Author Archives: glenalmus

Sky Meadows State Park

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I met my sister at this park in Virginia which is about halfway between our homes.
It was November 9th, my sister’s birthday.
It was on a weekday so there weren’t many people there. This was taken after we had our lunch at a picnic table under some pine trees.
It was a beautiful day. Almost a little too warm for a hike. In the 70’s and breezy.

October 2020

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We took out the elecampane from the front garden because it was taking over the space with it’s large leaves. I sliced a bunch of the roots – dried some in the dehydrator and made elecampane syrup with the rest. I just added honey and put it in the fridge. It is good for respiratory health. I was using it over the winter and it really did help with my breathing. With the cold dry air I wake in the morning feeling a bit thick in my chest. I started taking just a teaspoon of the honey in the morning back in November and sometimes chewing a piece of the root. It made a big difference – enough so that I stopped taking it in January and I’m still fine.
The little volunteer sassafras trees were ablaze last fall.
The kitchen garden after we took out the pepper plants that were in the foreground. We had a mild fall so things were quite green even though this is late October.

Wild Oak Hike Last Fall

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I’m very behind in my blog writing so will attempt to catch up over the next few days.

I just couldn’t resist taking a photo of this farmer in Churchville when we were on our way to the Wild Oak Trail near Stokesville in the George Washington National Forest.

A friend told me about this trail so we took the first opportunity of a beautiful day to go.

The date was October 7. I find the muted tones of early fall to be just as beautiful as the intensity of peak color.

Darcy doesn’t like bridges but Dave was able to get her to proceed. She’d follow him anywhere.

Jack-o-lantern mushrooms
The view

It was the perfect hike for us. It took about an hour to get to the overlook and the return was just going back the way we came. Wild Oak has 27 miles of trail for us to explore. I’m surprised we haven’t been back yet. Something to look forward to.

Harvesting Black Walnuts

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We harvested all these black walnuts from a friend’s place.
Dave put the bucket of walnuts in a large garbage can full of water. He agitated the mix using a dry wall mixing tool to remove the green hulls. I filled an old crock pot with some of the filtered sludge and cooked it down to make black walnut ink.
These are all nuts (minus the ones I used to make hermit cookies) after Dave dried them on a sheet all day on the driveway.
We gathered a couple more buckets full from this tree next to the dairy barn next door. Our pine tree is a little in the way in this photo. We hear the walnuts hitting the tin roof throughout the fall. There is also a young tree on our property along this fence and we found some nuts under it, too.

September

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The white wood asters and blue stemmed goldenrod in bloom.
herbs and other potted plants
been seeing a lot of praying mantis
a closeup of the blue stemmed goldenrod
Bumper crop of peppers this year and the Moondurang tomatoes are still producing.
Yukon potatoes did well, too. We have them stored down in the basement.
I’m extending the bed off the back patio. Moving columbine and white wood aster from the cracks of the patio brick.
The butternut did well, too. This photo was taken before we had a bit of frost.
The black locust tree and chestnut oak (smaller tree to right and behind) are doing very well. We planted them 4 years ago.
I love our meadow in September.
A closer look at the New York ironweed, jewelweed and boneset.
New York ironweed
blue cardinal flower in the meadow closer to the road
This little tree frog hitched a ride to the farmers market with me.
We cleaned out the mudroom and shed this month. These photos are of the shed.
purple stem aster down by the creek
Canada goldenrod also down by the creek
The aster and goldenrod down by the creek.
With Darcy’s help we harvested 56 butternut squash. We left many unripe ones in the field. They won’t ripen because we got such an early frost which made the vines die back.

Feeling Like Late Summer

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They don’t look pretty but I can’t complain. We’ve gotten at least 20 lbs. of tomatoes so far. I’ll probably slow roast these as they ripen.
We thought the cucumbers were slowing down. Wrong!

A female monarch on our blue foamflower. I wonder if we will finally see a monarch chrysalis this year. In the past, I’ve only seen males. Males have a black spot on their hindwings.

Peppers

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Our first big harvest of peppers. It includes Chinese Five Color, Serrano and Jasmyn Rissie. They are all hot peppers. We also got a few sweet Jimmy Nardello and Doe Hill. They aren’t in the photo because I only canned the hot peppers.
New York Ironweed growing in our meadow down by the creek.
Jewelweed grows down there as well.
We had heavy rain again this past Saturday night. It wasn’t as bad as two weeks ago but some of the same places downtown flooded AGAIN!
This photo shows our creek much higher than normal.

August 2020

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We planted this about three years ago down by the spring house. This is the first year it bloomed. Only three blooms that I could see. Hopefully, more next year.
Meadow petunias in our native garden. This plant is starting to spread itself everywhere!
Our native garden was planted in 2017 – three years ago. It is between the house and the garage. This is the way we walk to enter the house via the back door.
We added a row of blocks on either side of the driveway so no one drives off the edge where the conduits are. The other areas are a slope of rocks.
Well it didn’t take long between getting the new driveway and having a gully washer of a storm – about four inches in two hours. Many homes and businesses in the downtown area were ruined. The newspaper reported about $3 million of damage. We just had a bunch of rock moved downstream. We’ve moved some of it. Billy Young stopped by a few nights ago and said they’d move the rest when it dried up. Hmmm, that could be months from now if we continue in this wet weather pattern.
Our second batch of sauerkraut. We have our second batch of sour pickles bubbling on the kitchen counter now.
We’ve been busy with our harvest. Planning to can more tomato sauce this weekend using a mix of our tomatoes and those from the farmers market. We’ve had cool weather this week – 58 degrees last night – so I don’t know how well they will continue to do.
These are elderberries. It’s hard to tell how big they are. These are smaller than a pea. They can be half this size. The rain has kept them plump. I’m making immune boosting syrup with them.

New Driveway

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These are photos taken in May of 2018. The bricks on the grass in the top left photo were knocked down by us just pushing them over the side. I show the photo with Damian’s car because you can see the grassing circle in the center of the drive which is no longer there. It was dicey driving over that area because it dipped down. We were lucky the driveway didn’t fail before we finally got someone out here to repair it.
These photos were taken in October of 2019. We thought we had people coming out to do the work so Dave knocked down the brick wall with his tractor. I wanted to save as much of the brick as I could for some unknown project. The photo on the right shows how bad the pillars were. We had decided we weren’t going to keep them and then changed our minds when we talked to Billy Young. He knew of a mason that could come out and fix them so that is what we did. They just had to raid my stack of bricks because my neighbor, Nancy, and I had already started taking the brick from the pillars. She has already put the ones she took to good use as a garden bed border.
Billy Young came out to give us an estimate on July 10 and started the work on July 17. They started early and were here until 10pm. Billy wanted to get the conduits in so that is what they did.
Only Billy’s partner (never did learn his name) worked on Saturday the 18th. I think he just wanted to get a chance to use the little front loader.
A different crew came on Sunday to erect the frame for the concrete.
They poured the concrete on Monday.
And this is what it looked like Tuesday evening.
On Wednesday they prepared the area for asphalt. I should mention that they are doing all this in a heat wave. Temps were around 90 and it was very sticky.
And despite the rain we are done. The brick pillar on the right in the photo on the left was redone by the mason as was the same pillar on the other side of the drive. The other pillar and wall was still good enough.
It seems so much bigger without that grassy circle. And you can see the brick repair better in this photo above right. It’s covered in plastic to protect it for a couple of days.
They reseeded the straw covered area. I’d like to plant it with natives this fall.
We need to put up some sort of bumper so people unfamiliar with the drive don’t go over this approximately 6 foot drop. There is a slope where the rocks are, but the area over the conduit is a drop. I’m not exactly thrilled with how it turned out. Grateful it is done, but I’d wanted a block wall, not this expanse of rock. It is nice having a smooth driveway and I’m getting used to the view.

Summer Heat

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This is a photo from earlier this month of the kitchen garden. We had fairly moderate weather until last week when we hit 90 degrees. Yesterday was a scorcher.
And these are photos from a couple of weeks ago of the barn garden. It’s getting harder to walk around in there now that we are in the thick of the growing season.
Sometimes Darcy needs a little quiet time too.
Blazing Star, Wild Quinine, Purple Coneflower and Calendula
Last Fridays harvest
Work has begun on our driveway! Just some teaser photos here – parking the cars on the field and Billy Young has brought in a lot of equipment for the work.
Our cucumber plants are in the front yard. We are building up this flower bed with wood chips that will turn into soil in a couple of years. We decided to fill a trench down the middle with compost and plant our cucumber there. I wasn’t sure it would work, but we have already picked 2 cukes!
Smokey and I have been meeting up on the back deck every morning for some loving. I’m allergic so I just stroke him with my one hand and try not to let him rub up against my legs. I largely fail at that. I always wash afterward.
Orange and purple coneflowers
Smokey has not trained Darcy like Frida has. He usually runs away from her whereas Frida will stand her ground.

More about the driveway soon!