To Lime or Not to Lime...

With my Mom's help, I FINALLY finished digging all of the sorrel out of the bottom of the garden this weekend.  We essentially dug every square inch of that area (50 ft x 10 ft) with hand trowels and sorted out all of the weeds, rocks, and tenacious, spreading roots of that nasty sorrel. 

JP dumped 2 tractor buckets full of mushroom manure (aged horse poo, mostly), which we then spread around that whole area.  My intentions were then to spread lime, and allow JP or my Dad (they can fight over who will get that pleasure) to till it in with the roto-tiller.  I went on line first, however, to get an idea of how much lime to use.  That's when I saw the links with warnings not to use lime and fertilizer together.  Apparently together the two can form ammonia gas.  I got varying information from each site I visited.  Finally, I had to ask myself...how much of what is on the Internet should I believe?

What did I do?  I put the lime out there, of course.  I rarely follow directions.  Both the manure and the lime were dry, and the lime is pelletized for slow release, so I really don't think it's going to make too much of a difference.  I promise that I will report if I did the wrong thing.

After all that, I mowed the garden paths.  It looks so nice out there right now!

Garden Report:  We still have beans, and more corn to plant (in a couple of weeks, so that it doesn't all get ripe at once), as well as the seedlings - tomatoes, peppers, squash and cucumbers.  Peas, greens, radishes, potatoes, spinach and onions are up.  The other root crops - red beets, carrots and parsnips are still not doing much.  Things are coming together!

The rest of the weekend passed in a flash.  L and I went on a field trip with some others from her cyber school on Friday to nearby Laurel Caverns.  It was an enjoyable trip.

Limestone Formations at Laurel Caverns

Someone gave JP another huge bag full of morels.

Fresh Morels

We celebrated my Dad's recent birthday on Friday night with a mushroom fry (2 big platters of fried morels) and home made cherry pie.

The remainder of the morels, we dried.  Hopefully we will be able to enjoy these later.

Dried Morels

Saturday morning, we attended a seminar given by the Apiarist who keeps 2 hives near our garden.  I had invited along a bunch of our friends with children, and a handful of them were able to make it.  It was fascinating, especially when he opened up a hive and let us all take a peek.

J all suited up for bee watching

Searching for the Queen Bee (the one with the crown)



L and her friend E looking at a tray of bees with the Apiarist

That evening, we attended a cook out at a friend's farm.  L found a horse to ride off into the sunset upon.

  

On Sunday, we all rode our bikes in the parking lot at the Elementary school.  JP and J rode their new bikes, and L graduated to J's old bike.  My bike was unchanged, except for the kick-stand that JP added for me.

That evening, we had a quick and unexpected visit from one of JP's cousins.  Afterward, we were finally able to collapse together on the couch and read "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

And now, it's the beginning of another week.  L and I are still working on school work at 3:15 this afternoon, because we took some time off this morning to have a tea party with my grandma before she headed back home, and we planted 2 beds of corn after lunch.  It is supposed to rain tonight, so we were hoping it would get watered well.

Life keeps rolling right along.  Thanks to the love and emotional support of many of my friends and relatives, I made it through last week without a mental break down.  There are several "extras" on the calendar this week, but I think they are do-able.  I made it through the weekend, the crazy, crazy weekend, yelling only once.  (I stopped myself in the middle, so I'm not even counting it.)  That makes 4 days with no yelling!  Hooray!

Swarm

There is a reason for the paucity of posts of late - we were preparing for and going on a pseudo-vacation. I say "pseudo" because poor JP was stuck in conferences all day and didn't get to play as much as the girls and I did. This is one of those times when Cyber School is really great: we packed up our lessons and took them along. We did some on the road, and some in our Hotel room...easy peasy.

Now we have returned, and are trying to return to some semblance of normalcy at home. The dogs were happy to see us, and we had been missing them.  They fell asleep almost as soon as we got home, and slept most of the day today, breaking to eat very little. I think they got worn out playing with all the dogs at Pandemonia Acres, where they stayed.

We were in Williamsburg, VA, and stayed at The Great Wolf Lodge.  They not only have an indoor water park there, but 4 floors of an interactive video game called "MagiQuest". We spent our days doing lessons in a hurry, playing in the water park, playing the game, and reading in our room. In the evenings, we went out for dinner, walked through an Outlet Mall (and found Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream), walked through Colonial Williamsburg (and found Haagen Dazs Ice Cream), and inadvertantly crashed a prom.

Obligatory Colonial Williamsburg pictures in the stocks...

On our way home, we stopped at the Frontier Museum in Staunton, VA, which is a favorite for all of us. They now rent electric golf carts to tour the grounds in. JP was thrilled to drive us around, and it allowed us to spend our time seeing ALL the exhibits, instead of walking to a few of the best ones before leaving.  Isn't it just GORGEOUS there? (This is the 1800's American farm.)

JP and the girls in the golf cart.

JP creeping through the tiny door in a house in the West Africa Igbo Village.

The gentlemen at the German farm, who always plays the Scheitholt for us.

A handsome cockerel at the German farm.

After our return home, we picked up all our random animals from my parents house: a goldfish and tadpole that the girls adopted the week before from a local nursery, and 3 dozen peeps.

These girls are Barred Plymouth Rocks, and should grow into handsome hens in a few weeks! (Picture courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Today we noticed bees swarming in great numbers around my perenniel garden.  (Click on the picture for a better view.)

They eventually settled on my Harry Lauder Walking Stick tree.

We called the Bee Man, who came out tonight to see if he could catch them.  They mysteriously disappeared while we weren't looking, but stayed several hours, clustered on my little bent tree.

My Father turns 70 tomorrow, so we took my parents out for dinner tonight. We came home for ice cream and pie made from the last of the sour cherries that I picked a year and a half ago.

Bzzzzzzy, bzzzzzy, bzzzzzy around here

New Additions

Happy belated Easter to all!

We had a sick child here, so our guests (Mom and Dad) decided to stay home (we took them over some of the feast) so that they wouldn't be exposed to anything nasty before their big Africa trip (leaving at 4 AM tomorrow). J had a high fever, tummy ache and no appetite. She crawled in bed with me on Sunday morning and said "I'm worried that my tummy won't be ready for ham!" She had mashed potatoes and red Kool Aid...yummy yummy! After lunch she was feeling well enough, however, to have a photo shoot with her sister in their new dresses.



Today I found only one Easter Egg that we missed.

This evening, our latest addition to the farm was delivered: a hive of bees. They are down below the garden, near my pear trees where we can easily keep a respectful distance from them! Apparently they need to face the morning sun, and be relatively sheltered from the wind.



The past several nights we have heard cats fighting on our back porch. Most of the time, they take off as soon as they hear us coming out, but we have never seen Bert and Ernie involved. Tonight I am hearing strange barking and howling outside through the open windows. One of our neighbors recently asked if we had been hearing the coyotes...could this be them?

I need to sign off and iron some clothes for work tomorrow. I also need to change this background...the dots are starting to get really annoying!