Raised Bed and Lasagna Gardening

One day there's nothing up in the raised bed and the next the plants are 3 inches tall!

Green Beans:

Radishes

Coming right along:

My hubby re-glued my teacup bird feeders.  I plan to place them in Mama's little memorial garden area amongst the pink double knock out roses:

The beginnings of a lasagna garden.  Looks ugly now, but hopefully it will be a beautiful vegetable bed eventually, maybe for a small Fall garden.  HERE is one article on this easy and interesting gardening method.

In my kitchen, I have a little can with a step pedal that opens the top.  Inside I drop coffee grounds with the filter, teabags, peelings, egg shells and the like.  The small bucket inside the can lifts out and I scatter the contents on the newspaper covered area.  I also scattered a little garden dirt as a layer and we will add grass clippings and yard waste also.  There will be lots of layers, just like making lasagna.

"No Cost" and Fun Activities With Kids

My grandson enjoyed his Easter Treasure Hunt so much, we decided to do it again.  I wish I had thought of doing them with my children when they were small, but it never occurred to me and I guess they just weren't into pirates and such.  Its a NO COST activity. 

All you need is some kind of a box that you fill with things you find around your house. Things in the box this time were a few small toys, a small battery operated clock that no longer works, a freebie key chain, some fake blue jewels, a freebie pen and pad of paper, etc.  You can find "treasures" around the house or you can go all out and buy some things you know your child likes.  You can be on the look out for things to go in a future treasure box.  One idea is to eat a Kids Meal for your lunch and save the toy for the treasure box.

Draw a simple map with a starting point, and lines going all over your yard stopping at different things.  On the above map there are stopping points like:  clothesline, barn, fence, field, big trees, shade garden, and finally the treasure.

Kids love hide and seek and Easter egg hunts, so treasure hunts are right up their alley!

I wrapped the box in a towel and placed it on the bench.  You should have seen the big smile when he spotted it!

A home made treasure hunt is a frugal and fun thing to do with your little one.

Recycling in the Garden

The wind has been whipping my poor little pepper plants all week and I'm not sure they'll make it! So hubby cut the bottom off these Diet Coke bottles and placed them around the plants to protect them a little. He removed the cap so that there would be enough air circulation.
 

Blurry early morning cell phone pic!

A milk jug experiences a second life protecting this tomato plant.

 

We also reuse milk jugs all the time by filling them with water.  Its easy to grab one and water newly set out plants or containers.

Have a great weekend!

Living With The Enemy...

We knew it was coming...

Up Close and Personal

The soil was prepared with its tell tale strips of wind break grass...

Tractors were moving in as we left for work Monday morning.  In fact, started showing up the Sunday before...

Early morning deception.  The enemy even looks beautiful in the early morning sun.

The enemy sits in straight rows like soldiers in line

This will be my view out the back door until Fall...

Yes, my friend.  The tobacco has been set out right in my back yard.  I haven't been this close to it since the Summer of 1975, when I helped harvest it.  That's 38 years!  I will be posting pictures of its growth as time goes by. 

Farmhouse Gardening....

Spring fever has hit here and every spare moment has been spent trying to put the winter yard back into spring and summer shape.

I love this little wheel barrow my hubby gave me several years ago. This year I put some purple pansies and Mexican Heather in it.

Lots of my perennials have not come back this year, but I spotted this Bleeding Heart blooming.  Its small, but alive.

I planted green beans, bell pepper, radishes, cucumbers, a grape tomato and some marigolds in this raised bed.  I will put down some kind of mulch once the plants come up.

The cucumbers will run up the trellis and posts at the end.

A tomato plant in a big pot.

More purple flower goodness.

That must have been a big bird that left that feather!

I planted my annual Zinnias here.

I am doing some landscape vegetable gardening and so there are squash planted here along with the flowers.

I'm working on this little area.  The roses are in memory of Mama.  They are pink double knockouts.

One little bud about to open.

I have a new Rosemary plant that I will pot up and add to this area.  I read that Rosemary is for remembrance of a loved one.

The weather this week is back to cooler than normal.  That's good and bad.  Good because the transplants won't wilt as much.  Bad because it is about 40 degrees outside this AM and I think they probably don't like that either!

Busy!

I've been kind of scarce on this blog lately! We have been so busy. Two weekends in a row of non-stop commitments and then full work weeks in between make for no time to do much else.

But, this weekend looks wide open and I hope to finish up and start some projects. Here's what we've been working on after work this week:

Veggie and flower planting are on the agenda!

I gotta run to get ready for work! Have a great Thursday.

Glimpses of Home

Scrappy Paradise Quilt. Picture from my other blog. I love the crosses in the sky!  The soil in the background is prepared for setting out tobacco plants, which will take place in a couple of weeks or so. 

Late afternoon when shadows are long.

The pansies are coming along nicely. They honestly looked about dead when I put them in the pot.

Guard frog beside a Ghost Plant.  This plant is so brittle!  You can barely brush against it and leaves will fall off.  This is its way of propagating itself though.  The leaves that fall to the ground root and make babies.  This plant also survives the winter with no trouble, despite its being originally from warmer climates.

Couldn't resist this pink Geranium growing in a red watering can.

I took this picture just last week.  It seems like a long time ago because last week was still winter-like and this week is summer-like!

 

 

Enjoy your Thursday!

Some Vintage Items From Mama

These are some bowls that belonged to my Mama. I will forever remember them being filled to the brim with her homemade potato salad, boiled and fried new potatoes, chicken pastry, butter beans or corn. Maybe that is where I got my love for carbs... probably so.

I will mostly just display them in my kitchen, because it would be a rare occasion when I would make enough of any one food to fill one of those big bowls. But, Mama filed them up often.

This is her flour sifter.

These are the type of things I love to collect and display in our farm house, but knowing they belong to my Mama make them even more special.

Treasure Hunt!

My grandson loves all things about pirates and treasure. So, we didn't have just an ordinary egg hunt at our house, we had a real treasure hunt!

We made a homemade treasure box and 100 year old map.

The map had all the things a real 100 year old treasure map would have:  a compass rose, starting point, landmarks, red X showing where the treasure can be found and wrinkles and raggedy edges.  HERE are the instructions for making a 100 year old treasure map.

The treasure box was an old tackle box that we sprayed with just a little gold paint and decorated with some stick on jewels.  Inside we placed lots of "shiny" things.  I raided a drawer that contained old watches that had no monetary value, old costume jewelry, etc.  We put in a few old coins and other odd treasure.

With some help, my grandson followed the map, stopping at landmarks such as a red chair, birdhouses, a flower pot, the red truck, the meadow and more. At each landmark there was a bright shiny egg. After finding each egg he would move on to the next landmark.

Finally after much running around with giggling and happiness, the treasure was found under some twigs.

Our boy was very happy and had a great time!

After the treasure hunt, we then had a traditional egg hunt.

I hope my grandson will always remember the treasure hunt and Easter egg hunt that he had at Grandma's house when he was a little boy.