End of Summer Update

Drew found a Dragon in our back yard last week!

Luckily he and Douglas were able to kill it with their trusty PVC bows and Dowell arrows before it ate us! (Bows and arrows made by our neighbor Richard.. very cool..)

And then all of a sudden…School Started! Douglas is in 3rd Grade this year! Oh my…

Camera phone pictures.. not the best quality, but at least I got them! Douglas’ teacher this year is very fun. It’s going to be a good year for him!

And tonight we had one powerful rain/thunder/lightning storm come through… it was awesome! And the aftermath looked so clean and pretty, I thought I’d get some updated yard pictures taken!

Front of the house looking West (betcha couldn’t have figured that one out on your own).

Pretty pink cotton candy in the sky!

On the left…after storm rainbow through sunflowers! On the right, my new multi-colored rose bush planted earlier this summer. In bloom!

Now the remaining shots all look like it’s nighttime, but really, they were taken seconds after the cotton candy shot! Just dusk, not night. This is my new flower bed in the front of the yard. Almost all flowers in it were donated by neighbors (except for the rose bush I scored on clearance!). They’re starting to fill out, this is going to be really pretty next year!

The little Iron Trellis Dude made me.. it has a pink honeysuckle growing on it. He made the trellis out of an old porch support that was ripped down before we bought the house. But the remains were left behind! Good thing for us scavengers!

Black-eyed Susans!

Dark Purple Butterfly Bush…

Lavender Butterfly Bush (this bloom is about 3 times as big as the dark purple)

Our yearly volunteer Moonflowers. The bees LOVE these. The bloom on the right that is wound up is tomorrows bloom (they only open for one night then drop off), it unwinds slowly around dusk. The bees fight their way into the blooms and get stuck until they unwind. So what do I do almost every night? I walk around the yard pulling the blooms open and releasing trapped bees… entertaining…

The Moonflowers are almost like Kudzu.. this one is swallowing a bike and a scooter..with a second bike looking good for dessert.

And yet more volunteer Moonflowers growing out of our driveway cracks! Prettier than our old driveway, and out of the way, so I let them go. Lots of bee traps there…

And this years Tomato crop. Remember how I decided to do the square foot gardening thing and plant 1 tomato plant per square foot? I created a monster! The trellis is barely holding them up, so the plants decided to cascade out of the hot tub. It’s a jungle. There are tons of red tomatoes in the interior of the jungle, so I make the kids go on a ‘treasure hunt’ and find them for me! Next year I’m planting about 1/2 as many in this space.

So I’m educating myself with a few ‘let’s not do this again’ ideas this year. The one in this shot is the dark green Pole Beans growing up the right side of the trellis. Yes, they’re doing well! However, I didn’t think of them grabbing onto the Wisteria (lighter green leaves) and continuing to climb. These didn’t produce until late September last year, so no beans from them yet, but it sure is going to be fun finding them 1/2 way up the house!

The bed itself now has Cucumbers, Kohlrabi, Carrots, Bush Beans, Brussels Sprouts, and the odd volunteer Tomato plant from last year!

On the left, my new fence post garden bed! FULL of Yellow Crookneck Squash and Cabbage. This is my first year trying Cabbage, I only have one successful head.. the other four fell to aphids. But the aphids haven’t found my Brussels Sprouts yet!

Drew’s only Snake Gourd. We planted about 20 seeds, got about 4 plants, and only 1 gourd. And it’s not ‘snaking’ because gravity is pulling it straight. Next year no trellis!

One of our MANY Acorn Squash’s!

The Gazebo is full of Acorn Squash.. last time I counted we were at 14, but I’m sure I’ve missed a few!

And our BASKETBALL crop! Isn’t that what they look like? We’ve got at least10 pumpkins growing along the back fence, all nice and healthy! There are also bell peppers and raspberries growing in this back bed. I pulled all the onions up earlier this week (20+ onions) to let them begin to ‘cure’. I found a blog that said you need to leave them in the sun for about 3 weeks to form the outer papery skin before storing them. I had to haul them under the carport to avoid rainstorms during the past few days, but once they’re clear, the onions will go back out into the sun again. I’ll post results when done!

Happy little pumpkin…

Our Basil well! The old wishing well lost it’s roof this year and became an herb garden! There’s actually 4 Thyme bushes and 2 types of Basil in here, but the most common Basil is taking over! The Thyme will survive the winter and come back yearly, so I’m going to re-locate the Basil bed next year. We had a fresh homemade pesto pizza this week for dinner… soooo good!

Volunteer Sunflowers and Moonflowers. Way back in the corner are 2 Zucchini plants. I have to fight my way back to them every couple of days to harvest..

The back of the house.. and Shadow’s nose.

Dude’s hanging Pepper planter. Not hanging at the moment because the wind was knocking it around, but it is doing very well! We’ve had TONS of banana peppers off of it this year! I’ll be drying a bunch of them, we can’t eat them quick enough!

And lastly… the aforementioned curing Onions! Not the biggest, I also heard (too late) that if you push them back into the ground just as they start to grow above it, they will get bigger and fatter. Next year!

So that’s it for today’s updates! Stay tuned….

Baby Shower Gifts!

Two of my friends have recently given birth to their 4th and 3rd children respectively…

As I pondered what to make/give them in congratulation, I came across a reversible tote tutorial and thought, what a great idea! These moms already have TONS of kid stuff, both of their babies are girls, and both have big sisters and tons of hand me downs.

How about I make a gift for MOM to help with BABY stuff?

 

So thanks again to Dana at Danamadeit.com (I love her blog…she is so creative and has TONS of great ideas!) I whipped out 2 canvas reversible totes!

Both mom’s loved them, and one of them confided after opening it, that she was dreading all the ‘pink’ gifts, because she really doesn’t like pink. She received the tree/yellow stripes tote and was in love with it!

What a fun easy project! Of course I SHOULD make a couple for myself one of these days…

CRAB SPIDER!

Lookee what I found in our back yard last night!

Some kind of crab spider is my guess… not the smallest spider I’ve ever seen…

Nice and fuzzy.

My kids are in ‘bug heaven’ of course..

In my 10 years of living in this house, and gardening in this yard, I have never come across anything like this. Neither have any of my avid gardening neighbors.

Very interesting….

Sew Stormy Quilt Along

My sister over at Sew Stormy has decided to host a Star Sampler Quilt Along.

I’m so ridiculously busy lately, that I actually laughed at her when she called to invite me to participate… but whaddaya know… the NEED to create something with fabric has overcome me this weekend, & I actually completed the first weekly block!

I’m using a favorite line of mine, Modern Meadows by Joel Dewberry. This is a line I have been HORDING, waiting for the perfect project to come along for it. I gotta say, a Star Sampler has to be one of the most perfect projects out there!

So THANK YOU Stormy for coming up with the idea!

Stay tuned for block 2!

Backyard Bunker Visit

We had an opportunity to visit with a friend today at his home. He is a retired Vietnam Huey/Cobra Helicopter pilot who is very involved in emergency preparedness.

**I apologize for the picture quality… I didn’t think of taking my good camera, (duh! smack to forhead!) so I made do with my iphone camera**

The first project he showed us is one he’s currently working on…PeePee stations!

You can see a screen covering the hole, it is being used to keep unwanted bugs and critters out.

He’s making these out of hardware store supplies. This is a basically a funnel, large enough for a body to sit on, with a screen taped in above the hole, and foam lining the rim.

He then plans to dig a hole deep enough to accommodate the green tubing on the left, and a couple of feet of gravel below it. Once the tube is set, one of the green ‘sprinkler’ covers on the right will be placed on top of it to conceal it until needed. The seat can be installed when needed.

The urine will filter through the gravel and leech back into the soil underground.
I’ve found a bunch of conflicting info. about using urine to water/feed plants with, for example:

“Urine is an excellent source of minerals including potassium, magnesium, and especially nitrogen, albeit not in the correct form right away. Diluting urine and watering plants is good.
The salts that are in urine will be broken down by the "microherd" residing in your gardens and compost heaps.”

And:

Keep a watering can near the door and outside tap. Collect urine in (marked)Nalgene containers, which have screw-on tops that really do not leak, even if dropped. mix 1 jar with a watering can of water, and water selected plants. Comfrey and rhubarb, which are both nitrogen loving plants can take a very strong solution. Most other plants require a much more dilute preparation, as the acid will burn them. I do not use urine on food plants where the urine will contact the part eaten withing 2-4 weeks of picking.

It's best uses are for bushes, shrubs, and trees, the comfrey patches, ornamentals, for compost, and for off-season fertilization when sheet mulching, etc.

Both comments were posted HERE

So basically what I’m getting out of it is; it is safe to leach urine, just don’t water food plants with it either directly or close enough for it to soak into them.

Onto the next subject….

This is his garden. IT IS BEAUTIFUL! I didn’t get pictures to do it justice, but you can see it being built on his website.

He uses ‘depression’ beds, which are basically 3 inch deep squares/rectangles where he plants his veggies. He floods them to water them, somewhat like rice paddies…

Each ‘patch’ is in a 3” depressed bed.

He grows his squash vertically in these wire frames he’s made out of concrete wire mesh. He makes them 12, 10, and 8 squares wide, then they stack inside each other for winter storage.

Beds of carrots, bush beans, and an empty bed where his peas were this spring. (volunteer beans here and there)

The whole garden is elevated and surrounded by raspberry bushes. The garden itself sits on top of the bomb/earthquake shelter. You can see one of the 2 vents from his shelter in the raspberries here…(the rounded brown thing almost smack in the middle of the picture. And no, that is not his house in the backgroud)

Speaking of shelters… we found the hatch!

The shelter is built to Nuclear Bomb ‘specs’ but is not insulated/buried deep enough to qualify as a one. The hatch slopes down into the ground at about a 60/65 degree angle, with a steel extension ladder to back down on.

At the bottom of the entry tube is a 90 degree angle and a 10 (or so) foot pipe leading into the shelter.

The shelter itself runs 90 degrees to the entry pipe. The entrance is actually tucked back to the right of this picture, behind the 4 white boxes stacked on the right.

The shelter itself is a long corrugated tube about 9’ x 24’. and is made out of a culvert pipe. Take note of the braces for the lighting. He built them with a “single pin” in each corner to allow flexibility/compression in the shelter in an earthquake.

I  should have made sure this shot wasn’t fuzzy. This is looking down the length of the shelter from the access point. Say Hi!

The far end of the tube. The table converts to beds of course, and 1/2 of the supplies leading to this end can be moved into the opening of the shelter to create more bed space. He said he can sleep 12 people in this shelter.

That number brought up the discussion of sanitation of course. He showed us some of his PooPoo solutions down below.

This is a Sanitation kit for 50 people. You can see the contents here. He told us he paid $15 for it at Smith and Edwards. I don’t know how long ago that was, or if they still stock them, but if you’re out and about, it’d be a good thing to keep an eye out for!

Here’s another product I hadn’t seen before. The EZ Towel. These are paper/cloth towels compacted into tablets. just unwrap the tablet and add water. Very durable, he had one out that we stretched and pulled without ripping it.

I found them on Amazon ranging from $3 – $8/bag of 50.

And these are holders/reflectors for glow sticks. (See the yellow one on the right). You clip the glow sticks into these and reflect more light from them. Clever! He said he got them online (I believe?).. I’ll have to ask again because I can’t find them. May be relatively easy to make however!

And last, I forgot to mention the bees he keeps. This is a home for Mason bees. Each of the females in this family is fertile. They lay their eggs in hollow reeds or mud, or any long narrow tube. They do not produce honey or beeswax, but they do pollinate for you! And they don’t sting. He drilled holes in a couple of blocks of 4x4’s (all the way through, using a 3/8” bit) and you can see how some of them have been filled with eggs for next year. The males hatch first, hang out for the females to emerge, mate with them, then die. The females then gather nectar to feed the eggs, lay an egg on a mound of nectar, close the hold with mud, then repeats until the cavity is full of eggs. Great way to get your garden pollinated!

Adventures on the Great Salt Lake (again…)

So we took Dudley’s ‘FINISHED!’ kayak out to the GSL today for her maiden voyage…

The kids and I didn’t just stand on the dock and watch…the three of us piled into our 2-man inflatable kayak for HER maiden voyage, but seeing as how I was trying not to sink the thing (we may have been carrying slightly more weight than it was rated for), as well as being in control of our main propulsion (yes Douglas, dragging your paddle in the water as I try to maneuver the kayak IS a big help…), I didn’t manage to get the kodak moment I so desired…

But enough about my adventures… Dude’s kayak is AWESOME! It moves very well through the water and is sooooo easy to paddle! (especially after the inflatable kayak experience!). I took my turn gliding through the marina in it, but those photo’s are on Dude’s camera. Will have to post later…

Dude spent some good time in it, and even left the marina, paddled to the 1/2 mile marker outside the mouth of the marina, and back in. It didn’t take him all that long to do it either!

In the meantime, I tried to use our time as a photo opportunity to get a couple of good shots of the boys…

I think they may be ‘funky chicken’ in this one…

Definitely Groovin’ to the Music here…

And something between a Pirate and Charley’s Angels pose here.

(I would like you to notice the proximity of Drew’s head to Douglas’ shoulder here…and to remind you there is 5 years difference between these two, and of course the fact that Drew is still 3!.. I’m afraid I might have created a Hagrid.)

During our photo opp, we paid a visit to some of our old roommates and neighbors..

Douglas was SURE they were throwing a party of some kind. They did seem to be congregated in numbers, but this example is in reality a VERY SMALL sampling of the alive and thriving community of Orb Weavers that call the Great Salt Lake home.

Oh how I miss the good ol’ days…