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Prairie sunset

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 2:32 am

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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!

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clean your chimney!

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:56 pm

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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.

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garden shed goings-on

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 5:37 am

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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

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Old metal tub

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 3:52 am

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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.

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Metal cattails!

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 2:48 am

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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!

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