books and other stuff

I borrowed a giant wildflower book from the library, but I still don't know what these are ~

~ a little blurry, but perhaps you can help? we had a flowering bush like this when we lived in the city, too ~ perhaps it doesn't qualify as a wildflower?

chickens in the yard

seedlings in the coldframe

We've used The New Seed-Starters Handbook and Guide to Alabama Vegetable Gardening as reference books over the past couple of months. And on the subject of books, I got a couple of great ones for my birthday: The Wall and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I devoured The Wall and recommend it for children as well as adults. I've not yet started the other one -- looking forward to taking it with me to the beach. The beach! Happy sigh.

I love getting books as gifts because it's the only time I ever add anything to the shelf. All else comes from the library. When I first visited The Evelyn Thornton - Warrior Public Library, I was a bit aghast that it consisted of a single, tiny room. I was accustomed to taking the kids to the downtown Birmingham library once a week. But you know how picking things out at the store can be overwhelming these days, because there are just so many shampoos and cheeses from which to choose? I like the Warrior library because it's the opposite of that. There are a few really good choices, and that's all I really need.

happy weekend

This past Friday was my 39th birthday. (And no, I have not been 39 for the past several years!) My fabulously amazing General Manager made me this ~

a luscious pound cake, still warm from the oven!

Lee gave me a beautiful necklace, some ginger-scented goat's milk soap, and some Higher Ground coffee, all of which he purchased at Red Rain in Homewood, Alabama. Sadly, Amy Vickers' environmentally friendly general store is going out of business at the end of April. There are lots of good deals to be had from now until then, but I sure will miss them when they're gone.

On Saturday, I took Leah to a Girl Scout event at Rickwood Caverns ~

bluegrass

face painting



cool rocks

creeping phlox with shadowy intrusion


trillium, which i was able to identify thanks to a post by Annie at Edifice Rex

don't know ~ do you?

big bunny

And on Sunday, we ate a delicious dinner at my mom's, after which the kids sifted through a big box of quarters in order to find one from each state. Plenty of Delaware, but man is Missouri ever hard to find.

Perhaps the most exciting news of the weekend is that my brother, sister-in-law, and niece scored VIP passes to President Obama's speech at Hradčany Square in Prague. He waved to my niece!

while i was sleeping

When finally I crawled out of bed after a week's worth of sickness, I discovered that the dogwoods had bloomed ~

Miss Wisteria soon will send word
to the privet and mimosa tree
(by way of the bumble bee):
Put on your pearls, girls -- step past your bounds!
Kudzu's not the only thing taking over this town.

day of sun

Things that were built today ~

the beginnings of our cold frame

laptop with swivel monitor and swivel qwerty keyboard, designed and built by Leah and Neal, using their screwdriver set, scrap wood, a block, and some yarn

Things that were discovered today ~

twins!

coyote track? (nothing for scale, but it's bigger than it seems -- definitely bigger than a Maya print)

Things I need help with ~

What is it? If the flowering quince identification is correct, then this is something else. The quince blossoms are orange-red, and they produce small, green, crabapple-like fruit. In fact, last year we thought they were crabapples. These blossoms are pink. I'm pretty sure this is the same tree that produced small, red, apple-like fruit last year.

These little white clusters are growing wild in the woods. What are they?

Blogs are so selective. If I choose not to disclose the fact that I'm running a fever and couging up something evil, you'll never know, will you? Back to bed....

leah's top eight reasons

why it's no fun being a grownup:

8. You have to drive.
7. You never have time to get a haircut.
6. You have to buy your own stuff.
5. You have to take care of crazy kids.
4. You have to work all day.
3. You have to pay bills.
2. You have to make dinner.
1. You have to clean up throw-up when your kid gets sick.

Apparently, youth is not always wasted on the young.

action shots and things that hide

At the beginning of the week, we thinned our tomatoes and eggplant and relocated the squash to roomier digs ~

They'll be heading out to a cold frame in the near future -- we've got lots of salvaged windows that we'll be putting to good use.

The kids found some mushrooms tucked between the great big hackberry tree and the monster wisteria vine ~

Using our handy dandy pocket naturalist guide to mushrooms, we think we have identified these as Common Psathyrella (Psathyrella candolleana). Or something like that.

Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) on a log, I think ~

We're gathering enough eggs to be able to give some away these days, but Lee came across this wild nest underneath some salvaged materials in the yard. As much as we don't need any more eggs (or chickens), it's still a little disappointing that these weren't deposited in the coop ~

Easterius Eggisus

just hanging around

things that happen here

Remember when it snowed a couple of weeks ago?

The very next weekend, we started some of our seeds ~

tomatoes

eggplant and squash.

The only ones that haven't yet sprouted are the ground cherries, which are really a type of tomato. There's no need to start squash indoors, as you can see by the way it has shot up after only one week. We just figured we'd get a head start since we're a little behind on some other things. We have about a jillion more to start, and we've got to tend to these little germinators as well, thinning some and relocating others.

Gone are the daffodils ~

and the forsythia ~

giving way to spirea ~

Periwinkle is its simple self ~


The tulip tree sheds its dressing ~

Lythrum at Goblins in my Garden helped me know these bright little blossoms as flowering quince ~


The shiitake log is busy making shiitakes ~

That little dot to the right of the mushrooms is a ladybug, the indoor population of which is enough to drive anyone mad, but at least now they have a kitchen sprouting garden to visit.

Life grows ~




and leaves evidence of itself ~


in the form of a phone, a globe, a miniature tornado-maker, half of a hard-boiled egg, pistachios and shells, a screwdriver, and the work of children.

cluck, sizzle, strum

The other day I found an old friend of mine on Facebook, and she turned me on to the Alabama Chicken and Egg Festival in Moulton, AL. In particular, she gave a shout out to the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who'll be playing at the festival next month.

Bluegrass, chickens, and eggs -- what more could you ask for? Thanks, Ashley V.!

climate controlled

Yesterday, I opened my freezer to find the Alabama snowman looking up at me from the bottom compartment. Apparently he has been living there all week. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was 70 degrees outside. A freezer seems a bit like a zoo when a snowman is inside of it.

alabama snowman

all tomorrow's omelets

starting from seed

We finally ordered our seeds! Not these, exactly, but I thought I'd show some examples of seed packets from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I learned about them from one of my favorite addictions, Garden Rant. Jere Gettle's story is worth checking out: he began the business at the tender age of 17 and has grown it into an entire town. The catalog itself is a work of art.

We've charted our plans and will start some indoors and some outdoors. Some will go into raised beds, some directly into the ground, and some in containers. We chose seeds based on whether we thought they would succeed (here is a great resource for Alabama, although I don't know how much they take rare and heirloom varieties into consideration), and we also indulged in some that are just plain cool.

The great thing about seeds is that you can get a lot of them for very little money, and once the plant establishes itself, you can use its seeds over and over again. That's the plan, anyway.

two jobs with one terramite

What do you do when you discover you have a leak in your water line, and a shovel just won't do the trick? Why, you violate child labor laws, of course!


Making the most of our eight-hour time allowance, we decided to use the terramite to turn over the earth for garden experiment, part deux.

Garden experiment, part un, took place last year, and resulted in a few zucchini, some beans, and lots of marigolds. Flashbacks of turning the hard, rocky ground with a Honda tiller were enough to convince us that while perhaps unorthodox, the terramite would definitely do the job.

I expect garden experiment, part deux, to fulfill all of its new-improved promise primarily because it will be full of shit. That's right -- excrement. Chicken and rabbit, to be exact. Plus a whole buncha rotten food, decayed leaves, and a little woodash. Go worms, go!