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Recent Entries to this Blog
not gardening rocks no more!
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CritterPainter's BlogVarious ramblings of a country gal
Prairie sunset
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 2:32 am I tried to photo the fall colors in the foothills, but they didn't turn out. Here's one my son did of a prairie sunset- 
Hope that isn't too big. My DD is turning 14 in just a few more days, trying to put together "goodie bags" for the sp. ed. department. Like the kids aren't getting enough sugar the 31st! O well, keep them bouncing. Been having alot of nice woodstove fires, but I must admit I check the chimney frequently. Fortunately the main part of my house is quite low, like a cottage. I can touch the edge of the roof from the front porch. So it's easy to see the chimney sticking up from there, and be assured that it isn't glowing red! Zzzzz, woodstove plus hot cocoa equals one sleeeeeepy me. Ta! This blog entry has been viewed 419 times
clean your chimney!
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:56 pm I'm going to be stumping for people to clean their chimneys for awhile. I have some good friends who live in a log house, that they built with their own hands. it's just beautiful, or rather, was. They were peacefully having lunch downstairs yesterday when a neighbor saw flames shooting through the roof. So much damage, but they are ok. The good thing, these people live without any debt, are very careful with their money, but for some reason chose to "splurge" on house insurance- before the sun went down a professional team was there drying out the damage and starting the cleanup process. A whole bunch of people who care about them also have been able to finally do something for them, washing the smoke smell out of laundry & things like that. But we would all much rather have not seen them go through this!!!!! So, a finger-wagging reminder, check your chimneys, people! I'll step off my soapbox now. This blog entry has been viewed 669 times
garden shed goings-on
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 5:37 am It's been raining here, and I'm so glad for it. My favorite place when it's raining is out in my garden shed, the one I put pictures of in an earlier blog. It's so quiet where I live, the rain falling on the roof is the only sound. It patters on the shingles, and rattles on the corrugated plastic on the greenhouse side. The only thing that makes me sad about the rain and cold is that it means that my veggies are just going to spoil. Oh well, they'll mush down into fertilizer. The bunnies are prodigiously producing pellets that I will spread on the garden beds in a couple of weeks, after the leaves drop off. And my worm bin will be dumped out into the poo pile so the little wigglers can chomp through that bit of leavings through the winter. Gardeners are not a squeamish bunch! I'm working on my Christmas cards, laying in watercolor washes in shades of blue, but I haven't found the effect I'm after yet. If I get one right I'll post it here in December as a card to anyone who clicks on my blog. Hopefully I can post here more often now that I've valiantly fought off that rotten cold bug- huzzah, I am victorious ye foul invisibly small invader! Edit: well this isn't worth starting a new blog over, but I gotta let off some steam. We fenced in our whole 5 acres 'cuz we have a dog as dumb as a box o' rocks. OK, I can handle a "special needs" dog, even if that means spending too much on field wire. Anyhow, I couldn't find said mutt to put her in while I dashed to the busstop to pick up my daughter. 5 minutes max, it was raining, I left the gate open. In that 5 minutes El Mutt ran out, found something dead, and rolled in it!!! So I had to go out in the rain and give her a bath!!! Grrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!! ok, feel better now, big gulp of hot tea. Thanks forletting me vent. Last edited: Thu Oct 19, 2006 6:40 pm This blog entry has been viewed 572 times
Old metal tub
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 3:52 am I have an old metal tub hanging in my garage. It's handles are rusty, but it's in pretty good shape. It's very useful for scooting along behind me to hold weeds that I want to feed to the rabbits, tools I might need, the occasional water bottle. I washed my dog in it when she was still small enough that I held high hope that she would actually be a good dog someday. The tub used to rest in my mom's house. She weeded with it too. She would give it a good scrubbing and put dough in it to rise sometimes. The best cinnamon rolls in the world had their start in that tub. My mom got the tub from my grandmother. Gramma used it to weed. She would scrub it out and make her batter-bread- her arthritic hands wouldn't allow her to knead, so she would make a batch of rather runny dough and beat it with her mixer. Then it would rise, she'd squash it down, and beat in as much flour as she could. The best bread in the world had it's start in that tub. Every Christmas at Grandma's house, the tub would hold water for the Christmas tree. Concrete blocks held the trunk in place, and strings ran from the top to nails high in the walls that great-grandpa built, to keep the tree from tipping. The world hasn't been making much sense lately. The more people talk about love & tolerance, the more hate and spite seem to grow. I turned off the news today, walked into my garage, and saw the old metal tub. And it made sense. This blog entry has been viewed 1538 times
Metal cattails!
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 2:48 am Just a quick post tonight, we stopped at an art show a friend is doing. He takes scrap metal and creates the most clever and funny garden ornaments out of it all! He's been doing it for awhile, but his wife and a couple other ladies from our church convinced him that he needs to start selling them. So my sweetie put a reserve on my favorites, two welded cattails to go down by my pond. Spoiled gardener, aren't I :) Pictures to follow, hopefully within a week! This blog entry has been viewed 1356 times
prairie life, 9/29
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:15 am I wonder if anyone else gets a restless feeling that they just want something new to look at? I sure do, think it stems from a lifelong "making do" mentality. Every now and then I just want to break out and be frivolous. Probably why I'm an artist, too. A pretty canvas to hang on the wall is definitely not a necessity. Well, I got in a mood like that, and picked up a scruffy little painted table at a garage sale. I've been having a great time thinking about just what I want to paint on it, not something artsy, probably more folk-art-ish. I don't even need a table like that, and really don't have anywhere to put it, how frivolous is that? The prairie is slowly greening up despite the lack of rain. We've had a thick fog here every morning for awhile, but it isn't enough that I don't have to fill the goats water bucket or the chickens water pan! Still, the wabbits are not draining their bottles quite so fast, so maybe the mist on their fur is supplementing them. I finally spotted the little goldfish that lurks in my lower pond. It's black, so it's very hard to see and hides in the shadows. But I was a naughty caretaker and let the water evaporate and get quite low, so it couldn't escape the beam of sunlight reaching into the depths and, oh, my! It's grown to the size of a small perch! There seem to be fewer crickets chirping this summer. They are out there now, singing about the temperature (count the number of chirps in 15 seconds and add 37. Crickets don't do celcius :P ) It got up to 82 today, close to the record for this time of year. This blog entry has been viewed 518 times
Not quite autumn? go figure!
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:31 am I'm sitting here in the quiet listening to the sound of a Washington State rainshower. It isn't a nasty rain, more like a gift washing down from the clouds, an offering of something much desired and wanted to the vines and leaves stretching gratefully up to receive it. Now, my chickens on the other hand, they aren't quite so appreciative. They seem to have forgotten how to duck into the henhouse, out of the rain. They stand in it with feathers dripping, heads cocked sideways staring at the falling sparkles, clearly straining to remember what and why this is. It's been a long dry summer. So dry in fact that I forgot completely to put a bit of gutter on the tin roof over my lawnmower. The roof also shelters Tim the Bunny. And as I put an apple in his cage today, the dripping down my neck only punctuated the hazards inherent in my forgetfulness. All my garden is rushing to put on a last hurrah of growth before chillier weather sets in, and the vines around my front door seem to be trying to come in through the windows with the cat! Even my miniature rose has put out a new bloom. Things just feel normal again, and word is we are in for a very wet winter. So glad I don't live in an area that floods, though my driveway does tend to get puddly. There's been quite a bit on the news about coyotes attacking household pets. Don't know why people panic about this. It's rough, granted, but basic biology teaches that populations have peaks and valleys. Coyotes and raccoons seem to be at a peak right now, that's all. Could be frogs or beetles next year. Shrug. Personally, I'm rooting for a population spike for the meadowlarks! This blog entry has been viewed 513 times
Thinking about autumn!
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:06 am Hello Blog! Just a quick entry tonight. But I had to cheer for myself, since I got a perfect, red tomato out of my garden. Oooo man, that was goood! It got so cold night before last (about 39!) I thought for sure I'd lose the plant, but it's hanging on. Might have to finally try those green tomato recipes I've seen, though. And pluck up all my romaine, too. It's gonna be so much harder to watch my diet when the cold weather rolls in! We have a nationally-awarded cider farm not too far from me. It's all back roads that even I can navigate with no worries. And it's cider time! We're going to head over there on payday and get a jug of fresh-pressed. Actually they are required to pasteurize it so it isn't quite like the stuff we made when I was little, but close enough. Besides, I have a friend who works there who may be able to score me a jug of the fresh stuff. Ok, this may run my blog a little long, but it's a great cider story. When I was in high school, I was in all the ag. classes. Just loved it. Anyways, we made cider one year as a fund raiser. Well, we pressed one batch on a friday and didn't properly mix varieties and it came out waaaay too sweet. So the ag. advisor stashed the jugs in his office and went home. For a 3-day weekend. So we came in early the next week, and all the cider had fermented. Big time. I mean, it turned green and blew the tops off the jugs. 3 or 4 of the boys offered to haul the jugs down to the river to dispose of them. They didn't show up for the rest of the day. And when they did, well, you can just imagine the condition they were in, lol! (egads, am I a hick or what?) This blog entry has been viewed 513 times
Oh what a lovely sound!
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 4:40 am Just a quick entry, I woke in the middle of the night last night to a strange sound I haven't heard in months- rain! Pittypatting on the dry, hard ground, pinging in the downspout, patting on the shingles. Lovely sound! Now I probably won't wax poetic about it come February, but it's sure nice now! Been setting up a little enameling kiln from a garage sale out in my cabin. Still need to pick up a few things to make it work, but since I'm using an inverted flowerpot for a lid and an unglazed plant saucer to protect the heating element, I figure it's fair game to write about on a gardening blog. Spent the afternoon with my aunt today so my uncle could go to a class reunion. My aunt would have loved to go once apon a time, she's a real people person and as nice as they come. But this doggone disease has progressed to where she can't talk coherently much at all. Came home and cried my eyes out. This blog entry has been viewed 520 times
Gotta love a man with a truck!
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:18 am My husband stopped on his way home from work to pick me up some bark from the woodcutter with the "free" pile. But he had no shovel. And the guy wasn't home. So my sweetie backed up to the pile, and scooped in the stuff. With his BARE HANDS!! After working on a holiday! Am I blessed or what?!? I get to finish my path tomorrow morning thanks to him! And, just to keep life from getting easy, I started reshaping my back garden bed, ya know, so the rhododendron wouldn't outgrow it's borders. Tsk, the lady's lost her marbles for sure this time. Anyone know of a really great fertilizer for an asian pear? mine isn't much more than a stick with a couple of tiny, stingy pears on it, and it's been in the ground for 5 years. Wed. am quick note- went out early and got all that bark spread. It's so cushy underfoot! I put it down thick, as alot of what's in it will compost down over a (hopefully) wet winter. Took pics but they came out too bright. Bee sting on my finger from yesterday morning itches something aweful! Last edited: Tue Sep 05, 2006 7:44 pm This blog entry has been viewed 503 times
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