A few years ago, I wanted to have more perennial plants, and reduce the amount I spend for annuals in our flower beds. I purchased the two outside plants, and the center one was a gift from my daughters.
They have been in three places in the yard, and I think we finally found a place they like. This is the best they have looked since I planted them. D3 studied up, waved her green thumb, and added iron to the soil. The have beautiful blooms this year.
I hope they continue to do well, they sure look great right now!
D3 planted a small raspberry patch at the edge of the garden a few years ago. It is a lot of work, but we get quite a few berries from the bushes. They are looking strong this spring.
If you strain your eyes, you will see my cabbage and broccoli at the right. It is pretty happy in the cold wet weather. Go, cabbage go!
We like strawberries, but really don’t have room. D3 found this solution this year.
She purchased bigger plant with the strawberry row-marker, and it is doing quite well. We thought it was such a good idea, we bought some plants and planted them in the hanging baskets we save from year to year. Papa makes the row markers. He has tons, for many vegetables.
I wonder if we will have enough berries to do anything with? I might have to move my base of operations out to the patio and eat them as they ripen!
Spring is the most beautiful time in Michigan, and also a time of much fun and work for gardeners. I am not a “real” gardener, but I do enjoy my flowers, and we get a lot of good out of our vegetable garden.
I started a few plants vegetable indoors this year, and now I am not sure that was the best idea. I do not really have room for them, or at least room for them away from the cats. They are hanging on, so perhaps I will have something out of them to plant. In this area, Memorial Day is the safe planting date for tender plants like peppers and tomatoes, but I will be setting cabbage and broccoli soon.
On the flower front, my daffodils are finished, but the tulips are really in their glory. I remember how hard it was for me to cut the sod out and add the border for the flower bed on the south side of the house. Finally GS2 helped with the last of the sod. I believe it was three or four years ago, and now the work is really beginning to pay off.
The tulips are wonderful this year, I believe it is their 3rd year, but it might be the second. The daisies are really set in good, and doing wonderfully. You can see it has been an early spring, the peonies are huge, I actually tied them up yesterday. A close look had me thinking of mother again.
Long before the flower bed, she and S-dad went over to Holland (Michigan) for the Tulip Festival. They had a wonderful time, and she brought me a couple of bulbs back. They are fancy, not plain like I planted in bulk several years back. Last year I met to mark and move the bulbs to a spot farther away from the peonies, and forgot. This year for sure!
Tonight is the Steep Canyon Rangers/Steve Martin show at the Max Fisher Theater in Detroit. I am really excited about this show, hope it lives up to my expectations.
I learned something today, and I wanted all my friends who live in the City to know about it. I had some CFC bulbs to take to the recycling center. I called to get the phone number and found that the City pays a fee for each trip I make to the center to deposit hazardous waste. I had thought it was based on how many items I deposited, but find that is not the case.
I found a bigger container for my burned out CFC bulbs, and I will be making one trip this year to recycle them, not one trip a month. It will save the city money, provide correct handling for the bulbs, and save me some time and gas. Everyone wins. I may contact the neighbors and collect all their bulbs, too. One trip for several households would save more.
Now that I have learned something today, I will go back to bed. Well, I wish I could go back to bed, but I can not do so. I have to run a bunch of errands, and figure out how and where to get our prescriptions using on our new insurance. I have much more to learn today.
I remember when I lived up north, in a rural area. It was tough to recycle, real tough. We had to save everything, and wait for the Saturday the recycling center was open. On the appropriate day, we would load up the car/truck, and drive to the appointed place. everything had to be deposited in a certain place. In those days we could recycle plain glass, milk jugs and newspaper. Oh yes, and tin cans, with both ends and labels removed, and then we stepped on them to flatten them out.
These days the recycling truck comes by every week, on garbage day. We can recycle much of what used to be “garbage”. Any metal, plastic or paper, or cardboard packaging can be recycled. The smaller pieces of paper go into a paper bag, the shredded paper in a clear plastic bag. We bundle up the cardboard, newspaper, magazines and bags using twine or duct tape to hold it together. The whole works goes into the bin, I actually have two bins.
Plastic grocery bags have to be carried to the recycling center, as do pieces of metal that are too big for the bin. I keep a bag near my desk, and we put all the packaging, scrap paper and small advertisements into that. On garbage day, I just put it into the bin.
The other day I was carrying these things from the kitchen out to the bin, and that is when I realized how different everything is now. We are able to recycle much of the packaging that enters our household.
I hope you are able to do the same where you live. If not, I hope you will work with your local community to be able to do so.
I know your remember my arbor, I cut down and dug out the roses and planted Morning Glories this year. On July 8, they were started up. You can see the twine I added to give they somewhere to climb.
On August 15, the thing was ready to take over the world. We couldn’t walk through any more.
Just before Papa’s birthday, things were getting out of hand, and the arbor was threatening to fall, so Papa did what only Papa can do.
Then came the remnaments of hurricane Ike. On he entire thing tipped onto the grass. We just flipped it over on to the sidewalk, and it remained there, blooming happily for another month.
When the frost finally killed it, we dumped it on the compost, and put the poor arbor in the recycling bin, piece by piece. Papa is going to build a new arbor, and he’s insisting on more of Morning Glories next year.
Well, things have improved on the coast, but there is a long way to go. I was looking around this morning, and found this. Oh, and check this out, also. After you read the articles, keep praying for the area.
Papa and I went out to the garden last night, and picked many cucumbers and zucchini. We also cut a lot of lettuce, and pulled a few carrots and beets. I picked one cabbage to eat, I enjoy slaw this time of year.
I was able to give some cucumbers away, but we are overrun with zucchini. I’m taking it, and the lettuce to a charity this morning. Years ago, we would feed the extra produce to our chickens. One year, we had pigs, and they loved that type of thing. Although I’d love to have chickens, we live in the suburbs now.
Interestingly, one city near here allows residents to keep hens. I read that the limit is 4, and wondered where one would get 4 hens; they came in 100′s when we had them. They were delivered by UPS or mail, I remember sticking their little beaks into some water to get them drinking, and keeping them under a light till they were big enough to keep themselves warm. You couldn’t tell the hens from the roosters for a few months. I guess, if you can obtain permission from your neighbors to keep the hens, then you have to go somewhere and buy grown hens. It seems crazy to me, since the main reason we had chickens was to eat them. By the time the hens were egg laying size, we’d had many chicken dinners, and filled the freezer with many little roosters. I remember keeping about 20 or so hens, and thinning them down nearer winter. You have to buy feed, and I’d bet eggs are cheaper.
All this makes me think of an old song, “Cluck Old Hen”. Here it is:
I’m not sure how old Sierra Hull is in this video, but it really doesn’t matter. You can hear the hens clucking, for sure. This song has lyrics, although I never heard anyone singing it:
My old hen’s a good old hen
She lays eggs for the railroad men
Sometimes 8 and sometimes ten
That’s enough for the railroad men
Cluck old hen cluck and sing
You ain’t laid an egg since late last spring
Cluck old hen cluck and squall
Ain’t laid an egg since late last fall
Cluck old hen cluck when I tell you
Cluck old hen or I’m gonna sell you
Last time she cackled cackled in the lot
Next time she cackles cackle in the pot
My old hen she’s a good old hen
She lays eggs for the railroad men
Sometimes 1 sometimes two
Sometimes enough for the whole damn crew
I notice that my banjo tag is decreasing in size again. So, I want to let you know this is a banjo tune, usually heard on a banjo, played to feature a banjo player, by a banjo player. The banjo player in the video is Ron Block; he’s the one playing the banjo. There, that should help!
I’ve had more problems than usual with my vegetable garden this year. We had to replant the lettuce and the carrots. The beets came up pretty spotty. A few of our tomatoes suffered frost damage, and some tomatoes just died, don’t know why. To top it all off, a few days ago, 12+ broke off the the huge wind and rain storm we had here. Papa and I found some more last night, and I’m planting them today.
I also had poor luck with some perennial seeds I tried to start indoors. A few days ago, Papa brought me more seed, and I threw it directly into the ground.
The trees and the lawn are loving the huge rainfalls we’ve had. I haven’t heard anyone complaining about the lake heights, but there’s plenty of time left this summer. Only a select few people are actually running their sprinkler systems around here. We don’t have underground sprinklers and we never water the grass. This year, a lot of areas are filling in and it’s looking pretty good. The trees are happier than they’ve been in years.
I have a ton of photos on the progress of the garden, so I’ll post them later.
I notice that most stores are now Selling bags. You pay $1.00 for a bag you can re-use. This little publicity stunt has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with the bottom line. I suspect if the stores were serious about environmental issues, they would just quit having plastic bags, and sell bags for cost. I don’t think $1.00 is the cost of the bags being sold, I think it’s what the stores figure people will pay.
I picked up my groceries yesterday, and stuffed them into bags that I carry around with me all the time. I always have a box or two in the trunk of my car, and it contains bags. I have used some plastic store bags, but they mostly wore out. So, I scouted around the house and started using bags that I just “had”.
So, without any more BS, the bags I use to avoid excess garbage in my can:
Someone around here works at this store, I don’t remember how she came upon this bag, and it really doesn’t matter. I’ve washed it a few times, but it still works.
Papa attended a conference somewhere, and brought home this one. Very nice.
This one held my Mother’s craft items and some personal items at the nursing home. It has her name clearly printed in S-Dad’s hand inside. It makes me sad to see it, but it is a nice bag and very new.
This one was another of Mom’s bags. Not sure how I ended up with this one, but I did bring home some things of hers, perhaps they were in it. This one is very worn, but has no holes and is very sturdy.
M-in-L is a very thrifty person. For many years, she has given gifts in bags she sews from fabric she has around the house, and this is one of those. Saves on gift wrap. These days, we hand the bags back to her after we open them so she doesn’t even have to make more, but this is from a previous time. I’m not sure why I have this one, either, but I guess someone didn’t use it, and I could.
Did you know I was a certified QS 9000 Quality Systems Auditor? That was part of my job function before I quit working. I attended several conferences and this bag and the two below are some from those events. They are small, and have an obvious purpose of holding conference materials, but they work fine for groceries.
That’s about it for now. I have many more bags around here that I reuse, maybe I’ll let everyone know how when I stumble across them.
Granny lives in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan.
I like genealogical research, gardening, cool weather, spending time with my family, and bluegrass music.
