It's a Good Day

Today has been filled so many good little things!  I just feel the need to share my gratitude for these tiny blessings...

Derek's mom loaned me her car for the weekend while she's out of town attending JazzFest in New Orleans.  Freedom.  Independence.  IT. NEVER. FELT. SO. GOOD.  Plus it's a pretty cool car!  She drives a 2011 (I think) black Chevy Cruze.  I like the way it handles.  I like it a lot.  I actually told Derek I could get used to having a little sedan like this instead of another SUV... which has been my stated preference for ease in hauling dogs around when we can get stable enough to replace my vehicle.  But now I'm thinking I can crowd them into the backseat and they'll be just fine.

I went to pay the note on his car earlier in the afternoon.  The nearest branch of the bank that holds the note is inside a Kroger not terribly far from the house.  They were doing Customer Appreciation Day so I got hor d'oeuvres (aka over-cooked chicken nuggets from the store's deli and nibbles from a fresh veggie tray) and a bright blue frosted cupcake.  Hey!  That's meat, vegetables and dessert... that counts as a FREE lunch!!

And while I was inside Kroger I remembered to pick up the garlic that I forgot when we grocery shopped earlier in the week and need because it is one of the absolute necessary and key ingredients in the marinade for the Cambodian Chicken Skewers I'm planning on making for dinner tomorrow.  And it was on sale so I got 2 with the thought I'll have at least one full head to break apart and plant in the garden and then hopefully we can be "garlic self-sufficient" starting this fall.

When I came out of the store, I found $1 in the parking lot.  Woohoo!  Mad money!!

Thinking they're crappy but will do the job I need it to I stopped at the Dollar General by my house and got a broom.  Last time I noticed they were $2.  But now the same brooms cost even less... today it was priced at $1.75.

Ace Hardware shares their parking lot (for now, but they're moving when the new building is finished) so I walked over there to look at their plants and picked out a 4-pack of really good looking 'Beefsteak' tomatoes.  When I got home I noticed there's 5 plants in the plastic tray.  Score!!  Now I just need to get me outside and get a spot to plant them prepared.  I think I'm already just a little on the late side for getting a garden in but it should be ok since the growing season is quite long.

A nice man at Church has offered me strawberry starts from his garden.  I'm hoping to go get them Monday afternoon... but while I was looking at plants I noticed the strawberries there.  Holy moly!  6 scraggly little plants are priced at $3.99.  Getting pretty much all I can use for FREE... major SCORE!!

Considering all the doom and gloom of my recent past, I think today isn't just good, "IT'S GGGRRREEEAAATTTTTT!!"  (I bet you thought that in the voice of Tony Tiger... of Frosted Flakes fame.  Yes, I blatantly and unashamedly stole that quote... sorry Kellogg's.)

Forgotten Skills

Photo credit:  Village Green Network

One of the Facebook/Blog pages I follow started this morning off with these words:  "Amazing how a decision to start growing your own food cascades into so many different things in your life. New friends (invaluable support), baking your own bread, making your own taco seasoning, making your own laundry soap. The list goes on and on..."  (Karen Taylor of Old Pa Farm) Not sure my list of mostly forgotten skills would look exactly like that but the words and sentiment got me thinking about how many old and [by many people] forgotten skills I use in my day.  Some things I do because it's how I learned to do it growing up and some is a conscious choice for either thrift or to leave an environmentally softer footprint on the Earth.

I garden.  Most years I do anyway.  And I will be when this coming Spring finally gets itself underway.  In the past I've used much the same methods I learned from my Dad - organic for the most part but willing to bring in a chemical for limited use if I found myself dealing with a pest I couldn't otherwise control.  In the past, I've hired someone to rototill the ground but this year I'm going to experiment with creating permaculture beds.  That's something I'm pretty excited about!

I preserve garden produce for later use.  This summer I want to make red and green salsa, dilly beans, apple pie filling, applesauce, spaghetti sauce, garlic preserved in vinegar, sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, refrigerator dill pickles, strawberry freezer jam, frozen diced tomatoes, and several dried herb blends.

I cook from scratch.  Well, sometimes.  I admit a lot more boxed stuff has slipped in during the past 18 months.  It's been a time of big adjustments that affect all parts of my life and that's part of the reason that real cooking has fallen by the wayside.  It's something I laugh about now and then, but Derek loves the TGI Friday's(TM) Tater Skins from the freezer isle and would eat them 3-4 times a week... I about had a heart attack right there in the frozen food section when I saw the price and started making them at home.  Mine are so much better he tells everyone that they "are the bomb!" And I want to get back to even more real cooking over the coming months.  One of the first things I plan on doing is getting my sourdough starter going again and making our bread.

I make many of my own cleaning products.  Again, I've slipped a little in doing this but getting back to it more and more.  I've found that I can make my own product that is very effective for much less money. Some of my forays in cleaning products have been laundry soap, dryer sheets, and a concoction (I hope I can replicate) that did an awesome job getting puppy stains out of our carpets.

I create things.  For Christmas I made Derek an afghan in his favorite sports team colors and since we have serious lack of bedding (thanks, in part, to puppy chewing) it's been helpful in keeping him warm on some of those unusually cold nights we've had lately.  Over the last year and a half I also made some of the items we've gifted for birthdays and Christmas, cards, our potholders and some of the decor on our walls.  Several items have used recycled or re-purposed materials.  I love that it saves money, but even more I love that it is unique, kind of quirky and very personal.

I do my own home repairs and upgrades.  Inasmuch as it's safe and I have the skills to do a reasonably good job, I do my own repairs and upgrades.  A recent example was replacing a burned out breaker in our box.  Calling an electrician would have run around $100.  A few friends telling me it was an easy do-it-yourself job and a Youtube tutorial later, I did it myself.  The new breaker cost $11.84, including tax.  Money savings aside, it was a powerful feeling when I flipped that switch and everything worked!

I get to know my neighbors.  For me, a sense of community is important.  I am a naturally friendly person and I like finding people nearby who can share information and skills and, sometimes, garden tools.  Besides, being sociable is a good skill to have... so many of us suffer from nearly unbearable loneliness these days.  I also want to try and barter for things I can't do on my own like get our one neighbor who co-owns a dog grooming business with his daughter to cut the dog's toe nails.  I've talked to him a number of times about gardening and learned that he's diabetic and baked goods won't appeal as a trade off... so I'm hoping this summer to woo him into a barter arrangement with lots of fresh garden-ripe tomatoes!

Could I do more?  Sure.  Will I?  In time, probably.  I've already started a list of upgrades and additions for the 2015 garden...

There's An App For That

Do you forage for food?

I'd never exactly put that word to it until recently, but I do.  I always have.  I grew up with parents who were foragers.  Some of my favorite childhood memories are fruit picking trips cleverly disguised as weekend family camping trips.  Not far outside of Shelley, ID (my... how far I've wandered!) you can, or at least you could 30-40 years ago, drive up into the mountains through Wolverine Canyon.  We did that a lot when I was kid because, looking at it with today's insight, it was both nearby and filled with resources.

I remember 'harvesting' these things in Wolverine Canyon:

• Chokecherries
• Elderberries
• Currants (Yellow, Red and Black ones)
• Oregon Grapes
• Crawfish
• Trout
• Deer
• Sage Hen
• All kinds of fallen trees for firewood
• Watercress

We'd bring one or more of these things home on any given trip.  The next day or two would be devoted to preserving (except the crawfish and watercress which were always used fresh) the bounty for later use.  Chokecherries, Elderberries, Currants and the Grapes were quickly turned into jams and jellies.  The trout was filleted and sage hens cut up and either frozen or canned.  Deer was usually processed at a local butcher who would do game meat.  And wood was chopped down into smaller pieces to burn as supplemental heat all winter.

A few times my dad cut Chokecherry branches that had naturally formed into a good shape for a cane or walking stick and then peeled back the bark, shaved them smooth with his pocket knife and, when they were well dried, oiled them so they are a luscious natural wood finish.   Later they were cut to height as he sold or gifted them away.  I still have the one he made especially for my mom and if I shrink the way she did in her later years one day it will be the right height for me, too.

It was just a normal part of how we lived.

Just like picking asparagus growing along the roadsides in the spring...  Or picking the extra apples, with permission of course, from a neighbor's tree for juice, jelly, apple sauce, pie filling and dehydrated apple chips.

Some day make your own apple chips!  Try dipping the apple slices in cinnamon and sugar before drying.  Or... my favorite:  strawberry banana jello powder.

Everywhere I've been after that it's a normal thing to mentally tally the resources around me.  Now there's an app that will track a lot of that for me.  I signed up on Neighborhood Fruit and took a look around this morning.  It seems like a pretty new thing that doesn't have a lot of information entered in for many locales yet.  But it's an interesting idea.  One I really like and will continue to check back periodically.

On Neighborhood Fruit, you can both enter information about fruit you have available to others who will come glean it and search for those opportunities for yourself.  Some estimates say that as much as 80% of the fruit growing in backyards around the country is not used while the fruit we do eat is grown in water-intensive orchards far from our homes.  That just doesn't make sense to me.  It's not sustainable or responsible.

In the spring, I have every intention of adding fruit trees to my yard.  And I know they'll produce more than I could ever hope to use myself.  I will be entering them on Neighborhood Fruit.

Fence Install Day

After weeks of wanting this done so badly I felt like I was counting the minutes:  WE HAVE A FENCED YARD!!

Puppies may run at will with no lead to get tangled up and wrapped around their legs!  And yes, they love it!!  Their sloppy happy gushing wet kisses show me it's so...

First the installers and supplies arrive and they unload the truck.

The parts are laid out near where they'll be used.

Post holes are dug, posts are set and concreted into place.

Three rails are added to the structure.

The wire mesh backing is stapled into place and the gate is built.

The extra board is nailed in place so the wire
mesh is securely tied to each post.

The gate gets its hardware and the top is cut to shape.

Just like that we have a fenced yard!

(I say just like that... but it took two men working from about 8:30 this morning until close to 8:00 this evening to do all the work!)

Lizard in the House

Between trips up to shuffle dogs in and outside, I sat down and was looking at Facebook and Pinterest... you know, killing time.  Something caught my attention on the floor near our walkout basement door and when I got up to investigate it was a little lizard, maybe 2 1/2 to 3 inches long, with gray and tan stripes going the length of its body and a brilliant blue tail.

Decision point:  Do I freak out, climb back on the couch with my legs tucked under me screaming "Lizard!!" and hyperventilating or do I worry more about if it's poisonous or just a curiousity if the dogs get ahold of it?

It's already been a rough day with dogs making messes (and chewing up remotes and 'helping' me bring dirty clothes down to the laundry) and price gouging by a plumber.  Of all the service people I've ever needed to call in to help on a house project, it's the plumber that always leaves me feeling like my checkbook has been raped.  Seriously... It was almost $300 to replace a 7" piece of copper pipe and another $200 to flush the drain in our shower.  I shot him down when he wanted $215 each to put handles on the water spigots outside.  That's a $2 part at Home Depot and while I have no clue how to do it right now, I'm a smart girl and for that price I will figure it out.

Enough rant.  Obviously, the plumber has me a little disgruntled and upset...  So freaking out about the lizard would have been easy.  Oh, what a fit I could have pitched!

But I didn't.

I Googled it instead.  If the reports about the NSA keeping tabs on our computer activities is true at all, I bet someone finds my Google search record both fascinating and... disturbing.  Probably more disturbing than fascinating, really.

Oh well.  Back to the lizard...

It's a Brittle Blue Tailed Lizard that's seemingly taken up residence in our basement.  It's there along with a couple of cave crickets I've been ignoring since it's supposedly bad luck to kill the little beasties and I haven't been bothered by them quite enough to find a cup, dance around like a maniac and catch them for release outside.  My laziness has granted them a reprieve and probably will with the lizard, too.  I'm not too proud to admit that.  Ignoring it gets me out of doing a lot of stuff. Or I guess if I'm putting it in more flattering terms... Unless it poses a real threat I'm pretty much of the opinion 'live and let live.'  And this little lizard doesn't seem to be any threat at all.

Photo from http://www.georgiabackyardnature.com

This one isn't who's in my basement... he (or she?) moved too fast for me to get a picture.  I didn't even get a single bad shot so I'm borrowing one from someone else who's had a lizardly encounter.  These blue tails are non-poisonous, eat lots of insects in the garden and around the foundation of a house.  I understand they will bite if cornered and provoked, but it sounds like even the bite is no big deal to human or dog.  That bright blue tail is a decoy device and it breaks off if you grab it then the lizard grows a new one.  Going out on a limb here and saying that's the 'brittle' part of it's name?

All those advice memes urging you to do something you've never done before... yeah, I think I'm good on new things for awhile now.  Thank you very much!  Seems like almost every day lately has been throwing me into doing new things.  Willingly often; otherwise pretty frequently, too.

Hydrangea Progression

It's the first time in my life I've ever lived in a climate where hydrangeas grow so I watched their development with utter delight.  They're very much waned and ready to be cut back now but I thought it would be fun to share how the blossoms progressed from bud through peak.  I love that the particular variety and soil conditions here produced flowers that are my absolute favorite color!

Budding: May 14, 2013

May 30, 2014

June 2, 2013

June 5, 2013

June 10, 2013

June 18, 2013

Their peak: June 27, 2013

Tree Sleuth

For awhile I've been, with varying degrees of effort, trying to find out what some of the trees in our yard are. I recognize the leaves of the oaks and maples and the needles of the pines and cypress but there are more that are a complete mystery to me.  It was made a bit more urgent today when I pried an immature fruit/nut from one of the unidentified trees out of Lightning's mouth.  Luckily I happened on a website called Native Plants for Georgia and found some quick answers!

They identify this as a Tulip Poplar, a member of the magnolia family, and is one of the leaves I've been curious about.  I've seen 3-4 of these in the edges of our woods.  All but one of ours are about 2 feet high, but the website says they can grow to 80-100 feet and have these orange-yellow tulip-like flowers in April and early May.

The green nut I took away from the dog appears to be from a Mockernut Hickory tree.  At least it's not something that will poison them!  Two of the three trees nearest the house have leaves like this (the other is an oak) and have been dropping green, though growing, nuts when the wind blows the last week or so.

I also learned we have one or more Sweetgums, most easily identified (to me, anyway) by these spiky seed husks that I think will make great additions to pine cone laden Christmas wreaths!

And our plentiful pines are Long Leaf Pines.  Their habit of only having needle bundles on high branches, an environmental adaptation from enduring fires on the coastal plains, makes them a good canopy tree in our woods.  Unlike the shallow root ball I'm accustomed to seeing on pine species, these have a deep tap root.  Learning that makes me feel better about a couple of them that are clinging to the edge of where a former inhabitant of this property graded for better drainage around the house.  Their large cones will also make welcome addition to the wreaths I'm dreaming about making for the coming holiday season.

This leaf was a contender when I was trying to identify the figs... which I'm beginning to doubt are in my yard.  It's a Sassafras tree.  Best collected in the fall, the dried and crushed leaves can be used to flavor gumbo.  I'll have to keep that in mind and gather some...

And it seems we have 2-3 different varieties of oak. Some produce acorns of a good size and others are so small that 3 will fit on the surface of a quarter... Another interesting addition to the holiday wreath building.

As you can see we have a pretty diverse woods.  And I'm excited to see that many of the trees have leaves that turn colors in the fall.  I bet the display of yellow, gold, amber, and red will be beautiful!

Adam's Skivvies

Adam might be right at home here. I got his favorite undies in the back yard... The first man wore the leaves to hide his nakedness once he realized his junk was out there but I don't recall that the Bible says he ate the figs.  He might have.  Lots of people do.

I don't.  At least I never have.  And I don't think I'd like them much.

Or maybe I'm judging them unfairly?

The only fig I've ever tasted, as far as I know, is one of those dried up brown chunks of yuckiness you find in the grocery store's produce section wrapped tightly in plastic on a little meat tray during the holidays.  I did not like it!  Not even a little bit.  I don't like raisins or dates, either, so not liking the figs could be anticipated.  But maybe there's still hope!  I'd venture a guess that it's all the extra sugar, but I don't mind a Fig Newton now and then.  Can't say those are ever my first choice in cookies, but they're not terrible by any means.

And I'm not really sure I've ever seen a fresh fig.  In pictures, yes, but not up close and personal. Figs were just not a fruit crop that grew in Idaho or Utah... but apparently they are in Georgia.

On several occasions, I've spent a little time talking to one of my neighbors.  He's quite the gardener and an awesome source of knowledge about the neighborhood, stuff that went on in this house before we bought it, what kinds of plants grow wild in the woods, Civil War history, and all sorts of other stuff.  A couple of days ago, he told me he was sure I'd find some wild fig trees somewhere out in the wooded section of our back yard because he has some.

Which, oddly, he keeps even though he says he doesn't care much for the fruit.

I say keeping them is odd because he told me he had more than 40 trees removed from his lot so you'd think a couple more that he doesn't really love would be no big thing.  He may keep them for his mom.  He did say that sometimes she comes and gets enough to make a batch of fig preserves.  She likes the stuff.  I'm sure (at least I hope) it's very much tastier than I'm imagining right now.

But I digress...

I've been wanting to go look for these fig trees so I can keep Derek from chopping them down before I get a chance to decide if I want one.  Or two.  Or maybe even three since more trees give more coverage from looking through to a neighboring house on the other side of the woods.

And them looking through at us... eek!!

Here are a couple of pictures I found to help me know what to look for:

Photo credit: http://allotmentheaven.blogspot.com/2011/01/fig-ficus.html
Lot's of good info on figs in that blog post!

Photo credit: http://allotmentheaven.
blogspot.com/2011/01/fig-ficus.html

There are a few trees with similar leaves out there.  Guess I'll just have to pay attention and keep looking for fruit.  I learned today that they don't flower first; the blossom is inside the fruit and never emerges into the daylight.

Adam might have found them to be his comfy clothes but I like a bit more coverage than these leaves would provide!  While the leaves of what I think might be fig trees out in our woods are somewhat bigger than on the surrounding trees, they're just not enough...  Guess I need to do my shopping at the plus-size fig tree!!

Any thoughts how I use figs? Favorite recipes?  Gotta decide if they earn a spot to stay!

Great... We Have Ticks!

Not the wildlife I would have preferred to encounter... but we seem to have a tick problem.  The dogs have picked up a couple of them.  I found one in my hair, thankfully still unattached.  And tonight there was one crawling across the blanket we keep on the couch for evenings that are a little cool for comfort.

I'm ready to end the meet and greets with yucky insects that I've never seen before!

The dogs have been treated with flea and tick medication so hopefully they are probably safe.  Although I did find one attached to that soft belly skin a couple days after the treatment and that does give me some concern.

male     female
http://www.tickinfo.com/TICKIDPAGE.htm

The identification guide I googled makes me think they are American Dog Ticks which are closely related to Rocky Mountain Wood Ticks and Gulf Coast Ticks.  And, sadly, can be carriers for the same diseases:  Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Tuleremia and may carry Human Granulocytic Ehrlichiosis.  (I'm not even sure what those last 2 are but guessing they are bad.)

The picture is 2-3X larger than the real life ticks I've seen.  And even the couple that had attached were still unengorged and going by the picture all have been male.  The engorged females look even more unsavory...

Left to Right: unengorged female, 1/4 engorged, 1/2 engorged and fully engorged
http://www.tickinfo.com/americandogtick.htm

Our brushy and wooded lot is their perfect habitat.  They live, in large numbers, in tall grass and jump off onto any warm-blooded creature that wanders by.  As I said, the dogs have had a flea and tick treatment.  But we still check them, and us, daily.  And I'm exploring ways to kill and/or repel them even more.  What I've found so far says that if we treat our clothing with permethrin it will kill any who try to hitch a ride there and that DEET-based skin repellent helps repel them.

So what is permethrin?  Where do I get it?  How do I use it?  And is it safe?

Wikipedia has this to say:  "Permethrin is a common synthetic chemical, widely used as an insecticide, acaricide, and insect repellent. It belongs to the family of synthetic chemicals called pyrethroids and functions as a neurotoxin, affecting neuron membranes by prolonging sodium channel activation. It is not known to rapidly harm most mammals or birds, but is dangerously toxic to cats and fish."  And that in agriculture, "its use is controversial because, as a broad-spectrum chemical, it kills indiscriminately; as well as the intended pests, it can harm beneficial insects including honey bees, and aquatic life."

That's not sounding like a very safe to use chemical.  And DEET comes with its own set of reasons to avoid it.

So far the only more natural controls I've found are to mow the grass as close to the ground as possible to eliminate their habitat and to spray the yard with citronella oil.

Off to find citronella oil!

Just talking about ticks is making me itch and imagine crawling sensations all over my body.  Ewwww...

The Wildflowers of Reynolds's Woods

It's still hard to believe this is my back yard!

Some days I just look out there in amazement wondering what in the world I did right to get this view.  I wandered the edges of our woods this morning snapping pictures while the dogs romped and played and enjoyed the sunshine.

Here's a "taller" look at the same area on the west side.  Isn't it pretty?  Further over, by that neighbor's fence, is the very much not attractive brushy patch.

And this is the far eastern edge of our woods where I want to fill in with some tall bushes and block out the view of this neighbor's house.  If you look really closely at that dead tree in the middle, you'll see 3 hollowed out nesting spots.  Not sure what kind of bird is using them but it's call is loud and it favors the darkness.  Sometimes the little fella is still telling his story to the world well after midnight!

There are so many birds and bugs and plants I've yet to learn names for...

It seems that much of the brushy patch on the west of our lot is filled with blackberries.  Yum!  We've been talking about putting a swimming pool in this area sometime in the future.  And before that happens I will be transplanting some of these so there's a supply for fresh fruit, jam and maybe even the occasional pie.  I love blackberries and it's been years since I had any fresh from the vine.

Between what I think is a locust tree and one of the oak trees there are several of these.  I think they are blue bells.  And I hope they spread and that there are more of them next spring!

So pretty!

I have no idea at all what these little pale lavender-colored flowers are but there are half a dozen little clumps of them  in the semi-level area we thinking would be perfect for a fire pit.  Like I've said out loud a few times, it's probably a weed, but I like them so they are staying put.

And these little white flowers, that I think are some variety of wild aster, are growing all over the yard and into the edge of the woods.

I really favor leaving the woods very natural.  No fussy manicured lawn here!  All it needs is a bit of cleaning up fallen dead wood and a few supplemental wild flowers and flowering bushes to add punches of drama to be perfect!!

A Chance Encounter With Local Wildlife

Today has been more than a little nerve-wracking... It's awfully hard to be at the mercy of someone else's mortgage lender who seems to have less than an appropriate level of interest in getting this deal closed.  Someday I'm sure all the stress they are causing will be the makings for a funny story.  But that day is not today!  So a chance encounter with some local wildlife was a welcome, if short, distraction.

I walked outside to get some papers out of my car and noticed a small lizard sunning itself on the rocks of a retaining wall between this and the neighboring property which sits a bit higher on the hillside.  It wasn't very happy to pose for my picture taking pleasure but I was able to snap this with my cell phone before it scurried off and after getting some friends to take a look we decided it was probably an Eastern Fence Lizard (a.k.a. prairie lizard, fence swift, gray lizard, or pine lizard depending on your locale).

The skin was sort of a mottled gray and from nose to tail tip I'd guess it measured about 4 inches long.  As it scooted along, the underbelly appeared light, almost white.  (Which may mean it was a female... everything I found online said the males are browner and have blue-colored bellies.)

Google confirmed the identity and came up with some other facts about this cute little reptile.

Wait.  Did I just say "cute" and "reptile" in the same sentence?

I did not see that coming!

Wikipedia gives the genus name as Sceloporus undulatus.  Sceloporus is derived from the Greek word "skelos" (meaning leg) combined with the Latin word "porus" (meaning hole) in reference to this lizard breed's large femoral pores.   "Undulatus," Latin for wave, refers to the transverse dark crossbars on their backs.  And it says this 4-7 1/2 inch long lizard is found in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Southern Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Mississippi, Delaware, northern Florida, and southern New Jersey and that there's also an isolated population in southeastern New York.

A little more digging around other websites uncovered much the same information but I also learned that they are non-venomous.  Most people who were posting pictures and comments and articles weren't overly concerned when their kids caught these little lizards or the cat drug a mortally wounded one home and left his gift of prey on the doorstep.

Not poison... maybe things are looking up for that cute factor!

In fact, they are among the good guys in the garden as their favorite meals include spiders and other pesky insects that we don't want nibbling on our tender and expensive plants.  So I say welcome to my world, and munch on little lizard, munch on!!

People who've lived here for awhile tell me to expect to see lots of them.  They say there'll be gray ones and  brown ones and green ones... oh my!

Acts of Eco-Terrorism

I guess it's fair to start off with an admission... I am a tree lover.

My heart makes a little lurch from sadness when wind blows a tree over or someone does something stupid and hits one with their car.  I can't help but think those shattered branches must be painful.  And it makes me unhappy when they get torn up for urban development.

Ok.  There are exceptions.  Notably these 3 trash trees that were so prolific in my yard and neighborhood back in Utah (and I'm sure other places, too, but I'm hoping not in Georgia!).  Most people called one of them either a Chinese Elm or a Siberian Elm.  I was told once that neither of those is correct but my hatred for that kind of tree is so strong I almost immediately forgot its right name.  This is the trash tree that drops those zillions of seeds in late spring that look like over-sized oatmeal.  And every blasted one of them that touches ground sprouts.  They can grow as much as 10 feet a year so within a single growing season you're dealing with a good sized tree.  Another one that was found very frequently in that area was called the Tree of Paradise.  It had big yellow cones of flowers in the spring that produced copious amounts of pollen that for many people that brought on allergies of a crippling scale.  And it smelled bad... not like something died bad, but very unpleasant.  It also dropped seeds that sprouted with extreme ease and grew quickly.  These sappling trees, when you tried to pull them, slipped their bark off all wet and slippery and they emitted that same foul odor.   The  other tree to garner my ire is a Box Elder more for the nasty, cannibalistic, red and black colored bugs it attracts en masse than for anything else.  These trees are some I'd be happy to live without in my world and I've happily hacked many of them down.

Does that make me an eco-terrorist?

I guess it's possible the answer to that question depends on your point of view.  The trees probably felt terrorized.  But I wasn't protesting anything... just getting rid of trash from the yard.

Eco-terrorism is not new.  For my whole life I've heard of rogue environmentalists turning animals in fur farms loose and driving huge metal spikes in pine trees to damage logging equipment.  It's dangerous and I don't advocate doing it any more than I like to see the devastation of clear cut deforestation following a logging operation.  But it's a fact of life that both have happened and in some places continue to happen to this day.  Man is hard on his environment.  Oftentimes much harder on it than is needful for the continued existence of humankind.

Photo credit:  http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?
fbid=480842885305117&set=a.212356272153781.
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I do have to admit, though, this is the first time I've seen this form of eco-terrorism:  illegally ripping up a piece of developed land to plant a tree.  And I don't support it either.  In all likelihood, that tree will be removed and destroyed and the road will be patched and life will go on.  All this activist will have accomplished is to waste the money to buy the tree, the time and effort to get it planted, the time, effort and wages of the city workers to remove it and patch the road.  And in the end, the tree is dead.

It's sad.  No one wins in this situation.  Or maybe that's the point... no one wins but it does get attention.

I think this is the most dangerous kind of eco-terrorism because it tugs so hard at the heart.  Part of me wants to applaud and hope the tree will stand as a monument of protest to urban sprawl but I just can't bring myself to encourage all the other idiots out there.

So I'm showing you and rambling on trying to say don't do stupid stuff.  There are better ways to make the world a better place and get your point across.   Get more creative and stay legal.

What To Do With Old Tires

I think the picture is pretty self-explanatory.  No, I haven't done this.  Yet.

Actually, I just wanted to pin it on Pinterest but since I found the link on Facebook and you can't pin directly from there and I couldn't find a way to get this specific picture into a format that would work, I'm blogging it here specifically so I can pin it.  And yes, that you can post from Pinterest to Facebook but you can't pin from Facebook to Pinterest annoys me.  It really annoys me today...

For those of you who want to trace the source back and see what other cool stuff they have, here's the link from Homesteading Self Sufficiency Survival's Facebook page.

The Lilacs Are In Bloom!

I love lilacs!  Especially these big, substantial looking, darker purple ones.   Wish I could capture their intoxicating fragrance for a wonderful potpourri.

My childhood home in Shelley had 2 very old 'lilac trees' or bushes that had been pruned over many decades so that there were huge twisted trunks with peeling bark.  Many dolly tea parties were held in the shade below...  I love that my home in Salt Lake has the same sort of lilac tree, though not nearly as big and old and gnarled, over the back of the garage with a juniper towering above and purple grapes on the fence below

With storms moving in for tonight and tomorrow they'll probably be thrashed so I took this opportunity to capture a few photos.

Can't you almost imagine the luscious heady scent wafting through the air from these beautiful blooms?

Lilacs are one of the flowers that remind me of happy childhood memories and the start of a carefree summer.  In Idaho, where the season is a bit later, lilacs were among the flowers we picked fresh in the yard to decorate family graves for Memorial Day. After a visit to the cemetery we often had a picnic and, if we were really lucky, a swim in the warm mineral pools at Heise Hot Springs.

I truly love the lilac time of year!!

Patio Lanterns & Pesto

Last summer my dearest friend, Heidi, shared a recipe for a Green Bean Pesto Salad that is both heavenly and healthy.  You'll find the recipe at the end of this post and I hope you'll try it because it is delish!  Making it (and just using the pesto on pasta) a "few" times left me with a whole bunch of cute little jars.  Even though they are imprinted Atlas Mason in the glass, and  look to be about the same size as a jelly jar, the top is smaller than any canning sealers and rings I've found.  So... they are becoming a craft/garden art project and finding new life, with the help of a roll of concrete tie wire, as hanging patio lanterns for some soft candle light on summer evenings.

I probably should have used gloves when cutting and bending the wire but you know I didn't bother with safety precautions.  And even with my reckless behavior no fingers were bloodied or permanently maimed in the process.  You can find the tie wire in a roll with the concrete and related supplies at any home improvement store.  I got mine at Lowes for less than $5.  You'll also need wire cutters, needle nose pliers and an abundance of patience.

Here's the steps:

Cut a length of wire big enough to wrap around the neck of the jar plus enough to twist the ends together to secure in place.  Don't twist it down yet, however.  Cut 2 pieces of wire about 1 inch long and form each into a small ring.  Place them on each side of the jar - this is how the handle/hanger will be secured.  Slip them onto the wire you wrapped on the jar neck and twist it down securely.  Next, form the handle/hanger.  Cut a length of wire approximately 9 inches long and using the pliers form a curly-q at each end then bend the wire up just above each curly-q and into an arch that will span the top of the jar.  It took some work and frustration and even some not-so-nice words to get the curly-qs even but with time and patience it can be done.  You can get a better look at this piece viewing the finished lantern above.

Then I decided that I wanted a bit more length in my handle/hanger and made 3 of these S shaped pieces using about 5 inches of wire for each.  They slip apart easily so if 2 ends up making the length I want it to hang that's easily accomplished.

I also made a hook for hanging it using an approximate 6-inch length of wire.

And a little dangly with some flower shaped beads to add a spot of color, movement and visual interest.







So what do you think of my first attempt at a wire project?

I'm pretty happy with it in all its quaint, rustic and imperfectedness.  Maybe by the time I finish a dozen of them I'll have it mastered!

And now, the recipe that got this whole project started:

Heidi's Green Bean Pesto Salad

1 Cup Fresh Cut Green Beans
1 tsp Sea Salt
3 Cups Cooked Salad Macaroni
1 Cup Diced Mozzarella
6-7 oz Pesto with Basil

Cover green beans with water, add sea salt, and cook until water is gone. Let beans cool then mix all ingredients together. Serve.

My Notes: I like green beans to still be a little crispy so I picked fresh from the garden and just tossed them in with the pasta the last few minutes of cooking and then drained and cooled all in a big colander with ice cold water. The crispiness added a nice texture. I also added a bit of parmesan to the mix and used half again more mozzarella. It's a family size recipe, more than I could eat in one day, and it dried out a little storing overnight in the fridge so I tossed with a tiny drizzle of olive oil the second (and again the 3rd) day.  Perfecto!


I've shared this post at FarmGirl Friday Blog Hop! #53 on White Wolf Summit Farmgirl.

Yay!! Spring!

Been spending a little time in the yard every day...  And it's starting to show.  The jungle will be tamed into submission yet!!

This area on the northeast side of my house used to be covered in Balloon Flower vines.   They were 2-3 feet deep and wide along both the foundation and the fence line. The nasty things were even crawling up under the siding!  Still have a few more to pull out from around the heat exchanger unit and the front of that little shed, but this section is pretty darned close to ready to have the newspaper, mulch and compost laid down to make nice planting beds.  It may just sit like that for a year since I'm not sure what I'm going to be planting in this mostly shady piece of yard.

And in this section leading from the patio back to the northwest corner of the house, I've started putting down the cinder block edging.  Those things are heavy! I'm glad I'm only having to carry them a few yards at a time.  My plan is to plant strawberries in the holes.  A few more weeds to pull (I ran out of oomph before I finished that today) and this section will also be ready for its layers of newspaper, mulch and compost and a few other flowers and herbs that I want to transplant here from other places in the yard.

Here's a few more pix from around the yard today.

The now lopsided Ornamental Plum in the front.  A couple of encounters with limbs from a dying Maple in the parking strip followed by snow and wind did that.  I love the tree (except for the couple of weeks in July when it's dropping fruit) and how it keeps that corner of the house shaded.  I'm hoping I can get it trimmed back and balanced out again...    The flowers are just starting to decline now so very soon it will be covered in dark red foliage and plums.  The fruit is edible.  Well, maybe I should say it isn't poisonous because the skin and just around the pit are sour enough to pucker your bottom lip right up over the top of your head!

This little bed is in the strip between my driveways.  Thought all those daffodils were pretty even though showing you this picture does highlight the need for me to get back out and remove Star of Bethlehem and out of control Trumpet Vine that just started popping up out of nowhere a couple of summers ago.  My neighbor has a Trumpet Vine that's been trained over maybe 40 years to stand like a tree.  I had visions of doing that but I think I failed in the attempt and now I'm ready to yank them out and try something else with the bed.  I haven't absolutely decided but the Trumpet Vine may find a new home crawling over the pergola type patio structure in back.  It's that or climbing roses.  Hmmm... buy rose bushes or move the trumpet vine for free.

And just because they are so cheerful, these daffodils got a closeup!  That's the last of the red Tulips and some Columbine tucked in there, too.

I really enjoy this time of year.  Yay!! Spring!