Dinner

Will said...' take a picture and tell everyone 'it rained half an inch or worms'! well...Will found these super worms while digging around to plant some perennials. We need worms just about every day and this is why:

This won't take many words...it's kind of self-explanatory; our little black cat, who was dumped off here last winter, has become the main cat. Although this may piss off other cats, it cannot be helped....He had no name.....we called him 'little kitty' because that is how we got him to come onto the carport in the beginning. But, in the end, that is a stupid name for a cat.

He is a talker; this you know if you have been with this blog for a while. He says 'Mouw!' He says it quite a lot. So, I said to Will, 'We should name him 'Mao Zedong' and Will says...'no...we should name him "Mousy Tongue!" so there you have it. He is quite the 'mouser', after all. A real killer.
Every evening, he runs to the little bridge over the ditch, and then to the dock, in hopes that we will take a few minutes out of our lives and catch him a tiny fish. or two . or three, maybe. And here is the daily scenario:
WAITING

WATCHING


GETTING

...and there you have it.

This and That; Cleanup Time

I've taken a picture of this and that over the past month; and I wanted to purge...so here's the news before I re-format the camera and we move into the late late spring...
we had one day, ONE day, of most excellent kite-flying weather. And I tried to take pictures of kites flying way up high...but they all looked like those UFO pictures...like this:
So, I just waited until we brought them inside, so you could actually SEE the kites. Will bought me the butterfly kite for my birthday a year ago; you know, around here, we have, like, two days, maybe three a year that are actually bona-fide 'good kite days'.
so THAT.

Also, I have actual PROOF that tomatoes are in the ground and coming along and here you go:
Now...sometimes you just wander around with the camera and you see 'stuff'. I love weeds. Sorry; can't help it. Actually., I was trying to get 'clover' pictures with bees on the clover and that was a heroic effort. Sorry; bees are small and my zoom doesn't work worth a darn and so too bad. But I got a couple of pictures of beautiful weeds along with clover and I just wanted to share.
and the wildness around the pond; letting everything go to seed before we mow it all down.So.. there you have it, or sort of: nothing important, just this and that. We've been looking out of the upstairs window, admiring the dirt, which is something one does in the springtime; Will's been tilling and the dirt is a beautiful sight after months of scraggly weeds. He planted eight rows of corn today, and he said it made him feel like he had a new lease on life. yes, that is pretty cool.

An Owl and Some Carrots

I had this vision of the day - we all do that; I thought I would spend my Sunday fiddling around with my herbs - I have flats ready to be planted etc. etc....but no. Will asked me would i check out the carrot row....he needed to plow and maybe there were some carrots from the fall and maybe we should check first. So, last night I said ' well sure! that will be my job tomorrow!' Stupid me. Yeah, there were carrots, alright. LOTS AND LOTS.I went out there and didn't see the manure fork, so I got the hay fork, which is kind of the same thing, only not as tough, and has ten prongs rather than four, and I kind of started pulling and digging and filled up the 'muck bucket', and saw that I had only gone maybe five feet down the row and I thought, ' uh-oh'. And I brought my first haul to the carport. Then I washed the carrots and laid them out to dry and realized I had many, many trips ahead of me. Then I started to get worried. I dug carrots while eyeing the strawberries and I knew there was NO WAY I would do all of this AND pick strawberries too. Will was very busy doing a lot of other important farm things. What now?
So I took carrot pictures and went inside and sent an emergency alert to our email list. Thank goodness for our clientele!

By the time I was washing and sorting another batch of carrots, the vehicles started coming up the drive. We had plenty of folks to pick berries and everybody bought carrots too!!!yea!

It was a good day. There are still bundles of carrots in the fridge outside, but the strawberries are picked AND sold. yes.

Ok, Time For A Break

I looked at this blog and thought...my goodness what a lot of pictures of bushes and such! Of course, it is that time of year - I mean, that's what there is to look at, after all. But to break up the bush monotony, I thought I would offer a couple of pictures of our cat 'Crazy'. only because I kind of feel sorry for him. He's still crazy and the big bad cat. But his supremacy is being challenged by the tiny little black cat we found in the weeds last year...who has become the king-of-cats around here (for many reasons). So, I give you two pictures of the fabulous Crazy. He still tears up Will's hands and arms when they play. I personally cannot play with him because he is too rough for me. As a matter of fact - Will has to wear an oven mitt when the play gets serious; or when his co-workers may wonder what's up with all of those scratches on his arms. So Crazy's still 'got it', so to speak. And he still wishes he was a dog, not a cat. He lays around in the yard with the dogs..likes dog snacks and likes to be brushed roughly with a wire brush. But, let's face it...his days of dominance are waning. What a great cat. I picked him out when he was running around with a litter on our friend's blueberry farm. I thought ....I'd really like a good orange cat! By the way, does anybody out there know of an orange cat that was NOT a male? Just wondering.

Yes, I Would Like To Sit Right There

In this year of the 'clover mayhem'...I mow, but I just can't bring myself to mow all of the crazy clover. It seems there must be 100 times more clover than usual. Used to be, we would just be really glad about that. These days, the first thought is 'hmmm...things are different this year...hmmm' And along with bird songs you never heard before, and I didn't see the robins, although surely they were here; it's hard to know whether to be happy or worried. So I choose happy. I mean, why not? We can all worry ourselves into oblivion, or we can enjoy what is presented to us. No bees? hey, get some bees! That's what WE did.

P.S. Bee Update: The hives Will moved to the blueberry farm are back home: I don't think he'll be doing that again. The bees were unhappy about being moved around. When they first got home, they would fly around and try to enter the wrong hive, and everybody would be mad! But they have settled down and I think they've figured it out. In the menatime, Will got his 'russian' hive. Because one cannot mix them with the Italians, the new hive is out at the blueberry farm.

ok, Things Are Coming Along

...wet garden and all.
Every Spring, the same story..."it's too wet to plow!" and "We'll NEVER get this field planted!"
And then it dries up some, and then we do.
It's a frustrating time here in south Louisiana. It's been raining JUST enough to keep us from planting. Will did get an opportunity to plow...once...but once of course is not enough. It must be done two or three times, then rows pulled up etc and etc.

In the meantime, yes, we have some strawberries..some days, way too many! I must have picked 1000 of them yesterday (and I kid you not).
But it is hard to let our beloved customers know. Because it's an every two day or so event. And that's all there is at the moment. And we would HATE to have more people want them than we had berries for. So we store and cut and freeze and every now and then a customer says 'are there some for me?' and we say, well sure!
In the meantime, as we wait for the moment when we can go out and actually plant, thank you, I have made many flats, mostly herbs...because i cannot stand the anticipation! I MUST have herbs, the sooner the better! and this is a picture that is probably two weeks old, but here you go..I have the usual suspects: Basil: Italian, Mammoth, Lemon...I have Sage (because you have to replant every two years or so) and Oregano (even thought it never is quite right) and Marjoram (because Will is a new fan of that) and of course other interesting things: Bee Balm and Bergamot (because the herb beds have been plowed (ouch) and Catnip and Hyssop (yeah, right and what is that?) and Statice (see 'your dried flowers') and I would have seeded the Flax, but Will encouraged me to wait and direct-seed and my friend who spins yarn wants to know what type I am planting, but as far as I can tell, it's not about 'type', it's about how far apart you plant the plants....close for seed, (as in flax-seed), far apart for cloth but I wanted seed but now I'm thinking ...hey - linen? So, this and that.
And, finally, the Thyme bed had to be ripped up (R.I.P) because I could not keep the Bermuda Grass out of it, so a new generation of thyme plants is at hand and I have no idea where I'm going to put them, but one must have thyme, right?And so..things are moving along, although slower than we would like. We do have an eager customer ready to bring her kids fishing this weekend and that is a good thing...it should be fun.
As we await the 'big planting' we have flowers and things that are being very showy....it's a start.