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DS graduates, castle discovery, wildlife report

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 2:53 am

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DS has graduated, and will be moving out for his summer job in a few days. I'd be a blubbering mess, but decided to forego the overwhelming load of housework to go run errands with him, mainly shopping for his Father's day pres. When the two of them were out hiking in the Olympics last year, and got caught in a lightning storm with golfball-size hail, they had to rip his sleeping bag in half to shelter them after they dropped their packs and were running for their lives. Ah, good times. Very fitting that he get his dad a new bag, eh? Anyway, it was awfully good to just spend a day bumming around with him. sniffle.
My mom tracked down a geneaology book on the MacDougall line of the family. Always been curious about that one, since the pairing of my first and middle name has passed through every second generation of women for quite some time now. To my extreme delight, I find that we have a family castle! I googled it and got some great photos, and plan on doing some sketches when I get a bit of time to breathe. All odds are against me ever being able to actually go there to see it, but that's ok. It's pretty cool just knowing about it. Here's a site that shows it if anyone's curious: http://www.castles.org/Chatelaine/DUNOLLIE.HTM
I like that name, think my next critter might get named Dunollie! I'm actually Scottish on both sides, fortunately they don't seem to have ever been warring clans, lol! The castle is near Oban, overlooking the Firth of Lorn. So fun, there's a castle and a fellow who went down in a shipwreck on my Mom's side and a couple of people on the Mayflower on my Dad's side. And a bunch of folks that came here as indentured servants from Wales and Scotland on both sides, what a mix!
Dandelion control is in full swing. It's tricky, if I mow the prairie at the wrong time, it makes the native grasses too weak and the dandelions move in. But if I wait too long, the invasive scotch broom gets too thick for my mower. Tsk, this habitat management is for the birds! Or rather, the bunny that lives outside my kitchen window. It's so tiny! *melt* The quail population is definitely having a peak this year, there are at least two pair claiming my place as their own, and two other pair I've spotted across the road at the neighbors. I wonder if having the wildlife preserve expand this way will mean even more quail and pheasant? Probably more cougar encounters, but what I'm hoping is that the herd of elk that feeds not far from here will mosey up this way. Love watching them!

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a repurposed old door

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:37 am

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Dad was a heavy-equipment mechanic. I can't recall where, but one worksite had a place called the "bone yard", where odd bits of equipment parts went to rest.
I have a spot hidden in the trees where I have a small pile of wood that can't be burned due to preservative or whatever. My own "bone yard". One of the things that's been sitting there for a few seasons is this old door. It was a freebie, but covered in layers of lead-based paint. A couple of rainy seasons and the paint finally peeled off in big sheets so I could properly dispose of it all. It didn't go far, it's now screening off the backside of my potting shed which is right near the bone yard.

I ran several screws through the wood to keep it from warping apart as it sits outside, then fastened it to the potting shed/blacksmith forge. A cedar post from the bone yard anchors the free edge of the door. The wire mesh in the door opening is reclaimed from a pen built to safely house baby chicks- I won't likely be raising up many new ones so cutting off a length of wire is no loss. It's attached to the back of the door with screws through scraps of cedar.
The little thuja in front may or may not make it- it was not doing well in it's former spot, hadn't grown at all in two years and was turning brown on one side. I figure this is it's best chance, since I'll be tending this bed to monitor the hollyhocks and iris I've planted alongside. Haven't yet decided what to attach to the wire mesh, to add to the screening power of the door, but I'm hoping the hollyhocks will get tall enough to help. I'll probably wire on some interesting bit of garden art.

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Strictly pictures

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 10:58 pm

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Just a few snaps around my place...
my tippy pots, full of strawberries

Some death camas, an awful name for such a lovely flower. So called because the local tribes would gather and eat the camas bulbs that grow alongside, the bulbs of death camas look identical although they are poisonous

The back of my house, set up to offer me the fantasy that I'll somehow have time to sit here and drink tea!

A good friend

and, finally, a scene from my back yard, sorry it's sideways


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A harrow-ing tale

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 10:51 pm

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Worked in a vegetable garden today. It was sooo nice sticking a shovel in the ground and feeling it agree to sink into the soil. Nothing like the rocky soil around here. So I turned over two rows, laid strong and dropped in the radish seeds. Very rewarding. I tucked in a row of onions and patted them down, and gave it all a good soaking. Then Himself came out to show me where he wanted two rows of beets put in. I should have guessed something was wrong, he was wearing a nice polo shirt. He directed me where and how deep to plant the beets, then disappeared. By the time I was chugging down the first row with the harrow, his motorcycle roared to life and sped away. No concern of mine. I turned the corner, bumping the harrow along the ground and enjoying the faint rusty squeak of the wobbly wheel. Then Herself appeared on the porch. "What are you doing?!?" I stopped, afraid I'd made a mistake, and explained that I was planting beets. A muffled oath ensued, and Herself stomped back into the house. I went back to the harrow. She reappeared moments later, and slapped a straw hat on my head, informing me that it was 82 in the shade, and she thought I WAS in the shade, weeding under a particular shrub out in the garden. Turns out I'd been Tom Sawyered, and Himself had been specifically instructed to do the task I was by now nearly finished with. Then she expressed how impressed she was with Max, who, apparently by my diligent training, had remained this whole time on the edge of the garden, never setting a paw in. It just may have been that said edge was in the shade, and said garden was NOT.


Last edited: Fri Jun 01, 2007 3:09 am

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may's winding down...

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 10:52 pm

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Short blog of the day, I'm just too tired! Went down to Mom's in Daffodil- she wanted to go for a ride so we went down to this amazing little shop hidden on the back road. They sell koi, garden art, plants, and it's also the corner grocery, all in two little buildings. A fellow Mom knows wandered in to pay his rent (he lives in a house out back of the place) and appropriately admired my pickup. Then I went and spent about 3 hours in the heat of the day running a weedeater and doing other garden work. Got home and there were 7 messages on my phone, all of which needed my Immediate Attention (yeawn). Good thing I set up dinner in the crock pot before I left, I've just got very little steam left in my tranny. Daffodil, however, ran like a trooper.

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Memorial day weekend thoughts

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 3:49 am

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OK, I'll admit it, I'm just not much into visiting the tombs of my ancestors. But Mom managed to get my Becky & I to go along to the two pioneer cemetaries to tidy up. The first was the site of my dad's mother, a McCash. I've always wanted to learn more about that side of the family, and while I was pulling weeds and brushing off moss, this tiny old lady walked over and asked how I was related- turns out she was my grandmothers cousin! Now you must understand, my grandmother died when my dad was a baby so not only did I never know her, noone spoke of her either. I wound up chatting with this dear lady for an hour, about grandma and the family. She showed me a long-hidden gravesite at the base of a tree, where my great-great grandparents were buried in the 1800's. We never knew it was there!
Then it was off to the graveyard on Mom's side- the oldest monument there is from the mid-1700's and yes, was an ancestor. Cornelia Griswold, always liked that name. I'm named for my grandmother and her grandmother- another Scot thankyouverymuch. This graveyard was fully equipped for generations who would walk from town, and the mound of earth where the outhouse stood has several very-healthy shrubs ornamenting it's top. The hand-pump wasn't working, but I'm sure it just needed a part replaced. My littlest niece was too tiny to pull the handle down even when she was hanging full-weight on it. She's my brother's daughter. Waaay back,when my brother and I finally, together, triumphed in pulling the pump handle down, and felt that rewarding gooosh of water into the bucket, was almost a rite of passage. Mind you, I'm very happy for indoor plumbing, especially since our well is 150 feet deep, but turning on a faucet could never inspire the same memory-feelings as that distinctive gooosh sound.
I got a bunch of new freebie plants, a couple of "wild" geraniums, an oak trying to grow where it ought not, a huge lot of iris rhizomes, and a sad-looking displaced fern. I'm challenging myself this year with relearning everything I used to know about propogation. I'm a complete faliure with seeds, But grafting, layering,tip cuttings, I had great success with all that back in the day.
Had my little Max into the vet for his first visit and rabies shot. The gal I'd bought him from said he was "fixed", but the vet showed me otherwise. Oops.
So I'm going to assume that the other things she told me were, um, creative embellishments, and I'll start his series of puppy shots next time I can get up to the feed store.
I think my Becky shall be too sick for school Tuesday. Though not too sick to see a matinee of Pirates of the Carribean. Oooo, what a naughty mommy I am! Hope this nausea from a medication adjustment corrects it'self by then, or seeing Davey Jones and his slimy tentacles... *shudder*

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Pest spray, coreopsis, concentrated roundup

Category: tips I don't want to forget | Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 2:11 am

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To control bugs, steep a handful of chopped garlic (from the big jar I get at Costco) together with 1T. red chili flakes (I'm assuming cayenne is the same thing as it seems to work) in a quart of water for several days then spray it on plants.
Be sure to pick up a couple of those cheap sprayers that Big Lots has before they are all sold out, one to hold this and one to hold vinegar for weed-killing. Just be sure to label them, bubblehead!
Apparently, I've been working too hard trying to keep the blooms on my coreopsis tidy. Word is, if I just let a bunch of the blooms poop out, then shear them all off with hedge clippers, the plant will put out a whole new crop. We shall see how this goes.
Read somewhere that the best way to use those pricey ultra-concentrated weed killers (not my idea of healthy, but desparate times...) is to leave it concentrated, put it in a cleaned-out and delabled bottle with an eyedrop-squeezer. Like one of those fertilizer bottles. Then I can just put a very small amount right into the center of any nonnative obnoxious weed. I am SO going to try this on the Scotch Broom!

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Pheeling Philosophical

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 11:45 pm

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Should be tending my phlox and phlomas at this rate!
Anyway, don't know about anyone else, but once my fever crosses about 100.5, I get pretty loopy. So naturally, when it hit 101 this afternoon, I went out to my dear Daffodil to turn the engine over. Cranked it about a dozen times but no luck. Just when I was about to quit, DS came strolling up from school and, being the philosophical boy he is, prayed over her. Then she started right up. I informed him that holiness is rarely accompanied by such a smug smirk!!!
But ya know, in all the years I've been wanting Daffodil, one of the reasons was because I liked being able to pop open the hood & know what & where everything was. Well, all this needed tinkering has been a marvellous refresher course in engine mechanics. Dad was a heavy-equipment mechanic, and made sure I knew how to do all this myself, though I've forgotten an amazing amount of it. But a couple of years after we lost him to cancer, Mom hooked up with her old high-school sweetie, and he's been a star for showing me all this, checking the sparkplugs, how to listen for misplaced engine noises using a stick of wood, cleaning up the battery terminals, etc. Don't think I would have gotten around to relearning all this but for the mysterious engine problem that plagues Daffodil. And when she's running, man does she purrrrr!

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What I've been up to all week

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 2:16 am

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So, I've not been on the internet much this week. Except to look at old-car-parts places.
Have you ever had a "dream car"? I have. A butter-yellow 1949 pickup. I've vaccilated between wanting a Dodge, Chevy, or Ford, but no matter. A 1949 pickup has always been my dream car, since I was a teenager. Well...
A week ago Mom was tooling around town, her tiny hometown, when she saw a guy pulling a pickup off to a grassy spot, to put it up for sale. A 1949, one-owner, much-cared-for, butter yellow pickup. Sooo, having recently gotten out from under a big financial burden, and being a Mom...


Aint she purdy? Her name is Daffodil, though I've opted to not pop the 50 bucks a year to have a vanity plate, I'm going to try to find one of those self-customizable "plates" to mount beside the real one. Perfect for a gardener's truck, eh? She has a longbed, with wooden boards (so cool) which will be ideal should I ever need to transport my mower. I'm adding wood rails soon, and changing some of the silver-painted bits to white-painted. Now I can join my brother at the local car shows! He restored our dad's 1964 1/2 Mustang convertible, bought before my brother and I arrived and made our parents too broke to buy fancy cars, lol!
I've been rather surprised at the stares Daffodil gets, though I guess I shouldn't be. We broke down on the way to Bible study last night- did the two Sherrifs that passed me stop to render aid? Noooo, but the two teenagers in a 70's vintage sure did. I let them poke around under the hood and, in general, get a good look at her before I told them that my DH was on the way with jumper cables. Nice to share such an awesome car. Actually wound up having her towed (thank you, AAA!) and the old-timer who did the job said that when the call came in, he had to fend off several young guys to get the job, lol! Makes me think, why on earth would anyone want a complicated new car? Well, there's the gas mileage, but my driving is so limited these days, it's really a nonissue. I'll take her to Mom's, the feed store, grocery store, and Church. Yup, that's about my limit.
Really sore from working today, on a garden with really funky soil. It really needs to be beefed up with bunny poo, guess I'll take a bucket over next time I go.
Great weather lately, but that means the gardens need water. so back to work I go!

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warm & breezy

Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 8:19 pm

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It really amazes me how so many people can find the time to post on here. Also a bit bummed that I don't have time to read all the great posts- I think my Life needs DSL!!!
Today I finished building my dog pen. Hopefully I can get pictures up here soon, it's awfully cute with a picket fence. I bought a squirrel feeder at a church sale last weekend, and mounted it to one of the support posts on my bird feeder. In another lost photo op, the silly grey squirrel was dangling outside my kitchen window today, gripping with just two toes, chowing down on my hanging suet block! I really can't see buying a bag of peanuts to fill the feeder for such a nonpicky fellow, so it's filled with cracked corn, compliments of the chicken feed barrel.
The folks I've been gardening for are away for a few days, so I get to focus on my own yard. Good thing, weekend after next we are having a swarm of people out here to meet the young missionary couple that our youth group is looking to get involved with. We are going to set up a croquet game and maybe a Mima Mini-golf Course. Lots of prep work to get the gardens looking their best! I'm hoping for a big ol' load of gravel for Mums day to put around my goldfish pond, but the trucks been acting funny.
Time until DS graduates is absolutely flying by! I'm starting to get pretty weepy about the whole "what happened to my little boy" thing. I'm about to lose my place as his Mom! I mean, I know I always will be, but it just is going to change...
I was oh-so-thrilled (not) to hear that we are currently paying the second-highest gas prices in the country. Huh?!? All the oil from Alaska comes by here, there is a oil refinery just north of here, but it's hit over 3.75 a gallon. *fume*
Meanwhile back at the ranch...
There were a half-dozen male quail having a male-bonding time out on the road. Which means the females are sitting on nests. Just the thought is heart-stoppingly cute. Quail are definitely God's idea of comic relief, with the silly "deedle" thing on their heads. Gotta love 'em.
Enough time sitting. Work and weeds are a-calling, and I need to stick post-it notes everywhere so I don't forget (again!) to spray Bordeaux on my blight-prone lilacs next fall!!!

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