
Hi Lesa,
Receiving your note in the mail was such a sweet surprise!
Congratulations to Kira! Will you visit her often in Tokyo? You and Paul have been traveling so much! Would you say you are away as much as you are home?
Is there a website you would recommend to someone (me) who loves birds but doesn’t want to travel? We hear more than see birds. Some spring days the noise from the trees is astonishing. I did see one bird that appeared to be protecting its nest – whistling and spinning wings like mad – maybe some sort of blackbird.
Our spring garden was not much – just some lettuce and kale. Tried sugar snap peas but only got enough for a serving here and there. Our onions did very well. We’ve been harvesting as needed and sharing for the past month or so. Soon they will all need to be harvested. Hope we can cure them well for storing.
Our summer garden includes butternut squash, sweet potatoes, okra, tomatoes, sweet peppers, green beans, bitter melon, blue corn, watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumbers and purple hull peas. Sounds like a lot but not doing a lot of any one thing. Everything seemed to really take off in the past week. We already got a cucumber and tomato. Would have gotten more tomatoes except a chicken got to a couple first. I think I’ve barricaded their way into the garden but will have to keep checking. Sometimes the chickens seem so stupid and other times rather crafty.
We were up to over 40 birds due to several hens going broody from March to June. We have traded, sold and killed and now I think we have between 30-35. As the roosters mature we will butcher them and then see how many hens we end up with. Hopefully, not much more than 20 as I think more than that is too many for us.
We also have the 2 cats and 2 dogs. Duke, our goldendoodle, will be 14 years old next month. He is quite a dog. Still going strong.
All this and I still haven’t told you about the landscaping we had done! Over the winter we hired a design firm (thenaturalgarden.net) to design a garden for the area between the house and garage (garage has an apartment above it – a cute building we call “the cottage”). It is our back entrance and the one we use most often. For 3 weeks (mid June to early July) they put in stone paths, a rain garden and native plants. We are very pleased with what they did and look forward to watching it mature. We worked very hard all spring in preparation for their arrival – transplanting and giving away a lot of what was there – also saving some things to transplant back into the same ares. A lot of work and I learned a lot too. Here is a list of what they planted – Columbine, Aromatic Aster, Lady Fern, Pennsylvania Sedge, Blue Mistflower, Pale Purple Coneflower, Strawberry, Coral Bells, Soft Rush, Provence Lavender, Blazing Star, Wild Quinine, Christmas Fern, Orange Coneflower, Meadow Petunia, Little Bluestem, Woodland Stonecrop, Creeping Thyme and Golden Alexander.
Funny you mentioned the good by quilts. I just pulled mine out. I thought it would be a good summer quilting project. It’s too hot in my sewing room right now. Plan to hand quilt it. Not so big that it will be hot in my lap. I enjoy thinking of my QU friends when I hold it. Good of you and Lura to take over the job. It’s a very special gift.
How I’ve gone on!
Would love to meet up. Any ideas?
Love,
Maureen
PS Feel free to stop by any time you find yourself near. The place might be a mess but I’m learning to be OK with that. Paul too!
