Monthly Archives: September 2017

Garden Mixer

This is the nice handle my husband made to go on the garden mixer. It not only makes it much easier to move, it allows the mixer itself to move in all different directions for use.

 

Here’s the mixer hanging in a moveable position.

 

If you look carefully, you can see the long, straight metal handle coming down from the round, black disk thingie. This allows you to turn the mixer into a position where you can toss the components of Mel’s Mix (vermiculite, peat moss, and three kinds of compost) into the bin. Then you can plug it in and mix it thoroughly. Unplug it and move it down for dumping into the wheelbarrow to take wherever you would like.

Here you see the mixer in place beside the bins holding the components of Mel’s Mix.

We used bungee cords to tie a tarp in place over the mixer to protect it and the extension cord from the elements.

We can also use it for its intended purpose, to mix concrete, but we don’t do that often. I mix Mel’s Mix all the time, and who would have thought of using a concrete mixer as a garden tool?

Leave a comment

Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Mailbox Decoration

Yesterday we changed our mailbox decoration on the way to Lunch Bunch. This is Wyle E. Coyote paying Sonic the Hedgehog to strangle the Roadrunner. This is the back of the piece. My husband is pleased with this one because we managed to add a bit of 3-dimenionsal quality to it with the legs welded onto the main piece.

 

Here’s the front of it.

The school bus goes by our driveway on week days. I hope that the kids get a kick out of seeing what we put on the mailbox.

2 Comments

Filed under Lewis Art, Lewis Mailbox Decorations

Down!

As we were eating breakfast this morning, we were trying to get Amber to lie down quietly on the floor beside us.

Yeah. Right.

It was as if she were on a trampoline!

We would say, “DOWN.” And she would comply.

We would pick up our spoon – “DOWN.” And she would comply. Before we could pick it “DOWN!” –

I think you get the picture. Up and down. Up and down. Down and up. Down and up.

We ARE making a bit of progress, but it’s very distracting trying to eat breakfast – or talk – or swallow…..

Leave a comment

Filed under Amazing Animals, Family

Today’s Harvest – Veggies and Flowers

This is the last of the spaghetti squash harvest. I pulled out the vines today. I could have gotten a few more, since there were still flowers on some of the vines, but I need to get things cleared out to try to get a fall garden going.

I’m still really pleased that I was able to save the seeds from one spaghetti squash I bought at the store, planted two seeds in pots in the kitchen and put them on the window sill. When they got large enough, I transferred them into my raised bed, square foot garden. I had no clue whether they would grow or not. The vines ended up taking up two of the 4×4 foot planters. The plants weren’t very ‘pretty,’ but I think getting at least 8 spaghetti squash from this experiment could be called a success. :0)

 

This is today’s harvest of tomatoes. I should get a few more. I’ve cleared out the plants in the ‘nook’ planter, but I still have four plants left in the 8 foot planter to the east of the house. I planted one new tomato plant on each end of the planter last week. I have no idea if we still have enough time to get to harvest with these, but it’s fun to hope.

On the first session in the garden today, I brought Amber. She was good until she got bored. She then decided to try to dig some holes under the planters. My husband brought her out – on the leash this time – on my second gardening session. The most significant thing in the square foot garden right this minute is marigolds. They’re everywhere.  My husband said I should cut some and put them in a vase for us to enjoy inside.

He saw some wasps climbing around and into the pipes that form the framework of our garden. He decided to spray them – so instead of just having to be wary of them, we actively had to dodge the really angry wasps! It was easy to decide the second gardening session of the day was over.

So here are today’s flowers – marigolds and zinnias.

I think I’ll wait until later this evening or tomorrow to finish getting the square foot planters ready for a fall garden. My chair and a cold drink are calling to me….

4 Comments

Filed under Arkansas, Gardening, Greenwood, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Cleaning Out the Garden for the Fall

The Best Years in Life

This weekend I’m cleaning out our raised bed, square foot garden planters, getting ready for the fall garden. I harvested some more spaghetti squash, and I’ll show you pics of those later.

Amber went out with me to ‘help.’ We discovered she likes to play with grape tomatoes! I would throw one to her every once in a while, and she would happily treat it as if it were a toy. But then, after half an hour, she got bored and started to dig under the planters. I couldn’t allow that, so we came in.

I’ll cool off for a bit, drink some cold water, and then head out there again. I want to be ready in case we find some lettuce and spinach plants in Fort Smith when we go on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, if I can get the garden cleared out, I’m planning to set out 4 new celery plants, and plant some carrot and radish seeds. I’m pretty sure the radishes will do well, but I haven’t had any good looking carrots yet.  I’m not going to plant a lot this year. I told you recently I started two new tomato plants, in the hope that they’ll produce before it freezes. If I can get those, and some spinach or lettuce and radishes, I would be happy.

We’ve just had too many projects, plus trying to spend lots and lots of time with Amber, to try to do a large garden.

Are YOU growing a fall garden?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Arkansas, Gardening, Greenwood, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

“Orange Dahlia”

“Orange Dahlia” – Paul Militaru Photography

I LOVE the light Paul captured in this photo.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Paul Militaru Photography

Reading

This and That with LoriBeth via Cathy Ruggiero

Leave a comment

Filed under Reading is FUNdamental

Three C’s

source unknown

Change is difficult. It’s SO much easier to simply ‘keep on keepin’ on.’

Change means leaving your comfort zone, getting up off your duff, doing things might be scary, challenging, even unpleasant sometimes. But if you stop making the choice to take the chance to make a change, you stop living. You gradually quietly implode, your world becoming smaller and smaller until it’s gone.

Sometimes I think my husband is on a mission to make us UNcomfortable – with WAAAAY too many changes at one time.

One example of this is our CHOICE to cancel our subscription to DISH TV. Living in the sticks outside a small town in Arkansas, we’re very lucky to have two satellite TV choices: Dish and DirecTV. Now we’ve tried both. Both offered a lot of stations in the package we chose, but we couldn’t JUST get the channels we wanted, and we had to pay extra for the channels that weren’t included, plus the rental of the DVR, plus a charge for HD, plus……over $98/month.

So now we’re free of that, and that’s a good thing. BUT now we have to learn how to use Roku, Hulu, AmazonPrimeTV, and about 4 other choices right off the bat that all sound the same to me. Nothing is relaxing, mindless anymore. That’s a good thing for us, too, but it isn’t enjoyable at the moment. We had to order another Roku remote, because I can’t take the idea of my husband being in charge of what we’re watching, how loud the sound is, etc.  Now, instead of leaving a news channel on, buffering it for about an hour so we can skip through commercials, plus being able to hit “DVR” and see a list of stuff taped, ready to be watched, we have to figure out how to get the Roku service on (particularly if we watched a DVD the night before), then go to the service that provides the channel or program we want to see, then figure out (again) how to get the sound on.

We’re having to adjust to the fact that you can’t pause a show. You can mute the sound, but you can’t pause. So, if you get a phone call, need to get up to do something, get a call of nature, etc., you either miss whatever happened while you were gone or watch it again.  We have to mute for commercials, although we’re paying a bit extra for services that offer no commercials.

Instead of $98/month, we’re paying $36. We have almost all of the channels and programs we wanted. I’m finding that watching 24 hour news programs was stressful. Since they all hashed the same news with their unique spin or opinions, we aren’t missing much. Between my online news and the ones we watch now, we know pretty much what’s going on.

We’re still researching to find out what’s being offered or updated. We’re still working together to figure out how to make things work. We’re having to strain our brains, rather than mindlessly staring at the tube.

We’re reading and talking and playing with our animals more.

So we made the CHOICE to take a CHANCE so our lives have CHANGED –  for the better.

Leave a comment

Filed under Acting Like a Grownup, Attitude, Bright Ideas, Challenges, Changes, Encouragement

Life

Sun-Gazing.com

2 Comments

Filed under Attitude, Challenges, Favorite Quotes

“Ornamental Flowers”

“Ornamental Flowers” – Paul Militaru Photography

Leave a comment

Filed under Paul Militaru Photography

Busy Morning on the Porch

 

Right at this very moment, Amber is lying down beside my office chair, asleep. Ahhhhhh!

We’ve had a busy morning. We’re still having a bit of trouble giving Amber food that agrees with her. And, even if THAT is all good, we can’t keep her from acting like a vacuum cleaner outside, eating everything dogs find appealing. UGH.

Obviously, something didn’t agree with her that she ate yesterday. I had to hose and mop the porch first thing this morning. Since she’s been having trouble off and on, we’ve been leaving her crate door open at night. My husband did the initial clean up and then I followed with the hose and mop.

We fed her lightly, and then checked on her in half an hour – my husband had left the Clorox Clean Up bottle on the table. She had knocked that over, spilling about half of it on the porch floor. I leaped up to get THAT cleaned up, hoping she didn’t ingest any of that. I then admonished my husband that we’re at least PRETENDING to be smarter than the dog….

We went out to play with her later and ended up hosing and mopping the porch again –

We took her out and walked her quite a bit, gave her some water and went inside to get ready to go do errands. I checked on her before we left – to find she had taken her bedding from the crate and was in the process of shredding it all over the porch floor.

I put the the intact piece of bedding back in the crate, closed and latched the door to it, put her on the string on the deck since she won’t allow mopping or sweeping without a game of tug of war.  I swept everything up and put her on the porch once again.

 

Amber on her dog run, waiting for me to get the porch mopped.

 

Amber with her purple bone on the office bed.

 

We were gone about an hour. Amber was delighted to see us when we got home. Her porch was still clean! We took her out again, and then let her come into the office.  (If you look behind her head, you can see where she discovered the reams of copy paper on the shelf yesterday –

So far, so good.  Fingers crossed.

2 Comments

Filed under Amazing Animals, Family

Dani Ives – Felt Paintings – Take 3

Incredibly Lifelike Felt Paintings of Pets and Plants by Dani Ives

by Laura Staugaitis on August 22, 2017 – Colossal

“Fiber artist Dani Ives conjures the natural world in her unique take on the traditional craft of needle felting. Ives describes her method as “painting with wool,” in which she applies her love of animals and her background in biology to build intricately layered portraits of a variety of flora and fauna.”

 

“Dogs, cats, birds, and farm animals come to life alongside toadstools and fruits, and Ives’ ability to capture the moisture and glint of animal eyes and noses adds an impressive degree of realism. While her plant life depictions take more of a traditional botanical angle, most of Ives’s animal subjects take center stage on the embroidery hoop, peering out at the viewer, further adding to the strong sense of unique personality, and it’s no surprise that she is in high demand for pet portrait commissions.”

 

“Ives sells originals and prints of her work on Etsy, and she continues her love of teaching by traveling from her home in Northwest Arkansas to lead workshops around the country, as well as offering e-courses in needle felting. You can also follow her work on Instagram”

Thanks again to Laura Staugaitis from Colossal for bringing us the work of this fine artist.

Leave a comment

Filed under Creativity, Embroidery/Sewing Art

Cute Animal Pictures – Take 3

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Marsha Koenig for her email.

Leave a comment

Filed under Amazing Animals, Awe-Inspiring Photography