Oh…I remember this….rain!!

1 inch so far. I feel like the gods are smiling down on us here at the Lake at last. I hope it keeps going!

ETA: 6:05PM 3 inches so far…hopefully more is on the horizon!

Peace!

The list of things to do is long, the kids are antsy, many miles to go…but we are getting out of town this weekend for fun on the lake with extended family! We are leaving tomorrow at noon and are not even close to being ready. Hah! I’m working today (have the extra kiddos) so time is precious. Gotta get it all together so I’m exiting this venue until we meet again. Hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day weekend and I’ll see you all again next week!

Peace!

Another busy gardening day yesterday. We spent most of yesterday outside as it was finally “only” in the mid 90’s rather than the over 100 death heat. We got the front fence line cleared of the overgrowth and plants we didn’t want that had sprung up. Got the massive Rose bush pruned way back. Seriously, it was tied to the fence and was taking it down. J had to repair a couple of the fence boards so we just hacked the bush back. It was having a hard time with the heat and drought since I don’t water it regular and was stressed so we are hoping this pruning will help it. Of course, by doing that I opened up this shade bed and need to take care of the right side of it now. That side gets sun from about 10AM to about 1PM, so is pretty much in the shade most of the day. It is filling in really nicely and loves the misters from the drip irrigation. Now that the Rose is cut back it will most likely get a little more light and of course now needs to be continued on down.

I also used my brand new garden tool, the Cobrahead, to edge and weed. I’ll have a separate post about this awesome tool, but suffice to say I have no idea how we lived without it up to now!

The girls were outside for most of the day too as the weather wasn’t sapping all the energy from them. It felt good!

The garden is taking on a whole new appearance now as things fill in, grow larger and with all the things we got rid of yesterday. So much had died do to the lack of rain and it was starting to look a bit straggly out there in the very front. It’s nice to get all that cleaned up and refreshed.

How was your weekend? I hope full of good things and productive times, no matter what those were!

View from the front door:

These just make me smile:

Look at how tall that Golden Bells Esperanza is! My yellow one is just as tall and right behind it but not blooming at all, although the plant is super healthy. Anyone know why this might be?:

The smallest of the front beds. I am starting to really like how this one is filling in. It’s just out the front door, so makes me happy when I walk past it everyday:

Nice to see we have a fence!:

So, the right half of this really needs an overhaul now that the Rose has been cut back:

The bee made me happy on this Indigo Spires:

The Garlic Chives are about to bloom:

Aw..Ginger:

Peace!!

Is that even a word? Well it is now, randomness! That’s what today’s post is. Just random pictures from our last couple of days. It’s been hot, hot, hot! Did I mention hot? We are now at 66 days of triple digit temps for the summer and just about to break the record. If it tops out at 100 today, we’ll officially be experiencing the hottest summer ever in the Austin area since record keeping of temps of course. It’s been miserable! Not alot of outside activity going on past 10 in the morning, so the kids and I have had to get creative. Lots of playdough, art and pretend play going on. Today, however, we are venturing out with friends in tow to the fountain park here and having lunch with the fountains. Then we’ll pick Farmgirl up from school, drop kids at their correct parents and rush over to gymnastics. I hope we make it on time! 😉

Farmgirl Lola is basking in the glow of going to school. She absolutely loves every moment of it so far. Comes home just ecstatic, full of stories from her day. While it is public school and not the education system I’d choose for her if I could choose any, the school is a good school and the teacher completely understands that kids learn at different rates. So since Lola is so far ahead, she has her own reading and math programs she’ll do. I am of the “project based learning” bent, so that’s a hard one for me to swallow that she won’t really be learning in school along those lines. But we agreed to re-evaluate at Christmas and see if it’s all going well not only for her socially but also educationally. We are still going to supplement with our own homeschooling/unschooling style as well. But for now, she’s loving it and it seems to be feeding that desire to be with tons of her peers all at once. She’s a social one that kid!

Last night a small storm looked like it was going to roll through, but of course went south of us at the last minute, so aside from a few drops that didn’t do anything, we did have some really cool lightening and cloud formations. It was a nice change of pace from the clear skies we normally see. Hopefully more will head this way and actually decide to rain down on us! We need it. The lake is at 41% full now…sad to see all the docks up on the shore. The boat ramps are all closed now and there are islands where there shouldn’t be and dry land in other spots that are suppose to be in deep water. Hopefully El Nino will hit us hard over the Winter and Spring and bring up those levels!

For now, enjoy some of the randomness in photos that were taken by me and little Xi..;)

I love this shot! Xi took this and we didn’t realize how she captured the angle of the moon with so much love until we uploaded it to the computer…hehe:

Another by Xi of the cloud formations:

My blurry attempt at no flash with my old-ass camera:

It’s a stand-off. Moose the ferret was playing with Emo the cat for awhile and it tuckered both of them out:

My super duper thrift store find! A Le Crueset whistling kettle, the large one, for a whopping $20! I had just looked at them in a retail store and they were $85 there…literally 10 minutes later we saw this at the thrift store, almost un-used:

When I realized that there were going to be sacrifices in the garden due to the drought, I decided to try and save a little of a couple things. This is from the Honeysuckle and is growing from a vase of water on my kitchen windowsill..and blooming!:

Sweet potato vines and Honeysuckle cohabitating:

Peace!!

We discovered my second favorite nursery of all time…Barton Springs Nursery. After reading about it from several of the Austin bloggers, we had to make a trip and we are super glad we did! We found several plants we’d been looking for and even some we didn’t know we wanted. A couple of them are mystery plants to me as I just was in that crazed mode that gardeners go into when browsing rows of the most gorgeous greenery, that I just grabbed them. So I’ll get pictures up of those for identification purposes in a bit. For now, enjoy these new creatures and a couple extra garden pictures to boot!

Oh, do I spy Bat Face Cuphea? I think I do!:

A new, hanging succulent. Any ideas on this one?:

The potted succulents are doing well in this heat:

I am loving this combination, Giant Benary’s Purple Zinnia and Green Envy Zinnias (I’m pretty much dedicated to always having zinnias in the garden):

So pretty, Green Envy:

And another new one, I’m very excited about this one. Black and Blue Salvia!:

The shade garden is filling in nicely:

I do admit I water. We are still on Stage 1 water restrictions, so we have 2 days we can water during designated hours. In Austin they are now at Stage 2 where they only have one day to water using irrigation. You can hand water anytime, and I do. I put alot of time and money into my garden and I don’t want to lose it. Fortunately we planted drought tolerant plants and the ones that need an extra boost everyday are in shadier areas so not quite as affected as the full sun plants. Plus we have some really established plants that were here for years before we bought the house, those don’t get any watering at all and are still doing pretty good under the circumstances. Plus, except for one little bed and a pot in the back, we don’t water the back at all and that’s where most of our property is. We really need the rain though!

And now, on to the first day of school. Our darling Farmgirl Lola started First Grade yesterday…eeekk! She absolutely loved every moment of it. She came home full of stories and timetables of her day’s events. She has been home schooled so is pretty far ahead in reading, math and comprehension. She said the teacher told her during English, while she was talking to the other kids about phonics, that Lola could go to the corner of the classroom where they have a little in-class library and pick any books to read. She loved it! When Xi and I were waiting at the bus stop for her, we saw the bus coming down the road and all I saw were arms waving and her little mouth moving…haha! When they stopped the bus driver was laughing and said he now knew our whole history…hah! She’s a talker that one!

We all walked her in for the first day. She was thrilled that she had her own desk and cubby. She promptly hung up her backpack and lunch, grabbed her name tag and started introducing herself to other kids. Didn’t bat a lash when we were ready to leave, I think she was even trying to hurry us out! hah! After school she was super excited about homework…but she LOVES to do schoolwork anyway, so that isn’t too surprising to us. I didn’t get any pictures in the classroom or at the school as it was pure chaos with everyone walking their kids in. But I did manage to get a couple before leaving the house early in the morning.

So the first day went off without a hitch and she had a blast! She may want to go back to homeschooling in the future, which is fine with us of course, but for now she’s totally stoked to be at school and that’s all we can ask for!

Someone just a little excited:

Hope your first days and new things are going well for you too! Peace!

No pictures to share today, just wanted to post really quickly about our weekend so far. We got the raised beds half full with compost and dirt from the chicken run (we put all the leaves and kitchen scraps in the chicken run and they are nice enough to turn it all into really good dirt for us!). We picked up a couple bags of peat moss for another layer and I’ll also be putting a hay layer in there then the good topsoil from The Natural Gardener should round it out. We still have 2 more beds to build, but feel like we have a good start right now. I also planted Zinnia and Cosmos seeds in what is the current veggie bed. They are coming up nicely! The plan for that area is to turn it into a regular flowerbed. Things that re-seed and that we seed ourselves, but no real perennials, mainly annuals. At some point down the road we’d like to turn that whole area into a deck as it is just off the dining area. So we plan on opening that wall up with glass doors and a then do container gardening on the deck. So with those thoughts we don’t want to spend a tremendous amount of money on plants that we’ll have to move or rip out anyway. Flowers seem the best option and they’ll smell nice too! I’m planting some Datura in there today (seeds of course) and am hoping, with our extended seasons, that I get a bloom or two before the first frost. We’ll see!

The drip irrigation in the front is working like a charm. Just a couple things we’ve tweaked, but the plants look so much happier. I’m still turning it on 1/2 hour a night just so everything stays alive, but it’s so much better than the hand watering I was doing everyday and the run-off that was occurring with that. My chartreuse color Zinnias I planted from seed are getting ready to bloom too! Yay!

My pumpkins are not a happy story however. I am down to just a couple good vines after borers and chickens had their way with them (one of the chickens was being defiant and decided to take charge on the thinning detail…*sigh*). I am not hopeful for any pumpkins from them this year, but plan on planting in the spring regardless of what the books say…Hah! I did better with my Spring volunteers than the intentional ones. This year I’m also planting Tatume Squash rather than regular zukes or yellow squash. It is from Mexico and resists the borers. You can harvest it young and eat it like zucchini, or let it mature more for a Winter Squash. I’ve lost too many squash plants to the borers and am pretty much going to give up on them, except with pumpkins. I just don’t have the time to pick off hundreds of eggs a day unfortunately. So Tatume is in our future.

I was able to get skirts sewn up for the girls as well (I’ll post pictures later of those). Three apiece! I used the Lazy Day Skirt pattern from Oliver and S. I love their patterns and this one sews up quick and allows for most modifications. Super easy! So now the girls have new skirts and more to come with the amount of 1/2 yard fabric remnants I have! I set up my sewing machine on half the desk/table in the bedroom where J had computer stuff. Yes, I took over and claimed my spot! Finally! It’s not ideal, but seriously better than what I was doing, which was getting everything out, set up and then broken down and back into the closet. Didn’t make me want to sew much. J was actually happy when all was said and done, so it’s a win/win right now.

So that’s the news for now. I promise pictures of progress in the next day or so! I’m also sending lots and lots of love to my sister Carol.

Peace!!

Well, it’s in place. Now all we have to do is screw in the middle section and it’s ready to ride. J wants to put another layer of wood on the top and then we’ll seal it all again for weather (kind of a joke at this point considering we have no rain). The girls are super excited, as is J of course!

I am going to finish the second raised bed on Friday and then we’ll start the retaining walls for the new beds in the Back 40 sometime next week. Once those are in place we can start amending and landscaping in earnest back there…oh what fun I’m going to have! We’ll get a drip system in place as well and probably extend the tall back fence all the way up to the studio. With our vision of things back there, we are hoping to make it more of an oasis with hidden gardens and hanging plants off that tall fence. B said he can make hanging hooks that come off the top for me, which will be great because then I can hang those really large baskets up there. I am still amazed that it is all starting back there finally, after all our talking about it and wondering just how we were going to afford to get it all done. Bartering is awesome and community is even better.

I also ripped out all the cucumbers yesterday. It has just been too hot for them to pollinate well and even taste good. The few we were getting were so bitter that they made better goat food than people food. So in their place I put in some more Habaneros that were starts from seed. I’m hoping the pumpkins will do well now that they have so much more room too. We’ll plant fall cucumbers in the new raised beds with a trellis. I did manage to get 3 tomatoes finally though, and the two really good plants seem to be setting more fruit! My cherry upside/down plant in the front is getting loaded as well. It was a volunteer that I decided to keep. Glad I did! The rest are growing slowly and not doing much in the way of production but are healthy. So I may cut back the bigger ones and baby them until Fall. Once the pumpkins and peppers are done in the bed I’ve used for vegetables up to now, I will plant flower seeds and annuals in their place and use the raised beds and my new gardening area for vegetables and perennials. Lots to do back there, but feels so good to get started finally.

Peace!!

Skate ramp’s old home up at B’s place, which is now a construction zone as he’s broken ground on his house:

Arriving in front of our place (B lives directly behind us, so it didn’t have too long of a journey):

And just about settled into it’s new home. We need to screw in the middle piece still:

No more cukes:

If anyone can tell me what kind of caterpillar this is, and if it’s worth the damage being done to the sunflower leaves at my mother in law’s house, I’ll be eternally grateful. So far they haven’t touched the blossoms, but the leaves are in sad shape and apparently there are many of them.

Thank you in advance! Peace!

We are putting in the drip irrigation today and tomorrow…yay!!! We have 3 beds done and still alot more to do, but such a worthy project. Drinking lots of good H2O to beat the heat.

Back to the grind…

Peace!

Look who came to live with us today. We are so happy to have a place for these guys and hope they love it as much as we do.

Peace!