Beautiful October

I had lunch with Friend Jill today, and we had SUCH a good time talking. 

It's so good to see friends, and have a one-on-one. 

Yes, we dished. 

Then, I ran to the feed store. 

It is all dressed up for fall... doesn't Marti, the owners wife, do a good job?  Crows are looking out of those cornstalks... and Neil was not able to keep cornstalks in stock! 

Yes, they mill their own feeds there, right in Bonner Springs, Ks. 

I got four bales of straw, and a fifty pound bag of bird seed. 

I went down a grade in birdseed, because I realize the sparrows and 

doves are not touching the peanuts and safflower and some of the other goodies. 

The less-expensive blend will satisfy them.  I did look at hummingbird feeders too... I am going to increase them next year. 

Four bales of straw will just fit in the HHR.  Anthony, the hardest working kid in Wyandotte County, knows how to load.  I need to get a picture of him the next time I am there. 

(Straw is at 7.00 a bale, in this time of abundance... too high!) 

Look at the gorgeous milo along Evans Road in Leavenworth County, on 

my way to the old place. 

Isn't it beautiful!  

This is really corn and bean country... but I love that some farmers are still planting milo... 

my uncle always planted some milo and some sorghum. 

And here's some of that corn waiting to be harvested.  When I was 

a little girl, I often read a story about the witches at Halloween, who made the cornstalks come alive and dance around their fire.  I always think of that this time of year.  

Five years ago, I found this very book in a book sale and bought it! 

Everywhere you see bits of green in this bed, I tried to dig it out. 

The dirt is glorious... a combination of paper, dirt (good dirt brought in) and 

straw that has composted from last year.  I never got this bed planted, remember. 

Here is the bed, and four bales of straw was just about right.  I laid it on 

thickly. 

Clearing the weeds out has helped the perennials so much. 

The mondarda "Jacob Cline" is really expanding! 

And can you see the new growth on my white lilac that was so buried in weeds this summer 

you couldn't even see it???

I am so happy about this, I have raised it from a six inch tall plant. 

I went over to the backside of the north bed... it is the only bed I haven't touched. 

Look what I found on the second spadeful! 

I dug out a little of it... and then stopped for the day. 

We are to have rain the next few days, and next week, the dogs and I will 

go back out and I'll get busy in this bed and get it all finished. 

I could go on and on, but, as Keith reminded me.... we are renting it... so I won't. 

I am going to sprinkle wildflowers in this bed. 

(Thank you, Jill, for the idea!) 

I saw only two small butterflies today... none of the larger ones, though I did see some bumblebees working on the buddleia. 

There were plenty of these guys. 

As I started out the gate, I took this picture: 

The trees are beginning to turn!  

I can't wait to take some pictures in the next two weeks, while the color is good. 

Now... I am changed and have to start priming the next set of trim! 

Isn't October wonderful? 

Not the Post I Wanted to Make

Yesterday afternoon, I worked a lot on this: 

That's the henspa, and normally, I simply rake the straw shavings out the door into the henyard. 

This time, I wanted to recover them. 

I had to lock the goats up first, because Kelly would LOVE to get in there to eat chicken feed. 

The straw, which was bought at our regular feed store, smelled okay but was particularly DARK. 

I'm wondering how old it is.  It did not smell moldy, though. 

Some of the smaller birds rarely go outside, and they were spazzing while I worked.  Then they calmed down. 

I got a lot of eggs from here yesterday, eleven of them.  I used to get twenty, but I have old birds in here now. 

The cart load was shoveled into the new bed.  If you look at the far end, you can see the darker cleanings from the old henhouse.  These were lighter, I had just re-bedded it a month or so ago, but they were full of chicken poop.  It will all compost over the course of the winter.   We'll come back to this picture in a minute. 

Our gorgeous sunset last night. 

I dug the potatoes nearly 2 months ago.  Keith insisted there were more, and I knew that some plants had started growing again. 

He was right. 

And we found at least ten baby pumpkins (and one big one) on our vines that we didn't plant until mid-July.  I'm hoping we get a few in time for Halloween! 

Look who was hiding behind the ammo box/nest in the old henhouse!  Mr. T!  

I honestly thought the snakes had gone underground already, but these last few days of heat have brought them out for sure. 

It was very dark in that corner, and the flash lit him up. 

Kelly is trying his best to eat all the porch decorations! 

Okay, back to that flower bed picture.  If you make it a little bigger, you will see that the yarrow patch has become badly overgrown with grass.  I planned to dig it all up, pull out the grass, and divide it today. 

I got about three spades in, and realized I was totally pooped out.  It was 85 degrees out, and I just.could.not.break the ground. 

I'm either going to have to get Chris up here or wait until it rains tomorrow. 

Today we receieved the Liebster Award from Stella Rose, Maggie, and Gussie at The Three Little Pugs.  Thank you, friends!  We will comply with the "rules" tomorrow. 

Also, we read two bits of sad news.  

S and J at Cranky Puppy have lost their 17 year old Pomeranian girl, Foster... we are so sorry to read of this, and for your loss.  She was a beauty. 

And Ian, at Life on an Acreage, has found out that his wife Elaine has Parkinson's... our hearts go out to you, along with lots of prayers.  They will be moving from their home on acreage, back into town. 

We have enjoyed so much Ian's pictures of the beautiful Canadian bush where they live. 

Resting up this evening in hopes of getting those plants out tomorrow! 

The New Garden Bed Week Three

Three weekends ago... the weekend of the Big Fall, as I like to call it... when Keith fell off the scaffold... Chris and Hayleigh had begun preparation of the southern half of the new flowerbed started last summer.  This bed had been allowed to grow up to weeds over the mild winter, because we put paper down and then didn't secure it enough, so that over the course of weeks it had come up and been ruined.  So Christopher weed ate the bed down to the ground, and we put some wood on the thistles growing in part of it, and then, three weeks ago, Hayleigh and Christopher spread Max Mix and peat moss and straw over new landscape paper to make the base of the bed. 

Here is the northern half of the southern bed, that we started planting last summer:

I have never planted kniphofia (Red Hot Pokers) before... this is a huge plant, and I love it.  The achillea behind it has also grown huge.  I must say that the layering of the beds really pays off.  Yes, there is some grass I need to get out... there is a bed behind it that is not prepared yet, and I need to root all that grass out as it is invading, but, overall... this bed is beginning to look good.  Tucked back behind that kniphofia is a white lilac bush, about ten inches tall.  I'm going to carefully dig it up and transplant it somewhere where it has room to spread it's wings.

There is another kniphofia in the north bed, at the far end, where it has a lot of shade from the big maple... it is not even half the size of this huge one!

Here is the bed looking to the north (the south end of the south bed)... where you see dark dirt, I planted purple coneflowers, and then white coneflowers, having been given seed by a friend at work.  I also have black eyed susan seeds to plant.  Behind the butterfly bush, hydrangea and clethra is a row of sunflowers of all kinds and colors, now well-started up from seed.  I love coneflowers, and hope these get started well. 

And here is a new compost heap started.  We had great luck with an old heap we had... the one year we had stellar pumpkins, they were volunteers from a compost heap much the same as this.  You see our bins to the south of this heap, which is grass and cleanings from the llama yard.  I didn't get a picture of Lil rolling in the llama poop.  (There is also a base of chicken house cleanings under all this)

I have a lot more grass from the pasture to put on this heap, if I can get our little cart hooked up to the tractor tomorrow.  I can't push the big cart up and down the pasture hill when it's full. 

And... the main reason I'm not using the compost bins at the moment.  I threw a two year old gourd in here a few weeks ago after Ranger played with it for weeks and finally chewed it up. 

Look what happened!

More Projects

Another project we have been working on is composting, and improving our garden beds.  This spring our neighbor Troy was kind enough to drive his tractor over and plow our garden plot.  Then, several weeks later, he came over and went back and forth over it with his rear-tine tiller.  He left a great bed for us to plant in, and then it rained.  And rained.  The yard was squelching.  We did not get the plants in until mid-April, and did not have a bounty of peas, but we DID have a productive garden.  However, we are planning even more improvements for next year.  Because of the success of this bed....

we have changed the way we garden.  Keith has been studying Lasagna Bed gardening, where many layers are put on the ground without tilling or breaking it.  This is basically what we did with this flower bed, laying straw from the horseshed full of manure... dirt from bagged dirt (the hard and expensive way to go), grass clippings, and more straw.  Then we covered it with wood chips (also expensive).  We planted the perennials in this deep bed, and they ran riot all summer and fall.  The three boxes of wood you see above are the three original beds.  And by early summer, it looked like this....

So now, Keith has spent considerable time the last few weekends working on the compost bins.  Thanks to a friend at work, we have bags and bags of leaves and yard cleaning composting.  He was kind enough to give them to us in paper sacks, and we put them inside plastic bags to cause them to compost in the bags.  We'll add these to our beds in the spring, because now we have four more beds! Keith also strengthened and repaired our original compost bins.

The bags are some of the leaf bags... we have more laying in the vegetable garden.

This is a new bin that Keith bought and set up, it is full of layers of dirt and leaves and other things (chicken house cleanings)

And this will be set up for kitchen garbage, and all the other refuse that goes to make good clean compost. 

(llama poop)