I HATE HENBIT!

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/WEEDS/henbit.html

 My yard has been taken over by henbit!  

Every spring, the old garden is full of henbit. It creeps in from the vacant house next door and takes over. Seen from a distance as you whiz down a country road, those perky little pinkish-purple flowers covering a farmer's fallow field can be enchanting. Having them in your raised beds and walks is a different story.

My landscape architect friend was telling me that the real time to fight henbit is in the fall when it's seeding. Too late for that right now, so I have to do it manually.  Plan A is to do a raised bed a day until I have it under control. Plan B is to try to curb it's growth with wheat straw mulch in my walkways. I've never seen anyone mulch walkways with straw. You see photos of cypress mulch or other bark, even gravel walks. Why not straw? The worst that can happen is I'll seed a bit of wheat to fight for growing room with the henbit. Wheat is a grass. I can mow it.


Today was the day. I grabbed gloves, wheelbarrow, a bucket and some tools and tackled the first bed. It was pretty bad. The henbit was so thick there was no clue what rested in that bed -- or if it had survived the winter.

The good thing about henbit is it has shallow roots and pulls easily. The ground is still moist and works easily, too, so I could grab handsful of the stuff and dump it into the tub. When the tub got full, I could empty it into the wheelbarrow and keep on going. I just had to watch out for the plants that belonged in the bed and not disturb them in my righteous frenzy to get rid of the hateful henbit.


Surprise! This is the strawberry bed!

It was a full afternoon project clearing this 4-12' bed. I completely filled the wheelbarrow with my gleanings. Ah! compost!!

I love strawberries. I've worked hard to keep this bed alive. A few years ago I had three 4' square beds of strawberries that were going crazy. I had strawberries to give away and my brother was happy to come pick his own. (He loves them as much as I do.) Then the first drought hit. I salvaged five plants. Last spring, I made this new bed. I added close to 40 more plants and trenched and watered and babied them through another drought. It wasn't enough. Only 1/3 of those survived. I haven't decided if I will add new plants to the bed this year, or encourage these plants to make daughters. 

These are Ozark Beauties. I can usually find plants locally to fill in the bed, but none of the places I've been have offered them yet. They have other strawberry varieties, but no Ozark Beauties. It may be mail order time again...

Evolution

When I started this blog, it was to document the remodeling we were doing as we made our mark on the home I inherited from my parents. That started in 2006. It is now 2013 and a lot of the work has been done. Not all. I still have three or four rooms that need to have cosmetic work (mostly tape, bed, texture and paint.) After all that has been done, that seems pretty minor. 

I will be documenting those changes as they occur. I hope to have most of them finished by this time next year as long as money and child labor holds out. (Hm... is it still child labor when the baby is 34 years old? She's my child...)

In the mean time, the content of this blog has changed to be more of a record of small town living. I tell you about my gardening and canning. I mention the critters or things the family has done. 

So -- I'm changing the name from Bungalow Blues to Bungalow Blues and Country Delights. That should cover just about everything I talk about here. 

Spring! Time to Play in the Dirt!

I can't wait for the snow to melt and the ground to warm so I can get outside to play! I couch potato all winter, but the minute it is warm enough to be outside, I go out in the morning and find things to do all day. This time of the year, it isn't hard to diet. I'm active and not thinking of food... and not near the kitchen! :)

It is hard to remember that we has snow for Palm Sunday. The weather is beautiful now. Jen has been doing Spring Cleaning on the lean-to of the garage. (You go, Girl! I'm getting out of your way!) and I have been digging holes and planting/moving trees and bushes all over the yard. Last fall I purchased a lot of tired arbor vitae trees at Home Depot when they went on clearance. I didn't expect all of them to survive, but the price was low enough, I could give it a go. About half of them made it. One of the first things I did was "police the line" moving out dead trees and shifting live ones to fill gaps.  

This is the year for grapevines. I like Concord grape jelly and Thompson seedless raisins. Lala just likes grapes. With that sort of encouragement, I have planted five Concord and five Thompson seedless vines on the west side of the old garden. They are two-year vines. I don't know how long it will be before they will be producing, but I'm ready! (Hm... where was that book on raising grapes?)  


For the last two or three years I have been working toward planting a living fence along the north and west property lines. The arbor vitae that I mentioned earlier have filled a large part of that need along the northern line. I was suffering from the need to make all my plantings the same. In my head I was remembering the 100 ft. long spirea hedge that stood there when I was a kid. It had been my job to trim that hedge every summer that I lived at home. As soon as I went to college, Dad pulled out the hedge... Grr. I liked that hedge.

When I was talking about my vision for my yard with a friend who is a landscape designer, he said I am going for a "cottage garden". These are by definition eclectic and random in their placement. I can -- and should! -- mix plants. He helped me plant the Washington Hawthorne, Crepe Myrtle, Flowering Dogwoods, and more that I got from the National Arbor Day Foundation  They are in the line where I had started my lilac bushes. (Okay, he did say these one-foot high plants would take forever to grow and I should always buy the largest tree or bush I could afford so I could see my efforts sooner...) 

Thanks to his work and all the new plants, my western property line is also complete. I just have to wait how many years to see the bushes/ trees big enough to bloom? :) I think I see his point. If you look very closely at the photo of the grapevines, you will see metal stakes along the line of the ditch. They mark the lilacs and other plantings in the "fence row". There is also an arbor vitae showing at the end of a grape row. It's now been moved to one of those gaps I mentioned.

When Joe rebuilt the front porch last fall, I was afraid the Blaze Climber that has always been on the west side would get damaged. To save it, we shifted it to the east yard. It stands now in the company of the two rosa rugosa that I purchased at Arnold's Nursery last fall.  One of the first things I did when the weather improved was to haul the trellis that used to support the rose bush  and stand it up as a wall behind the climber. Now I have to decide if I want to add two more trellis panels to make a fence, or if putting something tall, like Pampas grass, on either side would give it a finished look. Hm... both ideas have merit.  But if I made a fence, I could have an arbor crossing the rock walk. That would really get into the cottage feel... Hm... (wheels turning...)

In the mean time, the trellis and rose bushes have acquired company. I finally ran the wheels off Joe's little red wagon. My folks gave him that wagon for his first Christmas in 1976. I don't know why the attach points would rust out and let the back wheels collapse. It's only been 37 years!  I just couldn't trash that red wagon, so I filled it with dirt and a few of those durable daffodils from the compost pile, and then parked it near the Blaze Climber. Jen found one of their old Tonka trucks in the lean-to, so I've put dirt and more daffodils in the dump truck bed and added it to the display. They look pretty chipper out there.  One of the neighbor kids was riding down the street today and he hollered at me to say he liked the toys in my yard. 

You Can't Keep a Good Bulb Down

Last spring my big push was to move the bulbs from Mom's old flower beds. They were root bound and I didn't want so many in that location. I dug and dug, and moved and moved, and scratched my head and found more places to plant things. Eventually, that last wheelbarrow of bulbs dried out and appeared dead because I had no places left to put them. I threw them in the compost pile.

Surprise! Guess what is coming up in the compost pile?

Can't Wait to Get Outside

 That was a fast snow! We had about 8-10 inches of snow for Palm Sunday, and here it is Easter Sunday and it has nearly all melted. Because we have had so much melt water from all the recent snow, the ditch on the west side of the place is backing up and threatening to flood the garden. As usual.

The  problem with that area is the land is too flat and the neighbor's culvert is a bit crushed. The two problems don't let water flow through the culvert very well, hence it backs up in my yard. Jen got the wild hare that we should muck it out. 

Lala found Dad's old hip waders in the garage. She  pulled them on and I handed her a shovel. As soon as Jen showed her the water, she was a bit cowed. What do I do now? It didn't take our Pisces long to figure it out. She started movingthe dirt out of the culvert as far in as her shovel could go. Jen, being a Virgo, chose the dry side, but she mucked her culvert as well. I'm a Virgo, too, but I got my feet a bit wet channeling the water below Jen's spot. 

We did get the water flowing a bit faster. I don't think it makes a big lot of difference, but it was a good excuse to be outside. Lala didn't even mind that the water was cold and the waders leaked.

Our First Quilt

 Lala's 14th birthday is March 16. Jen found a pattern for a quilt that she knew Lala would love, but the question was how could we make it without Lala knowing it would be hers? (Never mind that none of us had ever made quilt before. We can read, can't we?) Jen acquired a mysterious buyer for a quilt on her Etsy Store. This buyer had a teen-aged daughter who would get the quilt, so, of course, Lala was our expert on what a teen would like.

Jen had her help select the fabric. When it was cut, Lala (who has a great eye for color) was the one to place the strips before I pieced them for the top. She was also intimately involved in every stage of the quilt making, from cutting of the fabric to putting the final quilt together. All along, she thought she was helping Mom prepare the quilt for a sale.

 My serger was a Godsend for this project. I was the seamstress while Jen engineered the pattern and the cutting. I sat up in my living room and serged like crazy!

This became quite a project.  Even though Jen and Lala live across town with her boyfriend, they spent several overnights here while we had marathon quilting days. We roped the boyfriend into figuring out how to put together the quilting frame that my folks had stashed in the garage loft. None of us had any clue how the thing should look when finished. There were no pictures or boxes, just a bunch of boards with no screws. Neither Jen nor I could help Steve because we were doing our parts of quilt making. He surfed the Internet for photos of quilt frames, scratched his head a lot, and stood the the challenge. I salute you, Steve Barnes! You did a great job reconstructing the quilting frame.

The last week was planned to be leisurely. Put the border around the top, add the applique and tie the quilt as a comforter. Yeah. Right. You know how that goes. Life is what happens after you make other plans. I wasn't available much of the week at all. My car died and was cooling it's wheels in a parking lot in Burlington. I was scrambling to either fix it or replace it. Jen and Lala were on their own with the quilt and Jen had never run my serger.

It came down to Lala's birthday. The quilt was together, but not tied. Lala's friends came at noon for a birthday party. Jen gathered the girls in a back room and told them our secret and our problem. Abby, Sabrina and Angela were troopers! The girls put a DVD in the player, turned the TV toward the quilting frame and had at it. By the time the movie was over, the comforter was tied!

The official birthday supper was at HuHot in Topeka. Sabrina and Angela were able to go with us. You can't believe Lala's face when Jen handed her the quilt! "No, this isn't mine. It's for that chick on Etsy..." was the first thing she said.

Her mother had to assure her it was hers and made with love by family and friends. Lala just grabbed it and hugged it.

Plant Potatoes by St. Patrick's Day

Dad always said you should have your potatoes in the ground by St. Patrick's Day. Mine aren't quite "in the ground", but I did put them out today.  I planted three cages of Yukon Gold potatoes. The ground under the cages was dug to one-shovel deep, raked to remove clods, then the cage was set down and the soil leveled a bit. (The cages sit on the break of a slope.)  I probably planted more potatoes per cage than I should have, but I've had trouble getting potatoes to grow. It will be lovely if I have to thin them! 

The potatoes are spaced in a ring around the outside of the cage, then straw was placed on top of them. When they grow up through the straw, I'll layer more dirt on top and another round of straw. If this goes like the places I've been reading on Pinterest, I'll be able to reach under the straw and pick potatoes the way I pick tomatoes. 

Wow! I'm, excited. I hope it works! (And I have enough tomato cages left for at least some of the  plants that are growing under the grow light.

It Takes So Little To Make Mom Happy

When March got here, I was stuffing seeds into potting mix. I have three kinds of tomatoes, watermelon, luffa gourds, birdhouse gourds, mugwort, motherwort, lavender, catnip, Thunbergia vine (in the dishpan), summer savory, broccoli, basil, parsley, and more in the little seeding trays. I am keeping a running list of what I plant on the "blackboard" that I painted on the doors of an old metal cupboard.

The red tub on the floor is our "reclaimed" lettuce. Jen bought three "living lettuce" that still had the roots attached. After we cut off the leaves for eating, I stuck the roots in dirt. The first one planted is already putting out tiny new leaves. The next two will be added as they are eaten.

I had been getting by with two small 2-foot grow lights, but they didn't really reach all the plants. Today my son came by and rigged the four-foot light you can see in the top of the photo. It lights the top shelves beautifully. The 2-foot units have been suspended via twine from the center shelves of the little book cases. They are lighting the bottom shelves. I plugged everything into a surge protector. One switch at night, and all the plants go to bed.

And yes, the bare insulation showing tells the tale that my remodeling project is still in (slow) progress. I want to finish the sheet rock in this room after the grow lights come down.

It doesn't matter. I'm having fun with my plants. The house will get done when the house gets done.

Gardening Season Has Officially Begun

 It's February. We have close to three feet of snow outside. Snow! Lovely snow! It has been unseasonably warm most of the winter. I'm so glad to see the moisture!! Granddaughter Lala was too busy working on her home schooling to get out in the weather, but three of the neighbor kids borrowed my sled and had a good time dragging it and falling down in the snow.

Inside, I've got the urge to garden. I've been reading Month by Month Gardening in Kansas. Mid-February was the time to plant broccoli. Mine was dutifully started on February 13th, under a grow light.  I will be adding more plants around the first of March.

And a Porch, Too!

 Joe was working so efficiently, I didn't get any photos taken of him building the new porch, but these shots show the cosmetic work. He laid down at least two coats of primer before putting the green deck paint down. That's Joe hard at work painting near the picture window.


One problem the old porch had was its brick supports fell apart. (It was only about 110 years old. I don't know why...) That made the porch unstable. Add rotten boards and you can see why I insisted every one use the back door.

Joe didn't want that to happen with this porch. He used treated landscape timbers seated in concrete to support the deck. It took him a lot of talking to convince me to put two full supports in the center to keep the crossbeam from sagging. I was so against it that he didn't use full sized 4x4s when he built the front part of the steps. He had to come back later and scab in pieces to extend to the crossbeam. Come spring and nicer weather, he will sheath this support with some 1x somethings to make it look pretty.

We will add the porch railing in the spring as well. 

Hm... Does this mean folks can start using the front door?

Walls! Fancy that. Walls!

 The summer before Pat left (2009) he gave the grandkids each hammers and let them do their darnedest demolishing the plaster in the utility room. Two months later he was gone and I was not in a position to do anything about the roof leak or the bare lathe showing on the walls. I have lived with that for three years. (After a while you cease to see it, but you never like it.)

Times have changed. The roof is going to be repaired soon. It's time to finish the walls and reclaim the utility room. My friend Brian offered to help with the sheet rocking  That was good because Joe was still an over-the-road truck driver and he wasn't going to be home long enough to do much with the project. He did help Brian get the first two pieces up.

With Brian's expertise and my thumb-fingered assistance, we got the walls up in a couple of days during the first of October. It looks so nice! The entire room is brighter.


Joe and his wife Lisa changed jobs after Halloween. They have been staying with me while they look for a place to live. This has given Joe a chance to do some of my Honey-Dos. Replacing the front porch was one major project and plumbing the utility room was another. I wanted to get rid of the side by side washer/dryer and put in a stacking unit on the other side of the room. This would free a wall to create a pantry.

Joe built a partial wall to protect the stacking unit from the back door. He mounted the new faucet and drain hookups in the wall. There was even room for a trash compactor beside the stacking unit. Hey, I'm getting uptown high class!

The finishing touch has been the pantry. I purchased a base unit for a bathroom sink at the Habitat for Humanities Restore in Topeka. We butted a 3-drawer unit that came from the kitchen against it and Joe built the cupboards above. I have the doors to the base unit in the garage. They will get their last coats of paint when the weather is warmer. (Tape, bed, texture, then painting, will happen then as well.)

Now we are talking about putting a single metal sink in the pantry unit. It will give mechanics a place to scrub that ISN'T my kitchen sink. I'm liking that idea. I can use it as a spot to scrub vegetables coming in from the garden, too. Of course, Joe is going, "I just pulled out the plumbing there..."

My Lovely New Roof

 November 13, 2012! My day of joy! The new roof was started! I have been struggling to find a way to put a new roof on this house since we moved home in 2006. I finally came up with the money and a person who could do it. I was like a kid in a candy store watching the metal going on. 

Once the roof is finished my son is going to rebuild the front porch. I won't know how to handle that. When my folks bought this house in 1960, Dad announced that the front porch was bad and should be replaced. He and Mom lived here till 2002, but he never got around to doing anything with the porch. I took the flimsy railings off in 2010. (It didn't take much). Now Joe will do what Joe Bill wanted to do. But that it tomorrow. 
Right now, let's just admire this lovely new roof!

A Road Less Taken

 You might be from the country if you don't mind getting a bit lost on the way from one place to another.

Jen, Lala, my friend Brian and I were running errands in Emporia when we realized we had to get to Jen's bank in Burlington before it closed. I thought I knew a shortcut, so I turned south on a road that follows the Coffey County/Lyon County line instead of staying on the Interstate that angled quite a bit out of our way to the  north. We were enjoying the ride until I ran out of blacktop.

Oops!

Oh, well. The beauty of Kansas roads is they are almost all laid out in a gird pattern. As long as you are angling in the right direction, you can't get lost. Sure enough, after a few miles of gravel roads through the wildlife refuge and on the backside of Lake Redmond, we came out on more paved road and made it in to Burlington before the bank closed.

We all enjoyed the detour. This drive was more restful and far more beautiful than any Interstate.

Sometimes it's nice to get a bit lost-ed. :)

Canning Budget

   Mom kept a copy of a flyer pinned in the back of her favorite cookbook. It was called Your Canning Budget. We used it to anticipate how much to can each year. My biggest problem is figuring out how much to plant to get 110 quarts of food per person. :) 

FYI: The photo is a section of the pantry shelves my son built me.

Your Canning Budget

From Modern Guide to Home Canning, National Pressure Cooker Company, n.d. (1940s)

Planning your work… and then working your plan is essential to carrying out your canning program. While it is difficult to devise a canning budget that can be followed exactly, it is important to have at least a rough estimate of your requirements before you start in on your program.

          Working out a canning budget need not become a bookkeeping task, nor is it necessary to plan in minute detail the meals you are going to serve for months to come.

          What is important is to make a list of the various foods you want to can during the season. Decide, insofar as possible, whether you are going to put them up in pints or quarts… basing your decision on the size of your family, the types of foods and the containers available.

          Then calculate the approximate number of times you think you will serve each type of food in planning nourishing meals for a week. Multiply this figure by the number of weeks you expect the canned supply to last, and place the result opposite each food on your list.

          As an example, presume that you figure that you use about ½ cup of tomatoes per serving, and there are four in your family. If you usually serve tomatoes at, say, three meals a week – then your family consumption will total 2 cups, or 1 pint, per meal amounting to 3 pints or 1 ½ quarts a week. Figuring 34 weeks out of the year, then you would need approximately 51 quarts to take care of your requirements. Add an additional 14 quarts for other cooking purposes, and you can put down 65 quarts of tomatoes in your canning budget. Follow the same method deciding other needs.

          If you have your own garden, working out your canning budget before you plant is a good idea for it aids in deciding how much to plant and when to plant certain foods. Of course, you must keep in mind that you want a supply for use fresh, in addition to your canning needs.

          Just as a suggestion, the following canning budget has been worked out for a family of five.

         

                                                                                                             Quarts

Spinach and other greens………   30

Tomatoes…………………………    65

Other vegetables……   …… …… 100

Fruits……………   ……   ……… 220

Meats………………   … .……      100

Soups......................…  …             25                                                                                               
 Total....... ..  ................. ......... 540 

         

However, while arriving at a figure may be easy, it is sometimes difficult to budget the amount of each type of food needed to fill a pint or quart jar and what the approximate yield will be when you convert fresh foods into canned foods.

NOTE :

          Mom and I estimate that following this budget, one would need roughly 110 quarts of food per person canned for the season. We discounted the canned meats and soups because we do not go in for that kind of canning. These items are frozen, made fresh or purchased at the grocery store

Alliums

Gnome and chives

I like alliums: onions, leeks, garlic, chives, wild garlic, wild onion... It doesn't matter what they are or where they grow. They have cheerful flowers and many of them taste good. (We won't address the mild allergy to garlic...)  This year wild garlic was prolific in the shade of the wooden dog pen. I felt guilty digging it up to put in the new raised bed for the cantaloupe and watermelon. Ah, but there are others in my garden. Chives wintered over again and are growing enthusiastically. The garlic that I planted as an afterthought last fall produced nicely.

Dried onions from 2009

Drying onions, 2012

The onions that I planted with my tomatoes last year got away from me. The tops died and I only found about half of them when I harvested. As usual, they were tiny: about the size of golf balls. This spring, all those missing onions sprouted and kept growing. When they went to seed, I enjoyed the balls of flower on the ends too much to harvest them. A few days ago, I broke down, dug them and braided their tops to dry. They are huge! Do onions need two years to make? Was it the organic fertilizer I used this spring that they liked? I know that you aren't supposed to harvest alliums after they go to seed, but what the hey? They were lost last year. Maybe they will be worth something this year. If not? Well, there is always the compost pile.

Leeks in bloom 2012

The leeks got away from me, too. I don't even care. They are so pretty! I enjoy going to the garden and watching the pollen gatherers at work. There are always honey bees working the leek blossoms. Wasps visit, and twice I have seen bumblebees at work. It gives me a charge to see the honey bees. My dad was a bee keeper. He had three or four hives in the garden, not to far from where I have my blackberries. When the hive would swarm, he would have to catch the new queen and her helpers to start a new hive. Who knows? Perhaps the bees working my garden escaped from Dad's hives.

More Squirrel Stories

Squirrel on red shed roof torments dogs

Our days are spent listening to the frantic barking of two terriers: Charming and Brooklyn. Charming is the most adamant. She MUST catch that squirrel that sits on the garden shed roof. What matters the small detail that she is inside the big dog pen? The squirrel is not impressed. In fact, I'm pretty sure it sits there, slowly eating a walnut, just to torment the dogs.

Furball and Squirrels

Furball

My oldest cat, LC Furball, is a character. I found her in Grand Prairie, Texas, in 2002 as a six-week-old kitten. She was caught in the plants on the neighbor's porch. I knew she was lost because that neighbor didn't care for cats. She was raised by our German Shepherd, Hagar. No matter that he was a dog, and a male, to Furball he was Mama. She mourned when he died.

When Furball was half grown, she found a way to slip out an upstairs window and lurk on the garage roof watching for squirrels. She was a mini-panther. She was a fierce hunter. She stalked squirrels.  Until the day one caught her.

The neighbor told me about it that evening. She looked out her back door to see a squirrel sitting on the cable TV wire that stretched across her yard and attached to my house. Furball saw the squirrel, too, and slipped across the wire to catch her prey. She caught him! But squirrels have sharp teeth. Once Furball had him, HE didn't let go. The neighbor said she wasn't sure what would have happened if the wire had been larger. It wasn't. They fell off!

Furball dashed one way and the squirrel went another. Each was happy to escape the monster on the wire.

Watching for squirrels

I found Furball and doctored the bite on her chin. She snuggled close to me and told me what a mean creature that squirrel was. From that day on, the mini-panther did her squirrel hunting from behind windows. She had no desire to return to the roof.

Furball was traumatized when we moved to Kansas. This house is surrounded by trees -- FULL OF SQUIRRELS! She rarely goes outside now. She will lurk at the screen door and peer outside. Where are the squirrels? If it is pitch black outside, she will venture as far as the porch. She rolls around and basks in her freedom. Any sudden noise will send her scurrying back to the safety of the house. Most of the time she follows me from room to room, lounging nearby, keeping an eye on me. Perhaps I am her protector, the new Mama now that Hagar is gone.

Jen says she knows Furball's secret: she's nuts, and she is afraid the squirrels will collect her.

New Entry

With all the flowers that needed new homes after I dug up the rootbound plants in the old flower bed, I've been sorely pressed to find homes for them.

This new entry solves several problems. It will give more interest to the front door. It gave me a home for several narcissus and daffodils, and it added an edging to the sidewalk that will make mowing easier. To give summer color, I added impatients to the bed as well. Win-win!  I also got an impressive workout cutting out and moving the sod that used to be where those beds are now located.

Instead of turning two wheelbarrows of sod into compost, I patched it into various bare places around the yard. I hope they take root. We haven't had a good rain since I planted the starts. Watering by hand isn't as effective as a good rain.

Potato Update

Here is the volunteer potato growing in the compost pile. It REALLY likes growing in the compost pile. I will be interested to see if any potatoes make. The green part is going crazy.