More about the driveway soon!
Summer Heat
More about the driveway soon!
Category Archives: Our Animals
More about the driveway soon!
Cool Spring
It’s been a beautiful, long, cool spring. While so many others have been bored during this stay at home spring due to COVID-19, I found myself busier than ever. It’s been nice being outside tending my garden with temperature mostly in the 50’s and 60’s during the day. I have a lot of photos to share.
a lone tulip among the Virginia bluebells
We have since had a couple of frosts so I’m not sure we will have any fruit this year.
I made elderberry syrup from some elderberries I dried a couple of years ago. Hoping to regulate my immune system.
I’ve been making face masks for family, friends and Damian’s coworkers at FedEx. It takes me about one hour and 15 minutes to make two masks and I try to make two every evening. I also made my sister a couple of scrub caps because she has been involved in COVID testing at her hospital.
I guess most of my posts include a photo of Darcy and or Frida. They play though not in the way Darcy wants to. Basically, Frida stares at Darcy and twitches her tail and Darcy goes wild in a ‘why won’t you play with me’ kind of way.
Violets and dandelions – pretty weeds.
I don’t mind them in the grass – I just don’t want them in my flower beds because they take over.
We are trying bee keeping again. Not sure I mentioned last year that our two colonies failed. We have high hopes with this one because it seems so robust. It was nice of our friend, Sue, to give us a swarm from one of her colonies.
The ferns are so pretty when they first sprout.
I don’t often include a photo of myself.
I’m making hermit cookies to send to my mom for Mother’s Day.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I love columbine because it looks good from Spring to Fall. It’s really spreading itself around the garden – and patio – so much so that I’ve dug some up from between the brick and transplanted it along with some heuchera and woodland stonecrop into the front yard flower beds.
Mother’s Day cookout
Smokey Roo wanted to be included, too!
This rocker is on the top floor of the mudroom. There are two rockers up there and no one sits on them other than the cats.
A little painting I did in my Perpetual Nature Journal. According to the Humane Society “opossums can be beneficial for your garden, eating snails, slugs, insects and sometimes even small rodents. They’ll even clean up spilled garbage and fruit that has fallen off trees.”
Gardening During the Coronavirus Crisis
This is in the master bedroom.
We also planted other peppers, tomatoes, dill, marjoram, cosmos and marigolds.
A perk from this was the wood chips the arborists left behind. I used it to cover the cardboard I’d laid down in the kitchen garden a year ago. This is the path. I also finished putting leaf mulch there on the top left of the photo. I hope to put flowers and or native grass there. That area is under the eave so it has to be something that doesn’t mind it dry.
The cardboard was there to kill the grass. I’m trying to reduce the grass, especially in areas where it is difficult to get the lawn mower.
So far, social distancing because of the Coronavirus has been good for our garden. Last week we planted lettuce, carrot and spinach seed. Over the weekend, we planted onions and potatoes.
I should note here that our winter felt like a prolonged spring. Very strange. They say blooms are 3 weeks early this year.
First Snow
It was a pleasant snow day.
Making Corn Tortillas
When I bought this mixer I never thought I’d use it to grind corn we grew ourselves.
Frida and Darcy are checking each other out.
My sister and her two daughters visited us Saturday through Sunday AND NONE OF US TOOK A PHOTO!!! This is not the first time they’ve visited and I kicked myself afterward for not taking a photo. Ughhhh!!!
Black Kitty Day
It’s black kitty day and she posed so nicely for me.
A huge branch fell from one of the silver maples by the road.
I said I’d try to get the serviceberry tree in it’s fall glory and here it is. You might need to click on it to get a better view of it. I tried photographing it in at all times of day and in sun and clouds and it just wasn’t doing it justice. I think maybe it is because it is a delicate looking tree. The individual leaves are small and it is shaded by trees all around it.
Fall is Finally Here
I’m sitting at a table with an open window at my back and the breeze is glorious! The first three days of October were around 90 degrees which is crazy. Today is beautiful and we are even expecting some much needed rain on Monday so keeping my fingers crossed.
Dave usually walks Darcy in the morning and we both go in the evening. Dave’s requirement to report to work in northern Virgina two days every other week means it is hard to get his hours in so I’ve been walking Darcy in the morning when I can. She plops herself down when she looks back and sees people coming up behind us which is pretty much always since it is a well loved park we walk in. I literally have to drag her to get her going again. Then the people say “oh, she’s tired” and I let them know she just wants to see them. She runs around the dog park for an hour so I know walking with me isn’t causing her to be tired. I enjoy walking again and can feel it is good for my body.
Letting her have her little break.
The red chokeberry bush
in my nature journal
The paw paw tree leaves start turning color quite early. I harvested quite a few this year. They are best when I just pick them off the ground before they start to rot too much. I gave some away this year. Some people had them before and were happy to have them again. One had never had a paw paw and was surprised she like it.
Our one little pepper plant has given us quite a few large peppers. I expect this is the last of it. I made some sweet red pepper relish with these. The guys ate it on their chicken salad sandwiches last night.
Been Too Long
Having issues with getting photos in a post and have now figured it out.
A photo from July – Dave and a harvest of green beans, cucumbers and tomatoes. The green beans did well for about a month and that was it. We’ve gotten a tomato here and there. The two plants just didn’t do well. Not sure why. We got so many cucumbers I canned bread and butter pickles and dill pickles. Without fail we have to make tomato sauce so we ended up buying seconds at the farmers market to do so.
Our big news around here since last post is that we adopted a five month old puppy. She is a labrador/hound mix. We were smitten at first sight even though I didn’t really want a big dog.
Her first visit to the vet.
She loves Dave best.
white wood aster
woodland goldenrod
Darcy and the cats have made peace.
Darcy has been with us for six weeks now. I can’t imagine a home without a dog.
Beekeepers
I’ll get to the bees in a minute. First some photos from earlier in the month. Here, the fringe tree and columbine are blooming.
What do Frida and Smokey want?
A replacement rhododendron – the others are white. I’m okay with it.
Blooming woodland geraniums and stonecrop
I love green and gold as a ground cover in our native garden.
Lichen (blooming?) on the old fence behind the barn.
Peony time
Ready for the bees
Larry (we know him from hOUR Economy) had hives and not enough property. We had property and a desire to have bees with the help of someone with some experience. So we have partnered with him in beekeeping. The bees arrived last Friday in this box. The queen bee come in a little separate box. There is a piece of candy on one end and the bees are supposed to eat the candy over a period of a few days to release her. It gives the other bees the time to accept her as their queen. We opened the wrong side of the little box and released her too early. Either she was killed by our clumsy efforts of hive set up or the other bees killed her because we are pretty sure by the behavior of the bees that they are queenless. We even had someone with two decades of bee experience out here yesterday and that was her assessment. Sue wore only a veil and looked all around the hive, lifting the frames and lid to look at all the bees to catch sight of a queen. She couldn’t find one. She also thought they were without a queen by their high pitched buzzing. We are now waiting for another queen to come in the mail.
We have harvested nine quarts of strawberries. Most of which have been sugared and frozen for my mom ; c )
Poor Len took a turn for the worse recently and we had him euthanized a few days ago. He had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer 15 months ago. The doctor was impressed that he had lasted this long. We are now dogless and it feels strange though I was happy to get ride of the stinky dog beds.
I love my old oak.
Not really sure why we did it but we bought a second hive of bees. This one came all ready in a hive and was delivered to us by my friend Paul who keeps bees in downtown Staunton. One of his hives swarmed a month ago so he put them in this hive and they are busy doing their thing – making comb, the queen is laying eggs and maybe even making honey already. I forget what Paul and Larry said. There is so much to learn. This is a very small colony of bees but they seem to know what they are doing and are doing it. I guess because they have a queen. We won’t harvest honey this year because we want the bees to have it so they are strong and make it through the winter. We are of the mind that honey is better for them than sugar water. If both hives do well, we will harvest in he fall of 2020- some honey for us, some for Larry and we’ll leave honey in the hive for the bees. If they run out before spring we will supplement with sugar water. Paul says our garden will flourish with the help of the bees.
You know you are in the country when your neighbors want the beehive near their property ; c )
Sketch of Front Door
I’m feeling a bit under the weather so the only thing getting done around here is a bit of sewing, reading, sketching and light housework. (And if truth be told – watching a lot of youtube videos.)
I thought I’d share a few sketches since one is of our front door. The cityscape is of the Clock Tower building on E. Beverley Street in Staunton. The sketch of some of my toiletries and the door was done for an online sketching class I’m taking. I’m purposely focusing on sketching (and not drawing) because I’m not interested in trying to perfectly render what I see.
I’m having fun playing with my pens and paints and seeing a little bit of improvement with each sketch.
It’s time to start thinking about a vegetable garden. It has been too rainy to do any prep work. Right now we are just hoping for a few good days in early spring to get things started and then just planting some of the seeds we already have. No real planning – just doing what can get done.
I should mention here that on February 5 we had our precious goldendoodle, Duke, euthanized. It’s such a hard thing to do, but we knew it was the right thing to do. He had a good long life – 15 years – and was a great dog.
I think these photos are from 2015.
