Tag Archives: gardening

favorite things {happy fall y’all edition}

 

Y’all. I love fall. Almost as much as I love Christmas. Almost. So I though it would be appropriate to share some of my favorite things this fall. This is random, so get ready. And in no particular order. {My favorite way to do things.}

1. The Hill Country Pumpkin Patch in tiny Medina, Texas. So many pumpkins. Tiny train rides for the littles. A petting zoo. The obligatory stick-your-face-in-a-wooden-cutout picture.

{A cheerful little pumpkin}

 {She has the perfect chubby face for a fat pumpkin, no?}

2. The Pumpkin Cappuccino candle from Comfort Candle Company. Oh yum. Love this company {they are local!}, love this scent. It’s so…fallish. :)

 

3. Decorating with natural stuff. Like pumpkins. And gourds. And sticks from our yard. And my faded rubber boots that were outside on the front porch anyway so why not decorate with them? This could be considered the lazy way to decorate. However you’d like to look at it. :)

 

4. This purse from Target. It is the perfect fall color, with little handles if you want to wear it over your arm a la the latest fashions on Pinterest or a long strap to wear it as a messenger bag. Lots of pockets for your keys to get lost in because you can’t remember which pocket you put them in storage. It goes with everything. Perfect price, too, at $29.99.

5. Fall organizing with Google calendars. There’s just something about fall that makes me want to get organized. Maybe its the impending chaos of the Christmas season, but I like to attempt to organize every fall it seems. So, thanks to Simple Mom, I now know about Google calendars. I know, that’s so three years ago. But seriously. Life-changing. I’ve created one for regular stuff, for menu planning, and for blog posts. And then you can super-impose them on top of each other. And see everything all at once! Or print them! {Cue fairy dust and magic}. Try it. It’ll make you feel like an organized, put-together adult. Or maybe that’s just me. :)

6. My holly jolly Christmas board on Pinterest. Part of the reason I love fall so much is because I can start planning for Christmas! I love the anticipation. And the drawing-it-out as long as I can. And pinning things on Pinterest that I will never do but seem like a great idea.

7. Fall wreaths. Everywhere. I finally broke down and made one. All in an afternoon naptime. Gotta love lazy quick crafts.

8. Fall garden in full swing. We’re growing tomatoes, potatoes in a barrel, spinach, carrots, kale, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, beets, beans, and peas.

9. Busting out my fall/winter boots! Even though by noon I have to take them off and switch them out for something more appropriate for the 80 degree afternoons here. I think I’ve pinned a record number of fall outfits on my fashion Pinterest board. It isn’t lost on me that most of those “fall” outfits I will only be able to wear for 2 days in January when it gets cold enough. But I will continue to pretend I can wear them all the time in the fall, so I will continue to call them fall outfits.

10. Pumpkin spice pancakes on Saturday mornings. Oh yes. I’ll post the recipe for this soon. You van make it in your blender!

Happy fall, y’all!

call me laura

 

As in Laura Ingalls Wilder. {Thanks, sis.}

As mentioned before, we now have a dozen chickens. More specifically, 11 hens and a rooster. His name is Rufus. I’m not sure why.

Up until this point, he has just been acting like one of the hens. Kind of a sissy. A sissy with a ginormous sharp beak and talons and spurs on his spindly little legs. But I digress.

So yesterday afternoon I went outside to gather the eggs and check the feed/water status of the chicken coop. Even though they are free-range during the day, they act like they haven’t eaten in 7 years when I fill the feed thingy. {I’m sure Laura would have known the correct term to use here, but we’ll go with thingy.} It makes me think maybe they really are super hungry even though they have 22 acres of bugs and plants to eat. So I continue to give them a full scoop of feed every afternoon. Maybe instead of Laura, you should call me a sucker.

So back to the story. I went outside to gather the eggs. Did I mention I am wearing a tank top and running shorts {appropriately mismatched} from my run earlier that day? And garden crocs. So not only am I one sexy lady as I’m gathering the eggs, but my legs are terrifyingly exposed and I’m not wearing getaway shoes. This comes in to play in the next part of the story.

I tossed the chickens some “chicken scratch” {I still don’t really know how that is different from feed, but it is} and they were all happily munching on it. I calmly walked by the gaggle of chickens {or is that just for geese?}, innocently swinging my bag of eggs on the way back to the house.

And then it happened. Rufus the rooster must have not liked the way I was walking or my garden crocs or he just had a surge of testosterone {do roosters have that?}…I’m not sure, but he started trotting at me.

So I yelled Hey at him and shooed him with my hand. The docile creature that he once was would have shied away and I would have been left alone.

But not this time. This time, I saw those beady little eyes narrow in a how-dare-you-shoo-me way and he all out charged me. Wings flapping and spurs coming at me and muscles bulging.

source

So I did what any sane person would do. I executed a plan of tactical evasion, discharged my weapon, and engaged in verbal assault. Which really means that I started running backwards, swinging my bag of eggs at him. And yelling. Loudly. Actually kind of roaring.

Then he stopped. And the look in his eye was one of pity.  So I think he gave up his attack because he felt sorry for me. I don’t think he’d ever seen a human stoop to that type of maniacal behavior.

So there are several lessons to this story. One, never trust a rooster, no matter how sissy he seems. And two, if you act certifiably insane, you can scare lots of things off. {That last one might be a given. But you should keep it in mind all the same.}

Now I’m off to gather the eggs. With full body gear and a BB gun.

feeding and watering and not blogging

I’m back.

Here’s what’s been going on. I have made it through those first 6 weeks of newborn-life, begun to adjust to life with Baby Sister {who is now 4 months old – what??} and Little Bit in all her big 2 and a half year self,  inherited a dozen chickens, and doubled the size of the garden.

Yes, you read that correctly. We have 12 stupid, inbred, loud lovely chickens. That need to be fed, watered, and eggs collected every. single. day.

Then there is our ginormous garden that needs to be hand watered every day because we just planted tons of seeds and half our soaker hoses broke and all the tiny seedlings were drying out too fast with just the hoses we had. Sheesh.

Then there’s the 4 month old. Always feeding and watering her. Seriously, she eats every 2 hours still during the day. But she sleeps well at night, so I’m NOT complaining.

I’m just sayin’. I feed and water lots of living things all the livelong day.

And I love it. Really. Maintaining life. Growing things. Watching His creation grow and blossom and bloom. It is miraculous.

So at the end of the day, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that there will not always be a lovely blog post written or lots of pretty, edited pictures up. But y’all. My babies and my chickens and my vegetables are all alive and well.

I love other people’s blogs. I love other people’s blogs that write every day or every other day or once a week. And I might get there soon. But I’m letting go of the pressure to have it all together AND blog about it.

So I’m giving myself some new rules. First, there are no rules. Second, I’m going to blog the way I want to and when I want to. Third, no more putting off posting just because I don’t have tons of pretty, edited pictures. Fourth, I’m going to listen to Him about what He wants me to share. Or not.

I’m super excited about blogging now. I think more than I ever was before. Like I can’t wait to tell y’all about what the rooster did to me this afternoon. Or about going to the MOPS Convention. Or about making Little Bit and I both cry at Lowe’s the other day.

So I’ll let you go now, but I’ll be back soon. Cause I’ve got some stories to tell.

 

 

weeds and ants be gone :: thrifty garden

Y’all. I have discovered two huge gardening secrets. {Actually, I just googled it and found these solutions to try. But still.} I hope these will be as revolutionary as I found them to be. Are you ready for this?

#1 Cheap, generic brand white vinegar KILLS WEEDS!!! What?? Yes, it is true!

 

Here are the ugly weeds/nut grass before I attacked them with vinegar…

 

 

And here you can see them shriveling and getting brown.

 

 

 

Apparently, it is the acid in the vinegar that does the trick. Now, I will say it took two applications of vinegar and I’ll probably have to hit any green again that is still left. But I didn’t have to use Roundup. Need I say more?

HEB sells the huge containers of vinegar for $1.98 each. That’s like one-tenth the cost of Roundup. And way better for you, your garden, and life in general. I mean, the only thing offensive about vinegar is the smell. Wherever you spray it, a distinct odor will linger for about a day. But I just breathe it in deep and picture my weeds shriveling to death. It makes me happy. Is that wrong?

At first I poured the entire huge container of vinegar in a watering can and “watered” the weeds with it. But it seemed like I was wasting some, so I switched to a garden sprayer. You know, one with a pump and a long handle. My 34-week pregnant self was a huge fan of the long handle a.k.a. not having to bend over at all. I borrowed the garden sprayer from my mom, but you could always just use a hand sprayer.

I actually had FUN weeding, since I knew this was dirt cheap and effective and I wasn’t spreading toxic chemicals everywhere. Or maybe I just have no life. Either way, good times were had.

And Little Bit followed me around the entire time saying, “No, no weeds. Don’t grow heah.”

Okay, on to the next thrifty garden tip…

#2 Coffee grounds KILL ANTS!! Seriously. In our garden, we had two huge pots of veggies that had gotten infested with  ginourmous ant hills. I was avoiding picking parsley out of fear for my fingers. Anyway, I saved our coffee grounds for a few days and then dumped them on the ant hills. One ant hill is completely devoid of life and the other has just a few ants left. Boo to the yah.

I’m saving up grounds for a few more days, then I’ll resume my ant-killing spree. Apparently, this works because the ants ingest them and then they “implode” according to one website. I keep trying to see this imploding business in action, but no luck so far.

Maybe I’m just a big gardening dork, but these two tips are life-changing incredibly helpful! Did y’all know this already or does this help?