Let the weekend begin.....

We had some big thunderstorms in the area yesterday. In the town where my Mom and Dad live, the roof was blown off the local cafe -- a not-so-pleasant surprise for the customers in the dining room enjoying the noon special. Fortunately, there was no damage at Mom and Dad's house. The storms moved through fast but here's a picture I took from our driveway of the last line of storms moving into Iowa around suppertime. Wow, I love seeing the towering thunderstorm clouds (as long as they're not heading towards me!)

We had an unexpected visitor show up in the backyard for afternoon snacks today! I'm always amazed at how their summer fur is so completely different from their winter coat. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see this old doe has quite a few scars -- I suppose from running through the woods and hitting all kinds of branches, fences, etc.

She was hearing or seeing something farther down in the yard......I don't know what it was, but it sure got her attention!

I did some work in the vegetable gardens this afternoon. The squash, zucchini and tomatoes are humongous and I had to trim some of the branches and vines out of that garden so the plants could get more sunlight. The other veggie garden got some attention too and I pulled out all of the lettuce, onions and beets. Except for a few smaller ones, these onions are all quite nice. There are so many though that I may have to put some in the dehydrator to make sure they don't spoil. The beet crop was mighty disappointing. I'd like to try replanting some more seeds, but I'm guessing it's probably too late in the season for that. (There's a couple small golden zucchini I picked too.)

The weather's been so cool and predicted to remain so into the next week, so I'm going to replant some leaf lettuce and more peas too.


I finally got my rain barrels set up today. I read in a Birds & Blooms magazine about one gentleman who used garbage barrels as a less expensive substitute for those +$100 rain barrels sold in home & garden stores, so I bought a couple of 50 gallon Rubbermaid garbage barrels and some downspout adaptor tubes. I installed them this afternoon on both ends of the garage where the downspouts are closer to the ground and I have level surfaces to set the barrels.

It looks like kind of a "Rube Goldberg" set-up, but I think it's good enough for who it's for and both of these together cost me way less than $100, so I'm happy.

Not much else going on with me. Tomorrow we'll be riding with some friends in the motorcycle "Cruise for Kids" benefitting our local Ronald McDonald House. The weather forecast sounds perfect and we're looking forward to a fun day. I'll take my camera and see if I can get any interesting pictures to share with you. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Miscellaneous Stuff & Some Knitting

I got an e-mail notice from the owner of my LYS (local yarn shoppe) this afternoon saying she had just given away the last chemo cap and it was time for us to make some more. The challenge thrown out to us rabid knitters was 30 caps in 30 days and I've decided to accept the challenge. So in order to get my 30 caps done, I'm going to have to take a little break from blogging (and probably Facebook too) and concentrate on this knitting challenge and also some other home and garden activities. Before my break though, I'll share some of the miscellaneous stuff and knitting that has been occupying my time these past couple weeks.

We moved the deer hunting ladder stand last weekend in anticipation of the upcoming archery deer season opener. (Actually we had to move it off some private property where our hunting privileges have recently been revoked.) Anyway, Mr. Johnson had this tree in mind and the ladder stand worked perfectly there. In this picture, he's cutting off a large grapevine that's grown up on this tree. This is a perfect spot right at the intersection of two heavily used deer trails, plus not much underbrush in the woods, so it should be good for birding if the deer activity is slow.

I picked the first zucchini from our garden. They have a somewhat stunted shape, but were very tasty nonetheless. There are plenty of blossoms and more little zucchinis on my two plants. I like this golden variety because they're easy to spot (not like the green ones that sometimes grow to the size of a baseball bat because you couldn't see them under a leaf!)

I'm finally starting to see more juvenile birds around the yard. Here's a cute little cardinal who visited the birdbath on Sunday afternoon.

This juvenile Red-Bellied Woodpecker easily figured out how to get inside the cage to the suet log. This is the first one of these youngsters I've seen this summer too. The adults have also been noticeably absent from my backyard--although they were regular visitors during winter and spring.

And now on to the knitting projects. I've been looking for this book ever since I saw it on another knitting blog and last week I found it at Michael's. There are so many cute patterns in here, so I also picked up three balls of cotton yarn to try some of the designs out.

I don't think I have to tell you what this design is.......

This butterfly turned out really cute too.

Sunflower

Leaping Frog

Hummingbird

I'm still working on the square lace shawl, but have finally gotten to the edging. Here's what I've managed to complete this week for the edging. I know this shawl will be much more impressive once it's all blocked out. I'm still not liking this pattern very much--the written instructions aren't very clear and I wonder if the person who wrote it was a really experienced knitter or expected only advanced knitters would be working on it. I've spent plenty of time re-reading sections and scratching my head trying to figure out what she's doing. The real challenge will come when I get to the first corner with my lace edging, but I'm hoping that once I'm there the written instructions will make perfect sense and the chart will correspond exactly to the number of stitches I'm working (I would hate to give up now that I'm almost done!)

I've also been whipping up some of these "coffee cup sweaters." Aren't they cute? And a good way to use up some of my leftover yarn scraps.

Here's a couple more pairs of the knitted half-mitts I've finally finished too. I love the colors in this self-striping yarn.

This color is called Pink Camouflage. (I honestly don't quite get the pink camouflage thing......but I thought the colors knitted up rather cute for these half-mitts.)

Most of these knitted items are destined for my Etsy shop, which is in desperate need of restocking, so between knitting chemo caps, watching birds, pulling weeds and all the other fun stuff going on around here, I hope to get the Etsy shop "shelves" full again.

I'll be checking in with occasional posts when I can and hoping to stay caught up with everyone's activities. In the meantime, I hope you all have an enjoyable summer!

A Backyard Walk With Sophie

Finally we saw the sun for a few short hours this morning (first time since last Friday!) Here's where working part-time is great because Sophie and I got to take advantage of a nice morning and go for a little hike in the backyard. Come on along and I'll show you some of the things we saw.......

In spite of being almost 12 years old, a heart murmur and hind feet with no feeling in them, Sophie still loves to get out and run in the backyard. I don't take her for long walks anymore and she spent the rest of the afternoon napping after this adventure, but I think you can see how much she's enjoying being out here!

There's nothing wrong with Sophie's "sniffer" though. I bet she was smelling a bunneh under this tree.

When we were exploring at the farthest end of our yard, I noticed this fresh deposit of deer droppings.

Very close to where I found these droppings, we have an area of the yard that we've never mowed or done anything else with -- in fact, it's where we dump tree trimmings and other yard waste. It's grown up into a pretty dense thicket, but as you can see below, there's a little path going into this thicket......

and when I followed the path into there, I spotted this fresh deer hoofprint also.

Sophie was checking out all the good scents in there too, but I didn't let her snoop around too much because I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a doe hasn't hidden a fawn or two in that area! Wouldn't that be a real treat to see someday? I'll definitely be keeping a closer watch on this part of the yard now.

I've got quite a few cavity-nesting birds occupying some space in the backyard also. There are three active Tree Swallow nests. This little female Tree Swallow was reluctant to vacate her house, but I wanted to see if her eggs had hatched yet.

Not yet! Just 6 pretty little white eggs in a lovely bed of feathers. I'm always amazed at the variety of feathers the Tree Swallows can find to line their nests. Does anyone know if that stripey feather right down in front is from a hawk? (click on the photo to enlarge it)

I also have Tree Swallows nesting in two of these plastic super gourds, but they place their nests against the back wall of the gourds, so it's impossible to see how many eggs there are and whether they've hatched or not. But I know the nests are still active because I see the swallows going in and out.

Mrs. Chickadee is still sitting on her 5 eggs in this front yard nest box. According to my incubation calculations, there should be baby chickadees hatching by this weekend and I'll keep you posted on any new developments.

I have bluebirds in a nestbox in the backyard too. There was an unsuccessful nesting attempt earlier in the season and I'm not sure what happened, but that nest had been abandoned. Now a new nest with 5 eggs is being tended by the bluebird pair. Another neat thing about this is that I've finally found a nest that incorporates some of the yarn scraps that I put out in the backyard every spring!

Here's a nice shot of Mrs. Bluebird waiting for me and Sophie to get the heck out of her territory!

A quick check on the vegetable garden revealed these broccoli sprouts from the seeds I planted a couple weeks ago.

The garbage can potatoes are doing pretty good too.

Remember the scenes of the wildflower garden that I burned on April 13th?

Here's what it's looking like today. No buds or blossoms yet, but everything has grown back very nicely. With all the rain that we've had recently, once it gets sunny and warms up again, these flowers are really going to take off.

The wild grape vine has really taken over the dead tree in my front yard. Right now it looks there's going to be a good crop of grapes later this summer and the dead tree isn't quite so unsightly now that it's covered with green leaves again.

The house sparrows finally took over the nesting cavity that I showed you in this tree earlier this spring. I wasn't real happy about that, but a windstorm a couple weeks ago blew the top part of the tree off right at that nesting cavity, so the sparrows lost their home anyway. (I'm so glad the bluebirds weren't nesting there when that happened!)

I've got a bumper crop of common milkweed growing next to my driveway this year. I have only seen 1 monarch butterfly in my yard so far this spring, but hopefully when they come back, they'll find this milkweed patch along with several others that are growing in different spots in the yard.

And finally, a couple weeks ago I cleaned out some dead plants and replanted some new perennials in my hummingbird and butterfly garden. One of my new plants is this Foxglove. It's the only one blooming so far, but isn't it pretty?

Thanks for coming along with Sophie and me on this walk.....we had a good time and hope you did too.

Garden Update

This afternoon I harvested the first produce from this year's vegetable garden -- a radish!
This is the first time I've planted radishes in the garden and I couldn't believe how beautiful the color on this little radish was. It tasted pretty good too.

Here's a look at my two raised bed gardens for this year. As you can see, I've gone back planting in rows again. The radish came from this bed -- down on the lower left side (radishes are sharing a row with leaf lettuce -- the bright green leaves at the lower right of the picture). There are also some volunteer strawberry plants that I discovered this spring while cleaning out this bed and I decided to leave them and see if they will produce any strawberries. In this bed, I've also planted cucumbers (pickling and eating), peas, green beans, carrots, beets, and onions. I got everything planted really early this year (late April) and have been fortunate that we've not had any late frosts this spring.

Here's my second raised bed (you might remember what a disaster it was last year when my dirt was delivered from the garden center). Earlier this spring my neighbor Scott brought over a little pickup load of compost for me and that was just enough to cover this bed and it's doing really nicely now. In here I've planted zucchini, winter squash, tomatoes (Roma, cherry, and regular ones for BLTs and canning), a couple of red pepper plants, a jalapeno pepper and cilantro for making salsa, and broccoli (that I'm trying to grow from seed).

In case you're wondering, the little plastic containers are "wind protectors" for a couple of really small pepper and tomato plants that I grew from seed.

I've got some garbage-can potatoes going this year again too. After last year's successful harvest, I added a fourth garbage can. I think I planted these on Easter Sunday and after a slow start, they are now doing very well.

This has nothing to do with the gardens, but here's one of the cute little hummingbirds that's visiting me this year. After getting a drink from the oriole feeder, she loves to sit on this little branch perch and fluffle up her feathers (that's what she's going here--see how her tail's fanned out and moving really fast?)

Garden Update

I took all of these pictures yesterday and had every intention of doing a post last night, but a vet appointment for Penny, phone calls and "The Greatest American Dog" all conspired together against my best Blogger intentions for a timely post, so without further delay, here are some pictures and an update on my gardening efforts.

Even though it's been pretty dry lately and my watering efforts are irregular at best, the garden is thriving. We've eaten a couple cucumbers already this week. Here's another one that's almost reached the ideal size for supper. These are Japanese Climbing Cucumbers. They seem to be doing much better now after a couple good doses of Liquid Fence. Did you know deer LOVE cucumbers? And because they're climbing up a trellis, they're at an ideal height for a deer to nom, nom, nom!

This is Bright Lights Swiss Chard. I picked some the other night and cut it up for Swiss Chard Patties. I also have another recipe I want to try for Braised Swiss Chard. (Both recipes are from cooks.com).

Here's a real surprise--garbage can potatoes! Don't they look fabulous? And they tasted fabulous too! I tend to forget about them in their own little spot in the yard, but decided it was time to dig down into the dirt and see if there was anything resembling potatoes hiding in there. I was so surprised that there were potatoes and they were really nice ones too. I didn't even have to peel them, just scrubbed them clean with water and the vegetable brush, cut them up and boiled them for supper. This has been my most successful garden experiment so far this summer and I'll definitely try it again next year--maybe even add another garbage can to my collection for more potatoes.

Here's the yellow zucchini. I've already picked several of these--made a chocolate zucchini cake and zucchini fritters one night for supper. The really nice thing about these yellow zucchini is that you can SEE them and pick them before they turn into the size of a baseball bat. Those green zucchini sometimes can hide under a leaf and grow really fast if you miss them for a few days.

My squash is growing like crazy now too. This is Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash. Isn't it cute? This is a white acorn-type squash. I've never grown squash like this before and it looks like I'm going to have plenty to share from just 2 plants.

The tomatoes are still slow. I've picked 6 red grape tomatoes so far, and there are a couple more hiding in here and just turning ripe. These are a little bit bigger than grape tomatoes you buy in the store--they're almost 2 inches long, but very tasty right out of the garden.

The regular tomatoes are growing, but still no signs of ripening at all. All of the tomatoes took a bit of a beating from high winds in a thunderstorm early last week. Even though I have them in the heavy-duty cages, a couple of them were almost completely toppled over when I got home from work. I set them to rights and tamped the dirt back down around the roots, but the bottom branches came out of the cages and I had to remove several that were laying on the ground.


We had a little rain shower yesterday evening around suppertime. It was a nice surprise because we haven't had much rain for several weeks.

It rained pretty hard for about 15 minutes. This chipmunk found a good spot to stay out of the rain and continue stuffing his fat little cheeks.

And you know what happens when the sun shines while it's raining........

Can you see the second rainbow?

I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to post again tomorrow, but if I don't, I hope you all have a splendid weekend and get a chance to enjoy nature in your backyard and beyond.