New Things

New Things

            What a week!  I am working with the folks at Advanced Prosthetics in Greenville, SC to get a prosthetic leg.  The last little place on the surgical incision had finally healed so I could proceed to getting a leg fitted.  That entailed having a casting done of my leg so the socket for the prosthetic was a perfect fit.  Then the next day, I taped two interviews about sepsis and how it affected me.  Both TV stations did an excellent job and I was very pleased with how they handled it.

            On Saturday, we picked up four new ducks for our flock; a pair of muscovies and a pair of pekins.  The muscovies are now Albion (Al) and Boudicca (Boo).  The pekins are Ping (female) and Pong (male.)  We have them in a separate run from the other birds and we enjoy watching them when we are in the garden-- see there was a tie in to the garden!

Our four new ducks

Al is a mature male who we think was probably never able to socialize in a flock situation.  He has a wonderful time talking to my old geezers through the fence and even tries to fight.  Keep in mind that duck fights are not a situation when they hurt each other.  It's some feather pulling and a lot of posturing where they march side by side trying to convince the other guy that they are tougher.  Sometimes they wrestle until one proves himself stronger but I have never seen them hurt each other.  Mostly it's a lot of bluster.  Silly things.

            We built a shelter for them and they have a new pool to play in.   On a day like today, they were out taking turns soaking themselves in the water.  The muscovies are dominant but there is enough room in the run that the two pair do not come into conflict and are getting to know each other pretty well.

I know that some people don't care for muscovies, but I am partial to them because of their intelligence and character. 

What does it take?

What does it take?

            Not only has time passed a lot since I started the blog. but other things have changed as well.  While some call it a terrible tragedy, (I lost the lower part of my left leg), it's really not that big a deal.  It came down to me asking myself what is it going to take to stop me from accomplishing the things I want to do?  Not that.   While I can't walk for the moment, I can roll.  You might be amazed at where you can take yourself in a wheelchair, and even sometimes without one.  This one's just the average kind of chair so it has its limits.  I can roll out of the house and out to the garden.  I didn't know I could do that until I tried. 

            In rehab they taught me how to go up ramps.  In spite of ADA laws most ramps are too steep for the average chair bound person to make it up going forward.  The solution?  Go backward.  That means that you use your hands to roll the side wheels and feet (or foot in my case) to push.  You'd be amazed at how well that works.  I use the same method to get around outside in my garden. 

            I started out this spring going out for short bursts to pull weeds.  I had been afraid that being in the chair would preclude being able to get outside and be in my garden.  The more I went out, the more confident I became.  I was bound by only two rules.  The first was not to go out if no one else was home in case I ran into trouble and the second was to always carry my phone.  Both reasonable. 

            When I was outside the other day, I saw a splash of color on my dwarf pomegranate bush.  I'd never seen a pom flower before.  Isn't it beautiful?

            Something I have discovered through what I call this "adventure," is that if I let fears rule me and my thoughts, nothing will be accomplished.  Worse than that, I will miss out on many things that stretch me and make me stronger.   I was afraid that this would be a non year for my garden or that it would look really awful because I couldn't get around.  Not true. 

            So far, this has been the best year ever.  I might be slow, but I am more thorough.  The plants are looking better than I have seen for years.  I plan more what I am doing and work deliberately.  As a result, more has been done.  This is the first of the cattle panels with tomatoes on one side and dragon tongue beans (a delicious heirloom bean) on the other.

            You don't need to be able to walk to garden, although it is useful.  You do need to determine what you are going to do and find a way to do it.  The strength of your character is determined by what it takes to stop you.

It's been a long time between posts and several things have changed.  We are down to just two cats now, Blaze and Blue.  They generally stick close to the house and yard which has a lot to do with their longevity, I think.  I am usually accompanied when I go out to the garden.   There are other cats around, and they get food, but generally hide when we go outside.

The hugle bed which is nearly four years old now, is a little worse for wear.  the wood at the heart of it all has continued to degrade and as it does so, the soil level falls.  It's now about 18 inches lower than than it was at the start.  I think that next year, we will disassemble it and maybe rebuild it into a lower raised bed, but the soil should be fabulous.  Right now with the sides being about four feet tall and the inside so much lower, I used it to winter over some plants but it's accumulating some junk. 

All in all though, it's been a useful experiment and it did work as described in that it needed very little water (and still doesn't) and things grew wonderfully.

Keeping Cats Out!

The problem with the raised bed is that is a cat attractor.  Nothing wrong with attracting cats if you want them where they are being attracted.  Seeds, tiny plants, and digging cat paws don't mix well unless you don't care of the seeds and plants grow.

Since the cats live outside and the the bed is outside, but I am not outside all the time, I could see that it was going to be a challenge to keep the cats out of the bed.  I considered several options.  The first was to put some kind of net over the top of the bed.  That would work if I had the netting or the budget to purchase it.  The second was to get some plastic sheeting and use pvc hoops to cover the bed like I hoped to do over the winter anyway, but had the same problem as with the netting.  There had to be a better solution that was easy, free, and available. 

I was mulling over my options when I noticed the cats playing around but not in a pile of branches that had been deposited near the bed after we had chipped up the previous pile.  Perhaps if I piled them over the bed after it was planted, the cats would be deterred.

I think that the best part of having a garden is planting the seeds.  Your hopes and dreams of the harvest to come haven't yet been marred by disasters like drought, frost, and cats.

 I grabbed several packets of cool loving plant seeds and began marking out rows.  I started with green bunching onions, then planted beets, two kinds of chard, then two kinds of cauliflower, some Brussels sprouts and more beets.  I was actually about six weeks late planting the seeds, but it couldn't be helped.  After planting the seeds, I picked up a bunch of the branches and laid the over the bed criss-crossing them until there were no places big enough for a cat.  There were no leaves so the sun was easily able to penetrate the bed.

In a week, I saw the first leaves of my new plants.  The beets and chard were up first and the onions were last.  We had a lot of weeds pop up as well.  The morning glories are the worst, but they are easy to pull.  They were young and succulent and perfect for my new ducklings to nibble on.  They have also been sampling the lambs quarter, chickweed, ground ivy, and wild amaranth.  If truth be told many of those are edible for us too, but I prefer to let my birds enjoy them.

The little plants have come up too thickly in some places and I am considering thinning the rows and enjoying the micro-greens as part of a meal for the family.  I recently removed the branches because I need to cultivate the rows. and the cats have been leaving the plants alone until this morning.  The loose dirt in the rows was too enticing.  They don't like to dig in wet soil, so a good fertilizing with some manure tea could be just the thing.  If I have to, I'll put the branches back until the plants are larger.  This time, I'll have the branches hanging over the side more to discourage jumping up in the first place.  Bold, Snip, and Blaze are the worst for that.

Cats and a Garden Experiment with Hugelkutur

There is something about the stillness of a clear fall afternoon that is so restful.  That is, until the cats discover that not only are you outside, but that your lap is available for casual occupation.  Bold and Darth Fluff approached at the same time but Bold got the lap space.  She turned around once and flopped.  Then she belched.  Evidently, her early supper met with approval.  After sitting for a few minutes and soaking up attention, she decided to jump down and chase away one of the other cats.

After Bold got down, Blaze decided it was her turn.  Then I had three of them (with the addition of Little Blue and Snip) for a little while.  I didn't really have room for three, but none of them wanted to give way for the others.

A recent project we built in the garden was a large raised bed.  I've been reading about hugelkultur and decided I wanted to do a version of that, after all, we have the raw materials in abundance and it would be shame not to utilize them.  It sure beats leaving them to rot in place.

I wanted to build the bed using three courses of concrete blocks around the sides.  I thought it would be a good working height.  Unfortunately, we are short on concrete blocks, so we started looking for other materials.  I suggested to my husband that even decent wooden pallets could work.  We found a free source on Craig's list and were able to get enough to build the project.  Right now the bed is four feet high by four feet wide by twelve feet long.  (I think if I was going to do it again, I'd cut the pallets in half so the beds were only two feet high.)

Because of the large gaps between the pallet slats, we utilized an old pool liner on the inside of the pallet walls.  Not a pretty solution, but it keeps the bed contents in place.  Landscape fabric would be good to use the next time we do this.  The pallet frame was situated in an over grown section of the garden.  Think weeds and light brush.  The whole bed was filled to overflowing with leafy brush, then we pressed it down with short chunks of heavy dried branches.  The brush compressed down to less than a foot thick and then the heavier wood filled up the bed to about two thirds full.  On top of that we piled wood chips to help fill in the gaps and then we added grass clippings, chicken manure, and composted leaves.  The final few inches at the top of the bed were filled with soil we had built over the past couple of years with organic materials.

The whole time we were building this, the cats stayed out of the way, but their curiosity with the new bed was evident with their tracks the day after we finished putting the dirt in.  They all agreed that my new winter garden bed should be a cat play ground.  The only trouble was they didn't consult me before making their decision.  I didn't spend two days of hard labor just to entertain my cats!

Bold the Beautiful

Miss Bold made a trip to the vets yesterday to be spayed.  She was not happy about it but is enjoying a certain amount of coddling as part of her recovery.  She is supposed to have crate rest for the next week.  Her incision is looking good and she is eating well.  She especially enjoys having her own plate of food and not having to share with the others. 
I cut back my sweet potato vines today.  I've been meaning to do it for a while.  They were rampaging all over the place.  some were visiting the melons.  Some were outdoing the cucumbers on their own supports.  A few were saying hello to the tomatoes.  One was slogging through the onion patch to greet the okra..  They are currently back in their own area and I took a large mound of vines and gave them to the ducks and chickens.
When I first went out to the garden to work, the kittens were nowhere to be seen.  No sooner had a picked some summer squash than furry bodies appeared.  Blaze and Darth Fluffy were the first.  Moments later, Snip, Snippet and Tiger appeared.  Snip and Blaze were most determined to help me by getting under my feet and inspecting every cut I made with my hand pruners.  Sometimes the safest way to garden with cats is the scoop them up and snuggle them in your arms while someone else does the cutting.  Blaze and Snip love to be scooped and snuggled.
I picked my first burgundy okra and found three nice sized summer squash.  Some of the tomatoes are ready to pick and there are armloads of sweet banana peppers in every shade from yellow through orange and red.  Lots more to do.

my fall garden

I have a nice sized garden and I also have cats.  Our cats are tamed ferals.  Some more tame than others but for some reason they like to hang around me when I am outside.  I think it may be natural cat curiosity.  Being out in the garden with me affords them the freedom to be close when they wish to be and at a distance if they are not quite sure what I am up to.
The cats are (in order of tameness) Tiger, Bold, Snip (or Snipper doodle) Blaze, Little Blue, Darth Fluffy and Snippet.  There is another one, a blue tabby, but he is very skittish and I haven't found a name for him yet.
We recently got our sweet corn stalks cut off and donated to a friend with cows.  That meant that my over-full garden had a place for more stuff to be planted.
In order to plant, I first had to remove the bottom of the stalks and the roots from the ground.  I like to use a hand cultivator for this process and the cats thought it looked like fun.  Thankfully, only two of the cats decided to become actively involved.
Tiger and Bold took up supervisory positions, but Snip and Blaze wanted to "help."  Every time I raised the cultivator to hook it under the corn roots, I had to move a cat aside.  As soon as I began to pull, Snip and Blaze were right there to lay on paws and pretend they were pulling.   It probably took a little longer to finish the job, but I was pleased that they seemed to enjoy my company.

After the row was planted I took a break and the cats decided it was time to play.  Darth Fluff hid under some tomato and sweet pepper plants and watched the action.  Snip and Blaze stalked each other and Snippet.  The game was to see how close they could come to one another and not be seen.  Then to surprise the quarry and both of them jump up in the air before running off in opposite directions.  My younger son came out to talk to me while we watched the cats and we spent most of our time laughing.  I have no fear of allowing the cats the run of the garden because it is strictly organic.
I planted a stand of beets and some more bush beans.  Now I need to get back out and see about getting some cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and chard seed in.  This is my first fall garden in years.  I'm really looking forward to it.  Most times I just clear the garden and let it lie fallow through the fall and winter, or I turn my fowl loose on it to keep the weeds down and add some natural fertilizer.