Fixing the Sprinklers

No fun!

Our sprinkler system is about 25 years old and is in need of some repair. It took Bryon 3 evenings after work, and most of the day last Saturday to get it all fixed.

Just in time for the warmer weather that hit this past week.

Of course Quin had to help Papa and Matt. Notice the little tractor he's got his hand on? He almost always has a tractor when he's outside helping.

All done! I love the new spigot to water the flower beds more easily.
It's out of the way of the sprinkler so it's easy to turn on and off without getting wet.

None of the flower beds have sprinkler system installed. One day we may have the money to rip the whole system out and start again, but definitely not this year!

For now, we'll continue to water the flowers by hand. And be grateful for all the rain we've had this spring!

It took about 5 hours of weeding.....

to get the weeds out of this bed.
I don't like weeding, but I didn't mind this year because we were so thankful for the rain!

Even the Peonies look nice this year!
These Peonies look like ordinary ones to everyone else, but they came from Bryon's grandmother's flower garden. We are the last ones in the family to still have any.
They bring back happy memories of her farm every spring when we see them.

I was recently told that it's possible to grow peonies from seed, so I'll be saving the seeds this year and giving that a try.

Photos from the Farm #30

Welcome back!

Do you want to see a few more photos of Harry?

We love him! He is such a sweet goat kid! He's so friendly and very soft. Often our goat kids are shy and we have to catch them to pet them. Not Harry! He comes right up to us.

He often sits on my lap while I'm milking Annie, his mom. I wish I could get a picture of that! I'm not very good at taking selfies while I'm milking.

Here's Harry! Did you notice he has a collar on now?
He is almost 4 weeks old.

Misty is on the left, Harry is in the middle, and Annie is on the right.

The mama goats don't mind letting Harry have a treat.

Goat kids love to climb and play, just like you!

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We had a visitor earlier this week. This is a turkey hen. I don't know who she belongs to.
We saw her on Sunday, by Monday afternoon she had gone home.

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I found one of the nests the ducks made! I found 3 eggs!
They decided that since I found their nest, they would hide their eggs again.
I found another nest in the garden under the raspberries.
They didn't lay under the raspberries very long.
It's like an Easter Egg hunt every day!

Last week I showed you a graph of how many eggs I collected over almost 6 weeks. I thought you might like to know how much all those eggs cost us.

We collected 348 eggs.

There are 12 eggs in each dozen.

348 ÷ 12 = 29 dozen eggs.

A 50 pound bag of food costs about $16. The chickens and ducks ate 2 1/2 bags of food during the 6 weeks I was counting eggs.

$16 x 2.5 = $40

To find out how much each dozen eggs cost I divided $40 by 29 dozen.

$40 ÷ 29 dozen = $1.38 for each dozen eggs.

I'm not sure how much eggs cost in the store since we haven't bought eggs from the store for a long time!

We like our chickens, and we like fresh eggs a lot! They taste much better than eggs from the store. We also like that the chickens eat all the bugs in the pasture. We don't usually have many grasshoppers during the summer.

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I thought you might like to see the flowers that are starting to bud in the front yard.
It's spring and everything is growing!

Here is the flower bed by the front door.

Do you see the tall, fluffy, white flowers?
That is a rhubarb plant.
This afternoon I'll cut the stalks and bottle them in jars so we can make pie with it. Rhubarb is sour so the pie has a lot of sugar and berries in it to make it sweeter.

That's all for today.  Make it a great week!

Maine Flowers

Spunky lives in Maine. She runs by these flowers every day and decided to pick a few yesterday.

So many of the home decorating blogs try to reproduce this wild, rustic look. They do a pretty good job, too!

But, oh! How beautiful it looks when it is real!

Vinegar Weed Killer

I've had a few people tell me that using vinegar for a weed killer is a great option to Round-Up or other weed killers.

I searched around on the internet for some recipes and found this very helpful site. The Garden Counselor

I really appreciate the scientific approach used on the site (being that I'm married to a Ph. D. chemist and all.)

They used a few different recipes for killing weeds. I used the Full Strength Vinegar and Soap recipe. Really, it's 1 gallon of regular white vinegar (it's cheaper than cider vinegar) and 1 tablespoon of Dawn dishwashing liquid (because that's what I have on hand.) I put mine in a new garden sprayer.

Are you wondering what the soap adds? The scientist/hubby said that the soap is the 'spreader sticker' that makes the vinegar stick to the plant better.

I sprayed the weeds in the flower beds and around the new fruit trees a day after it rained.

There are some pros and cons to using vinegar. The pros include: I don't have to buy a Monsanto product, it is safer around pets and kids, it only kills the tops (not the roots) of the plants, our soil is alkaline here, so adding some acid to the soil is a good thing.

One con is: it only kills the roots of the plants.

While killing the roots and the plant completely is a great thing in some areas of the yard, I'd prefer to not kill roots in the flower beds and around the fruit trees. If I spray with vinegar and soap often enough, I'm fairly sure the roots will eventually die off. If they don't, at least I haven't killed off the flowers or the fruit trees along with the weeds.

Here are some before and 24 hour afer photos

Before spraying.

24 hours after spraying. I didn't get the camera in exactly the same spot, sorry about that! You can see the grass and the dandelion are brown, although the flowers on the dandelion are still yellow. 

Before spraying

24 hours after spraying, again, the flowers are still yellow, but the leaves of the plants are dying off.

24 hours after spraying (but no before picture). You can see the bind weed all shriveled. I'm pretty excited about this! I can spray really close to the other plants in the flower bed, while it might kill a few leaves of some of the flowers, it won't kill the roots. I never use Round-Up in my flower beds because I don't want to kill off any of the flowers, but I hate pulling bind weed all summer long, too. Using vinegar and soap (I'm hoping) will help me keep the bind weed down this year without hurting the rest of the flowers.

One more reason to use vinegar and soap: I'm not leaving harmful chemicals on the plants that the bees still enjoy! This is the first honeybee I've seen this year, what a beautiful sight. Since Dandelions are among the first flowers to blossom in the spring, they are pretty important to the these hard-working gals!

We'll probably still use a stronger weed killer on the access road to the barn and in spots on the driveway, especially to control the puncture weeds. However, I think we'll be using alot of vinegar in the flowerbeds and around fruit trees (and maybe even on the thistles in the pasture) and see how it works in other areas of the yard throughout the summer.

Black-eyed Susan

Weird! I came in the back gate and noticed this little Black-eyed Susan growing in the corner of the yard. About 5 years ago I put one in the front yard and enjoyed them all summer. But this variety is annual, not perennial. It was a pleasant surprise to see one growing in a completely different part of the yard!

Bloom where you're planted.... or where the wind blows you!

I decided to take a photo before Vet2Be mows the lawn. It won't last through the weekend mowing and trimming.

The Daffodils Think Spring is Coming!

A Bit of "Pretty" to Brighten My Day

I see so many lovely photos on other blogs. I'm not much of a 'beauty' photographer. I can't seem to capture the beautiful in the simple as well as others do.

But I saw these today and decided to just snap a few photos of them.  These are the Primroses that I have sitting in the copper tea kettle my Grandma gave me.

Have a Glorious Day!

Weeding....

I am still way behind on weeding! Some days I wonder if I will be caught up by Christmas or not. If you are behind on your weeding, these photos should make you feel a bit better. I don't know anyone whose flower beds look as bad as this one does.

I've always got excuses... death in the family, homeschooling, church responsibilities, practicing guitar or piano, going to the doctor ... there is always something that gets in the way. And I am usually happy to let stuff get in the way since I don't enjoy weeding that much.

It took me about 40 minutes to clear the area that is just dirt. You can see behind it how much more weeding there is to do.

Here is a picture of the whole flower bed. There are many days that I would love to just spray Round-Up on the whole thing and then turn it into a parking area. We need the parking area anyway--but we don't have the cash for it right now, so it will stay a flower bed for another year.


Here is the same bed from the road. There are some few beautiful plants in there, if you can see them among the weeds; Peonies, Sea Heather, Lavender, Iris, Day Lillies, a small climbing rose on the fence, and a few others that I don't know the names of. This side of the flower bed looks better than the other side because one of the neighbors across the street has to look at it. If I make myself weed, this is usually where I start.

I'm sure I'll be out there again tomorrow. Hubby is on a business trip for two weeks, maybe I'll find time to get this bed cleaned out and mulched before he gets back. It's a good thing that he doesn't care about stuff like weeding flower beds (or cleaning house), because then I don't feel like such a failure!

I think the flower beds all look best when they are covered in snow!

Planting Flowers

Yesterday I planted flowers. Six chrysanthemums and one Hibiscus. The Hibiscus was given to me by my friends who bought it for me in memory of my mom. Hopefully next year it will have beautiful flowers. I planted it in front of the house near the front door. I placed some of my mother's ashes in the hole before I planted the bush. Perhaps her green thumb will nurture the flowers better than I can.

The Hibiscus my friends gave me is planted in front of the house near the front door. The blue flowers are from a bush directly behind the Hibiscus. I will move it in the fall when the weather is cooler and easier on transplants.

We don't have much late summer and fall color in the flower beds. Hubby and I went to the store and found some beautiful mums. I love these pink ones with yellow centers.

Hubby loved these red and yellow mums. They are planted at the end of the driveway near the mailbox. Hubby will see them every time he pulls into the driveway.

Weeding is not my favorite hobby, but I can effectively take pictures are parts of the garden that are weed free right after I've weeded! Hopefully by the time winter comes I'll have all the beds weeded. Maybe next year I will have more time to take care of the flower beds and the vegetable garden.