BlueBirds Fledged Today

We had a nest box by the Rv that had five little eggs in it.  We weren’t sure if all the eggs hatched, but today the nest was empty and there were no eggs left there!  They were there yesterday, but gone today. Another success!

That makes two batches so far this year.  We have two more nests starting, so we should have some more babies soon!  We love them because they are in a nest box and we can open the door and peek in.  The Blue Bird expects encourage you to put up nesting boxes and monitor them for parasites and such.  You are to keep track of when the eggs hatch and not open the next box after day 14.  At that point they are close to fledging and opening the nest could cause them to fledge early.   Just wanted everyone to know that we aren’t hurting them by peeking inside!

The garden is growing well.  We have potatoes, snow and sugar peas that we’re eating already.  We have some green tomatoes, and some small Jalapeno and green bell peppers.  He’s growing cucumbers and dill for some pickles.

Things are flourishing here, between the garden, grass, weeds, and birds!

Spring is Here

I can tell, because it is nearly dark and Al is still outside.  When the time changes and the days get longer, I can’t get him in the house before 9pm.

We went into town today and got some more white millet for our winter birds.  Hopefully it will be the last 50 pound bag we will need for this winter.  We have so many winter birds that we have to use some of the cheaper stuff. We normally feed them the sunflower chips because they make no mess (no hulls or unwanted plants) and the birds love them.


We came home and planted more onions and I tried some garlic this year.  We’ll see how that works out.
We got the leaves raked up under the front tree and the grass underneath was pretty green.  It looks so much better.


I guess because it was close to the house the grass stayed greener.  The outer portion of the front yard is not nearly as green….but it’s getting there.

I did some mowing on my zero turn Grasshopper mower, which I love.  Al was the one that insisted we get the zero turn style mower, but I quickly found how nice they are.  I do most of the mowing…and Al gets stuck doing the hard stuff!
The Blue Birds have been showing an interest in the houses, but so far no one has started making a nest.  They have been hanging around the boxes though.


Miss Kitty watching me from the window.

It was a good day.  We worked hard outside, but got some thing accomplished and the weather was about 70 degrees again.  The next two days we are expecting some rain, so we may get a few R & R days.

72 Degrees and Sunny

The weather couldn’t have been nicer and we spent most of the day outside.
Al worked on tilling the ground in the lower garden now that we have the upper garden mostly planted.  Every summer when it’s hot and the weeds are growing much better than the garden we tell ourselves, next year we need plant less and take better care of what we do grow.
Every spring the weather is so nice and we’re so glad to be outside, we get carried away again.
I keep reminding Al that we plan to take more trips in the rv this year and that I don’t want to have to worry about it when we’re gone, but he keeps planning the garden. 
I guess we’ll plant what we want and worry about it later.
I planted more onions and worked on raking the leaves in the front yard.  It’s the only place where we really have any raking to do.  Our tree sheds leaves from late summer until spring.  It has finally lost all it’s leaves, so it’s time to rake!
One thing about spring in the country…you get exercise!

Planting the Garden

We had warm weather today, finally, and no cold wind.  We were actually outside this afternoon without a jacket!
Al got the area ready to plant the potato’s, and that was the plan for yesterday.  First he tilled the soil, which in my experience makes soil real nice but turns up all the weed seeds and they sprout tons of weeds.

We planted Yukon Golds, and red potato’s.  They are easy to grow and store well, so we like to grow them.
That was all done yesterday and I realized very quickly how out of shape I am.  You’d think after the project laying the new flooring in the RV that I would have gotten used to bending and kneeling.
Today the weather was even nicer than yesterday and we spent most of the day outside.
We planted spinach, lettuce, kale (don’t know how that will do here), onions, Zinnas, wildflowers, a Mimosa tree and 3 small oaks.  Of course Al did most of the digging, but I did most of the planting.
Very hard work, but we felt like we accomplished something and it’s sure nice to have fresh vegetables right from your own garden.
Gardening is a new thing for us.  Coming from Tampa, we had a house on a small lot in a subdivision and never did any gardening.  We decided once we moved up here we would attempt to grow our own food.  We have had mixed results.  The weeds grow very well though!
We found out that it’s much easier to go to “Longs U-pick” and get most of our veggies! Long’s is a wonderful farm nearby that grows vegetables that you can go and pick yourself. You get a 5 gallon bucked for $7.  We go there when we want to get a lot at once, for canning or freezing.
Another new thing we started when we moved here, was canning.  Al helps and we kind of enjoy it.  We also freeze a lot of what we pick/grow. We just used up the last of our green peppers recently, but are still eating wonderful peaches and blueberries from last year.
Several years ago we bought a Food Vacuum Sealer and have found it to be a great way to preserve fresh food.
We go pick blueberries and peaches  in June, flash freeze them, put them in a vacuum bag and seal them up. Then we have wonderful fruit all year long.  We also use it for lima beans, green beans, tomato’s, jalapeno peppers, corn and squash.  Of course it is also great for seafood.  We recently got some shrimp and Mahi Mahi.  We brought it home, flash froze it, and zipped them up.  The fish is as good as fresh for a year or better.  Fresh fish has no fish smell, but once it’s frozen it gets that fishy smell.  If you take the air out of it to freeze it, you get no fishy smell.
Anyway, our planting is done for the day. 
Tomorrow we have to take the RV in to get our propane refilled.
We will probably spend the day outside again.  I want to plant some more zinna’s, and we need to do some normal clean up from the long winter.  With 11 acres, there is always something to do!

Gardening

Al's cucumbers (he calls them pickles) are doing well. We have canned 14 jars of pickles. Some dill and some sweet and sour. They are pretty tasty but not as crisp as we'd like. I had heard to try Alum to make them crisper, but did a websearch and found that may be a little of a health issue as this stuff is toxic. It is approved for food by the FDA but it can be toxic at relatively low levels so I guess we'll have mushy pickles.

We were told to pick the cucumbers early and can right away. That didn't help. I think our solution is to get a different type of cucumber, made specifically for pickles.

We're still picking jalapenoes, green peppers, tomatoes and eggplant. Our okra is blooming and we should be eating it in a week or so.

Al is taking 2 of his Cacuzza Squash to friends in Tampa. One is 22 inches long! They are huge. I found a website on them.. it has recipes!