Grow Garden Grow!

I have my first squash blossom! YAY! It's sooo pretty! It's one of my zucchini plants. Isn't it pretty! *points*
My tomatoes are doing great now. I Burned them by watering them in the heat of the day. They looked pretty pitiful for a few days. But now they're greening up and I have a few flowers too!
I saw a honey bee the other day around sunset. That's the only one I have seen this year. I have seen several small little bees around,... not sure what kind they are.
I'm pretty happy now that I have a lot of plants up and growing. Let me think... I have corn, tomatoes, several kinds of pumpkin, patty pan swash in white, yellow, and green, some acorn squash, zucchini, crook-neck squash, purple potatoes, cucumbers, several kinds of beans, turnips, peppers of all colors, shapes, and heat levels, onions, garlic, okra, watermelons, and several types of unusual melons to try. Hooray for Summer! :D

Spring Report!

Only 2 and a half weeks to the official start of summer! We've had a busy spring. Luckily, some of the work we've done in the past when we lived here 10 years ago has survived to greet us this spring. Here's a few of our bright sunny tulips.
The first thing we did was plant a mini orchard of fruit trees along the North side of the backyard. I helped Don plant an Italian Prune, a grafted combo of apples, a combo of cherries, a combo of pears, and an apricot. They all budded out nicely and all had a few flowers. So it looks like we may have a few fruits this year from each tree!
The next project was to make a garden. Back in February, I planted trays of seed and had them up and beautiful by March. Grif built a lovely greenhouse... that Orion ventilated for me. Which killed all my plants. *Grumbles something about big obnoxious rowdy oversized dogs* We gave up on the greenhouse idea and took it down. I decided I needed a fence to keep out Big Nose and Jack Rabbit! (Orion and Dori). Grif did a fine job of making a beautiful wood fence.... that Dori dove under and Orion went through. So we lined it with 2 by 4 inch vinyl-coated wire. But then they both wiggled under the gate. So I put a row of firewood logs under the gate. I have to step over, but it's worth it to keep them out.
I started new trays after we got the fence up and now have new seeds ready to go out as I get the beds ready. I bought several tomatoes and pepper plants that were already good size. so they were the first to go in. I planted about 8 different kinds of tomatoes right in the bed. The seeds will hopefully be up soon. I also have one corn bed planted. I'm gonna try this new Mirai. They say it's the sweetest corn ever. The seeds were really funky looking- all shriveled up. They didn't look like corn at all.
More to post soon! I'll take more pictures as I get the garden done. Next up, strawberries!

Chickens Again!

We have chickens again! I returned the 2 little roosters a while back and ordered 2 dozen Black Copper Maran eggs from mail order place. BAD idea! I asked to be notified when the eggs were shipped so I would be expecting them. Well we came home one chilly 37 degree day to find my box of eggs sitting on the porch! I rushed them inside and turned on the incubator. When the temperature seemed stable enough, I put the eggs in and hoped for the best. Only 11 developed, and only 5 hatched. There was another problem as well. This breed's eggs are supposed to be dark chocolate burgundy brown. These eggs were not all that dark; in fact, they were not much darker than regular brown eggs. It was a big disappointment. Soon after my 5 little chicks hatched, out pet shop had a few amaraucanas come in. I brought home the cutest little white chick to add to the flock. We still don't know which are boys and which are girls, but we are getting a bit of an idea. There's one in particular- quite aggressive and tends to run off by himself. We figure that one must be a boy. But time will tell! About a week ago we brought home 3 more amaraucana chicks from out pet shop. These were sexed and are supposed to be hens. They are all a cute soft buffy brown. Sorry, I don't have pictures of them yet. So the total is 4 Marans (we lost one to a local Cooper's hawk- my daughter caught it in the act!) and 4 amaraucanas. Out of these we will hopefully have 2 girls out of each group. If my marans don't lay any dark eggs though, I'll be shopping for replacements next spring.