Photo Filler Wednesday

Having survived a whirlwind of finals, last weeks of school, and surprise visits from the Sailor- we've been a little too busy to do any major projects around the homestead. We have plans- oh so many plans! But they'll have to wait until this weekend when we have a little sun and everyone is officially on summer break.

Guest-Author-Girl-Child here advocating that the veggie garden looks AWESOME. I'm really excited, mostly because I've never gotten past the watering-indoor-plants stage. Inevitably, any horticultural feats are eaten by my cats before I can endeavor for something braver. Growing veggies from seed and being successful just blows my mind.

Mesculin in the bottom left, red peppers immediately to their right, onions next to them and radishes taking up the lower right hand corner. Tomatoes line the back wall- caged are store bought but in the top right hand corner you can see the seedlings I started in the green house happily growing along. 

Oh and cucumbers! Those are growing nicely too! We opted to just use the seeds we had and take note of what sprouts and what doesn't- so far everything sowed (sewn?) in the raised garden beds are thriving. 

Those trays in the greenhouse filled with the remainder of our test seeds isn't as productive. So far only this one pot is sprouting anything of interest. One more has hints of green, so I'm just keeping an eye on them for now. 

Local grocery store had a sale on fuchsia trees- this one happily greets us by the front door. 

Mum moved this old wheel barrow from near the chicken coop (between those two trees in the far back of this image) and planted some fun bright flowers. They're still adjusting but as long as the chickens leave them alone they should thrive.

Mum has these fantastic mock wine barrels. This one, we filled the bottom with upside down plastic pots and then covered with fresh soil. Mum liberally sprinkled some of our herb seeds, just to test if they were any good. So far it seems so! Parsley, English thyme, Basil, Dill, and Cilantro to get us started. The plan is still to make one of the out door areas a permanent herb garden, but this will suffice until we can weed and pull tree stumps and get the area prepped. 

I'll see if I can snap any photos of our fast flying visitors- there are at least 2 species of hummingbirds who frequent the hanging baskets. Mum picked up a new feeder and dusted off some of our old ones and now we've constant visitations. The cats go crazy, moving chairs to situate themselves for their new favorite show.

Better photos of our deceased back yard denizen, general consensus is that it's a badger. The front canines aren't as long as some of the other photos I've seen- but the orbital cavity  and the coronoid process seem right. A super helpful website has been the Museum of Osteology and its supplier Skulls Unlimited International.

Rear view- we found it beneath that tree trunk and assume that it fell or was crushed by the tree.

Upside down view haha- but you can get a good look at its jaw and orbital cavity. Definitely an omnivore!

More photos- found most of his bones beneath the ferns, 

Found a bunch of vertebrae! 

Future project time! Mum identified these plants as NOT hydrangeas. Initially mum moved them from the middle of one of the garden beds to the window outside the downstairs studio/office. She thought they were some kind of hydrangeas but they are DEFINITELY NOT. There will be a mystery plant Monday explanation as soon as Mum sits down and types it up. We were quite startled with the discovery that these are NOT hydrangeas. DEFINITELY NOT. 

Future project will involve moving them to another part of the property. 

Hopefully this midweek update will tide you over- until then enjoy the outdoors and keep your fingers crossed that I do well at my interview!

Tech Talk Tuesday

Hey All! Guest Author Girl Child here posting in response to a few emails we've received. Some folks are having some trouble posting comments on the blog, so I've put together a post to walk you through the options available. If you're a tech-guru, here's a picture of a sleeping kitten to tide you over...

Okay, so at the bottom of every post there should be a little blue link which says something about the number of comments. I've highlighted it in the image below with red:

When you click on that link, it will bring up an option bar like this:

You should  be able to see previous comments but also be able to add your own. It's important to click the "comment as:" drop down button as that determines HOW you can leave a comment. If you are already logged into your gmail or google account, it will automatically allow you to publish a comment that way. 

Just click "preview" if you want to see what your comment will look like or "publish" to send it into the series of tubes that is the internets. 

If you don't have a gmail or just plain don't feel like sharing that information (which is totally fine), the drop down menu will provide alternatives. 

Like the "Google Account" option, if you have an account with any of the listed websites or programs, you CAN log in that way and use that as your comment "log-in," if you will. 

LiveJournal is found here: link

Wordpress is found here: link

TypePad is found here: link

AIM (Aol Instant Messaging) is found here: link

OpenID is found here: link

All of these sites are free, the first three are kinds of blogging platforms similar to blogger. AOL is a chat platform and OpenID seems to be a one-stop-shopping for internet log-ins. You create one OpenID and you can use it to access any number of websites.

The Anonymous option is easy, just enter your comment and it will be submitted with no fuss. You're welcome to sign your name or internet handle in the message box like 

"Comment... - Guest Author Girl Child" 

or just leave it blank! We love feedback either way!

The Name/Url option is another easy way to personalize your comment. 

This box will pop up giving you two type-able fields: name and url. You just enter whatever you would like to be called in the "name" box and if you want to include a link to your personal website or blog, paste the http:// link into the URL box. If you don't want to include a link, you don't have to! Go ahead and leave it blank like I did, and click continue. It will take you back to the comment box, like so...

Once you're happy with you comment- click "publish." 

Because the internet is full of goblins, trolls, and robots, you will get a pop-up like this:

Prove you're not a robot! Sadly, these things are often testy and don't believe you when you swear vehemently to your status as a homo sapien. Don't worry, just respond the best you can. If you're not sure, just click the little circle arrow button at the bottom, that will refresh the word so you can try again. If you prefer (I usually find it easier) click the "sound" button to the left of the ? box. It will play an audio file of a word or some numbers, just enter what you hear. But make sure your sound is on first!

Once you've proved to blogger's satisfaction that you are not a robot, click "publish." 

Because the internet is full of goblins, trolls, robots and mean people we have the comments for the blog moderated. This means that they will not appear immediately after you click "publish." 

Instead, you will receive a message like this:

Rest assured, as long as this yellow box appeared- we have received your comment! The main blogger, namely my mum, will receive an email notification that you have commented. 

That looks like this: 

We can publish your comment directly from email, or log onto the blog and do it from there.

One comment!! YES! 

As co-moderator, I can publish comments too.

Hopefully this helps clarify any comment related questions you may have. Feel free to try it out! 

Click on the comment link below this post and let us know what you think :D

Snapshot Sat-er Monday!

Happy belated Saturday! The weather is fine and our schedules are opening up a bit more, so we'll be back (again) to weekly posting pronto.

Here's a view from the barn up the hill to the pasture. There's no way our walking lawnmower could even dent the mass of foliage up there. Right now, it's waiting for a riding lawnmower but until that happens it looks like something out of a Miyazaki movie!

View from the barn down towards the house. The fenced structure in the bottom left is the new dog kennel. The green house and raised veggie garden are off screen to the right. 

The other side, you can't quite make it out on this image but there's fencing in the woods in the top left. The wood frames in the center are the remains of the previous tenants' grape vines. It's so totally overgrown and rotted that you can't get access to anything. Sounds like a future project to me!

This guy has been lurking around the property, I want to clean and paint him eventually as decoration for my apartment, but I can't decide on a design.  The spiky plant of pain to the right is one of the prolific raspberries that torments- I mean resides on the property. They are everywhere!!

 We have so many ferns in the recesses of our property that some areas seem like it's Jurassic!

Where's Jeff Goldblum when you need him? 

 We currently have mountain strawberries, wild raspberries and wild blackberries blooming around the property. We will even have some blueberries, as the barrels mum planted last year have finally matured!

A better view of the dog kennel (complete with dog house and dog deck!) as well as the garden shed.

I spy with my big hetero-chromatic eyes... a tiny bench and a summer project! The house is set up with little sprinkling systems, but there's a fault in the line somewhere so they just make a mess. Mum plans on fixing them, but wants to do some research first. 

Big bowl o' chives! It needs to be split and r-epotted, but in the meantime it smells divine!

Everything is in bloom now- these rhododendrons are especially volumous outside the game room window

Close up of a blossom- so pretty!

We hired a survey company to reassess the far edge of the property last week. Our neighbor made a bunch of assumptions about the line between our properties and ended up damaging the treehouse in his attempt to "reclaim it." All is well now, but we opened up a dialog and got a legit survey crew out ASAP. We asked them to make really obvious markers of where our property ends and at this point we have to take their word for it, because their hefty 2x4 in cement markers are completely obscured by brush! One is so far down by the water, we couldn't find them even after some exploring. Up in the hinterlands of Jurassic river access, I found some really interesting remains. Completely clean, the head shape is to angular to be feline but much too large to be any rodentia we have seen around. Maybe weasel? Will research and let you know!

Belated Garden Sunday

Life has been crazy-crazy! Guest-Author-Girl-Child here, in the midst of dead week and prepping for finals. After this next week, I am officially in my last year of university!! YES.

Anyway, here is a belated "Sunday" post of the projects mum and I did last weekend. 

The sun has come out and STAYED out these last few days. Gorgeous weather just begged for some veggie planting and mum, having finished her national board projects (HECK YES!) reactivated her green thumbs and joined me in the garden.

You might remember our raised garden bed project from before, I filled it partially with a mixture of compost and peat a few weekends back. Together we filled it the rest of the way in preparation for some new veggies mum picked up as well as some seedlings I grew in the greenhouse. 

Mum arranged the new veggies by future size and spaced them accordingly. Tomatoes will be tall, so we put them in the back so they won't block the sunlight from the other veggies. Those are spaced about 8-12 inches apart. In front of them are peppers, spaced 4-6 inches apart. And at the front of the box, are radishes, spaced 2-4 inches apart. Once everything was arranged to her liking, we took off their shoes and got them comfy in the veggie bed! 

Completed! We filled in the open areas with the seedlings I grew from the green house (more tomatoes, peppers, and radishes as well as some carrots and a mystery plant). Mum pushed in some of her tomato cages, ready for when they get a little bigger to make sure they have the structure they need. 

A lot of the seed packages in the garden shed are old or of unknown origin, so mum and I made some temporary planters to test them out. We labeled them (much better than I did  last time!) and we'll see what sprouts. If nothing sprouts in a week or two, we'll know those seed packets are done for and toss 'em. If they grow, we'll repot them and let them thrive in the green house until our next veggie box is ready. 

Project 2 we started was a door for our new fence. Project puppy-time meant fencing off a good section of the property and we cut a preliminary section out to attach a door. As I have the most experience with power tools, mum measured and labeled the wood and I cut. 

For the record, we did not cut on the bed of my truck. That is a major saftey no-no. This was just a perfect photo opportunity while mum went downhill to research how to adjust the blade allowance. I took woodshop and metalshop in college, and the experience is totally worth it. We covered table saws, skilsaws, jigsaws, lathes, mig welders, tig welding, and oxy-acetylene torches - all are excellent tools to have a good know-how about. In any case- the door we were trying to build was like this one:

This is one dad and the boy-child put together for the dog kennel they built. We picked up an extra hardware set (hinges, frames, handle, and lock) from our local hardware store and laid everything out. 

The fencing seen here is the bit cut from the actual fence, I think it's a smidge to small to actually cover the door frame so we're contemplating using spare hardware cloth. 

We ended up not finishing the door project that day, ran out of daylight and 1/8th inch drill bits! We called it a night when the one we had broke off in the uncooperative wood panel. 

We picked up some more today, and hope to finish the project in time for the next Sunday post!