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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
Of storms and such
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2006 7:26 pm My power is on for now. It's been out since Sunday night, and several circumstances made it more difficult than usual. With the windstorm, my 14-year-old lilac bush out front split and is reduced to one scraggly bit. All the evergreens are pruned, and after I get outside (when the frost is gone) the goats will have a pre-thanksgiving feast on it all. This morning, I took pity on my teenage son and drove him to the Bible camp where he works on weekends- they have showers there. I picked up muffins for he and DD, she & I snuck into the game room and had a quiet breakfast while we waited for him. It was nice to get out, and I'm mighty grateful for that camp! Now I've gotta get back to housecleaning, there is another severe storm predicted for tonight and I'd like to start with a clean slate if we lose power again! This blog entry has been viewed 414 times
warning, sad blog (dog woes)
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:10 pm I thought I was struggling with my dog, Lily, for the past 4 or so years because i couldn't put my kids through losing a dog. She has killed a rabbit (while playing with it), and a chicken (ditto), digs holes in the yard, chases and bites cars (we had to fence in the whole 5 acres because of her), and on and on. And today she tried to take a bite out of me when I was scolding her for yet another hole in the yard. Tomorrow she goes to the shelter. And instead of being relieved, I'm on the verge of crying. I've tried everything within my reach to deal with her. She's got a good heart, but she's the middle and both ends of a bad dog in every other aspect of her life. Believe me, if there were another way, I would have found it by now. I'm just surprised that I'm the one crying. This blog entry has been viewed 645 times
and still more rain
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 4:33 am Just because I'm a 4th generation Washingtonian, let me say, I do love rain! I love sitting in my art studio (fancy name for a painting corner) working on Christmas cards and listing to the sound of nothing but rain coming down, splashing in puddles and rattling in downspouts, the pinging on the roof of my old pickup truck and the splats on the tarp over my firewood. But, here's a pic from a few days ago, for all of you who've never seen a Washington prairie or the Black Hills (the not-so-famous black hills, that is) 
Just missed snapping a coyote, he ran across the field. It's a bit dark, but this time of year it's tough to get a full daylight shot! This blog entry has been viewed 427 times
prairie rain
Category: gardening among the rocks | Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2006 4:02 pm Looks like we are officially into rainy season, the puddles on the driveway and drips down my neck when I feed the rabbits attesting to it. The oak tree is bowing to it's fate, leaves weighed down with shimmering drops. The hens look quite disreputable, their feathers plastered down- they do have a place to get in out of the rain, but I need to put in fresh straw later today. The goats have no opinion whatsoever about the weather. There is no sight of them but a nose poking out the door of the goatshed, a rather forlorn sight. I stopped at the feed store yesterday to pick up a bale of grass hay and another of straw- sort of a bed-and-breakfast deal for herbivores. There was a lone, lonely Netherland Dwarf huddled in a cage there, it was so hard not to come home with it!!! I've got to get to work painting, trying to paint up a bunch of Christmas cards and such. A more indoor task is definitely in order now that the garden is busily mulching itself. This blog entry has been viewed 439 times
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 409 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 658 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 562 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 1525 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 1346 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 510 times
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