The yard is so over grown!!! It has rained so much lately & then it will stop raining for a few days. About the time it dries up enough to mow, I either have to work or it starts raining again. There are places so tall I have a hard time seeing the smaller dogs. I think this is the time of year the snake babies are hatching or being born & moving around. I don't mind the non-venomous ones but I don't want those venomous ones getting me, the dogs, or the cat. So I 've got to knock down what grass I can. I still have a lot of trees & limbs to cut down but I need to get rid of the existing burn piles before adding any more to them. I don't want them getting too big I can't control them by myself.
The riding mower needs a belt or maybe its just slipped off. We bought it used a couple of years ago & have never serviced it so I'd like to have someone do that. Or maybe I'll watch YouTube videos & see if I can do a lot of it myself. I think the push mower & the riding mower both need to have their blades either sharpened or replaced.
Years ago my husband hung the extra cast iron skillets we had on the outside wall of the old well shed. These became ideal places for birds & wasps to build nests so we would leave them alone in the summer time but then never get around to them in the winter. Finally, a couple months ago while it was still cool, I took them down. Slowly just in case. There was an old bird's nest in one & a wasp nest in another so I cleaned them out. My plan was to take them inside & clean them but they were REALLY dirty & rusted. So I decided to throw them on the burn pile & let the fire do most of the work. We already have 3 or 4 cast iron skillets plus a couple griddle that we use so these will be cleaned, seasoned, & put in a hope chest for the grandkids.
Here's some of the back yard & one of my piles.
Here's a small pile I started this morning.
Yesterday I moved my potato "patch" because I noticed it was in too much shade. The new location has morning shade but afternoon sun so hoping this is a better site. A lot of that brush will be cut out so that will also help.
I have been seeing posts & articles where some people are not taking quarantine well. They are finding themselves lonely, depressed, or both. Some are not feeling good about themselves, their circumstances, etc. Why not make these people positive affirmation boxes? This would be a great activity for individuals or families, as well as church groups, Scouts, etc. Positive Affirmation Boxes could be given to elderly in nursing homes, teens, single parents, people you suspect may be lonely or depressed.
Of course, you would need to research how to protect yourself & others when delivering this box!!!
This is a box I got a long time ago. There is a Bible verse on one side & a simple saying on the other.
Most of these "positive affirmations boxes" or "can of hope" or whatever you want to call them, have 365. That way, you have one a day. But you could have more or less depending on your container. You could have Bible verses, positive affirmations, or both to mix it up. You want to give a person who is extremely sad or lonely or have lost all hope to feel a little better. If they have more better moments than bad ones, that's a great thing. And maybe they get out of their funk.
Boxes can be as small as an altoid tin. You can make them out of cigar boxes, shoe boxes, old cookie tins, coffee cans, literally anything. Paint or decorate to make it nicer & more individual.
Google has tons of positive affirmations you can get. And there are tons of positive Bible verses. Here are a couple websites with positive affirmations:
https://www.essentiallifeskill...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry...
I would love to see examples of any anyone makes. Or hear stories of how one of these helped you.
I bought a 5 pound bag of Red Pontiac seed potatoes. Some were small so I didn't cut them up but I ended up with about 45-50. The bag was something like $5.60+tax at my local feed store. I'm not sure if that's a good price or not but I'll be happy if I can get some potatoes.
I am having a hard time with my garden. My regular size tiller has been out of commission for several years so I bought one of those little mini tiller/cultivates thinking I'll use that even if it takes longer. Well now I can't ever get the darn thing to crank. It's a Southland brand. I've been wanting to find someone TRUSTWORTHY & DEPENDABLE to come out & service the rollers & both the riding & push mowers. Who would have thought that would have been so hard!!!! I don't have a truck or a trailer to haul them anywhere. So, until I find someone, I don't want to NOT have a garden. I've looked into straw bales & would love to do gardening in those but here they are about $9 each. That would be really expensive to do my whole garden. I will buy a few bales as I can but will still need something.
I've already been shopping around for containers so my husband can garden. He's on oxygen & to go outside, it has to be close enough that his tubing will reach or he has to use his portable, which he then has to have exchanged for a full tank. He also has congestive heart failure & COPD (amongst other illnesses) & tires easily. However, we do have a patio area that I'm setting up for him. I've been collecting plastic totes & buckets as I find them on the side of the road & at thrift stores.
There is a Family Dollar next to one of the grocery stores I have to stock bread in, so I decided to see if they had some large containers I could use. I've discovered those clear plastic totes do not hold up that long before they become brittle. On the aisle with laundry baskets were these rubber containers. They were only $5 each & there were only 5 so I bought them all.
I then had to make holes in the bottom for drainage so I used a crowbar & gave it a little twist to make the holes a little bigger.
I do have a large compost tumbler but I've stopped adding to it. I bought it used & there's a large rusted out place in it that I need to fix somehow so I need to empty it out.
I'm still saving my kitchen scraps in my high tech composting system.......
.....so I've been dumping them in the various containers I already had & adding soil. Repeating until there's a couple of inches up to a foot of scraps, depending on the size of the container.
I had my little bucket full & since it needed dumping anyway, I dumped it into one of my new containers. We'll see if it makes a difference.
My husband had a bread route before he became sick, & we still have tons of these trays from when the guy helping run the route DID NOT empty the truck like he was supposed to. I am always looking for uses for these. I like turning these trays over so they sit a few inches up off the ground. This allows water to drain out of the pot & then drain away from it so the pot isn't still sitting in water.
Here is the soil I bought at Atwoods. I thought it might be pretty good soil but still had this huge bag of perlite I had gotten a few weeks ago. So I mixed it & hope it drains good.
I read somewhere to sprinkle cinnamon on your potato pieces so I dumped a cheap bottle in a Ziploc & threw a few in the bag, shook it to coat them. I think this is to keep pests away.
Once the plants start growing, I'll add compost & soil.
Today is a really sad day for me. Today - April 1st - is the day my dog Bear didn't come home four years ago. I don't know why it still bothers me so. Why I still send a little prayer up that he's alive & being treated good or if he died, he never knew pain or fear or any kind of suffering. We live in a rural area with houses sometimes a mile apart & not many have fenced yards so sometimes dogs go "hunting" but mostly they stay in their yards or nearby. The neighbor across the road has a pond so the dogs would go over there for a dip. Totally ignoring the large kiddie pool filled with clean water in their own yard. Bear, his litter mate Axle, & my husband's dog Sweetie had a routine. Outside to potty first thing in the morning, run back in for breakfast, & away for whatever adventures they did. They would come back mid-day, running in & gulping water like there wasn't a pond, a creek, & ditches. Bear was food aggressive & would be eating his food, staring at you & growling at you but we always ignored him. But I guess this made him the alpha because he plopped himself right in front of the box fan I had going just for them. In the winter it was a space heater. They would sometimes leave the yard again but mostly they would stay. I would feed them a second time in the evening & everyone went out for a final potty break. Bear had arthritis or hip dsyplasia & sometimes would be downright grouchy. He would get stiff & refuse to come inside. So we'd have to lure him with treats.
All of our animals have been spayed or neutered (except the puppy who was dumped here two months ago) but at the time Bear disappeared, neither he or Axle had been neutered. We had signed up for a low cost program & had been approved & paid our part but was waiting for an opening at the vet's. I wonder if he would have been neutered if that would have made a difference. If maybe he smelled some female & got far enough from home that he couldn't find home. Or someone thought he had been dumped & killed him. I pray no one used him as bait for fighting. A valid concern because some people do not treat animals good at all here. We never saw the point in keeping collars on them or having them microchipped since they are all mixed breed dogs. Another concern is snakes. We have venomous snakes like copperhead, cottonmouth/water moccasin, pygmy rattler, & timber rattles. Bear tried killing any snake he saw & had even been bitten before but recovered.
Here are photos of Bear & Axle. Their mother was a husky dumped here & their father was a corgi dumped about a mile down the road. He made it to our house & we fed him for a year but he never let us get near him. He died from what I suspect was distemper. Once I saw him become noticeably sick I tried tricking him into an old pen so I could then get him into a kennel & a vet. But I was too late. The mother was run over by my neighbor. I believe Axle may have been the runt. He had seizures so I brought him in & babied him for a week or two. He never had seizures again but he looked to me as mama & he was a little "slow".
Weren't they cute??!!!!
Here's one when they're a little older but still puppish.
As they got older......
When Bear went missing my heart shattered in a million pieces. Just not knowing if he was suffering somewhere just about killed me. I drove up & down nearby roads, parking & then walking to see if he was in a ditch. Called the closest neighbors. Talked to the mail carrier.
Watching how Axle reacted was just as painful. He stopped playing & spent hours yelping in all directions, calling for his brother. He stayed glued to me & stayed in the yard. He was always coming up to me & getting more petting & attention. This went on for months. He finally started to slowly play but he still acts aggressive towards our other male.
I don't think I would be like this if I had closure, no matter how painful the truth is.
I bought this booklet (more like a 23 page pamphlet) at a thrift store. It was written back in 1976 by siblings Doreene Clement, Clint Clement, Denni Simmons, & Denni's husband Glenn Simmons.
I bought it so that one day I could make macrame plant hangers but I still haven't gotten around to it. I realize people can Google instructions or watch YouTube videos but I'm old school & hate the thought of any written material disappearing. So I decided to preserve it here. I apologize in advance for the quality of the pictures.
This was part of the introduction:
>>>>>> After you have gained some experience & you desire to create your own designs, here is a hint: In general, you should cut your cords in a ratio of 5 to 1. That is, cut each cord 5 yards long for every yard of desired finished length. This will help you know how to cut your cords when creating your own patterns.
Many kinds of cord can be used.
ππππππTERMSπππππ
Tie Cords: Right & left side cords used to tie knots over filler cords
Filler Cords: Center cords that other cords are tied around
Sinnet: Vertical row of knots using the same group of cords
Row: A horizontal series of knots, which may be from different groups
Alternate Cords: Taking 2 cords from each of 2 different sinnets to form a new group
