more time and science backs that one up. Not because Christ needs modern science to back Him up, but interesting how the truth of the words of Christ do not need to see the end of this world to be plainly seen as true, right and good.

What is sin really, but to go against God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit? To live in and for the flesh and not reside in the Spirit, all of that, it is all sin. Sorry, if that just broadens the scope of what is sin and what is not, in your world. But to worry, to fret, to fear situations, is to not have faith, to not rest in God and take Him at His word, that He will take care of us.

Check it out, you do not have to become a breatharian ascetic to live a Spirit-led, faith-filled, anxiety-denying life. The Spirit leads us to eat and eat peacefully. True servants of His made cloth for clothing and tents for shelter. He calls us to be in company with one another, to crave to be in fellowship, to travel, to do good deeds of all sorts. But all that for Christ and not our very own flesh.

Might I go on now?

So its a sin to worry and be anxious and sin will always come into the world, we aren't going to stop it at the gate. However, if the one who lets the sin slip by them and causes a child of God to sin there by drawing an eventual remorse so strong that the Path-Paver would then choose to be drown for certain in the sea with a millstone around their neck, then why on earth would you desire to cause or stir up worry in another person?

Just wonderin'.

(Matthew 18:6, Mark 9:42 and Luke 17:2 in case you think I'm nutty about what happens to the path pavers, wide gate openers, uh, what they would rather have happen to them.)

So if you would not wish to cause another worry whether for their soul or for your very own neck, then why would you do business with a person who trades on anxieties and worries to make their buck?

Now I am not talking about not buying a safe ladder, or rubber gloves, or new brakes for your car, or vitamin C.

Remember, weavers, tent makers, moms, dads, travelers, neighbors we're all called to be His.

What I am speaking of, wondering about is, perpetuating the commerce of anxiety by buying into doom and gloom and "whoa is us", and "oh no the world is coming to an end" or at least a whopping good crisis.

I got news for you. The world is going to end. That is with out a doubt.

However, no one knows that day and time, not even Christ, only the Father. And no one is going to escape it no matter how deep their bomb shelter, or secluded their dwelling, or stocked their root cellar is, because it will end at God's hand, not a bomb, not a nuclear winter, not a carbon overloaded-sky-climate change.

I am not saying that you ought not to be prepared for the future, if you are headed for a trip in the mountains, by all means, grab your coat and put the chains in the trunk. But for crying out loud, do not worry and do not borrow trouble that is not there for you.

What business is it that these purveyors of doom and worry are in? You find them every where, selling nearly everything, everything but real peace and contentment. They will even sell you false mind-numbing contentment if you want it. They will convince you you have some crisis. They sell you themselves and their ideas, they sell you products to stave off the end of the world or at least protect you, or numb you, but mostly what they are selling you is anxiety, worry and a fraudulent product.

Y2K bring back any memories for anyone? A contrived crisis, where no one was reminded to rely on God but instead they were sold millions of dollars of "survival goods." The only business that hurt from that one was the sorry fellas that don't know how to be good hucksters: find or contrive a weakness, a fear; strike it; suck it for all its worth; and then move on to the next thing.

Some purveyors of panic are very good, very discrete, you can hardly tell what they are up to, it all seems so sweet and well meaning, and "golly, I was wondering about that too." No clear signs of selling fretfulness.

But then there are the others, that because no one calls out the selling of worry and whoa, doom and gloom, they are just plain bold, and the point is right there in their very own words.

Yes, they may be dressed up all cutesy in overalls and a floppy garden hat, or Victorian garb and dainty lace gloves, but their message of looming crisis is strong and unabashedly bold in print. "Buy our product because there is a crisis on the horizon, a big one, a prolonged one. To make it through you need us."

They say their product brings you peace.

With that one Dear Christ-Follower, you ought to hear in your head, your gut, your heart, your spirit, the sound of a needle sliding across a rotating disc of vinyl.

No one brings peace in a crisis or in daily life but Christ. And Christ says not to worry.

Then why are you buying into a product that is wringing its hands on the sideline with a pitifully knit brow and tears in its eyes for the Unprepared?

And low and behold nine times out of ten the product is faulty. Food in tin cans can not last forever, grain once it is ground will loose its nutrition, and many seeds do not last for five years, albeit some last longer, but some last a little over a year.

Live right right now.

Don't by a bucket of stale right living and put it in your freezer to pull out when the crisis hits. Most plants for food take an average of three months to mature, the unprepared ground another month or two to prep, given even that the right crisis hits in the right season, what good is it to bank on a salvation that comes four months after the crisis?

Look, I'm not saying that it isn't a good idea to garden and learn to save seed, in fact that is what I am saying, learn to listen to the Holy Spirit, make your food today, save of your harvest what you know you will need for the next day's planting, be an ant, be wise, be fruitful but do not worry. There is a big difference.

I'm not saying to be indolent and then arrive at my back door or freeway off ramp when your belly is a little empty. Learn to work your soil and your muscles so that you are not found weak and un-knowledgeable. But that takes daily practice, not a bucket in your freezer to be pulled out when the crisis finally hits.

And if you have no soil of your own or your muscles are not what they used to be? Find an honest business that is there to fill your needs, your honest needs, not your pretend or sinful needs. Hire them to do what you cannot, there is nothing wrong with that. The concept of self-reliance is not only quite far fetched it is also not how we are to live.

We are to live in community, relying on each other no matter how painful and irritating that may be. But we are to do so with honesty and forthrightness. Not manipulating each other's base fleshly worries and oiling up our panic buttons.

Being in a line of work or having a fairly decent smattering of skills that could play along with the current "green" crisis business, it is very tempting to join hands and participate in the nonsense that could make cash for my hip pocket.

To part hand-wringers from their hard earned cash in a barely honest manner is very tempting, "everyone is doing it", and good people are participating and buying into it, why shouldn't I?

Why shouldn't I? Because it will make my Father's stomach turn? Because it will grieve the Holy Spirit in whom I ought to be relying on to teach me better ways?

Because it will continue to cause others to sin?

And golly, I really don't like the idea of drowning.

Okay, I'm Leavin' My Comfort Zone

2010-04-13T22:03:00.001-07:00

And I'm weighing in on a T.V. show, a show that took a long time for the Vicks to finally watch and a show that I still only watch once it is half way through it's season.

But Simon and Kara are knuckle heads. Okay, yeah I'm no singer not by a long shot and I've not produce much more than heads of lettuce and even that is dicey. But I like to listen to music. I like shows like Idol and SYTYCD because they remind me a bit of variety shows of my childhood.

And Siobhan Magnus is an incredibly versatile performer, who is phenomenally styled for a girl from her era. Not to mention she has a voice that makes my skin shiver every time but especially this week.

The way that this crazy zany looking tatooed chick is able to hold her body, retain a shockingly flattering pose while walk down glossy steps in bizaddo spike heels, all the while singing, no, spinning a web, she must have had a secret life of having gone to finishing school or had her start in pageants.

Kara and her nonsensical "you have one voice at the beginning and then you have this other" and she thinks that's weird? It is what set us up, she's gettin' you all moody and sultry like and then bam she loads you on, takes you up and up and wham!

Simon and Kara are what? Jealous, worried that what, ah crumb I can't analyze them past they are nuts.

Hey, like I said, I'm no expert, just a chick with sensitive skin.

Hippy Hot Hut

2010-04-13T10:10:00.001-07:00

I'm in!

Well, I'm in for a little bit then I'll clear out and let Dirt finish sometime around June. Well with this side any who. We've got some figger out on the other side.

Figgerin' and fightin'. It's the perennial problem when the finance manager is the builder but not the user and dreamer.

September is the date for the other side.

I'm reconciled.

Honest.

When last we talked we had gone up during Dirt's spring break to pick up the missing pieces and come home and finish the glazing, but that far from finishes the whole deal.

Good ol' Patty Whack greets us and wants to know what took so long, Tulips Patty, tulips, a fantastic lunch, a splendid trip around an inspiring valley and a perfect but all too short of a visit.

But here we are now, back to work and happy, so happy to be working with this wonderful material.

Dirt is tapping the sheet down into place, tap, tap, tap, see the sheet moving down into place...

And the glazing was done, the twenty-ninth of March!

Two weeks later, enough holes have been filled and enough has been done that Dirt says as long as I give him room to work, I can move some of my plants down here. Others might just head to a cold frame or water walls, but... cough, cough, I'm not sure.

After supper yesterday, which we actually ate down here, the girls and Dirt helped me move all my fuchsias into the Hippy Hot Hut.

Dirt put up the crossy things and then put up a couple of pipes to hang the baskets. The crossy things will come in handy when I throw a little shade cloth over them to keep the fuchsias from burning.

They won't be in here long, I hope. Then I need to figure out where to hang all of them outside while they continue to grow. The crash and being in where I couldn't water them without walking them in and out has been hard on them, guess I shouldn't have been so eager to start certain endeavors before having the right spot to do it. Oh well, I'll learn that lesson for sure, when I'm sixty, or seventy, by then Bet will be in charge.

Well gotta get my coffin' head out of bed and go move the brugs and all the rest of everything. Maybe do a little seeding...

Workin' just a bit slower today, heck have been goin' slower for a few days now. But its all good, obviously I needed to slow down so I could do more deep thinking. Arencha lucky Dear Reader, you get to read the result of my brain matter sloshing around!

By the way, Ralph has noted that I managed to skip Colorado in my list of Arbor Day party state dates. Didn't mean to. But as I was clicking around the map on the Arbor Day web site I musta gottin a bit confused with all those square states down there Ralph. Duly noted and the date will be added and we will have a special cookie eatin' party, nah, we'll have Colorado Carrot Cake! in honor of a tree partyin' resident of said state!

Arbor Day Party

2010-04-12T19:22:00.001-07:00

Hey, as I stated in an earlier post, uh I think the last one actually, I've decided on not opening on April twenty-second or any time real soon, 'cause after all like Connie said, I's the boss. Instead of an opening day with tea and cookies on that-day-I-don't-care-for-because-of-it's-knuckle-head-association, I suggested we still have a party and on Arbor Day, a day I do like.

(By the way, in spite of any thing I say in this post or others, no matter how derogatory I can get, if you want to, or already do, celebrate what is commonly known as "Earth Day" April 22, I'm cool with that, I might even eat those interesting blue and green colored roundish cookies without sugar you had your kids make for the occasion. I just won't be hosting one here or arriving at your place in a Prius.)

In Washington state, Arbor Day is this Wednesday, April 14th, sorry 'bout the short notice for a party. But let's do it! Cookies and such around two-ish shall we? Although I do have a nasty cold so if you have fragile health issues you ought to know I'm a coffin' up a storm right now, but I have masks and if you show up with a scarf around your nose and mouth we'll be okay with that.

And then of course National Arbor Day is April 30th, if that is a more doable date for you, let say lunch-ish, bring a brown bag, I'll have a cooler of cokes and such and we can picnic in any number of special spots.

I'm sorry if my dislike for Earth Day throws you, Dear Reader, but I just can't hack it. The whole of it, the stuff that they promote on it or around it, in association to it, or the folks that conceived it and why they picked the date they did... I've tried in the past to like Earth Day but it has never set well.

I have, however, always enjoyed Arbor Day, it was a day my dad and I would often share and celebrate, and 'cause I fall more from that tree than the one who would say, "Let's keep at it so we stay ahead of things Lanny," we would often be celebrating it not quite on Arbor Day for Washington or National Arbor Day either, we often made up our own date when we had let the other slip by or had something arbor-ish to do way ahead or when we were without a calendar.

So I'm thinking that's what I'm gonna do, only even more Lanny style. My dad would just say what the heck and we would go do something treeish or birdish if we realized we were off date. It was something we did, just the two of us. I wanted to be a forest ranger and I think he sort of liked that and wanted to encourage that.

Any who, I'm puttin' a Lanny spin on it this year, including even the whole part that I'm a little late for doing it up just right, that is very Lanny.

Here's my idea: lets celebrate Arbor Day, here on my blog and at Victory Farm and Gardens. If you swing by in the flesh, uh in person not in a hedonistic sinful manner, any one of these days (give a ring though the night before because we could have plans to be out back or run to town for more party supplies) that some state or other celebrates and takes care of trees and birds.

Remember, Lanny's definition of party can be just about anything, balloons, clowns, cake, whistles, fancy punches are not mandatory, but can be nice if that's what ya got. So if you swing by we'll be partying, just please, don't be disappointed.

I won't be listing the states who's date has already come and gone.

Washington (that's me) second Wednesday in April.

Wyoming last Monday in April

Idaho, Montana, Nevada, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, Utah, Texas, Kansas, Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, Connecticut, Delaware. Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire (and this year, National) last Friday in April

North Dakota, Vermont first Friday in May

Maine third full week in May (that's why I like this state, a whole week of partying!)

Alaska third Monday in May

Really not all that many days for Tree and Bird Parties but it'll do and leave us for a couple of chances for other parties, like slug or fern parties. We've got April 14th, 26th, and the 30th, then May 7th, and the 16th through the 22nd. Woohoo! Eleven plus chances to party.

And again, why Arbor Day? And not that Other Day?

Arbor Day isn't doom and gloomy, it is a bright and joyful celebration of trees, planting trees, planting other things when you can't plant trees, putting up bird feeders, going for a hike in a national forest.

Arbor Day isn't about putting hidden spikes in trees that could kill those who desire to use the resource properly, it is about planting them and enjoying them for what they are, a tree, they are not reincarnations of my dead great aunt Judy.

Arbor Day is about being protective, just not a psychosis dressed up to look like protection. Protection is appropriate, we are called to be protectors, of trees and land, especially those of us who know we are called and free in Christ.

No, we are not free to chop down whatever we think we need, but we also are not to be doom and gloomy and fear-filled and psychotically controlling of everyone but ourselves. Lording our knowledge or worse yet, pseudo-knowledge over others, determining how much toilet paper others ought to use, how many light bulbs each household can buy a year, what automobile, if any, a person can own and when they can drive it...

So yes, lets celebrate God's creation and specifically trees and the beauty, wonder, and service that is ours from the trees God gave us and the little (and big) birds that inhabit them. Lets celebrate it on J. Sterling Morton's Arbor Day or really, any other day we find ourselves thankful for God's creation of trees and mindful of our stewardship responsibility.

Asparagus Beds

2010-04-11T20:40:00.001-07:00

A few more beds in Barn Garden need to be made up, We did these this week for asparagus. Anna did an excellent job of clearing the area of weeds including along the duck fence.

When the weeds get thick at the fence line it holds the rain water in the garden area instead of letting it go on down to the pond. So yay for Anna for being diligent on those weeds.

We are considering putting down some of our weed mat along the fence line to keep the weeds from coming back. No body likes weeding fence lines. Ugh.

Dirt says my garden method just looks like a bunch of graves, that's why I usually try and make them longer than ten feet.

After the weeds were removed, I came along and helped her dig out the paths and build up the beds. Barn garden is going to become our perennial vegetable, fruit and herb garden. Asparagus will be just one of the stars in the garden here.

I'm definitely no asparagus expert. I grew some once but only got a small little harvest before the crowns disappeared and we decided to not garden in that spot any longer turning it into a lawn for the resident lawn ranger.

I will be building one more asparagus bed as another order of crowns is due in. Unfortunately I was unable to get my really big order because the grower that offered the crowns could not ship their product to Washington, not that their product was inferior but that in order to ship here there are some hefty inspection permits that the grower is subject to.

I did find another grower that has the same type of crowns and at a really great price but unfortunately the Hippy Hot Hut is taking up the funds at this time.

After the beds were built we had some whopper rain storms and the beauty of raised bed can be seen here as the water has made some mighty mud in the paths but the soil in the beds remains well drained and ready to plant.

The bed on the left was raked as smooth as the one on the right until I place the asparagus crowns in holes approximately two feet apart and then only covered them partially. Now it appears as if I was back playing WWll with my brother and we pretended this was war torn France with bombed up ground.

Both of these beds are Jersey Supreme, an all male variety. They are on two foot centers and I was able to get twenty-four in each bed. The newer Jerseys, Supreme and Giant are able to handle taking a small harvest the year after the crowns are planted. Other crowns need two years and if you start your bed with seeds, they need five years of growth before you begin to harvest.

I am now officially behind, well heck, officially, I was born behind and I have never caught up. I remember as a child my mom saying on Saturday mornings while we were working, doing things like dusting dustless baseboards, "Keep at it and then we can stay ahead of things."

For the most part, the ninety-nine point nine percent part, my mom was ahead of things, always. I on the other hand, even though I am genetically hers, haven't even been in the vicinity of "things" let alone ahead. So I guess it has always been official but now I'm re-admitting it. But I refuse to admit complete defeat! I never said that! After all it is my job to keep everyone back here in the "not ahead bleachers" entertained.

Therefore, I am, with Dirt's permission, delaying Vicktory Farm and Garden's opening, grand, semi or peep show. No matter how you slice it, it is delayed. Maybe when I get over some disappointments and actually have some blooming baskets, peas or some salad mixes to sell or give away, I will throw up the open sign but for now I'm in the busiest holding pattern I've ever seen.

Besides, and you'll love this rationale, April 22 is Earth Day, I hate Earth Day. It is Lenin's birthday. Not Lennon's birthday, although he doesn't impress me as a person either, Lenin like Stalin, yeah, his birthday.

The first Earth Day organizer picked it for that very reason. So even though I was going to open V- F&Gs with an anti-Earth Day attitude. I can't, it just doesn't feel right. Every day is God's Day and so every day should be a "get your head screwed on straight and take care of the things God has gifted you with," Day. Uh, that would include the earth, duh.

But it would also include using your brain and not jumping to ill conceived ill supported conclusions, for the green-beanies own fellow once said, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." Well not really Lenny Dear, it just seems like it 'cause most folks swallow it.

Oooh harsh. And that from a hippy chick with a bran-new Hippy Hot Hut to boot.

Tol ja, you'd like my rationale for not opening on April 22. (I had randomly picked the day based on some other things I wanted to have the whole pressure of opening out of the way for, but Bet nearly immediately pointed out it was Earth Day,(how does she know that stuff?) at first I said "forget that date then." but then I thought I would lead my own personal counter-the-greeny-banana-heads movement, with tea, cookies and the hue and cry: "Com'on, Really Live, Go Persimmon!"

Alas it just truly is a bad date for me to pick to open to the public, groovy rationale or not. But we can still have a party, wait, lets have a party on... Wednesday, April 21st or how 'bout Arbor Day?

This is what happens, New Dear Reader, when Lanny spends the day sick in bed. (Long-time Dear Reader already knows I can go a bit over the edge when thinking).

Cat Fights Vicktory Farm and Gardens Style

2010-04-09T18:28:00.001-07:00

This photo story was not posed in any way by any of the humans that were witness to these silly cats.

Besides, when has a cat ever done what you wanted it to?

I'm not sure, but I think these cats need to know that this is not what I am paying them for. Oh wait, they are rather entertaining.

For those who need to know, the orange cat is Ranch Hand and the brown tabby is Farm Boy.

This is the exact order of pictures.

All totaled, this exchange took eight minutes.

Traffic

2010-04-08T00:14:00.001-07:00

What do you do in traffic?

We talked and laughed about the day and how wonderful everything was and then we hit traffic. But our day had been so good and traffic was, after all, inevitable, we decided, one by one, quietly to ourselves, to keep the wonderful day going. So we....

Took pictures of bizarre little cars, don't you wonder where the big fat dimpled hand is that makes this car go?

Tried to take a shot of the freeway pavement, I don't think I've ever seen freeway pavement up close and slow like this. Sorry it is so blurry. I wonder where they got all of that incredibly flat rock.

And of course we took photos of the traffic we were stuck in. And yes, people were staring. Not sure if they were staring because we were taking photos, or because we were driving a F350 with dulies in downtown rush hour traffic.

We also took some artsy martsy, com'on everyone says it the other way, I gotta be different, any way, some photos with interesting compositions.

And pictures with almost as much grey as possible. Flag ruins or sets off the monochromeness.

A picture of a place we've been, signs for other places we've been, books of the Bible that are our favorite and a favorite word, union.

More composition tries.

I do like my baseball best on the radio. With a bottle of coke and some gardening to do.

I've been to one baseball game here. It was great fun, Eric and Steph took Dirt and I. The stadiums border the more industrial area of downtown. A favorite place of mine.

I didn't use to be a baseball fan, I always thought the game a bit slow, it would cause me to wander off and do other things. But because of Dirt, the radio in my bedroom was always on and it was most often on the channel that hosted baseball for Seattle.

I would catch bits and pieces of the talk shows the channel did and often baseball would come on instead.

It changed things for me, my perspective, I'm always up for change.

Dave Niehaus announced most of the games I accidentally listened to as I cleaned the house or put away laundry. I began to like just the sound of it, the melody of the game, and before I knew it I was beginning to remember names and know who Dirt was speaking of.

The girls and I would have our own names for players, some were endearing names and some were, I admit, rather contemptuous of certain whiny behaviors.

But now the radio station that is on isn't the one that broadcasts the game, so...

One of these days I'll be a better fan.

But for now I have a greenhouse to help finish up and fill.

Always A Silver Lining

2010-04-07T22:52:00.001-07:00

Here's my greenhouse, all finished. Just joshin' ya. But this is part of what was promised...

...that silver lining that we always see when we step back and take a second look.

Last week we didn't have far to step back to in order to get a clear view of a bold, wide silver lining and this one, laced with gold.

Always a good and glorious day when the Vicks link up with the Coulters. The two young men on the left at the long lunch table with the Vicktory Farmhands are just part of the egg-warriors I spoke of in the last post.

Justin, far left, is the highway warrior of the four, doing battle on the road against nutty drivers throwing their cars in front of the egg truck just to see if they can break a few. They never do.

His brother, Trevor, mid left, keeps all the paperwork and eggs nicely balanced, you could call him the li'eggison between coop and customer. It was only a suggestion.

Pop Coulter, not to be confused with pop culture and not pictured here, also works with paper and eggs and pretty much everything and anything that allows you to walk in your favorite market, mindlessly scoop up a carton of eggs, throw down a few pennies, and know that you will have a good and nutritious product for breakfast the next morning or in a sandwich for lunch if that is more your thing.

Mother Becky keeps this hard workin' crew glued together with a homey relaxed well fed atmosphere where 'er she is.

The Coulters Four have become a vital part of the Vick's existence. They visit us often and are always so willing to pitch in a hand or two or eight and help us with our work. Victory Farm and Gardens would not be as far along as it is if it were not for them.

After another delightful meal and introduction to one of their favorite places up in beautiful Skagit country and great rebound from Chuckie nightmare (see previous post) the young men headed back to work (last week was a hard one for those in the real egg business) and

Mark and Becky led the way through the Valley of the Tulips native style. So yes, we turned left on Wall and drove out the tulip route

The daffs are still blooming with some of the tulips in the background just beginning to show color.

The tulips in Washington State and specifically in the Skagit Valley were out the earliest they have ever been and now that chilly weather has finally set in growers are expecting the longest season on record as well.

This was the view through the gate into the beautiful gardens at RoozenGaarde, we decided that time constraints on all of us meant that we would only peak through at the gardens that could have easily cause Lanny to spend several hours here, noting this and that tulip and other garden delights. Hey! it's what I do!

Every direction a body looks in the Valley there is a treat for the eye and the soul to feast upon.

Why is this so delicious looking, but if your four year old daughter put a red shirt on over her pink corduroys you would take her back to fashion school for yet another lesson on combining colors wouldn't you?

While were on the subject, I just want to say that though there are many a magazine and whole book shelves devoted to how to combine colors and textures in gardens for that perfect effect.. I say hooey, just garden.

If you keep looking at all those gorgeous photos of other peoples gardens and reading the articles, that sometimes contradict the last article you read, you may never feel strong enough to master the art of gardening.

I got news for you. Gardens are personal, but I have never been to a garden or hung out where plants were growing that didn't feed some part of my soul. A garden of any sort is far better than none at all. Gardens are not made by masters, masters are made by gardens.

If you've never been up to the Skagit Valley then you really must travel there sometime, it is a beautiful place. Dirt and I and the girls have been up there a few times and each time I see it in a new way, notice more things.

I can't imagine not wanting to be a farmer living in the midst of this splendid valley.

Our tour guides took us on Best Rd. which really was a best road especially during tulip time, it runs along in the valley and then up it goes along side this lovely little rise that gives a nice view of a large chunk of the valley and incredible blocks of color.

Then we came down again and connected with Brown Slough Rd. which would turn into Fir Island Rd and take us to Conway and I-5.

But as we turned onto the Slough Rd. we slowed way down because an enormous flock of snow geese decided to put on a show.

And they kept it up for quite a while

Even as we waved good bye to our good friends, turned into our pit stop for a chance at finding a grapefruit, Snowgoose Produce, the geese continued their aerial show for just a bit more. It was easy to see why the produce stand has that name, these geese were right across the road. And besides, it rhymes.

Alas, Snowgoose Produce had a lot of lovely offerings but not one grapefruit in sight. But Dirt spotted a customer with one of these so he just had to have one of his own. No one wants to be in the car with a warm fresh waffle cone filled with cool ice cream and watch it be eaten and not have a little too, and since there was no grapefruit, what the heck.

Hope you enjoyed the flowers and the tour a fraction as much as we did Dear Reader. I'll be back soon with our trip down the freeway to home, but I might have to tell you about some other stuff first, or unload a bunch of mental wanderings as well, we'll see.

Look for a silver lining, it is always there, God's timing is best after all.

Now For the Glazing.

2010-04-06T19:13:00.001-07:00

Oh, I love glazing, I put a lovely cream cheese glaze on my cinnamon rolls on Sunday...

No, not frosting or icing. Glazing. It is the clear stuff, if you will, that is on a green house or in this case, hot house. So yes, like the shiny coat of a sugary substance for donuts, the green house, hot house, gets a shiny coating of poly carbonate aka glazing.

The first panel went on easily. The outer edge gets an end cap which is then drilled to the two-by-four. The end cap gives the poly-carbonate extra strength. The inner edge takes a joiner strip, the next panel must be fed into the joiner strip. Not an easy task.

I want to say that the second sheet took three hours to put on, but that would be an exaggeration according to the time stamp on the camera. However, our hands and nerves and patience sure felt it was more like three than the one hour that it actually took.

The rafters went up one at a time because not only did the joiner strips make putting the panels up very difficult, they also threw off where the two-by-four needed to be placed for center. The stuff is easy to cut, but uck, one more step, no thanks.

And Now For the Hazing ala Charley's Greenhouse Supply

It began to look as if we were just going to twiddle our thumbs on Sunday with only two more panels to go to finish the glazing on the mostly south-facing side of Hot Hippy Hut.

For you see it goes like this:

We realized too late on Saturday that not only did Charley's neglect to tell us the trick to getting the sheets into the joiner strips, but that they did indeed short us two of those very joiner strips (two strips are used on each joint as the strips are only six feet long and the panels are twelve).

Back when we made our purchase and picked it up in person we added one more panel to our order. We indeed carefully asked the fellow in the pick-up bay if the two joiner strips which we had added to the order after we arrived in person were indeed included and he emphatically said that they were. And in a rather sneering gesture of goodwill, offered to re-wrap them if we wanted to un-wrap them to count them. "Nah. We'll trust you, since clearly we can see that the extra panel is here," the gullible nice idiots from Roy say to the cool fellow who works in the warehouse at Charley's Greenhouse Supply.

Around one thirty on Saturday, after hearing my relatively non-cussing husband hold a personal cussing* storm, I went to the house in hopes to call Charley's and get the low down from a real person on how to get the succeeding sheets into the preceding joiner strips.

The recorded voice that I reached on the one-eight-hundred number said that they were closed after one p.m. on Saturday and closed on Sunday.

It wasn't until much later when we realized that we were actually short the joiner strips that we needed to put up the last panel, that I realized that the store had been open until five on Saturday. And sure enough, both the Call Center and the store were closed on Sunday. Much too late at that point to salvage the day from the cuss storm or to go get the joiner strips.

But at V F&G when the construction project threatens to slow down and phone calls are being made there is always something to do, like weed a flower bed.

Or note the mackerel sky that indicates that the next day will be a wet one.

And sure 'nuff Sunday was a wet one, slightly windy too, just right for twiddling thumbs or pretending you are in a kayak on a raging river (the raging river effect comes from the person in back of you willing to shake the saw horse you are perched on).

"Oh no girls, I wasn't implying that there might be better things to be doing."

Out of the planned sequence of work perhaps, but still a viable and significant thing to do, the day was spent installing the door and less expensive hardware store clear glazing on the southwest end.

Butcha know, this man's wife could spend a day shopping and purchasing him some new sweat shirts to work in instead of allowing him to wear this type of clothing that makes him look homeless.

Nah, way more fun to help with the door and such. And plan the strategy for racing up north Monday morning, grabbing the joiner strips, saying a quick hello to our eggcellent yet nearly eggasperated egg-farmers and distributors during the height of their eggstravaganzic season, quickly catch a glimpse of the tulips as we race out of the flowerific valley and back home to finish up the glazing job.

That was the plan any way.

But another plan superseded Dirt and Lanny's plan.

Charley's Call Center, CCC, opens at 7 a.m. weekdays, the store itself opens at 9a.m. weekdays. Perfect. We'll call at seven, find out that they have what we need for sure and then head up and be there nearly as the store opens.

Hazing Perfected by Charley's Greenhouse Supply

We call. At 7a.m.

"Oh that was too bad that we shorted you those joiner strips, if we sold them to you but you didn't take them they should still be here, but yes, before you drive up here let me check and make sure we have them, I call you back in a half hour."

Phone rings at ten to eight.

"We've had a little electrical problem, I went into the warehouse to see if your strips were there, and I couldn't see them, I don't really know what they look like or where they would be, so I don't know if we don't have them or if I just missed them. The warehouse guy gets in at eight-thirty, I'll have him call you then."

Ten after nine.

"Dirt? Can I call them? They haven't called us."

"Yah, call em"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I told Charley twice that you needed to know, but I guess he got sidetracked. Some other customers came into the store... . Lemme just set the phone down and go ask him now."

"Yes, we have the two six foot joiner strips that you need and the two opti-vents your husband said he wanted to buy today."

So we load up the dog and her puppies, make sure that all the day chores are done and head out at nine-thirty.

The bright side? Dear overworked friends, who reside in near proximity to Charley's Greenhouse, were better equipped to meeting us for lunch (we will now arrive at Chuck's close to noon, instead of nine-thirtyish) and one member of the family would not have arrived back in town from his early morning egg deliveries until noon and would have been very sad to have missed an opportunity to say howdy to us zingy Vicks, one and all.

So really it all worked out for the best, but the Chuck saga continues.

The Chuck Saga Continues

Dirt and I figure, not being retail store owners just the customers of such establishments for the last um forty or so years, that we will whip into Charley's Greenhouse, grab and purchase those things we told them we were coming for and be on our way. Certainly with more than two hours forewarning that would give them plenty of time to have said items up on the front counter with an explanatory note attached.

We arrive, one customer ahead of us, three clerks helping them, no eye contact with us, heck it could be a tough situation, we'll hang back and wait, they certainly see us.

Finally, we are acknowledged, yet when we explain who we are, no one keys into or displays any sort of recognition of our story. Odd.

"Oh, not sure we have six foot joiner strips in back we'll see, and you want what else? Not sure we have two opti-vents. We'll go look."

While others look, Dirt asks an apparently intelligent looking older fellow what the trick was to using the joiner strips. Said fellow smiles, says, yes, they are hard to work with.

Dirt becomes engaged with another customer who is there getting materials and they discuss ways to get around using the hard to use joiner strips that Dirt was not talked out of purchasing on our first visit up.

Dirt says several times how he would not ever try using the joiner strips again and would do something else or use the aluminum cap cover which were actually more expensive but obviously worth it.

Older gentleman just nods and smiles, clearly disinterested in helping with any hints on how to use this stuff we had already purchased and committed to use. Yet, he did seem rather annoyed with Dirt's criticism of one of their products.

Counter Girl returns:

"Yes, I see your order on the computer but it says those have been shipped." Said after ten minutes of Keystone cop like antics to figure out what we were there for and to locate the joiner strips, which clearly early morning girl had not bothered to set aside or even make note of and has indeed left for the day.

"Uh no, we picked those up, increased the order when we got here and were shorted part of what we added. Here, I'll go out to my truck and get the receipt."

After five minutes of back and forth on what happened two weeks prior, "Oh, I guess we do owe you two joiner strips. But it appears that you don't need to pay for these two opti-vents"

No, I haven't paid for them yet.

"Yes, you have, it shows them paid for right here. But it does show that they were shipped, so you're picking them up instead?"

My brain is fried at this point so I wonder if a female voice will make things clear and as I try to explain, my dear Dirt who has had his fill of female voices at this point asks me not so nicely, but at least without cussing, to be quiet and go away.

Okie Doke.

Ahhh finally. "Oh... you ordered two opti-vents and now you want to buy two more, okay."

Purchase made, purchase firmly in hand and out the door just as our friends drive up to take us to lunch.

Yay! We survived the hazing.

Next Post: Gifts from God: Our Northerly Friends, a Great Lunch and Tour of the Lovely Valley of Tulips aka the Silver Lining to Doing Business With Charley's Greenhouse.

* Dear Reader, in reality, Dirt did not cuss (that much) while putting up the glazing, I just like saying cuss now after watching The Fantastic Mr. Fox. A great movie. And it makes the whole story a bit more spicey.

Bulletin Number Eight

2010-04-05T20:21:00.001-07:00

Or, Catching up on Lanny's Hot House Project

Bulletin number eight of the Pierce County whatever says that framed structures for the purpose of protecting and propagating plants covered with up to twenty mil plastic is exempt from having a permit.

So let's finish up that project eh?

We last caught you up on the project with the post Remembering, Doing, and Looking Forward, All in a Saturday's Work.

Since then...

The gravel came and Dirt spread it just so.

Then Wonder Workers came, helped me pot up tomatoes, moved some of my little trees and helped Dirt put in the foundation.

So that we could get to here during Dirt's Spring Semester Break. All vacations begin with a shopping trip.

This is the knee wall. It is solid because, well because it doesn't need to have sun come through here. It would lose more heat than gain.

Other things you can build in Pierce County without a permit?

An oil derrick.

I think we'll build that next.

Heave ho. Flippin' the wall on it's face to put it up.

Lining up to those big fat screwy things

Up...

Okay, okay, I think.... we're there...

Okay, brace it please.

That is one tall wall.

In place ready and

There you have it. Now for the rafters to hold the polycarbonate sheets.

And a whole nuther story.

We've gotten much farther along but this has been a lot of pictures for you to go through so I'll show you more progress soon, I promise not to take so long 'til the next post, barring plant tragedies and school holidays and such, it will be soon, really it will.

Things are still just humming along smoothly in my world. I'll probably have to call VF&G Opening Day, Sneak Preview Day instead but heck, things are looking better than I could have hoped for, really, target dates and dreams aside. And we have still had time to have a few good laughs as a family; watch March-now-April madness; sneak in another shopping trip, this one two hours away; grab a fun movie or two at Blockbuster; and eat way too much chocolate.

God willing, we will continue to hum right along to hatching out chicks, ducklings and poults; tying up loose ends on the hot house; moving plants in; transplanting many different items out to the Market Garden; and harvesting some spring greens... all the while enjoying the company of good and precious people in our lives and sharing our abundances.

Into Everyone's Life A Little Dirt Must Fall

2010-03-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

It has been a bit of a crazy time here at Victory Farm & Gardens, no different I suspect from anyone else and their lives. I am always looking for ways to calm the nerve endings and take it at a regular pace.
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After my work out days of going up and down and down and up the steps to Laundry House aka Propagation House, to give the plants inside a bit of fresh air and liberal waterings, I figured that the rest of the week and on beyond was looking rather mild, enough cloud cover that frost wouldn't be a problem and neither would sun burn.
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I began to hang the thirty-two planted fuchsia baskets out on Laundry House's porch on a metal pipe the is held in place by three two-by-four brackets. I even devised some wire hangers to hang a second lower tier. Everything looked great. It was a bit windy late that afternoon but it didn't seem to effect the hanging baskets that much. Well except for the last one that didn't fit on the pipe and had to hang out a little farther on the chain where my topsy turvy tomato plants hung last summer.
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In the morning I was delighted to see the lovely dew on the grass and the sun and clouds playing tag. But when I looked toward Laundry House I didn't see the line of baskets I expected to see. I could see one lone one but where were the rest. I hadn't put my contacts in and I know better than to panic when I have them out and can't see what I expect to see, I've been met with more than one old-lady-crying-wolf situations because of it.
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I mentioned that I couldn't see them to vacationing Phil Dirt, so he popped up to the window and mumbled something horrible. But it didn't really matter because I had already spied what the deal was.

The center two-by-four bracket had given way and this was the mess it created.

And there is my favorite Pink Marshmallow, the one I thought was hanging out in the elements, looking down on its forlorn and broken brethren, saying, "It pays to be last sometimes."

Some baskets survived by being last to the scene but most others were broken and the plants in them tossed to the four corners of the porch and beyond.

Clean up and rescue took all day. We now have several flats of fuchsia starts and all the baskets and lone plants have been pinched back, or squashed back as some cases may be, to insure lovely bushy baskets.

I emptied and tossed thirteen broken plastic fuchsia baskets into the garbage. Four baskets worth of plants, sixteen in all, were completely unidentifiable and went into separate four inch pots to grow and bloom so that I can make proper IDs on them.

A little over half of what was left were repotted into their own unbroken pot or a new one because their foliage is distinct enough and they were all close enough in a common pile of soil to assume that they were from the same basket. These were tagged however, to keep special watch on, to switch up when it is obvious someone fell into someone else's dirt pile.

The last of the baskets that had pretty much fallen upright and unbroken, without tossing anyone completely out of the confines of the basket, were realigned, tidied up, trimmed up and set to rights again.

Even though I am fairly positive that the last batch I took care of are all the right ones together in a basket, no one is getting sold 'til all have bloomed and proven their familial standings.

Silver lining? 'Cause there always is one or two... Dirt and I have decided not to set pipe in the rafters for hanging baskets in the Hot House for sure now. I was beginning to lean to a portable system after my multiple trips up and down Laundry House steps, but now we are for certain not hanging pots on the structure itself.

Second lining: man am I thankful that I didn't seed the lobelia directly into the basket! I'm thinking that would have been the weep point of the whole ordeal. I am positive that certain procrastinations or changes of plans are definitely from the Holy Spirit.

All twenty-eight baskets and sixteen four inch pots went back into Laundry House and are hanging peacefully up next to the ceiling with the lights on them and the fans below trying their best to mimic a lovely soft spring breeze. I have decided that waiting for the real Hot House to be up and running is a better thing.

It won't be too much longer now anyway, in fact, if Charley's hadn't sent us home short two joiner strips, I most likely would have been moving in Tuesday morning. As it is Dirt and I and the girls too, will be making a quick dash up north to grab the two joiner strips and the two vent openers from back order.

Hopefully we will get to see some fields of tulips and other things and someones that will brighten our crazy days.

Dear Reader, I hope you are having a wonderful, busy, crazy, yet restful, spring, just like we are. It all makes for a great life doesn't it? Wouldn't you hate to be one of those folks with a boring and steady life?

Well I'm heading out to sing some praises to my Creator, Saviour and Counselor, and to plant some asparagus that was delivered day before yesterday and healed into some nice dirt. I will come back later this evening with HotHouse construction pictures from yesterday, didn't want to overload one post with all that went on this week. 'Til then, have a delightful day and if you're the celebrating commemorating type, Have a Good Palm Sunday.

Sittin' by the Edge of the Pond

2010-03-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

I miss my Saturday company. They worked very hard along side Dirt and I and the girls, but they also brought some wonderful wine and a vital reason to relax and just converse, friendship. (By the way read the title to the tune of Sittin' by the Dock of the Bay)

We got back to work promptly after we parted with them and everyone else at the bowling alley for Spring Bowlerama on Sunday. Well first we stopped by The Orange Store, but that was a lot like work. And then we sorta sat and watched a movie when we got home.

But now were workin' hard. For instance, today Bet and I got her incubator up and running and stuffed it full of eggs. Chicken, duck and two turkey eggs about three dozen in all. After which she tilled the market garden area and I finished up making beds up at North Garden.

I moved about six wheelbarrow loads of dirt, soil, from North Garden down to Flag Pole hill, planted six lilac bushes and about fifteen dahlia clumps.

And before the day really started I walked thirty two hanging baskets out of my Laundry House (hanging in there aka as the Propagation House for about another week) not to mention twenty eight brugs that are getting quite large and gangly and several flats of this and that.

That'd be about thirty trips in and out and down two steps. And if I took them out this morning you know what I did last thing tonight 'til about eight thirty. Took them back in.

I think I have had my stepper exercise for the day. Which is good since I just looked up the side effects of my new drug and found out that the number one side effect is.... that's right, weight gain. Oh yippee, just what I need.

Oh well, a person can't have everything go their way now can they. Sometimes you have to have somethin' to push back against eh?

Dear Reader, please have a delightful day or two, however long it takes me to get back here to my zapping lap top. And hey, remember, God is taking care of us, you and I.

Words

2010-03-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

Words seem

Small

When I am filled with awe for His Love,

and blessed with His corrections and guidance.

He breathes upon me and my life is but His.

Dirt Hates, No Really, Hates Pizza

2010-03-15T20:24:00.000-07:00

How to get Dirt to not only eat, but to even pick up, pizza for a dinner that he will be eating:

The night before (this is best done late at night when everyone is on edge) allow him to say something amazingly insensitive to you.
Resist saying anything at that time in retaliation or to grind in that he was a very rude, nay, mean, fellow. But do withdraw from the banter.
Later, in choked back tears, go to him, hover until he recognizes your presence and then ask if he really meant to be that mean and insensitive.
Later if he crosses your path ask him for a hug to reassure you that he indeed doesn't think you and your children (or whom ever may be involved in the banter) are the idiot he implied you to be.
Then the next day nonchalantly have one of the parties involved ask if the group could have pizza because of time and fatigue.
Not only will he do it, he will actually recognize what and why he is doing the pizza thing.

By the way, Dirt not only read this and said I could publish this information, he laughed as if he was watching "What About Bob". (This incident goes with the previously published post)

This post is specially dedicated to the Coulters! Who really wish Dirt would get over his pizza adversion but are sweet to never make him eat it.

Just A Bit

2010-03-15T16:25:00.000-07:00

Busy.

Dirt and I had a great trip and visit up north with our good friends.

And we were very successful at Charley's. The plans are gelling up for the hothouse and plant shed! Fancy plans will be drawn up and we will be getting a permit, 'cause Dirt wanted to make my plant shed a bit bigger than a non-permit shed could be. Ain't he a thoughtful fella?

I came home so well rested that I was sure I could conquer the world, and was about to proceed in that very direction Sunday morning when Janie began her labor.

I'm going to let Anna tell the whole story, it might take her a day to get there, but all in all somewhere around noon on Sunday I lost control of the destiny of my well restedness. It all got spent on Janie. And Anna.

Why on Anna? Two hours of middle of the night tears spilling out of a clam are very hard on a Mom-body, rested or not. Tears freak me out, they are a bodily fluid you know, a big reason why I couldn't stay working as a nurse, body fluids draw bad reactions from me. You do know that I am an economy model mother after all, don't you Dear Reader?!

In the end, all is well, well, not Dirt's pocket book, that is so light I think it floated up over the trees and right on out to sea. But Janie has five live pups, two born Monday at three in the morning and three born at three Monday afternoon.

Janie's career at Anna's Personal Puppy Mill is over! It was already going to be her last litter as she was about to move on to a whole different stage in life, but now it is over for sure.

And now I am going to bed.

Not really, I'm headed out to check on seedlings and maybe scoop out a few new pathways but I will avoid anything that takes even just one brain cell, 'cause those stopped working several hours ago, hmmm I was driving though?.

You know what I am going to end with, don't you Dear Reader?

God is good all the time, absolutely, in every step and turn in our lives, as He holds together absolutely everything, the wonderful restful days as well as the long long tearful nights.

What's Today?

2010-03-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

Well, aside from being another day God made, it is a day for killing slugs (a favorite sport of mine) and eradicating "hard to kill weeds" hideous things in the garden both, so that is what I am going to do! In the rain.

Because it is raining I can't spray for disease and bugs like the sign of Aquarius recommends, but the next sunny day (no one told the rain clouds that they can't come around on the sign of Aquarius) I will certainly do so because the leaves on the roses have arrived for sure!

I was going to wander around and take pictures of everything for today's entry but Dirt is to come home early and I am to have myself and him packed for a little get away. I need to make sure that I actually get some work done. Sometimes between Photoshop and Blogger my day can render little else besides more pictures. Which... is not a bad thing really but....

Dirt and I are going up to Charley's Greenhouse to get the glazing for the hothouse, and even more importantly, to visit our dear friends up north, and for me to sort of regroup my brain cells, and gain a new go at things for the last hard push to have things ready for April 22.

The girls are staying here with eyes on the pasture, no more lambs are expected but we now have the bald eagles visiting because the early lambs are out on the field with their mommies and aunties. And because they are new and nursing they need good solid nutrition, so the girls stay and we go.

Besides, Janie should be popping any day now. Oh wait! LindaSue may not read this! I don't want to be responsible for someone else coveting.

You know really, it is a good thing I don't have much time to talk, I have several drafts in my file to tidy up and publish, all rantings about the current "green" movement, oh and one about bald eagles and the destruction and havoc that they bring to our farm.

Fortunately for you, I mustn't tarry here at the keyboard, I am going to take my cranky self outside in the rain to kill what I can and then off to a little time away to gain some perspective. Or get worse, who knows, you may get to read my rantings after all.

I am having what seems to be some major successes in the propagation department but I don't want to say anything too much about it at the moment, it could all go south, but I am going to make some chamomile tea today for my seedlings in hopes to ward off the dreading damping off disease.

Toot-a-Lou, Dear Reader have a very beautiful weekend whether it be a lovely shade of steel grey from the sky or clear robin-egg blue, it is all from God and to be cherished, may you and I revel in it and sing Him praises for His goodness.

Remembering, Doing, and Looking Forward, All in a Saturday's Work

2010-03-08T22:14:00.000-08:00

How's the Hothouse and Market Shed project going?

Well this is where I left you last, the big trees were down,

the little brushy trees got cut out, and I kept looking at what it was going to be.

Last Sunday, the last day of February, Mr. Leonard, Leonard and Sons Excavating, came for dinner and a survey of what we needed his operator to do. This was how it looked then. And he promised to send us an operator and an excavator on Saturday morning.

Well sure nuff, early (early for us lazy bones) on Saturday morning, Greg the Operator showed up with the excavator to dig out all the stumps so that the site could be leveled, graveled and the building started.

One of my favorite children's books is Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, by Virginia Lee Burton, (a girl, in case you didn't catch the Virginia part) this was pretty much like living in that book for a few hours.

The excavator began making quick work of the big stumps in the ground. I was in making coffee and so I missed a lot of the beginning work but Anna caught much of it on video and in pictures.

Greg would lift the stumps way up in the air and then open the grip and drop them from up high. All that crazy action to get as much soil as possible off of the stumps before tossing them over the fence.

The excavator is on tracks not tires, the potential for a lot of underground water to be pumped up to the surface with the back and forth motion made it necessary for the stumps to be shook and dumped in a pile on this side, then the

crazy prehistoric robotic alien jaws would toss them over the fence to be moved one more time after that to the rot pile. No stump burning piles are allowed any more.

Mr. Leonard, holding the coffee cup, has even gone to testify to the legislature that not burning is actually harder on the environment and creates more pollution than just burning them.

But no, the greeners are narrow minded and insist that if they see a big burn that it is more damaging that all the less conspicuous but much larger carbon footprinting that it takes to have stumps ground instead.

Oh well, ranting about the current "green" movement is for another day. Or more like days, 'cause if I said it all at once it would be a long post even for me.

Gregg chatting with Bruce, telling us that the thumb broke on the second stump pulling. The thumb is what grips and holds things in the bucket, or "scoopy thing" just in case it isn't called a bucket. Gregg is my new hero!

We were all in love with Gregg on Saturday, okay some of us still are, Dirt sent him home with a bottle of plum wine (sorry Kimberly, but we had to give away one from your special cache) but I still want to bake him a cake every day, every time I look at my beautiful building site!

In the middle of the excavating lambs began to drop. We ended up with five lambs from three ewes on Saturday. We went out to check on the first batch that dropped just to make sure everything was going well.

But then came back for the final touches that Gregg put on the site. He exchanged the small bucket for a larger one and because the thumb was broke it would not stay back so it got chained up to the "wrist" so that the "fingers" could fill in holes and smooth out the dirt.

Mr. Leonard, with Dirt's help, predicted that the area would be pretty wet and a big mess, needing a lot of special help and $ if we were going to have it ready to build before August let alone by the end of this month. Well, that may have been true on any other year but this one...

This one is all about me, so if you live in the PNW and are not enjoying our mild and dry winter and spring, blame me.

Everything is going so well that if I don't make my schedule, I am nothin' but a looser. A blessing and a test all rolled into one!

Justin from up north, joined us just in time to see the leveling of the site and help get the truck unstuck from the driveway, it pays to have an extra truck driver on hand.

.
Now for checking on the lambs...

and look more lambs have dropped in close proximity to the first batch! This is a problem! We run to jump in to the escalating issue.

You see, some moms are not satisfied with just their lambs, they want every one's lambs and will attempt to adopt all of them. Sometimes if we are not out there right away it can be a confusing mess to try and get the right moms with the right babies.

Even though the moms think that they want more lambs, once they get them all rounded up and huddle away from the other mother, they realize their mistake and reject the ones that aren't theirs. It is easy for them to know which ones were really theirs to begin with, one sniff tells it all.

But after all the ruckus and mixing of lambs it is often too late to get the right lambs back with the right mom.

This is why we take the ewe's and lambs into the barn once they have dried off and nursed. We try to wait at least that long so that the mom's aren't quite so nervous on the trip into the barn. But they need to be in the barn eventually not just to protect them from Bald Eagles and Coyotes, but to protect the new lambs and new moms from the bossy older sister and auntie ewes.

Anna catches the lamb so that Dirt can catch the ewe. Justin is the newest inductee into the world of lamb rustling and ewe driving.

Anna makes sure mom knows where her lamb is. Then the slow dance begins. Around and around we go, closer and closer, less and less tense around Mr. Vick...

and snag! the ewe is caught so she can be taken in the barn. This first batch will go in now. Then we will do some other farm work and come back and get the other ewes and lambs.

Bet, Anna and Justin spread lime on the front pastures, Dirt and I ran into town for some lunch fixins' and seed potatoes. We ate a lovely lunch and then headed out back to spread more lime and minerals on the hay fields out there.

Dirt is really diggin' on having the PTO driven cyclone spreader on the back of the tractor. It sure beats having a hand driven-hand held spreader, makes a week-long job get done in an hour or two, one of a few reasons, excuses, as to why the pastures and fields were a bit on the neglected side lime wise.

Bet asked to be chief tractor driver for this job, we were all good with that, especially since the lime is virtually dust free!

The rest of us gave the dogs some well needed entertainment and exercise, and the some of us just lounged around thinking of how tired we were from all that stump pulling. Man, my back hurts.

It was a splendid day, the sky was clear and blue, the mountain was in all his glory, just a great day to accomplish a ton of work and visit with a friend from way up north.

Definite difference in flinging styles.

After all this hard work and picking up more lambs and moving everyone around in the barn, it is rest time. A great simple supper, review of the day of excavating on video (thanks Peanut Butter) and a movie capped off the day.

Hey, about that pen, the ink pen, you have all asked about, it is a Uniball 207, marketed for anti-check fraud, but really it is for me, remember it is all about me, and writing notes in the mist and rain that I am sure we will get back to as soon as I need some rain in my life. Remember, it is all about me right now.

Oh, how does the site look? In all the excitement over lambs and spreading lime I forgot to take pictures of the finished site. Anna went out early this morning, a cold frosty morning and got a few pictures of it.

Brrr, we got cold here, even snowed a bit yesterday, but not to worry, anything that was tender is protected and the apple blossoms haven't begun to swell, neither have my fruiting cherries, just the ornamentals, so I'm thinkin' were still okay.

The site? She is lookin' pretty stinkin' good!

And ready for the next phase, Building!!!

Here at Vicktory Farm and Gardens, we have all been bitten by one type of bug or another, just not this one!

Today and Tomorrow, Oh and Yesterday Too

2010-03-05T07:25:00.000-08:00

Today and tomorrow are the best days for seeding root crops and perennials, I'm a busy lady for the next couple of days. Plus Mr. Leonard's crew (okay, one operator) is coming early Saturday morning to rip out the stumps and level out my building site then Mr. Vick can get the gravel in here, and start my buildings.

Six ewes have lambed, there are nine more to go. Docking tails happens late this afternoon.

Yesterday, right on cue in the afternoon, ewe number six, Rickie, a first timer, had two lambs. Way to go Rickie. We all walked out to see how they were doing and bring them up to the barn.

One little guy seemed to not look so good.

Mr. Vick does a quick check with his assistants standing ready to help. A finger slipped in the mouth reveals all is well and nice warm temperature.

Where the heck did Rickie go?

What is she running off to and look at the one baby doing his best to keep up with mahm.

Here comes the crowd, galloping, bawling ewes. Some of them are definitely heavy with lambs. Most of our sheep are Suffolk, a down breed, raised primarily for meat. Their wool is not barbed and therefore not the greatest to spin up and it will not felt like others. Because it doesn't felt up it is popular to use as batting for quilts.

Ooops off track again.

This was what they were all running for, the girl with the grain. Bet is the routine livestock feeder and she is doing an awesome job this year. All the ewes are looking great nutritionally.

If you listen closely you'll hear her singing as she swings her empty bucket, most likely Danny Boy or Desperado, maybe it is a tune from American I. but usually it is one of her Johnny Cash tunes. Gotta get the girl a new cd to listen to.

Well it is time to head to the barn now that all the other ladies have been distracted by the grain. Anne and Abby will carry the lambs out in front of the mom and that helps get her moving forward.

Off to get seeds in flats and under a low poly tunnel.

God is good. His goodness never ends and it never takes a break.

It's A Long Way to Tip...

2010-03-04T08:33:00.000-08:00

No I didn't go to Tipperary yesterday, but I sure went a long way! Seventy-seven point four miles north to be exact, to get Anna started in her new venture, angora bunnies.

I was going to be clever and post the google map of our route up there but every time I try to put it here on my blog, internet explorer turns off. Hmmmmm. Google maps says I, common computer user, can do this, but apparently I, Lanny Person Vick, cannot. This is weird since both, blogger and maps, are Google "products". Oh well.

And the only pictures that Anna took were of bunnys and bunny fur, and I know she will post these tonight, before the phone begins its usual evening ring.

She would have my hide if I "stole" them and posted them first. So you are going to be visually impaired today Dear Reader, well only here actually.

Back to the drive. We went up nearly to Snohomish, I think we were just a couple miles to the south of it, in this gorgeous farming valley (our local valley, what I always call The Big Valley, use to be a farming valley but now it is an industry, warehouse and cheaply built housing valley). We left around noon and arrived around two, having made a couple of quicky stops on the way up there, a quick bite to eat and money.

The bunny lady was really nice, an artist. Anna picked out her bunny based on temperament and color. We chatted with Bunny Lady, saw her other baby bunnies (not old enough to leave momma), tossed the ball for Bunny Lady's Border Collie and then said good bye.

Oh wait. I told her I was headed to Covington, and did she know the back way there by any chance? I was not looking forward to rush hour (it was straight up three by that time) down Hwy 405. Hwy 405 is not one of my favorite roads, I do not like being a marble in a concrete marble works, especially when I am a soft squishy marble and all the other marbles are bigger and meaner and tougher than me.

So she gave directions to Duvall, and beyond, but I was sure that I could figure it out from Duvall, with a little help from a link up via Bet to Google maps. Sure enough the road through Duvall and Fall City and up to Snoqualmie junctioned with Snoqualmie Parkway. Snoqualmie Parkway turns into Hwy 18 and Hwy 18 takes you right to Covington and our fuchsia start supplier.

The drive from Bunny Lady's to Duvall was splendid! We hugged the west side of this beautiful farming valley, Snoqualmie Valley. Then we crossed the Valley and entered Duvall. One of these days when I have time to just meander around the girls and I are going to go back up here. We picked up Hwy 203 in Duvall where it is Duvall's main street and then heading south turns into Carnation-Duvall Road.

I was on familiar ground. Hwy 203 was the majority of the route we, Dirt, Mike, Rebecca and I, took up to Burlington on the motorsickles August '09 to visit the wonderful Coulters. A trip where God once again turned our lives upside-down, inside-out and all-about, but that is a story for another day, suffice it to say, this road is nearly permanently embedded in the ol' noggin', only a severe case of dementia will remove it.

From another day with the Coulters I knew that I could take a different road out of Fall City and head up to Snoqualmie and North Bend. And every one knows that from North Bend I could hook up with Hwy 18 and drop down into Covington. But I was sorta hoping that I didn't have to go all the way into North Bend.

Enter Bettikins. With a call to EBet and her looking at Google Maps at home, we figured out that in Snoqualmie I could take the Parkway and it would magically turn into Hwy 18!

Yah Hooosie!

On Monday, Rebecca and I drove up to Covington to Earthworks Fuchsias to check out, and purchase if decent, what seventy-five cent fuchsia starts look like. Well they look just like the two-ninety-nine ones at fancy-pants Watson's and the selection was far larger!

When I got home Monday with my own personal fuchsia collection, Dirt and I figured that at that price I could put some baskets together, grow them out a bit and sell them for an honorable profit for my trouble. And that it would give my cusotmers somethin' pretty to take home with their nutritious bounty. We even figured in the price of the fancy soil sold at Costco and the hanging pots from McConkey's all of which are on the way home too. So I was ordered, ordered mind you, to include another trip to the Fuchsia Lady when I went to get Anna's bunny.

Since Covington is a shoptropolis, on Monday Rebecca and I went ahead and shopped at the Costco right there on our way out of Covington, a half a block off of the main drag we past down. And heck, looky what is in the giant never ending parking lot that connects half of Shoptropolis, Carl's Jr. and some mighty tasty burgers.

So Anna and I did virtually the same thing, got to Covington, went out a mile or so to the Fuchsia Lady and her wonderful employee Dawn for eighteen baskets worth of fuchsia starts (I had even packed my sales tax waiver in my bag, check it out, I'm sorta getting organized and a tad bit grown-up).

We headed back into Covington proper where the Hwy entrance is. We zipped into a pet supply, saw a neighbor in the parking lot, stopped to say hi, in the pet supply store we figured out we could do better at Freddy O'Meyer for bunny supplies, zipped across the road and into megaparking lot, ran into Freddy's for bunny supplies (and ice cream), came out, repositioned the car closer to Costco, went in, bought soil, chatted with the same Costco employees that Rebecca and I chatted with on Monday, (weird, I'm feeling like a "regular" at Covington Costco) went out, loaded our purchases into the Exploder, chatted with the young men loading their purchases into a Mini Cooper, asked them how they go shopping to Costco in a Mini Cooper and wasn't the car rather antithetical to the whole Costco experience, hopped back in the car, went to the middle of megalot and pulled into a parking spot at Carl's Jr, got our very big juicy yummy burger dinner for everyone back home, (felt like a regular here too) asked for it to be double bagged for warmth, it wasn't, headed out to the car, double bagged the food with our own reusable shopping bags, jumped into the car, looked at the bunny and drove straight home.

All in all, a ninety-six mile trip back home from Bunny Lady's to avoid the freeway-marble-works and swing over to pick up fuchsia starts, soil and a few other grocery items from Costco and into Carl's Jr. Burgers for take-home dinner. Well worth eighteen extra miles.

And actually when I Googled the trip straight down from Bunny Lady's to Covington to home via the freeway, it is eighty-nine point two miles. So really, my beautiful scenic route only was six point eight miles out of the way. Albeit not on freeway fast track but I'm thinking considering rush hour, I was just as fast, and way happier!

Hope you were able to hang in there Dear Reader for that wild scenic ride. Sorry I didn't have photos but I will return to the scene of the drive soon, with more time and a camera on my hands than I did yesterday. Right now I've got to run down to McConkey's right quick and get pots for the fuchsias. Beem me over Scotty!

New Pens!

2010-03-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

I have found my new favorite pen!

Wait!

It has been years, zillions of years, since I have had a favorite pen! This is a huge find! No simple little, "oh, I found a new pen I really like".

Mostly all I have run into are pens that are adequate. Or pens I really dislike and would like to..., oh I don't know, what do you do to a pen to hurt it?

But now I have found my ultimate pen.

What do I need for a pen to be ultimate?

Easy to read ink. This is why I don't like pencil, especially #2. They fade. And on a bad day, when I don't want to work hard at reading what I wrote, I can't see lead, uhmm, graphite, very well. It makes me work too hard. Remember, my full nickname is Lazy Lanny.

Colored gel pens, besides inconsistency, we'll get to that in a bit, come under this criteria also, or I guess I should say, more often than not miss this criteria. And besides that, except for blogging, e-mails and greeting cards, any other colored ink, besides black for important written stuff and blue for cordial letters or signatures, any other color of ink is just disrespectful, to the writer and the reader, a lot like hearts above the stick of the letter i, where a simple dot should be.

Oh, red ink? Ya, that is just plain brutality and saved for mom's correcting your spelling and grammar or for when you have spent too much money. Red ink is for noting a problem in a chart, or noting something that needs changing on the plans. Basically, it indicates wrongness. Ouch.

So I immediately toss pencils and gel pens from my hand when I ask for something to write with. Those are for sketching, or playing with artsy stuff.

Back to real pens:

Nice easy smooth flow of ink. Well that's fairly easy to find.

Consistent flow of ink. Ahhh, there begins the rub, toss those Bic stick pens, blue or black. They used to write consistently, they use to be my new favorite pen in the eighties and nineties when it became apparent that I could not hold onto an expensive pen, we'll get to that in another moment.

In fact, I used to have a plethora of Bic stick pens hanging around the house that were actually taped together, a black and a red or a blue and a red. That was when I would write all the time (on paper) or draw up plans all the time. I would need the red pen handy to make my own corrections or to show that the hydrangea was in the wrong spot in the yard and needed to be moved to this new spot over here.

But now when ever I pick up a Bic pen I have to spend a half hour getting the nasty little thing to write and then once it begins to write and I start wailin' away on what I was thinking about... it dies. Right in mid-thought-stream. I have come to despise those stinking Bic pens, I now toss them before even trying them, although first I try to make sure it was my pen to throw away.

Easy fit in the hand, a nice uncumbersome feel between the digits. That tosses out all those grossly fat things that write nice until you need an energy drink just to continue to hold on to the bugger.

Or so thin your hand finally dies in a spasmodic cramp before your last words can be formulated. (This is a recent occurrence in my life, I wonder what it means, my hand cramping around a small pen that is.)

Inexpensive. I don't even look at the high priced pens that would fit all my needs, because a pen should last longer than a week.

Well it should last longer than a week for me. I'm sure the person that picks up my expensive pen from off of the store counter where I last laid it, finds that those spendy ones can last nearly a lifetime. Unfortunately, I will never know that bit of information personally.

I'm a looser, I loose things. Except for those sentimental yet ugly cumbersome dusty weird things, those things I never loose. But a good pen, especially if it costs a good pile of pennies, those don't last a week even.

That just about covers it, oh wait, no. There is one more thing! The really important thing. The one thing I had a dickens of a time finding in a pen and actually became so jaded against ever finding, coupled with the aforementioned needs, that I stopped trying to find my idea of a good pen, and just went with those pens I would find lying around or in cups on the counter at Tacoma Electric Supply.

Waterproof.

I'm an outside person, I live in Washington and much of my need-to-note things happen out-of-doors in the mist or outright rain. When I write on my note pad that I planted Shandong garlic in the second bed and Idaho Silver in the fourth bed from the end of the barn, I need to be able to see what I wrote later that day when I go inside.

I used to have waterproof pens and waterproof paper, both rather expensively obtained items and only in specialty stores. But I loved 'em,and I took care of them, they were much a part of my daily ritual. That was before I was a complete looser, back when I could actually hold on to pens and note pads. That would have been sometime prior to about 1981 and definitely before 1987.

Its been a while.

Since then and still today, I've totally dismissed the need for the waterproof note pad, although I know they still exist. Because if the paper gets all crinkly from being wet, as long as the ink stays put it is still readable. Certainly not nice and tidy and presentable, but readable.

But if the ink runs... . Uh ya, I can't make heads or tails out of what I planted in the first bed on the right. Or how deep. Or which seed company the seed... I'm sure it was seed, pretty sure it was spinach, if I remember correctly it was Olympia spinach but... .
Yeah, ink running ruins note taking for this random, untidy, forgetful, spontaneous combusting looser.

But enter Happy Day!

All the above mentioned difficulties have been solved! Each and every point that I need in a pen has been found!

I won't even think about how long this pen has called to me from the shelves at Costco. And how long I ignored it in my cynicism towards its claims of waterproof-ness.

I caved, I finally ran out of semi-working pens at home. I didn't have a trip planned to the bank where I could pick up another pen if I talked to one of the important people who sit at a desk where the free pens are. (I don't mind if give away or found pens don't meet any of my criteria, hey, they're free. Granted, the better the pen the more I like the business that gave it away, but I don't expect awesomeness from free, close, I've been close to finding awesomeness for free but never total awesomeness.)

But there I was at Costco yesterday when I caved. Thinking about picking up a pack of pens, a bunch of them, quite a few black ones and three blue ones, I love blue (I love signing my name in blue). I'm pretty sure the pack was about eleven bucks, so somewhere right around a buck a pen.

So standing there once again, feeling slightly more desperate for pens than previous I-should-pick-up-pens trips, I said to myself, "Okay, I'll bite, I'll try 'em, they'll be nice pens, Dirt will appreciate being able to find a pen in the house, but I won't expect them to really be able to hold up to rain."

I got home, I ripped open the pack, well actually I think Bet ripped it open and handed me a pen. I wrote on the back of the envelope, "Farmer Lanny".

"Here," I said to Bet handing her the envelope. "Run this under water."

She walked into the kitchen and I heard what sounded like a good solid Pacific Northwest downpour hit the envelope.

"Okay," she calls from the kitchen, "I've soaked it and it's not running. It is showing on the backside of the envelope a bit."

Hmmm, I wonder what that means. Rats, I knew the ink would bleed. I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. Pooh, well at least I liked writing with it and it does have nice ink and a good grip. Dirt needs to have pens in the house, reliable...

"I'm dabbing it," she continues to give her blow by blow on the test in her loud over-household-noises voice.

"Hey," she says, quieter now as she is entering the dining room where I am sitting logging in my fuchsias starts I purchased earlier that day, "I think it will be okay."

I looked up, in utter disbelief but pure joy. There it was, complete, readable and on solid white, unspotted yet soaking wet paper: "Farmer Lanny"

Yahoo, I can go back to writing outside!

And inside! On the couch, in my bed, at the table. And in the store while I'm shopping, and in the car when an important thought comes to me... . Ohhh wait, I don't write while I drive. That would be unsafe. That is what I have a digital voice recorder for, it's here in my bag somewhere, I can find it, let me show you.....

Leonards, Lambs, and Landscaping

2010-02-28T20:32:00.000-08:00

Our good friends, the Leonards, have big equipment, so to get out the stumps, who do we call? The Leonards! Leonard Excavating, with big fat stump ripping out excavators! Yahooooo!

And what do we do when we call friends over? Eat!

But what happens when the Vicks sit down to eat? Lambs!

It's Tilly! Anna's bottle lamb (I.V. recipient even) from two years ago. So this is her first set of lambs.

And look! She had two! And she is an awesome mom already! Wow, that doesn't always happen.

You really ought to see EBet's newborn lamb walking imitation. It cracks me up!

One of the lovely Leonard ladies, Miss Ellianna and Vicktory Farm & Garden's First Mate, Miss Bet, hanging out with the lamb-ers.

Master Lucas ended up having a very interesting evening, shortly after we finally ate dinner another ewe went into labor and this one needed help.

Terry had a good time going down memory lane, she was one of those lucky children I envied every September when I, city-girl-farmers-daughter, would go to the State Fair and see other youngsters with their animals. Terry was a sheep girl.

Then her older girls and my older girls went through 4-H sheep together. So she was having fond memories of lambing season. But memories were as far as she wanted to ever go again.

So lamb count is at six: four ram lambs, two ewe lambs, out of four ewes. Eleven more ewes to go.

And the landscaping? The stumps may be gone by Saturday afternoon, if all goes well and Mr. Leonard can spare some equipment. So if the stumps are gone, then the dirt, ground, can be shoved around, the building site leveled, gravel hauled in and then a hot house and market shed! Yippeeeee! On my way to being a grown up, man this is exciting!

March looks like it is coming in as a lamb too, well at least for the first day. From there, who knows, 'cuz most of the last couple of months the weather man has called for rainy wild weather and we get mild drizzle and a bit of sun. Crazy.

Baby Count is on the Rise

2010-02-27T18:26:00.000-08:00

Lambs, ya just can't keep your lips off of them

A first year momma had a lamb this late afternoon, 'bout the same time as Ethel had hers on Thursday. So we are at three, two rams, one ewe lamb.

It isn't unusual for first year moms to have just one lamb, but after that the aim is for two lambs from each ewe. Sometimes they have triplets but they seem to be more trouble than they are worth.

Multiple births are part genetic, part management.

Is it coincidence that both ewes had their lambs in late afternoon?

When I did dairy goats lots of folks swore that feeding times affected delivery times. And to a certain extent it would hold true. I would love it if we had all of our lambs in late afternoon early evening this year but we won't begin to count on it and skip checking on them in the middle of the night, or leaving for more than a couple hours at a time, especially now that they are actually dropping.

Ooh doggy, Dear Reader, I am totally tuckered out. So I'll just sign off here. The moon is beautiful tonight hope you get a chance to see it in your neck of the woods. It is full tomorrow and nothing is supposed to be done in the garden during a full moon, maybe I'll get some stripes done instead.

Oh Peas, Another Baby Announcement!

2010-02-25T20:44:00.000-08:00

These are barely the fetal stage! Aren't they cute though, sitting in the furrow waiting to be covered. One of five different shelling peas: Canoe, Wando, Green Arrow, Alaska, Maestro.

Oh, but this is really what you came for isn't it Dear Reader? This year's first lambs hit the ground as we went out to plant peas after a quick day in town to get supplies and order a pallet of lime.

But the lambs needed some quiet time with mom to make sure they had a chance to find the faucets on their own, that is always the best way. More success with less mess.

So we went out and planted peas, and once again Lanny's eyes were bigger than her beds and so a couple more needed to be quickly cleared out, mineraled, limed, raked out and planted. Easy to do when the beds were basically already there, just a few fall and winter weeds needed go.

My goal for the year, no tiller until we get to the market garden. Hard to keep Mr. Tillerman from reving up the Troy Builts at every chance.

My new tool. Check that. My new favorite tool, a telescoping (I didn't even know it did that before I dubbed it favorite) cultivator with hoe, it is bright red and has a hanging loop. Life is good. All the peas got in. Just in the nick of time.

Tomorrow is in a barren sign, one of the barren-est, good for weeding tough weeds, which we will be doing, in between checking on lambs and watching for more.

So after the last pea was planted, and before we lost all the light, we all went out to bring the mom and babies in. Poor mom, she didn't have a name, just one of Bet's type sheep, a good one but not a kissy face fit-and-show sheepy sheep.

But I insisted that a good mom couldn't remain just a number. Since she was a type sheep with Lucy, the fit-and-show sheep, that last year Bet showed, Bet has dubbed her, Ethel!

So Ethel, formerly just a number, has entered the realm of "she's a keeper". Two great lambs both up and doing well. There was a little concern that maybe the ewe lamb hadn't nursed but Anna quickly made sure it was totally hooked up. (I think Anna may actually be done with wanting bottle lambs, hurray we all shout!)

In the dim light of evening we all head back to the barn after a chock a block full and hard workin' day.

Ethel-Mom and babies are safely in the barn with her pick of stalls, well not really, but she could have. Everything looks good so we head in for split pea soup. And no, I didn't plan on eating pea soup on pea planting day, but what the heck, good coincidence eh?!

Good night Dear Reader, I am one tuckered momma myself and so I am off to bed so that I can wake up in the middle of the night and take a lamb-spotting shift, or at the very least roll over and ask Dirt to.

Lots to talk about soon, lots in my brain while out gardenin'.

How I Make My Bed

2010-02-23T20:02:00.000-08:00

This has been my big project this week. A modified French drain around our old log barn that does not have gutters or any place to put them. The job was a tough one to get to. When it is really rainy and the need to do the job is very apparent, the soil is just to sloppy and heavy to work with, not to mention a slippery slope to try and get traction on.

With our somewhat dry but warm winter, by Saturday the soil was dry enough but not too dry, it is still winter. In the summer when the soil around the barn is dry it is as hard as a brick and a whole different sort of problems to getting the job done.

So except for Sunday I've been digging a hundred foot ditch, being very conscious of keeping a nice slow constant grade so that the water runs down to the pond and not into the barn.

But I promised you a baby announcement and the title says I'll show you how I make my beds.

Here they are, my beets are up! These are Kestrel, a great little beet when pulled when it is small and more than okay if you let them get nice and big for slicing.

These little guys are Touchstone Gold, I don't usually go for yellow beets, I like my beets red, deep red, beet red to be exact. But I thought I would give 'em a try and heck, they could be a hit in the Market Shed. (Their little out of focus friends are weed seedlings or mustard, but ultimately still weeds.)

They are growing under this poly tunnel in a raised bed. These pictures were taken early in the morning and soon this whole garden will be in full sun and it stays that way now for about six hours, pretty good considering our days are still rather short.

Raised beds are the first step to extending your growing season. The soil is warmer sooner in the season and longer once the sun is off of it in the evening. The better drainage enables you to touch the soil sooner in the season than if you are planting in a flat plot.

You may have noticed something about our raised beds. There is an absence of boards or other support structure. I've gardened in raised beds since 1977 and I've tried a lot of ways, but without hesitation I can say, boards or any other structure materials are mostly a pain in the neck to work around not to mention they can be very detrimental.

First off using any sort of treated lumber, especially those things called "landscape timbers", a person may as well buy those poisonous vegetables at the store and skip trying to go "organic" because all treated lumber leaches the "treatment", wood preservatives that are far worse than most of the residues found on commercially produced produce.

Concrete blocks, not much better. At the very least they leach soil ph altering material. Make some stepping stones or help someone build a sidewalk, read the label, get the stuff on your skin. Not good stuff. And not necessary.

Aside from all that leaching, solid framed in beds are a great hiding place for slugs primarily, not to mention earwigs, unpleasant to come across in your salad, and other little bug a boos that can really reek havoc on a garden.

Porous untreated lumber? Well aside from the aforementioned critters, fungal diseases thrive in wood and unless the raised bed is emptied out and the boards given a good Clorox soak, well you get the picture eh?

Soil erosion? It really isn't that big of a problem, Even in torrential PNW downpours little soil is lost, especially good humusy soil.

Oh, and those boards? Expensive, the ones sold in "garden kits" or the ones at the lumber store.

Yeah, I have a pretty good soil base here at the farm, it's why Sam Sorenson homesteaded here and not across the highway in Spanaway rock and gravel.

But North Garden? It was nearly soil less when we moved here. All this deep rich soil? Dirt (my husband), my brother (Chris) and I made it. Wood chips sometimes called hog fuel from the roadside maintenance workers, layered with whatever manure I could find to haul here or have delivered. Horse, chicken, cow, anything and everything (free or nearly free) that I could get my hands on.

The first fall we were here I cleared away the remains of the nasty burn pile, I still find molten glass that burgles up from the soily depths, and then began to layer the chips and manure until I couldn't get any more materials.

That next spring we planted potatoes. The beds and paths marked off, taters put in the bed area and then slowly that spring the paths were dug out as the potatoes grew and needed soil "hilled" up around them.

My brother and I had used the same technique a few years earlier to change my mom's back yard from a hard pan building site with struggling grass (not to mention the hard pan where my dad parked his work trucks) into amazing deep lush flower and fruit beds. Except we didn't grow potatoes, we layered the soil just like I described and put in plants right into the layered "soil". We would make a hole put in a little regular soil to cushion the roots from immediate contact with any manure.

Her back yard was featured in Sunset magazine, the reason for the feature were all our living Christmas trees, but the feature writer and the photographer he brought along were both quite impressed with the flower beds.

If there is already great soil, the raised bed garden couldn't be more simple to make. Mark out where the beds go, not too wide, not too narrow (I like a four foot bed for the most part). Mark out the paths, I need at least a good foot or so to work in and occasionally I throw in a wider path for the wagon to get through.

When everything is marked out begin scooping the dirt from the path area and heaping it up on the bed area. And then tell everyone that if they step in the bed area they will have their feet chopped off with a hoe, very painful.

Tomorrow at the Farm we are going to be starting some seeds in flats in the prop house and some will go out in the tall hoop house or I may just stick them under my low poly tunnel. We have lots to seed so Anna got a jump on things by filling the flats today.

Wednesday, and Thursday too are supposed to be great days for starting seeds for plants that produce their seeds in fruits or pods. But I am also going to start seed of plants that put their seeds on the outside, still an above ground crop and what is supposed to be planted between - oh check out my side board, but I think we are between a new moon and the coming up full moon on Saturday.

Have a great day Dear Reader, hope you are getting bit by the bug for a great spring and summer and doing what needs to be done in your zone for your own victory garden.

Pictures from North Garden

2010-02-22T22:26:00.000-08:00

More tourery tour tomorrow I am sure. We are expecting the end of our sunny run and back to warmer rains. I was digging drainage ditches by the barn today. But I did come down here to get a little work done in each garden today, kind of a check up on things.

Even snuggled some of these furry beasts over the gate today, I asked Ivan if the constant drone of Country Western music from the barn made him feel more like a horse. I believe he answered yes.

I'll have a baby announcement of some sort for sure tomorrow, even if the the sheep do not cooperate with our desires and have some lambs before the rain starts up again, I've got a back up just in case.

Have a good evening Dear Reader. God is good all the time! All the time! His goodness doesn't take a break.

North Garden, Poly Tunnels and Phenological Events

2010-02-21T10:59:00.000-08:00

Good morning Dear Reader. Got your boots on again? I was thinking I would take you on a tour of North Garden. But instead of doing it all in one day I would stretch it out all during the week.

North Garden is not the most northern spot on the Farm, north and south speaking it lies rather in the middle, and very much on the east line, save for the driveway. But it is the most northern of the permanent garden beds and so has been dubbed North Garden.

This is what the exposed garden soil looked like this morning. It has been clear and warm during the day and clear at night. Because of the clear nights the nightly lows have dipped down past thirty-two and so we have been waking to a good frost these last few mornings.

However, I have a low poly tunnel on one of the beds here in North Garden as a season extender.

In past posts I showed how I construct these: short rebar sunk in on the each edge of the raised beds about five feet apart or more; ten foot pvc pipe arched over the bed and slipped down on the exposed foot and half to two feet of rebar; six mil poly placed over the hoops; extra at the ends to cover and lap over; two x twos stapled to the bottom edges of the poly to hold it in place (this works way better than the clip system I use to use).

This is a shot of the soil under the poly tunnel, taken at the same time of day as the soil picture above. I didn't take the thermometer with me to get an actual reading but the soil is soft and not the least bit effected by the frost outside of the tunnel.

If the temps got much lower or if I had frost tender things under here (right now I just have some spinach and beets started) I would put floating row cover directly on the bed to add five to ten more degrees to the soil temperature. In fact the floating row cover is under there it is just scootched over to one side. I wanted to see how the poly tunnel would do all by itself now that it is getting way more sun during the day with the trees gone.

The late winter and early spring beauties that normally take winter on the chin so well are really doing nicely with the sorta winter we are experiencing here in the PNW.

The buds on the fruit trees are still very tight where they need a bit more time and protection which makes sense because even in a normal year the apple trees bud nearly two months after daffodil season with the cherries blooming just before the apples.

The only buds I see swelling are the ones that can take it in stride. I'm no expert and there is always room in my life for flukes (understatement of the year eh? beings that I'm nearly a fluke depend-er) but I really think that we have more chances of having a bad bud-damaging freeze on the fruit trees in a more "normal" winter than this one.

Funny how we have a tendency to run around in late summer and look at the fuzz or the size of caterpillars or the coloring on the birds or when they leave and arrive as signs of how deep our winter will be. But when it comes to spring we listen to a ground hog on a particular day at a particular time and whether or not he sees his shadow. Then we wring our hands with worry, completely doubting the trustworthy phenological events, like the blooming of the Indian Plum or the emergence of naturalized daffodils.

Lots of things come into play with the phenological events, length of daylight, consistent soil temperatures, chemical reactions (and biochemical reactions) because of those soil temperatures. It doesn't all hinge on ambient air temperatures. It has to all come together.

I'm still a young pup, I don't have eighty years of experience watching the weather in the PNW, but from the view of the few years I do have, I'd say that the phenological signs are to be trusted. We are several weeks ahead of normal and we'll be okay, despite what the doom and gloom-ers on the weather segment late at night have to say.

But then again farming and gardening is always gamble and not for the faint of heart.

Some People Skip Out

2010-02-20T11:38:00.001-08:00

Just thought I toss this out there for you, Dear Reader this morning's coffee cup holder. Not that we are so hooked on our brand names here at Vicktory Farm & Gardens but I do like a good cuppa coffee and Dirt likes a nice ride.

Speaking of nice rides.... I ought to keep track of how many times the motersickle goes out and how many times Lanny happens to be on the back of it. I'm thinkin' I'm gettin' the short end of the ride history.

Today Dirt and his little buddy, Anna, are off to The 2010 Northwest Aviation Conference & Trade Show down at the Puyallup Fairgrounds.

Meanwhile Bet and I will be busy workin', well Bet is, while I take a few pictures and tell you what we're going to do today!

It is a beautiful day for a ride down to the big valley. It would be perfect if it wasn't quite so cold. The clear air brings lots of cold with it and that can make for an uncomfortable morning ride.
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But Anna doesn't look like she cares. It could be the fourteen layers of clothes that her dad made her put on. Think Ralphie's little brother in A Christmas Story.

I thought I'd give you a straight shot of where my Hothouse and Market Shed are going to go. And tell you a bit about my plans. Basically Fluffy's standing in the middle of the glazing. Well his snout is pressed up against it anyway.

We are hoping that we can run the Hothouse primarily passively and so we are doing a "solar" type greenhouse, think "leanto" green house. The glazing (clear material) will face south-southeast to catch the early morning sun so that the interior can begin to recapture the days heat early on.

The backside, north side or what it will "lean" on will be the Market Shed. In the Market Shed there will be a wood stove and maybe even our old electric furnace for back up and vents and fans that connect the two air spaces when necessary. All in effort to bring certain things into propagation earlier and with less energy expenditure.

Plant life that likes to get a head start "inside" but doesn't need temps in the seventies and low eighties will be propagated in the Coldhouses. Unheated hoop houses, and cold frames. Much like my onions are doing right now and my lettuces and cabbage family will be doing soon also.

They, the lettuce and cabbage family, didn't really need to wait, except that I ran out of space and time and the onions are a bit more crucial as they need to make a certain size before the day length changes and they begin to swell making their bulb out of number of "rings" that they were able to put on.

Lettuce and mostly the cabbage family do just fine in this colder weather but they don't do a heck of a lot of growing, mostly settling in so that when growing time does hit they are rip roarin' ready to go.

Wait, I got off track of what this post was about. Well besides the fact that Bet and I are the resident slaves today and others are off goofin'. I was wanting to just tell you about the greenhouse plans.

This would be looking lengthwise down the front of the Hothouse. Once all the stumps are removed and as they clear the spot for the building I am hoping that they will begin a nice long berm here between the driveway and the Hothouse.

The design calls for a three foot knee wall that we won't be glazing because I will be using benches for my starts not the ground (a bit of a look to the future when things might not bend so well, like my body for instance).

It would be nice to have the berm for extra insulation and I also plan on having it be a new asparagus bed. I used to have asparagus. It has been a long long time since my asparagus bed became a back lawn.

.

Anyway, that is what I've got goin' in my brain for Dirt to build for me next month, all while lambing too. Not sure if he plans on just getting a dozer in here and do the work himself or have a operator do it faster and more efficiently. Sometimes it pays to have things done. Likewise with framing out and building my building, but then there is the flip side of the dwindling stack of money we didn't have to start with.

Well it is warm outside now and duty calls. Out to move some roses that are in the way of some future-future building plans and plant some of my things that have been in holding for a while. Ohhh that means I have to decide where things will permanently live....

Toodle lou Dear Reader. I'll be back in when I am exhausted but hopefully not to exhausted to catch up on my reading about all of your adventures. The last couple of days I keep getting thrown off track. What else is new eh?

Sometimes it isn't me personally that gets thrown off the work wagon but other family members, like Anna and Bet with a couple of non-resident bummer lambs to try and revive to no avail yesterday. But someone gets thrown and everyone seems to get thrown.

But no worries, what gets done gets done and the rest, well heck Dear Reader, that's what God made tomorrows for.

A Darn Fine Day

2010-02-18T20:15:00.000-08:00

The girls and I saw this as we traveled to my non-appointment today. Heads up. March 18 is also on a Thursday. Look closely at month names and dates this month that is all I have to say.

It was an amazingly beautiful day today. The Olympics (the mountain range out on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington not the games) were absolutely beautiful and in full clear view totally worth a drive into town (easier to see them from there).

We only had space on the camera and enough battery life for these pictures, otherwise we would have inundated you with pictures of our beautiful Pacific Northwest! We saw picture after picture. They are embedded in my brain. It was a good day with my girls. A very good day.

Okay, I'm goin' all weepy now so I'm goin' to say adieu and get back to you tomorrow and see what your days were like and how your weekend is linin' up. I have a workin' weekend lined up, widow style 'cause Dirt has a conferency, job fairie thing goin' this weekend. Work, work and more work, and hopefully lambs!!!!!

Soakin' and Stripin'

2010-02-17T19:23:00.000-08:00

Soaks

Okay, so I totally forgot to put my pea seeds, sweet and garden, to soak last night. They will soak overnight tonight here on the breakfast bar then tomorrow I will put inoculant on them. The garden (eating) peas will go straight in the ground and the sweet (flower) peas will go in peat pots and sprout in a separate place to foil the underground vermin.

According to the moon and stars the best day for peas was the fourteenth through the sixteenth, so even if I had soaked them last night technically I would have been late a day unless I consult Blum Almanac.

According to Blums I could have planted them today. That was what I was banking on when yesterday got sucked up by the drive to get the incubator. I was banking on that I could fudge another day.

So now this planting, which will happen tomorrow during a barren sign, can be my control and I will plant another batch on the twenty-fourth and the twenty-fifth. Actually those days are supposed to be better than this week's days for above ground seed in a pod or fruit. Earlier this week was really best for lettuces, and broccoli and the like.

It will take me a while to get the hang of this and the nuances from one phase of the moon to the next and the twist the different star signs put into it. But I promise to not go all whack a do on you Dear Reader, but it is good for the Lanniator Procrastinator to be on a schedule and this one is just interesting and purposeful enough that I might actually hang with it.

Stripes

I am by no means done, (I could have called this post "Almost Almost Done") only one stripe finished really, and I am not going to count how many more I have to do. But I thought I'd give you a glance at how they, it, looks so far.

I will be working on all of the stripes starting at the top and going down just far enough to get the shelf up and then I can go to "a stripe a day" like Dirt proclaimed yesterday when he got home and watched me hand stripe this. This is where the warning about painting panelling does come in. I don't want to use tape like he suggests because the paint doesn't "grab" panelling like it does other surfaces.

The doors and the door jambs will not be staying wood finished. I'm thinking a distressed white with a green glaze, I picked up two cans of green glazes off of a mis mix pile a while back that I have been wanting to crack open and use. I might try even a layered distressed look, like yellow on the white. 'Cause my friend Kim suggested the yellow and I like the idea of a bit of yellow on the doors.

Did a lot of shoveling today, building up beds and constructing paths, so... I'm done Dear Reader. I hear the Olympics playing in the other room but I hear my bed calling louder.

I made an appointment with my neurologist and got in for tomorrow, so the extreme pain episode has of course subsided, which I really don't mind, I know she knows I really have an issue and I would rather have a decent nights sleep for once.

When I get too cranky I reflect on Paul and his "affliction" that was never removed, and I pray that God show me what it is I am to glean from this. But hearing that might actually take me shutting up with the whining already and just listen. A good start to Lent I'd say.

'Night Dear Reader, rest well.

Yahooo, We Snagged a Biggen Off the List

2010-02-16T23:26:00.000-08:00

Not sure where that list is now, but I had a list of things Vicktory Farm and Gardens needed, oh wait, I think it was in a post, not my side bar, any who, we can cross a big need off that list.

We went up to Bellevue in Dirt's big fat truck (that is important information because Bellevue is about as skinny as it's snotty women and Dirt's truck is big and fat and loud like a good hearted country wife) and picked up a cabinet style incubator.

We have been searching Craig's List for a while now for an incubator that held more than a couple of dozen eggs at a time. Weeks before Christmas there was a fellow in Ellensburg who was selling five. I called, I emailed, I got no response. The ad disappeared from Craig's List.

I kept threatening to jump in the truck and drive to Worley, Idaho to get another incubator that showed up on Craig's List, or down to Eugene to get yet another one that showed up but was way more money.

On Saturday, on the phone I was talking a friend down from a crisis, while I had guests in the living room and sure enough a 509 number showed up on caller id, I didn't think I could handle one more thing, and I sure as heck wasn't thinking "incubator man from Eburg", so I let the call go on to voice mail.

Sure nuff, it was the fellow who had them on Craig's List just before Christmas. His message: he had a few phone calls to return and I was one of them. He still had the incubators did I want one.

I called back. I got his terrible message thing. I left a message.

I got no immediate response.

I thought it was a cruel joke.

I called one more time.

He called last night. I made Anna interrupt her phone call and answer it.

He had two left. I wanted one.

He was bringing two to Bellevue in the morning, could I drive up there?

Better than driven to Eburg across the pass!

So there you have it, the not verbose story of how I came to spend my day in Dirt's truck instead of planting peas and how we now have four-hundred less dollars in the Vicktory Farm and Garden's start up account, but how we now, finally, have an incubator that holds something like six hundred eggs. Really? Let me check.

The GQF 1502 will hold:

1488 quail eggs
354pheasant eggs .
270 bantam to chicken sized eggs
180 extra large eggs (Turkey, Duck, etc.)

Not sure where I got that whole six hundred thing goin' in my head, just a lot of numbers that's for sure and fourteen hundred quail eggs sure as shoot is a lot.

But any way even a hundred eighty turkey poults or ducklings at one time is a lot, a heck of a lot more than the couple dozen that fit in our old incubator.

So consider Bet's turkey and meat bird operation good to go. (She'll do some layers in there too but we don't want to mention it out loud).

We will even quite possibly have some chickies or something for our opening day April 22.

Talk about some exciting stuff!

Have a good night or a good morning or a fantastic afternoon, whatever it is that lay ahead of you right now Dear Reader, I know it is going to continue to be a humdinger for all of us here at Vicktory Farm & Gardens. Who knew this year could hold so much stuff. Daily. Since, oh, say, August! God has not only knocked our socks off He has knit us several pair in a rainbow of colors so that we can have a new pair knocked of each day!

Tomorrow, peas, both garden and my favorite of all time thing to grow, sweet peas! I'll be late a day by the signs but a girls gotta go for the incubator when the incubator calls.

Almost Done

2010-02-16T08:58:00.001-08:00

Well here is the hall in stage two, if stage one was paint over the yellow with white and prep the walls as best can.

Color is always an interesting thing to me and the funny rules people have for it. Like, pink and red clash. Who says? Certainly not in the flower bed where a particular flower has pink and red in it and everyone oohs and ahhs over it.

And how come my mom would put me in a print that would have pink and red in it but if I put a pink top over my red cords she always had a fashion cow.

These are the things that confuse your Lanny Dear Reader. And now she just laughs and goes about her merry way. Well until Dirt says something rather rough then I go all south and wish I would just stick with white.

But when I walk into the hardware store and there are piles of mis mixes and they look so intriguing and so lonely and tossed aside all at the same time? I can't help myself and so I find a way not only to use all the colors I brought home but make up a zillion more mixing them yet again!

Dirt must not mind it too much, all my whacky creative things I do, because he works hard to help me out and do the parts I have no desire to learn how to do. And he does have a hard time visualizing what I explain is running around in my head. Most people do, it isn't just him. But most of my friends are learning it is just easier to nod their head and say, "oh that will be so interesting when it is done."

At first Dirt didn't think he would like the stripes, then he decided that they didn't look half bad. (Oh ignore the red, that is actually the outside of the door, the door just happened to be open.) Then he was not liking the idea of yellow trim, but after he was half way through putting up the trim he liked it, now he loves it.

There will be tiny yellow stripes between each "green" stripe, the groove in the panelling actually (I've decided like the British spelling, besides the two els look like the panelling itself.). Dirt really didn't think that was going to look good at all. I did one last night before I quit for the day. He loves it. But I need better little brushes so when I go into town next I will pick some better brushes up and then I will slowly work on getting the grooves filled. I'll work from the top down doing all the tops first so that Dirt can put up the shelves that will rim the top of the hallway and hold all my children's books that I can't bear to give away.

But I was thinking I might not do it after all, sometimes I like how a project is looking before the planned finish is done and so I don't really "finish". But the little yellow stripes are a must because the green stripes were done with the yellow stripe in mind to cover the uneven edges. Besides I think they look "groovy".

Have a great day Dear Reader, I have grandsons visiting, peas to plant and an incubator to go pick up possibly, busy busy days.

Another Vicktory Farm & Gardens Weekend

2010-02-15T21:08:00.000-08:00

It's February, believe it or not, and there are lots of birthdays in February it turns out. My oldest daughter is a February baby, so is my second son, a good friend of mine has a February birthday as does one of her sons and the oldest son of some other good friends of ours, those northern folks I'm always mentioning.

Hopefully I haven't missed someone.

So in honor of the gaggle of birthdays we had a bit of a party, in the rain.

My February baby is in the hooded coat with the little fella in the brown coat hanging on to her. The other birthday gal, seen here on the right of the little fellow in the brown coat, had a little something for Anna to do on Saturday before the party really got off to a shootin' match, no really, they did eventually go out to the pasture for a little bit of shootin'. What else is there to do outside in February when it won't snow or freeze?

But first Anna was demonstrating her

skinning skills on a rabbit from Kimberly. It has been a long fought battle hear tell and the battle ended Thursday with one of her sons taking out the cabbage stealer.

Everybody who's anybody has heard of the Vick Chicks' love for skinnin' things and many have asked to be privy to the art. So Anna decided to do a little showin' of her skills right after lunch.

I'll avoid a close up for those of my queasier friends.

I dunno how the shootin' went really, I wasn't out there, I was in the kitchen making lasagna, and other delights and staying dry and warm and not stuck in the mud. Not 'cause I'm a sissy or anything, but there were lots already that wanted to be shootin' and there was after all a dinner to make. But I'm sorta sorry I missed the full pop cans bein' shot, now there's sumpin' fun to watch I'm sure!

Dirt, Rebecca and Mike chatten after dinner. Tellin' jokes most likely, like, what do you get when you put a hundred sows and a hundred bucks together? Why, two sows and bucks of course. But none of these are birthday people this month.

Three of my four daughters, but none of them are a birthday girl.

Op, here's a birthday person, right here in the middle with a birthday smile and a piece of birthday cake.

These aren't birthday people either, it's Mark and Becky, mom and dad of the birthday fella in the previous picture. Doesn't Mark look menacing? Wonder what he was thinkin'.

He musta not shared it with Becky, 'cause she looks as pleasant as ever. She is always pleasant, I am blessed with lots of pleasant friends. I'm hopin' it'll rub off on me soon. I'm just the town bully for now I guess.

And here is a birthday lady and rabbit murderer (well she hired the hit on the bunny anyway), oh and I do believe that is her hit man she is sitting next to.

Her birthday boy and my birthday girl were not caught on camera very well Saturday. I always just get into enjoying my company and forget to take their pictures. I missed takin' a picture of Pop and Patty who left before I remembered the camera. But then you can do this whole meeting the framily a little slower then, always a silver lining to my mistakes eh?

And no, I won't ask someone else to take the pictures, I might get in one.

Aww here is a fellow photo phobe. My second son and another February birthday person. He and my oldest daughter (not his wife, he is married to my second daughter) not only share a birthday month they share the same year also.

Well that's just a lot of Vick family and friends trivia for you and a lot to take in so I'll leave it there before we gotta get out a road map.

That was Saturday at the Farm, Sunday, Valentines Day some of us went down to Puyallup to the Daffodil Bowl and held Bowlerama February. And we were joined by the Fryers, well a few of them any way. I took my camera... I just didn't use it.

It was mighty fun. Next month I think I'll rent two more lanes, let me know if you'd like to join us and I'll make sure to get you a spot.
Well all good things must come to an end. Next time I'll get the camera out more. Next time? When will the next time be? Well.... who's got birthday's in March? Oh wait, we have a holiday in March! One of my favorites! We'll have a Saint Patrick's Day event I am just sure of it!

My Poppa drilled my wee bit of Irish heritage into me head and my love for the underdog into me heart, so you know I love all that is Irish. So we will be lookin' forward to next month's Bowlerama for the Saint and we'll see you there?!

Busy Weekend, You?

2010-02-14T22:40:00.000-08:00

As usual here at Vicktory Farm & Gardens we have been cramming a lot into our days. This week I went to town twice, once to do our regular shopping-Thursday thing adding Anna's first try at the written test for her permit, and then back on Friday for the second try at her test.

All that while trying to get the hall painted, so that I can put up a bookshelf around the top of the hall for all my children's books, so that I can get the book issue dwindled upstairs, so that I can....

Final look around here depends on so many steps we would need the help of a map.

We were also preparing for another Vicktory F & G style weekend party, celebrating February birthdays and gun enthusiasts on Saturday and then Bowlerama-mama on Sunday (today).

so in between reading the driver book from cover to cover Anna diligently did prep work (I hate painting prep work! Thanks Anna!) and did the undercoat of white on the hallway.

Given strict instructions to do a good job, she tackled it with due diligence and a good mood. Something I sure as heck have been lacking lately! She wants me to be sure and tell you that those are sunglasses. And that she has them on so

she doesn't get splatters of paint in her eyes. Smart girl, I just always let my contacts catch the splatters, not so nice feeling.

She is demonstrating how she rolled the walls, for the walls you don't need the sunglasses so much.

And yes, what you see is us, well Anna actually, but I instigate, painting what used to be wood paneling. When we first moved to this house Dale nicely didn't complain too much when I painted the walls. Every wall in this house was covered by dark wood, light-absorbing, depression causing panelling. Hey, I like wood products, don't get me wrong but as a mood enhancer, dark wood walls fail miserably! (I just noticed that I spelled panelling two different ways and spell check didn't say one was wrong, that can't be right, but I'm skipping research on which is what and so there you have it, two ways to spell paneling, one probably has to do with doing it and the other with being it) (Nope, that isn't it. ((couldn't stand it, had to look it up)) Both are acceptable the double "l" second and mostly British, so there you go, in the future I'll use both interchangeably and drive you just a little nuttier with my writing Dear Reader. Aren't you excited!)

When I first started painting I thought I was too poor to do anything but paint the surface, already people told me that that wouldn't work, let alone trying to change it. But then I got brave.

Surface experiments and color (mis-mixes!) all began to happen at the same time. My beige mother (she was married to you-know-who Mike) had passed away and I felt like I could face the disapproval of just one face and so I began to experiment. A lot of interesting things have been done in those fifteen years.

But here we are in the hallway and I'm not really into either putting on a smooth coat, filling in the panel grooves, like in the living room. Or taking down the paneling and dealing with the old board underneath like in the kitchen (I don't think the same walls are behind this panelling) or doing my messy crazy plaster smear like in the dining room and my new bedroom.

We have something slightly simpler (well that was the idea anyway, I'll let you know when I am done just how simple it really is) in mind for the hallway. So Anna is getting the base coat on and then on Saturday just before company arrived I began an interesting paint job.

For now I'll just call it "a study in green". And it incorporates the "stripes" of the paneling. My company arrive before I got far enough to share with you how it is coming together and I put all my toys away. So hopefully we will be all over the rest of it in the morning. Dirt has the day off, yay Presidents' Day! and so we can get a lot done tomorrow and hopefully even finish!

So have a good night Dear Reader hope you wake to a wonderful view of the world and God's heart in the morning.

I'm working on improving my mood, really struggled this week and weekend even though I was totally in my element, so I have a call into the neurologist to get see about getting this stupid-nothing-pain under control. Wouldn't mind so much if the pain had a legit origin, like my bad bowling form (I'll tell you about Bowlerama-mama later this week, what a blast!) but this stupid numbness and pain without a known source?! It doesn't make it better just 'cause it has a cool name that Mike likes to say. It doesn't make keeping a nice spirit a very easy thing, but then I guess that keeping a nice spirit wouldn't be a spiritual discipline if it was easy eh?

Okay, whining over. I'll try and keep you posted on all those loose strings I just threw out there not to mention update you on all the garden stuff that I haven't told you about. Oops another loose string, my favorite thing I guess.

Too-tells.

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

2010-02-11T06:54:00.001-08:00

Conversation on the phone yesterday morning at five after eight, five minutes after I should have left to go "exercise" with my good friend and across-the-highway neighbor:

"Hey, I'm going to be a bit late."

"How come?"

"Went out to my car and there was this weird white stuff stuck to my windshield."

"Really? What is it?"

"Well, I hear tell from other parts of the world that it is called frost."

The weather here since, oh say, Christmas, has been mild to say the least. I have not gone out to windshield-blanketing frost for nearly a month.

The tulip festival will be done before the Tulip Festival begins. The feed store may run out of wormer for livestock and the coat industry is crashing because of our mild weather.

Just barely enough snow to cover our majestic Rainier. Hardly enough snow for the Olympic Games a few hours to the north of us.

Ya know, I get the whole weather pattern stuff but we should have been able to predict this based not on El Nino, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), or whatever pattern it is that we are having, but the fact that the PNW is hosting the Winter Olympics.

This is more typical of our weather for the last of January and the first of February this year: sun shining, windows cracked open a bit, buds bursting open. But just enough of these to keep warm and cheerfully tanked up on vitamin D.

Our cold normally comes in when it is clear, especially at night. The clouds and blustery weather bring in warmth from the Pacific. So we have had just enough beautiful clear skies in the day time to be warm and happy but just as it gets a little chilly the rain comes to "save" us.

Like this week for instance, a few nearly clear days and a clear night, wake up to frost finally and hours later it begins to rain and now this morning we are in the lovely warm greys. Yes, interior decorators you heard me correctly, warm greys. I know! an oxymoronic statement eh? But that's the PNW for ya.

So why my title? Because here in the PNW we are all holding our breath hoping that we don't all of a sudden get winter in the middle of March, or worse April. We have had snow and ice that late in the year many times and on top of somewhat mild years, but rarely on top of a year this mild, but it has happened. And when it does we lose our fruit crops and other produce is set back quite a bit.

Right now, with the way the temperatures are, I can't imagine that we would get much more than some frosty mornings but things don't always go as they usually do and definitely not as you'd like 'em to. That is why folks are fascinated with statistics, not to see how things always stay the same, but how every once in a while things bust out of the norm.

So this could be a year to grow things PNWeners usually can't without the expenditure of significant amounts of energy. Or, it could be the year we get no fruit. Frightfully exciting, wouldn't you say?!

It has definitely brought out the gambler in me. Oh wait, what is it that you say Dear Reader who knows me well? I'm always gambling? I guess that is true, very true to my nature for sure. Random change and risk taking keeps the blood flowin'. But really, I don't gamble with the stuff that is important, like my very soul or the souls of those I am responsible for, that would be idiocy, not exciting and fun, not even exhilarating.

But no matter what, we fear not, you and I, Dear Reader, because God has us in the palm of His hand. That I do know and know well. I am beyond grateful that my fate does not lie in the hands of karma, ground hogs, money, or myself, but in the hands of a loving and just God.

Can We Time This Better?

2010-02-09T10:46:00.000-08:00

Some friends of ours are slowly sharing their family photos with us and got to a great grandfather, still alive, that has lived around thirty years without his beloved.

Our friends say that they want to check out closer in time to one another. That's sweet but I wanted to know how they were going to arrange that? I wasn't being snarky, I really need to know, cause I have my own arrangement to pull off.

I intend to go well ahead of Dirt. Dirt who sings, anything and everything and changes lyrics to fit the day. And my daughters think it is so cute. Okie Doke.

How 'bout somethin' like this:

Or how 'bout this clip.

Just sayin'. I'd like this way better than me driving my girls nutz.

But then maybe Mark and Becky do have the better idea, like Ford. Stick around together for a long time, bug the kids in tandem. Bwahahahahah.

Have a great day Dear Reader. I'm sorta swamped and feeling grouchy to boot, you really don't want me singin' to you right now. Maybe later when I get caught up and my People Palsy goes into remission.

So No Real Work Today!

2010-02-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

The sun is shining, the earth is warm, I have a deadline looming and a ton of work today. There is no earthly good reason for me to be in here writing to you Dear Reader, but I just have to share with you what I discovered today.

I'm a bit slow on the uptake, you most likely know this tid-bit of wisdom already. And I have a vague notion that I knew this all before. But doncha know that when the Holy Spirit really wants you to learn some concept he will have you learn it in a serious and deeply philosophical mode and then just to make sure it is good and sunk in He'll give you a nuther chance to see it in another way that becomes rather a laughing point.

So now I gotta share.

One of my daughters has been bringing me, or spreading herself, the lime I requested be spread on all of the garden beds. We've been spreading it for the last two and a half months on beds as we work along getting them ready for spring.

When we started I happened to be out in a garden and the fertilizers and lime are up at my current hot house/laundry room/pet food station/storage shed shed. So I asked my daughter to go up to the "shop" and get a scoop of the Sea 90 and an equal scoop of the lime. She and her sister had spread the Sea 90 on the pastures this fall so she knew what that was, the lime she wasn't so sure about. I told her it was up there in a can.

I knew it was in a garbage can because I had just transferred it from the bags into a lined garbage can because the bags had been compromised and were taking on moisture, one hadn't so I had set the un-moist bag on the top of the lime that I had opened and poured into the garbage can, mostly so that I would have a reminder of what it was that was in the can. Trust me I have stood over plenty of interesting looking material that I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was, the bag was very necessary. So I knew that the lime was in the can with one of the original white bags on top.

My daughter came back from the shop looking confused, I had expected her to come with fertilizer and lime in hand and was slightly put out that it wasn't the case and instead she had more questions for me.

"You mean the stuff in the white bag?" she asked, not mentioning the garbage can.

"Yes," I quipped impatiently, wonder who in their right mind would think that the potting soil might be lime. The can that held the lime was right there with the cans that held various types of potting soil for starting seeds and setting cuttings.

So in a bit, back she came with equal amounts of Sea 90 and lime. And we spread it on the beds we were working. The next week, more beds, and more lime and Sea 90 fetched by the same daughter. Now she has become my fertilizer fetcher and she is great at it. And we have worked our way through most of the garden beds in the Barn Garden and are up at the North Garden now. And day before yesterday and yesterday we finished dusting the beds in the North Garden with Sea 90 and lime. All except one. It has a hoops on it ready for plastic and remay is on the bed keeping in the warmth.

Today I went to the North Garden all on my own, looking to plant some beet and carrot seeds under the remay and put the plastic on the hoops. After I was down there, I realized that because of the remay this bed had been skipped with the Sea 90 and the lime. So I headed back down to the multi-purpose shop to get the fertilizer and lime.

Huh, that's odd. The lime is not as dry as the stuff my daughter brought to me.

Remember, the reason I dumped all of the bags of lime into the garbage can was because they were torn a bit and getting moist. But when my daughter brought me the "lime" I just assumed that it had dried out a bit.

"Hey, sweetie, you want to come out and show me where you have been getting the lime?"

"Yes", as we walk together into the shop. Ah hah. Yep it is a white bag alright but not the white bag in the garbage can. It in fact is a white bag that sits inside the shop on the floor right next to the bag of Sea 90.

"So that wasn't the lime mom?"

"Uh nope. It is a bag of either organic fertilizer from Azure Standard or the livestock mineral salt that they sell, I was waiting to test it to figure out what it was as the label had been ripped off. "

Ooops.

So none of the beds have been limed. They have been fertilized or mineral salted, but they haven't been limed.

Ah what a good chuckle we have had this afternoon. I'm up in the North Garden spreading lime or re-spreading lime or however I ought to look at that, and I can't stop smiling and chuckling to myself. Daughter passes by me on her way to the dumpster with a load of garbage from the kitchen.

"Why you smilin' mom?"

"'Cause everything just always seems to tie together to get a message through. There just always seems to be a "theme of the week" going on around here."

"What's the message? What's the theme?"

"Make sure that when you are talking to someone about something, that you and they are indeed talking about the same thing, there are lots of "white bags" in the world."

I had been thinking up in the North Garden that it can work in either direction. How many times have Dirt and I really been talking about the same thing but we thought we were talking about different things.

"Honey, can you go get the ratchet out of the bottom of my red tool box? "

"Sure." But because I am already in sort of a snit that day towards my beloved I don't see the ratchet in the only tool box in the location he sent me to and I come back in what can only be described as a foul mood because I've had to go on a wild goose chase.

"There isn't a red tool box out there, only an orange metal one and I took all the stuff off the top of it so that I could get in it and there isn't a ratchet!"

"Yes, that is the one and there are little drawers on the bottom of it, you don't have to go into it through the top. "

"Oh"

That is sort of what we have going on around us, some one who has their nose out of joint about things of our framily, takes exception to a word we use to describe what we do with those we love to keep them safe and undefiled. They want us to change our ways to their ways. But what they don't realize is that they say red and not orange but really it is orange, it is just that we work off of more colors that just the primary set, we like to paint more detailed pictures.

But the opposite can also be true, we can be seemingly talking about the same thing and yet not talking about the same thing at all. I can say fetch me some fertilizer and my dear spouse brings me a wheel barrow full of barn yard shit when really what I wanted was the bag of organic fertilizer blend that is sitting in the shed.

If we are not careful and specific, those we speak with can nod their heads and say yes yes. We can in turn get all excited that they understand us and are traveling the same road but in reality they are heading in the opposite direction.

Just on the west side of Washington there is a Silver lake in Pierce county, Cowlitz county and Watcom county and those are the three that I know of. And each has a "resort" on them. So if I told my brother to meet us at Silver lake at the resort, he could be a hundred or so miles from where we are but in the right place in his mind.

Often Dirt and I talk about how we are attempting to raise our daughters to be pure. We are coming to the realization that we often are speaking a different language than those who hear us. When we speak of purity we are not just saying that no one can touch our daughters where the bathing suit goes until they are married. But often that is all the farther folks get when you speak of purity and daughters.

We are looking for daughters with a purity that goes beyond the wedding night. A purity of heart, a cleanliness not a prudishness.

Wadding Waddles

2010-02-04T20:30:00.000-08:00

What happens when your panties get in too tight of a wad? You have a tendency to waddle and not get anything done correctly. But I managed to buck up, concentrate, ah the source of my migraine perhaps, and figure out the best way to address some bites made by our perennial pest, Satan.

So day before yesterday I posted a title, three times in a row. Without the snarky quips that went with it. And I have such dedicated and sweet Dear Readers that two of them went above the call of duty and came up with comments for my nonsensical title. So to honor their diligence as Dear Readers, even though I deleted my three posts of utter ridiculous proportions (no words from Lanny!) I retained their comments and am republishing them here.

The title? What No Blogging?

The diligent commenters and their awesome and meaningful comments:

LindaSueBuhl just sometimes - not blogging means doing life so que sera sera

KathyB. You're NOT blogging? If the rest of your blog is any example of what is goin' on at Vicktory Farm I am amazed you're blogging at all! You are getting a LOT done outside in the mud there.

Thanks ladies, for reaching deep and coming up with great comments to my nonsense, you are second to no one, not even Blue Tarp Camper.

How's the Weather?

2010-02-04T09:58:00.001-08:00

So last month the weather was amazingly conducive to thinking the calendar was on the wrong page, or that new months had been invented, because even though there have been plenty of cloudy days and rainy ones too (otherwise there would not have been any mud to deal with)

there have been a fair share of incredibly beautiful days like this,

and this, where even though there is not a cloud in the sky, the temperatures have not plummeted like they usually do on cloudless days. Most likely because by evening the clouds return and give a nice blanket of warmth to the region.

New months? Well lets just say that pretty much everyday last month I thought we were in Janpril and sometimes jumping to Januly. So I'm thinking that in spite of the predictions of the local hedgehoggy things that instead of more winter (would that be a bad thing considering what winter in the PNW has been so far) we are now in the month of Febray, well, we might get more rain than that so perhaps we'll have to call in Februne. What after that? Perhaps Margust. Hopefully Mr. Winter will not swing back up this way when he leaves the midwest and turn it into Maranuary.

PS. Sorry 'bout that weird post-not-post yesterday, I actually had a post that went with that title, it was going to be another one of my humorous rants but I was being sidetracked (imagine that Dear Reader) and really messed up big time on the whole, can you get your thumb off of the "publish" button, write your post and then remember to hit the "publish" button, brain wave. I'm sure I have a brain disease that causes this sort of thing, I just don't want to go to the doctor, 'cause I think he suffers from it too.

Something on My Side Board for a While

2010-02-02T06:58:00.001-08:00

The following was on my side board for a while recently I decided to take it off but I wanted to save the thoughts. Now however, I am cleaning up my drafts and eliminating them so I've turned this into a post where it was just a draft. I wish there was a way to save what your whole blog looks like from time to time. Oh well.....

Start looking at and reading the Bible differently. Perhaps it was never meant to be turned into a "word for the day" calendar.

The "letters" were meant to be read as such, not sliced and diced.

Think of yourself discovering a pack of letters written between your grandparents when they were courting and first married. You untie the ribbon, open the fourth letter in the stack, read the third line of the fourth paragraph because you see that it has an explaination mark behind it?
Or do you untie the packet and read all the letters completely, trying to figure out the order from the post mark, reading each one, sometimes over and over. Comparing how they spoke in the first one and the later ones. Essentially blowing a whole day in the attic; crying, weeping, laughing, gaining a sense of who your grandparents really were in those days.

Would you know that from picking out all the sentences that cousin Judy told you you should focus on and memorizing them so you could recite them at the next family picnic?

Tuesday or Is It Wednesday or Does It Really Matter

2010-02-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

By the way, the peach trees: Frost and Harken.

And if this is winter, who cares if there is going to be six more weeks of it. (PNW speaking wise that is.) Spring can be nasty scary weather, I think I'd rather do winter at this rate.

So I have a problem.

You know, if you read here a lot, that I am doing the whole plant by the moon and stars thingy. Whole hog, not only planting but weeding, fertilizing, pruning everything. Half 'cause I think there must be something to it, the moon moves the tides, God hung the moon and the stars as signs and seasons for us; and half 'cause it gives me a focus for the day.

At one time I thought I didn't want to do the whole moon thing, thinking that I had a hard enough time getting my stuff done (procrastinator extraordinaire) and if I could only do it on such and such a day then I would be sunk.

Then I received an almanac for Christmas and it was all about the whole planting by the moon and stars thing. I was intrigued and I noticed that there were plenty of days each month to get stuff done.

An idea came upon me, I don't get stuff done 'cause I have to many directions to go in a day, I'm always finding work to do, every where I look, even if I made out a schedule. It is always ditch able and then I hate myself in the morning for not getting what I intended to do done.

Sometimes I need a boss to tell me what it is exactly that I should do. (wait, honestly? all the time)

I am digging this whole thing, I am really sailing through the week staying on task, not getting so sidetracked. Then I made a fatal mistake.

I remembered picking up a little booklet once that was only about the whole garden by the moon and stars thing, I remembered it as having more specific things in it. And it was put out by a local garden expert and seed-salesman.

So I picked one up.

Now my problem.

It is really important that I not have any fudging room on my schedule. I need to be told that I have to get it done today and at the latest tomorrow or wait two weeks. It can't seem to be random or arbitrary. But this new little booklet is off from the almanac by a day.

What the heck! If it can be off a day then I can go back to fudging here and there and even though I'm supposed to be planting root seeds and not weeding I'll pull a weed and then two and then pull for four hours 'cause the one booklet is off from the other by a day so... !.

Crumb, I have problems.

Today, I worked by the little booklet. I weeded several beds, and spread lime and minerals on the North Garden. I didn't follow the Almanac which said I need to be starting more onion seeds, transplanting onions, and seeding beets and carrots.

The little book says I can do that tomorrow. Today was a great day for weeding. Those were the only two things I did, which was an improvement over my old work habits.

Maybe this will work out. That is, if I plant my seeds tomorrow.

Farm Tours Restart

2010-02-01T12:25:00.000-08:00

Welcome back for more tour of Vicktory Farm & Gardens! Didn't mean to let nearly a year go by. Today we will be strolling in the Barn Garden and talking water and weather, hope you wore your boots. Anna could run to the kitchen and get some bread sacks to go over your shoes but those stilettos your friend there has on definitely won't do.

In the scheme of things this garden sits west of the house, I can see parts of it from my new big bedroom window (the lilac hedge blocks a full view). In past posts you have seen the South Pastures that sit just west of the Barn Garden and share a pond, and in Hang Out Spots tour you saw the yard that is just the other side of the east boundary fence for this garden.

Let's get started, come off of the driveway here and come through the gate in Dirt's special fence.

You'll see a lot of plastic 5 gallon buckets around the Farm, they come in super handy. I use them to pick up my weed piles so I can throw the weeds to the chickens, easier than a wheelbarrow I gotta get up more often than a wheelbarrow load or I won't be able to unkink my legs.

There is a little strip of garden that separates the driveway from the main Barn Garden. We'll come back to that at the end.

For now we are going to go on through this second gate, gate way actually, because the gate is old and needs fixing. This walk way is rather muddy because the rain off of the big barn roof comes through here and out into Barn Pond. This issue is in the process of being solved, unfortunately it isn't at the top of the list.

I do a lot of ditching around here, no the "d" is correct, I dig a lot of water ways. I'm a hydrologist. The biggest issue about keeping someone out of the garden early in the year in the PNW (Pacific North West) is water and soggy soils.

This is what the soil looks like this time of the year when it gets walked on. Not a good look for garden soil.

That is the reason nearly every gardening area here at VF&Gs is a raised bed that has hidden electrodes around it so that you get blown to the next county if you step on the bed. Well, not really but a girl can fantasize about things, can't she?

A raised bed is one of the basic season extenders here at VF&G, one I wouldn't do without. We make them simple. No treated boards, no plastic "lumber", no concrete blocks (the poison they all leach has a way of undoing that home grown goodness plus they harbor slugs, bugs and fungus) just a three to four foot wide bed not much longer than twenty feet (otherwise you find yourself cheating and jumping the bed to get to the other side). They are sometimes straight and other times they go with the contour of the landscape. We employ them not only in the "vegetable" gardens but also in the ornamental gardens as well.

The soil in these beds is nice and fluffy and can actually pass the soil lump test just fine right now, if you took a similar sample of some other areas like the lawn or the market garden strip in the pasture rotation, it would not pass the test for a couple of months. It is also warmer than soil that is all soggy and wet because it can't drain.

Being able to get into the garden at this time of the year is a real bonus, and in spite of my being slightly jealous of those areas that get real snow and ice for winter, it is why I love living here in the PNW. With a few season extenders PNW gardeners can produce food for most of the year. So yes, our tomatoes are a challenge and fresh corn is barely a month long treat but if well attended to, a PNW garden can provide very well.

It also allows for gardeners to stay ahead of weeds. I suppose that ice and snow has a damper on weed growth but being able to weed during the slower growth months of winter really helps this procrastinator stay ahead, okay, a few steps behind the weeds.

Winter weeding is an art all to itself. I should tell you all about it soon. I hope you noticed a specific pattern to the little garlic plants coming up, it is called equidistance planting.

But for now lets look at another season extender, my cold frame. It sits just to the left and forward as we came through the last gate (the gate way). The area around it is trying to find itself, the beds just in front of the glazing side is becoming Bet's herb garden area but this funny spot back here is having some serious identity issues.

Here is the front glazing side of the cold frame, it is oriented exactly to the south. Not necessarily always the best choice, sometimes it is better to catch the sun a little earlier and orient it slightly to the east, but when you only have one and you can't make decisions well, you go with normal and average sometimes just to get the job done.

There are some things inside, lets lift the lid and see.

A few flats of last year's left over onion seed, onion seed like just a couple other vegetable seeds is only really viable for a year, but I hate throwing things out so I went ahead and dumped the packets into flats just to see what I could come up with. And I think the showing was worth my trouble. This week I will be seeding flats with this year's main crop of onions and in a couple more days these guys in here will be ready to come out and head to a garden bed. Most likely in the North Garden.

So this is the view looking west from the cold frame area. We rather went crazy with the garlic this year. It will be interesting to see just how much we really need to be planting. Even though Dirt eats lots of garlic, with the varieties we end up growing he doesn't eat as much of it as when we get it from the market. So it will be interesting to see how sales of garlic go this year and how much we really need to plant. Yippee I am so excited about our new adventure. But we'll talk more about that later.

For now let's go over and look at Bet's two new peach trees.

The names escape me at the moment, I'll get back to you on that in the morning here, They are semi dwarf and won't get much over fifteen feet or so. Bet says she is looking forward to coming out here with a good book and a saddle pad and taking her breaks from work under her peach tree, she has a few years yet before that vision actually fleshes out but I love her patience and I admire her faith. I now understand what it means to have the gift of faith, Bet has it. In spades. About absolutely everything.

Here is the other peach tree, the two trees line up with a spot she has picked out for some other trees. They are semi dwarf and of course deciduous, so the fact that they sit in the center of the garden isn't a real problem. The sun will climb up in the sky before they have their leaves and there will only be a lovely dappled shade underneath them, just perfect for somethings that can't take the heat of our dogs days of summer, five days in August.

This is our hoop house made from livestock panels. It has been a lot of things, a gourd arbor mostly, a cold greenhouse in the late winter/early spring and a great spot for the mums to get their early boost if it is a super cold winter.

Most recently it served as a chicken coop so that Bet could separate out some of her breeds. It may be that again soon. There is supposed to be a chicken coop built along the west wall of the barn, it will serve to keep the water from the base of the logs of the barn and house Bet's breeding stock but the Hot House/Market Shed complex comes first and then we might collapse for a month before we tackle this project.

If stock panels weren't so stinkin' expensive at the moment I'd have more of these, I'd anchor them a little differently, but this one was hard to do because there is a concrete slab we were spanning with the hoop.

Standing up here at the hoop house and peach trees looking south we can see Bet's duck house. It finally got its front doors on and so the ducks got kicked out of the big barn and now Bet comes out and locks them up out there at night and lets them out in the morning.

They were being pretty good at staying on their side of the fence until the last couple of days. Something will need to be done to keep them from coming in here and pulling up the garlic and onions. They seem to be attracted to the green, go to pull it out, taste it as they are pulling it out of the ground and decide they don't like it. Unfortunately Bet hasn't successfully trained them to replant it!

They really like their pond and they can wander all over on the other shore and up around the turkey pens but they seem to like to dabble in my garden this time of the year. I think its the green shoots of the garlic, I haven't seen much signs of slugs and other treats, besides if they are in here the slug and bugs are also out there.

Bet and I have been doing a bit of research about dealing with grey water, specifically the water from processing poultry, for when we apply for our license to process. We have come across some interesting info about cleaning water by running it through bogs planted with cat tails and some other specific water plants.

The heavy stalks in the water in the center left of the above picture is a little colony of cattails. I am really drawn to cattails and would love an excuse to have a larger planting of them up around the Barn Garden.

The boggish place just to the right of this fence line has been filtering and dealing with the grey water from the farm house every since there was inside plumbing here. It is a great system and rarely puts off an odor, some compost piles smell more than our little un-designed bog.

The pond just beyond the bog supports bull frogs, cat fish, occasional escapee trout, and the ducks of course appear to thrive here. Not to mention the resident river otters and beaver clan along with clearly healthy pond side flora.

Here's a view from the far southwest corner of the Barn Garden. The fact that the majority of our grey water has its own system and doesn't go through the septic makes our septic all that much more healthy. Besides in a septic system the grey water would pretty much end up doing what it is doing right now. Go through a soil/plant root filter before eventually ending up in the pond.

It is all so freakishly green I can hardly speak of it. Funny, things on farms were green long before now and old farmers knew how to protect the water and soil supply. They didn't really need the Birkenstock, or black nail polish crowds to tell them how to take care of the earth that they depended on.

Here is a big view of the south west side of the barn and the hoop house. In the foreground is one of the gazillion weed piles. Lots of my weed piles, stuff the chickens would rather not eat or just the stuff that is more than they can handle, are cold compost piles.

They eventually rot down and no, the weed seeds aren't burned up, but man that takes a heck of a hot pile and I'm just not that into doing that at the moment. The hot compost will come when we have to start dealing with poultry offal from the processing. But as for the weeds, I'm beginning to think they aren't so stinking bad, I really feel strongly, come 'round July or August especially, that we actually ought not to weed any more. But that's a discussion for another day. Right now I love weeding.

And I love tossing the weeds to the chickens so that Bet doesn't have to put alfalfa in the hay rack that you see the hens sticking their little head in (the bluish green square on the right half of the coop. This is the winter housing and where the breeding stock hang out. In the summer the eggers and the meat birds head out to the pasture and will become an integral part of the pasture rotation that we will be incorporating this year. MiG. Managed intensive grazing. Making the most of less land. And something Dirt and I are very excited about. But... you guessed it, we'll talk about that another day.

If we turn around and look east we come across my aronia berry bush. I have some more up at the nursery beds that will be coming down here this month during transplanting days.

I have no idea yet if this moon signs planting business is really effecting the plants and bugs and weeds (there are days for dealing with everything!) But it sure is doing a good thing for making me get stuff done and not get sidetracked with a bazillion jobs all at once. I need a way to keep me focused or I end up not getting anything finished because I am doing too many things.

A better view of Bet's herb beds in front of the cold frame, the bright green little tufts off to the left of the picture are her chives, a lavender and a sage is just beyond that.

The bed between that one and the cold frame is filled with lavender starts from a plant that I rooted in place by heaping soil up around it and in the middle of it. Each branch then became a rooted plant. It is a great way to multiply several different types of shrubs and herbs especially when they have been neglected of seasonal pruning and get all out of shape. A "do over" of sorts.

These are a examples of raised beds that are not straight. I would like to do more large gardens with not-straight beds but that will come later in my life I think. Right now I just like to get it done and get them planted. Soon I will have more time to shape and have fun with different geometrics in the garden.

These big lumps here on the far left are not more weed piles, they are my enormous comfrey plants that if I have time will be busted up this year and dispersed through out more areas of the farm. Comfrey is an amazing plant in the apothecary and out in the garden. Its huge leaves are great in the compost and add some really good extra nutrition, because of deep roots it can pull up lots of minerals from the sub soils.

I can't think of a plant that doesn't like to be near comfrey or have its big leaves as a mulch during those five hot days in August. It is another great bog and pond edge plant and has tremendous water filtering abilities. It is just simply a must have plant.

This for me is a dreamy view. I like to look far across the pond to the other bank and the white barked aspen. To me they are like the paper birch in the painting by Carl Larsson of his family picnicking or the one where they are fishing. Sometimes I like to think I live in Carl's world.

This is the little gate way and walk that Bet takes to let her ducks out. This spot is also in need of an identity and restructuring, something I hope Bet and I can get to and get into process later this spring or at least by early summer.

We turn around and head back for the gate by the barn. Our raspberries here on the right on the fence line await their annual trimming and tying up session, hopefully this year I will get to it before the leaves are out, that makes a tough job tougher. I'm utilizing a bit more of my wonderful black weed mat, Water goes down through but weeds are really discouraged from growing and it is even impervious to armor piercing quack grass.

On the right side of the weed mat walk way you can see a couple of step in black plastic posts. Those mark where I think I want some climbing roses to go up over some hoops toward the raspberries, forming a arbor-ed walkway here. I like secret little walk ways and such so we'll see. The fence post in the fence line are old creosote and I keep the raspberries back from them for the most part but I would like to move the raspberry operation some place slightly less toxic entirely.

As we head back out the gate you can see the walkway, between the barn wall and the chickens, becomes a holding place for my mums in pots and the fruit trees awaiting their new home spots.

Sometimes I get a little crazy with the old and makeshift things we've got going on here but then most of the time I just embrace the character of it all. And then, I am thankful that God has placed me here and not in a modern home on an uninteresting, history-less plot of land.

Like the stories this little garden by the driveway holds for us.

Some where in that center bed lies the first casualty here on VF&Gs. A murdered sheep was buried by yours truly about our second or third year here. Back in '88. Dale's flock of sheep had come out here to live but not before the pet lamb of the wife of one of his worker fellas had been mistaken for a locker lamb. So after the flock had been here a while Dale dropped off a sweet little Cheviot to hang with the group, replacing the mistaken identity lamb.

Well, sheep are flockish, and they did not accept her, She spent most of her time many yards from the flock, she ate separately from them or after they were done and had moved on she would come and clean up the leftover. She was excluded from coming in the barn to get out of the rain or the heat.

Then one day it was particularly rainy I was glad to see that she had obviously gotten to go in out of the rain because she wasn't in the barnyard. But when I looked over the door I didn't see her. Well this is turning into a long story and has nothing really to do with gardening so I finish it up later.

Along with buried sheep and my second oldest's pet goose being buried in here, down by the lilacs there, was where the out house stood for the former resident and now neighbor and old work buddy of Dirt's. All another long story about just how small the world is and confirmation on God wanting us here.

But as for the outhouse part, Dave says that when he left home for the Korean war the out house stood right about where the lilacs are or maybe a little over to the right where the path goes out onto the lawn. But when he came back there was a new addition on the house and indoor plumbing.

Well that's the end of the tour, long one for such a small space, you can come in and take advantage of the indoor plumin' if ya need to and you can stay for a cup a tea ifn' you'd like. I gotta get on with the hallway project but you can pull up a chair and keep me company while I paint.