Finally, for those who need to see a copperhead snake, dead or not…
just a link to the gallery:

http://vyxxan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/deadsnake.jpg

Hugs,
Vyx

So, on to garden news and other stuffs… well, first of all BuddyMack almost killed Ron yesterday while Ron was mowing. Buddy is on a trolley and he went running back to his house while Ron was going by on the mower. Nearly took Ron OFF the mower when he got clotheslined by the chain. Ron’s face is cut up and he lost his glasses but found them again before they got stepped on or worse. I got home from work and Ron was in the house cleaning his ripped up face off. Poor Ron, his face is quite sore. BuddyMack on the other hand can probably be left off the trolley more often. He never goes running off any more… but we still live too close to that road, and I can’t be having my dog getting run over. The trolley is to keep BuddyMack safe. When Ron is mowing, though, might be a good time to let BuddyMack loose. (we let BuddyMack off when we are sitting out in the night and he’s perfectly fine, especially if we give him his own chair, lol)

Last week we had a copperhead snake in the garden, well, right up by the garden anyhow. Ron and I were walking down to look at things and nearly stepped on the snake, argh! I stopped Ron, as I saw it first, and then told him to head for his gun. He was sure it would be gone by the time he got back, but I stood there and watched the snake (and the snake watched me) and Ron was able to come back and shoot it. I don’t like killing snakes but venomous snakes in the yard are not cool at all, so they become dead. I’d rather have a dead snake than a snake bitten family member.

A few days after that I watched a mockingbird chase a nice sized black snake through the yard. I followed to see what was up, and then the snake got into a wood pile and coiled up safe from birds and nosey humans. :) Blacksnakes can climb trees and will eat baby birds, so I’m sure that’s why the mockingbird was after it, trying to keep it away from the nesting area. Those are the kind of snakes I like to see in the yard! (okay, well except for the baby birds thing)

Speaking of birds, so far all I have here at the feeders are male hummingbirds. I’m waiting for the main crowd when I’ll put up every available feeder (I have 6) and be filling them constantly. That’s when the big migration goes through… it only lasts a couple of weeks at the most, but when that’s going on I’ll have 30 to 50 birds hanging around drinking up the sugar water. Should be pretty soon.

I did take some photos to share, but I forgot to go in and resize them before starting this post, so it will have to wait. Probably no one wants to see a shot copperhead, but will want to see sunflowers that have started blooming. Oh, and I have volunteer petunias again… not a lot, but a few tough it out and come up every year. I got those seeds from Ron’s mother before she passed away… I wish I could make them thrive but my gardening is rather lazy. I’m happy if a few bloom every year. One year I had a big clump of them mixed in with weeds… and I sprayed them all with Roundup before I realized what they were.

As far as vegetables go this year, we’ve gotten to eat broccoli twice. I don’t think 4 plants was near enough. We planted twice that in cabbage, but no cabbage heads yet. What the heck I’m going to do with that much cabbage I dunno. Eat a lot of coleslaw, I guess! I’ve also been pulling up radishes. I got some German Giant radish seeds this year and boy, I love those. HUGE radishes, they go from seedling to golf ball sized in no time at all. I’ve had good crops of radishes before, but mostly NOT good. Radishes are really easy to grow, and quick, but the past couple years I haven’t gotten any to do well. Either I plant them too early, or too late, or don’t water them enough or something. I had a small crop that mostly didn’t do anything of ordinary radishes. Then I made a spot for the German Giants. I’m impressed. I’ll never grow another variety. Ron doesn’t like radishes, so I can’t plant too many, but me, I love em so I will plant a small row every spring.

I’m thinking I ought to have a farm stand this year. We did get a bit carried away with the veggie garden. Lots of potatoes didn’t come up, but what did… sheesh, that’s still more potatoes than we use in a year. Corn is always too much, but you gotta plant extra because of earworms and coons coming to steal it all away. I’ve got lots of green beans and cukes and squash, too. I forget how many tomato plants we have… too many, though. 14 I think. Even though I will freeze lots… it’s still too many. :) Along with all the grapes and blackberries… we’ll be filling the freezer up this year for sure.

Today we planted cantaloupe down in the spot below the blackberries… a triangular shaped yard between the berries and the barn. We got some 16 ft wide black plastic and laid that down about 2 weeks ago. Moved it and mowed again, and then today Ron dug up 4 spots in the middle. Then he ran some hoses and rings of soaker hose around those 4 spots and we put the plastic back over. I cut out plastic in the middles of the rings of soaker hose and planted seeds. The plastic will keep the weeds down and warm the soil up while also conserving moisture. I’d =like= to get the whole regular garden done like that, but we will see… :) Last time I grew cantaloupes there I got lots, right up until the coons found them.

Well, tomorrow I will add to this with some photos. I need to take a picture of the cantaloupe garden, anyhow, and the other stuff. Plus the new hanging basket I bought myself for Mothers Day. :)

Hugs,
Vyx

But I didn’t work hard enough at finding a different job while on unemployment, and after 5 months I got a letter from the owner calling me back to work. I dreaded it, I really did. But it wasn’t so bad when I went back as it had been when I’d left. It was still plenty bad, just in different ways. The end of July this year I’ll have been back for 3 years. I still have a lot of problems at that job, so every once in a while I look at job ads and such.

Anyhow, recently and just by chance (more on that later)… I saw an ad on Craigslist for an SMT inspector. Well, I run an SMT machine and inspect all my own work, so I’m well qualified for that. I called them up and drove over and applied. The gal who took my application said it might be a couple weeks before I heard anything. It wasn’t that long. I got a couple voice mails last Friday asking me to contact them. Had an interview today.

This place is a small company just like the one I’m at, but the differences are huge. Clean, well organized, new equipment. They are serious about stuff: I wasn’t allowed into the plant area without safety glasses and an antistatic smock. I like serious. The owner himself took the time to interview me and talk a little bit about what they’d expect from me and what I could expect from them. I was impressed with them, and I guess they were impressed with me, too.

Because yeah… I have the job. I’ll start on the Monday after my birthday. They didn’t insult me by offering me very little money and while it’s not as much as I’m making now… the commute is less than half the distance and NO towns to drive through. No traffic to speak of, in other words. Less driving is always good. That’ll probably make up the difference in pay if gas prices keep going up like they say.

The chance that let me to seeing that ad? Well, it’s that cute little kitten who turned up. She’s some little girls pet, I just know it. So I was searching the lost and found ads. Thought, well, as long as I’m here… I’ll look at the job ads, too. We can’t change her name, but if we did I’m thinking we would have to change it to Lucky. :) Lucky for me, and Lucky for her. Heh, maybe I should have let her pick out the lottery numbers when that MegaMillions was so high. :)

So, I think spring is a good time for new beginnings, whether it’s a job, a garden or something else. Life is too short to be doing stuff you dislike. I’m looking forward to starting something new.

Hugs,
Vyx

Pictures of course…

I have more photos to share, but no time tonight. My clematis is already blooming… it’s been a mild winter and spring. There is a house down the road that has some well established clematis… one of theirs is is FULL bloom and it’s like 5 or 6 feet tall up against a wall and just covered. Lovely! The other 2 plants they have are a bit slower like mine is and just starting.

I decided that this year I want a dogwood tree for my birthday present from Ron. I’m going to plant it near my clematis and then train the clematis to grow up into it, I guess. I can’t think of anything else to plant near the clematis and I need something since that gate is now down. The gate was protection for the clematis. Ron is busy taking fencing and gates down that we don’t need any more. I have to protect my plants somehow, lol! (I’m actually thinking of tomato cages for the small stuffs)

I also have a picture of yard trash… what happens when you have a ginormous maple tree in the yard. Never mind pollen and such… this tree makes about a gazillion whirlygigs every year. They all fall in the yard like so:

And now it’s nearly time for chat… so this is all for tonight.

hugs,
Vyx

Walked around the yard this evening with my camera. I’ve got tulips blooming! When I saw that they had buds I thought, oh, a couple weeks yet. Normally tulips don’t bloom this early. Nothing is normal this year.

There is another row/clump right in front of those, but they are taking their time. That’s good… I’ll have flowers for longer there.

Next up, Ron running the rototiller in my sunflower strip. We measured it, it’s 81 feet long! About 5 feet wide. I’ve got lots of different sunflower seeds to plant, but I’m also going to take a scoop of birdseed sunflowers and sprinkle them out there. It ought to be absolutely gorgeous, a giant mass planting of sunflowers.

Now, to the three piles of rocks that came out just from the rototiller. This isn’t counting the rocks that he dug up with the plow. This is why the previous owners of the property never had a garden… too many rocks.

I tried to take a photo of a grape vine budding out, but the idiot camera wouldn’t focus. On the other hand, you can see how green the field looks.

Next, on to the new extra large garden. It’s not very wide, only about 25 feet. But the length, egads, is 67 feet.

And again, from the end…

Then I walked down to the pond. I feed the fish that live in the pond. We have bass, perch and catfish. Dry dog or cat food and bread is what I give them. The perch go nuts when I feed them bread. They know when I’m walking on the pond bank. So, first picture is before I’m on the pond bank… water looks pretty smooth and mirror-like.

Then I walked on the pond bank, and the perch knew I was there so they come swimming to see me. Ripples! The fish will actually follow me around the pond hoping for food.

I walked around the path a bit, on the hunt for some tiny tiny wildflowers. They are a sweet color of blue, and I’ve seen them in massive clumps that look like a bit of sky on the ground. We don’t have them that thick here anywhere, just little patches of them. They are very low growing.

Back up at the house, I tried to take a photo of my newest shrub, a forsythia. Camera blurred again, of course. I planted it in a fence row, and then Ron took the fence down today. Shucks… but now it will be easier to dig to plant MORE stuff in that row. :)

And a photo of the empty of barbed wire fence row. Ron has been busy taking down a lot of barbed wire… serves no purpose since we don’t keep any animals that need it.

Finally, a photo of the newest addition to our family. This little girl just showed up in our yard this week. Very friendly to people, not so much with all the grown up cats. She’s still pretty bossy, won’t let anyone eat in the same dish as her. Staked out a claim on top of the tool box, but she has been seen snuggling with other cats. She is so scrawny and small compared to all our big cats that Ron named her SkinnyMini. She was easier to integrate into our family here than kittens born here, sheesh. Just a little sweetie, but I wish she’d get over the making muffins thing… she’s clawing me to pieces every time I hold her.

And that is all for this week… :)

Hugs,
Vyx

Yesterday I got out my new food mill and washed all the bits. It puts together a little differently than the one I borrowed from my mother, but it’s basically the same. The screen is better made, though.

I put the thawed berries through it without cooking… they were completely thawed so I knew it would be okay. Lot of squirting going on, I was happy that I’d put newspaper down all around, including the floor. Dang good thing, actually… the food mill started dripping from the handle! Right onto my feet and the newspaper underneath.

After I’d run the berries through, I got the waste… and ran that through again. I like to squeeze out every bit of pulp and juice. Then I stirred the bowl to redistribute the pulp and ladled it into some freezer containers. 12 cups of juice/pulp, but there was still some in the bowl.

So, I’m all done processing the berries and I think… all those apples that I know we aren’t going to eat… I should cook those up and mill those, too. So I did. Squeezed out applesauce right into the last couple cups of blackberry juice. Between the last bit of juice and the apples, I had a bit over 6 cups, too much for most jam recipes.

Well, I’m not going to let that stop me. Apples set up really well without adding pectin… most apple jelly recipes from fresh apples use a lot more juice than another fruit recipe would. Twice as much, actually. I figured it would be fine. Looking at the recipes I decided that 2 cups more sugar than fruit would work just fine, too.

So, I sprinkled the powdered pectin into the fruit mix and started cooking. Sugar gets measured out into a separate container. Didn’t add any lemon juice or anything… it wouldn’t need it with all those apples.

After I boiled, added sugar and boiled again, I started filling jars. I wash em in the dishwasher and leave em in there until I need them. That’s the way I learned to do it, and it works for me. First I filled a quart jar. Then three pint jars and finally poured the last bit into a clean half pint jar that was handy. Didn’t fill that last jar all the way, so that one just got a plastic cap and went into the fridge.

They tell you these days to process jam and jelly in a boiling water bath. I don’t. I pour boiling jam into hot jars, wipe and cap them… and turn them upside down. Boiling sugar is freaking hot, there aren’t going to be any germs left in there. I let them sit upside down for 5 min, then turn them right side up. I’ve never had a seal failure, and that’s good enough for me. Heck, they also tell you to use up jars once opened within 3 weeks. That’s not happening around here, and the jam in the fridge doesn’t go bad, either. That only applies to jam made with sugar, though. The stuff made with sugar substitute WILL get moldy in the fridge. Gross.

Anyhow. Blackberry Apple Jam tastes faintly of apples and a lot like blackberries. The applesauce really enhanced the blackberry flavor in my opinion. Ron hasn’t tasted it yet… we’ll have to see if he likes it.

The big quart jar is earmarked for a friend of my son. Amos raved about my jam, but said the little jars didn’t last very long. I figure he’ll love getting a whole quart jar, lol!

Oh, also… I got new jars at Walmart on Friday. Better Homes and Gardens brand, they were on clearance for $5 a case. They are a completely different shape than most jars, but the lids seem to be standard. I got 3 cases of them… you can never have too many jars in my opinion. :) Of course as soon as I get them home Ron tells me that there are probably =hundreds= of canning jars in the shed at his Mom’s place. Oh well…

…and this is all for now….

hugs,
Vyx

I use a food mill to remove the seeds from the blackberries when I make jam. It’s also useful for getting the skin and seeds out of grapes, but you need a grape spiral, so I bought one of those, too. I also have used it on the wild plums… after I pitted them. Separates the pulp from the skins very nicely.

Speaking of blackberries… I still have 3 gallon bags in the freezer! Yikes, and I didn’t pick a single berry last year. I need to pick up some jars and turn all that into jam sometime before summer and berry picking season starts again. I’ll make at least one quart sized jar… my son has a friend who loves my jam but a little jar only lasts him about a week. He’ll be delighted with a whole quart of the stuff. :)

Back to gardening. I’m planning a bigger garden this year. Usually we concentrate on tomatoes. This year I’m going to have squash, green beans, bull horn peppers, cantaloupe, and sweet corn along with the usual tomatoes. It’s going to be awkward tilling… I’ve got 2 artichoke plants right in the middle of last years row of tomato plants. Well, awkward if they survive the winter, that is. If they don’t it will make for easier digging, but that will mean I’ll have to start over with artichokes again. I had 6 or so plants that survived me starting them (burned up a couple with the grow light) but the spot I picked for most of them was too hard to keep watered. After most of those died I moved the survivor next to the one I’d stuck in among the tomatoes. More regular water meant they were both doing really well right up until the frost.

It’s still too early to start plants… some people put their gardens in early, but that’s a good way to lose everything from a late freeze. Early or middle of March is a more likely time to start the seeds. Heh. One year my mom and I decided to start stuff extra early. We were starting tomatoes in January! We ended up with plants so big I could hardly plant them when it was time. Silly, because pretty soon even the smaller plants we started later were caught up. The reason I had trouble planting larger plants is because of the way the garden is set up at my mom’s house. We’ve always planted on black plastic, and the holes are the size of a bulb digger. That means that anything grown in larger than a 6 oz or so styrofoam coffee cup is going to be hard to get in the ground. We had stuff in ginormous 20 oz cups. (or larger, I can’t remember now) You can’t really dig a deep enough hole when the opening of the plastic is only 3 inches across!

I use plastic mulch here, too, but since the giant 30 mil thick rolls of it are no longer available I have to use the stuff I buy at Lowes. The thickest black plastic they sell is pretty tough: I haven’t had to replace any of it yet. I don’t use the full sheet, though… I cut it into long strips and put it down after the plants are in the ground. Really, it’s more handy to do it that way… get the plants in, let them settle a bit. Put down the soaker hose, and then the plastic in 3 ft wide strips goes down on both sides of the row. I snug it right up to the stems of the plants and pin it with garden staples. Chunks of wood here and there also help to keep it from flapping about in the wind. We tend to run over some edges with lawn mowers, but it doesn’t hurt it much. Best of all, though, is that it keeps the bermuda grass from strangling everything. It warms the soil but also helps the ground retain moisture. It may get a little hot, but unless your tomatoes are laying right on top of the plastic it doesn’t hurt them a bit. Some people put mulch of some kind down on the plastic when the weather gets super hot, but I’ve never bothered. Sun scald is more of a problem than the heat from the plastic, although I =have= had tomatoes cook right on the vine. Seriously, I could see them boiling in their skins! Fortunately that isn’t something that happens every year. :)

Along with the vegetables that need starting early, I’m going to start some flowers. I really liked how the Euphorbia (snow on the mountain) looked last year, and just in case it doesn’t reseed itself I will start more. Hopefully I didn’t use up all the seeds… need to check that, so I can order more in time to plant them. One of the best seed catalogs I got this year is from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. If you are growing stuff for a local market, this is probably the best catalog to have. Lots of varieties of vegetables, most of the catalog is veggies. Flowers are mostly types grown for cutting or planting in hanging baskets to sell. They have the Euphorbia seeds, but mostly their flower selection isn’t that great… except for sunflowers that are the cutting kind rather than the ones grown for seeds. They have over 4 pages of those! I’ve got some sunflower seeds left over from previous years that I’ll plant, and also some new ones coming. I’d love to plow a big strip on the edge of the field and do a mass planting of sunflowers… it would be so pretty! Maybe I will.. Ron’s tractor is working again, and he’s got a discer plus what he calls a new ground plow. We could put a strip right on the edge towards the road… will have to think about it! I don’t know how I’d keep it watered, although it is within reach of our hose.

Well, I think this is about it for today. I’m home because it snowed this morning and I don’t drive in the stuff. Going to be even worse later on as they have forecast freezing rain on top of the snow. Yuck! I just hope it can all melt off by tomorrow.

hugs,
Vyx

Then there was last year. Our (now ex) neighbor the chicken farmer was throwing culls out the back doors of his chicken houses. He’s not supposed to do that… they have an incinerator for disposing of culls. But the local wildlife loved it… including the eagles. We had an adult pair along with 2 youngsters hanging around for a couple weeks. It was super, except that I never did get a good photograph. Dang camera. Some day I’m going to have to save up and buy a DSLR.

The eagles are back again this year… I haven’t tried to take any photos as I haven’t seen them like I did last year. But it’s pretty awesome when you are standing on your front porch and a pair just fly on by low over your yard… on their way towards the lake and/or that little valley right next to us. Ron was standing right there, so I got to say Hey look! We have eagles!

Then we see on the news how some excursion company is selling boat rides for eagle watching. No need for us to do that, we just have to go out in our yard. :) It helps that we live fairly close to a lake, eagles like to hang out near water like that.

In other wildlife news here… we startled a great big blue heron at our pond. They are awkward fliers, and being startled I’m sure didn’t help any. I wasn’t sure it was going to clear the trees! We get ducks once in a while, and they are much better fliers. The heron is an infrequent visitor, there are easier ponds to get to than ours! Geese fly over while migrating, but never want to hang out in our pond, just too hard for larger birds to land in it being surrounded by trees. I wouldn’t mind having some tame ducks or geese around, but I wouldn’t know how to care for them. Probably wouldn’t be so great for the frogs and fish in the pond anyhow. :) And I can just imagine how it would go when we walk the dogs… pretty soon I wouldn’t have any ducks or geese because they would have left in disgust, tired of being chased. :)

Also this week I saw a critter every morning on my commute to work. Monday was a raccoon, Tuesday a skunk, Wednesday a possum in the pouring rain and finally Thursday a rabbit. I can go a long time without seeing anything, so it was interesting I saw a critter every day. In the past I’ve seen a bear, a wild pig, and of course plenty of deer. Raccoons, skunks, possums, armadillos and rabbits are more normal. Both the bear and wild pig were within about a mile of the house! Whenever I see something unusual like the bear at first I think, wow, that is a big dog and how is it climbing that fence like that? Then it shambles into the road and I have to slam on the brakes to not hit it and realize that it’s a big huge bear! I’d never seen a bear in the wild before. Same with the pig, I thought, that’s a funny looking dog… and then I realize it’s a hog not a dog. Heh, a neighbor at my old house had some Barbados sheep, and the first time I saw those I thought they were funny looking dogs. My brain is flipping through all the animals I know… and I realize they aren’t dogs, nor are they deer. Sort of look like goats, but not. I asked when I got home later and found out that they were Barbados sheep. :)

Funny how the brain tries to make an unusual animal fit into something more normal, like a dog. Or at least MY brain does. :)

In unrelated news: my son has decided he wants websites and/or blogs. I told him I’d help him blog, we can do a Son and Mom blog or something. Collaborate. I’ll also help him set up his forum, since I have experience with that. His goal with all this is for experience… it will look good on his resume when he graduates next year to have some stuff he’s done. Plus it might turn out he’s talented and can earn money doing it. I blog because I’ve had a website of some kind for a long time. I like to share pictures of stuff and having a blog is a much easier way of doing it than a straight up html site. Seriously, the last plain website I had, I was going in, and moving the previous post down, and writing something new. Just like a blog. Duh! WordPress makes it sooo much easier!
Anyhow… look for links here when we go live with stuff. I will of course let y’all know. :)

Hugs,
Vyx

Well, occupied, at any rate. I do like to read, and with the Kindle I’ve gotten quite good at ignoring anything else that needs my attention! Along with books it has apps.. things like Words With Friends and Solitaire. So, if I’m not reading, I’m checking on my ongoing scrabble games or having a hand of klondike. :)

We’ve had some lovely weather here in NWA: it’s been quite mild this winter. A wee bit of cold here and there, and a light dusting of snow this week. We got some much needed rain before the cold and snow came this week… and all the forecasts show just more mild weather coming up! They even said that we might not HAVE a winter this year… but I’m not going to believe that as we don’t usually get all the snow and such until later this month and into next.

The other news since I last posted anything is that I had surgery. Got one of my bad stomach aches at work again and went right to the doctor. He sent me to have a camera down my throat the next day, but the surgeon I saw said “never mind that, looks to me like your gallbladder, lets just take it out”. I was right on board with that and scheduled my surgery for Jan 6. So, last week I went in and they did the laparoscopic thing, where you only get a few holes. I ended up with 5 rather than 3, but that’s perfectly fine… never cared about scars anyhow. Four incision spots and one that looks like they stuck me with a turkey baster: more of a giant needle hole. :) I always have strange things in my head when I wake up from anesthesia and this time was no different as I woke thinking about my Kindle and how it does magic. :)

I’m pretty recovered as of today, don’t really need the pain pills any longer. Those first few days were pretty tough, though. I’m still afraid to sneeze, and my body is, too. I got a sneezing fit two days ago and I =couldn’t= sneeze properly. I was trying, but all I was doing was snargling. No “ah choo!” just sort of “ah flerbt”. It was sort of annoying- I needed to sneeze so the whole sneezing fit would go away. Instead I spent about 5 min doing the AH flerbt thing. Heh.

As usual this year I didn’t make any resolutions. I never do. It’s not that I don’t think I can improve myself, it’s that I don’t think New Years is the time to do it. Ron and I already did a major change when we quit smoking back in September. He is actually still smoking… more on how I found that out later… but he smokes 5 cigs a day at the most. I can’t believe that I can’t smell it on him, but I can’t. Weaning him off those few cigs a day that he’s still smoking… I don’t know how. He’ll have to find some better substitute than the things we’ve tried.

As to how I found out… my daughter told me. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she has smelled cig smoke. So I had to ask Ron, and he didn’t lie to me. Wanted to slap him upside the head… still do… but cutting way back like he’s done is more than I could do. I either smoke or I don’t, there isn’t any halfway thing like only smoke 2 cigs a day or something. Maybe those electronic cigs would work for Ron. I know they wouldn’t work for me, that whole smoking motion is part of what has to be quit.

Anyhow. I hear a cat roaming around the house wanting my attention… evidently Ron let Stubby in for some petting business. :) Gotta go pet the cat for a bit…

hugs,
Vyx

Anyhow… it decided to bloom just in time for Thanksgiving.  Two GIANT blooms opened up:  they were larger than my face!

Everyone that came over did double-takes at the thing… is that a REAL plant?  Yep…  and pretty awesome.

Those blossoms have now wilted and been cut off, but it had 2 more buds…  So I’ll have flowers for at least another week.

Pies I made last week.  Yep, the blackberry pie on the left overflowed.  Made a big mess in my oven before I stuck a cookie sheet under it.  I forgot to take photos of the apple and pumpkin pies…. oh well!

This is all for now…  It’s daylight out now and commuter traffic should be easing up… I have shopping and errands to do.

hugs,

Vyx