NO MORE MUD!!!!!

 Ok, it's been raining a little every night,

so there is actually LOTS of mud....

but the guys are DONE MUDDING!!!!!

I'm SO excited!

(And so are they!)

Now they have moved on to prep...

Getting those windows and doors

covered with plastic.

They got most everything out of the house.

And what they can't move

(the flooring mostly)

they are also covering in plastic.

And then comes PAINT!!!!!!!!!!

Yippeeeeeee!

We are all so ready to be done with

mudding and taping!

Meanwhile, the garden is starting to produce.

Jim and Sabrina SOLD OUT all the zucchini

and something like 23 onions on Saturday.

And then last night Jim and I sat in the backyard

and washed and skinned all the onions.

From this....

To this.

Looks MUCH MUCH better!

We shouldn't have any trouble selling those!

We are going to separate them by size,

some are "pearl" and some are a fairly decent size.

(Again, they are Texas Yellow NOT WallaWalla,

so they won't ever be HUGE, but they are nice!)

(Most of the big ones are on the bottom...)

He also brought home a nice handful of

some of the spicier peppers.

Those tend to fruit MUCH sooner than the

bell type peppers.

He's in the kitchen now, cooking up

some peppers and onions.

Plus we have some chicken nuggets we are

cooking and putting in wraps with some

ceasar salad.

Nice and fresh and perfect for a warm evening.

Hope you had a wonderful Wednesday!

OH.....

Rod and I stayed home today,

he slipped off the bumper of the dump truck

the other day and skinned up his shin pretty badly.

It is all nicely scabbed over, but his leg

keeps swelling and is pretty uncomfortable,

so today we decided to go to the little

walk-in clinic at our town hospital and get

a quick x-ray to make sure it's ok.

We should hear back tomorrow.

(No Radiologist on staff today...)

I'll be sure to update when I hear.

I'm sure he's fine, but we want to be sure.

We all know he has TOUGH BONES.

But......

Ok, off to dinner!

Happy Birthday Rozann!

 Today is the Birth day of my little sister!

So Happy Birth Day to Rozann!

(And to Mom!)

It's been a few years since she was born.

But they have been full of fun

and love

and adventure.

She has been a constant example to me of

just putting one foot in front of the other

and taking the good times

with the disappointments.

(Thank goodness for Facebook photos!!!)

I'm so excited for the new adventures that are

on her horizon.

There are lots of fun and exciting things

yet to come!

I wish we were closer and could spend

more time together,

but when we do, it is like no time passed at all.

(I wonder if she still scratches her pillow

at night - drove me to distraction!)

Or calls baseball games in her sleep.

Oh the joys of sharing a room with 

someone who was so filled with LIFE!

Happy Birthday Frozie Rozie!

I LOVE YOU!

Holy Onions Batman!

 We planted 3 and a half, 50 foot rows of onions,

with 4 rows of onions in each row.

That's a LOT of onions.

Some of them have flopped over,

which is the sign they are ready for harvest.

So...

today we harvested SOME.

(It didn't make a dent...)

There are a dozen or more zucchini in the 

bottom of the yellow milk crate.

Otherwise, it's alllllll onions.

When I got ready to leave to come 

home to teach tonight's class,

I hopped in my car 

and...

Oh my burning eyes!

Jim put them in the back of MY CAR!

(instead of the bed of his truck...)

Hahahahahahahaha!

I had to drive home with the back

windows open because WOW!

That is a lot of onions.

They are "Texas Yellow". 

So a pretty good size for a regular

yellow onion.

I did pick a few red onions, but

we didn't plant a gazillion of those

and they weren't ready yet.

We kept expecting them to be HUGE,

but last year we planted Walla Walla and

they get to be monsters.

These are much more reasonable sized.

(Most people don't need / want a HUGE onion.)

Anyhow.

Jim and Sabrina are all ready to head into

Hays to the farmers market in the morning.

But tonight there is a drive-in movie!

(A group has been working on building a

drive-in for about 2 years now, tonight they

are showing Smokey and the Bandit

as a fund raiser to get more of the 

infrastructure built.)

Sounded like fun!

So they went to the movie.

I'll put the finishing touches on the stuff

they need for the market tomorrow.

Wish I could go, but I'm teaching this weekend.

Meanwhile, on the way home I glanced

down at my odometer.

Cool, eh?

And the new holly hock is finally in bloom.

The flowers are stark white!

So beautiful!

Ok, need to finish my paperwork for tomorrow's

class and then get the rest of the stuff 

gathered and organized for the market.

NITE ALL!

First Harvest!!!

 Since none of our peas even germinated...

well, that's not true.

We found a random pea plant hiding today

in the middle of the carrots.

Like 5 rows away from where we planted them...

there were 3 ripe pods on there!

They were DELICIOUS!!!!!

But that's hardly a harvest.

As usual,

zucchini wins the race!

We counted 18 zucchini ready or nearly ready

for harvest!

Jim picked as many as would fit in his shirt.

Looking good!!!

I left one at Kyle's place for him to eat tonight

and we are cooking one up here for us.

We should also be able to harvest a bunch of

the onions by Friday.

They are starting to flop over, which is

the sign they are ready.

And I'm going to go through my freeze dried

stuff from last year and package some up.

I think Jim and Sabrina may take what we have

over to the Farmers Market in Hays and see

how they do.

(I have to work this weekend...)

And so it begins.....

Finally Flowers!

One of my favorite things last year

was my flower garden.

 

This year it is FINALLY starting to be pretty!

These are my little tiny pansies.

I didn't think they would survive,

but they seem really happy down in the

shade under the buttons.

The buttons are all volunteers from last year.

And the holly hocks overwintered!

The zinnias are from seeds I saved from 

last years garden.

They are finally starting to open up.

Same with the marigolds.

The little tomato next to the flower

is a volunteer from last year too.

There are lots of flowers and

even a couple baby tomatoes.

It's starting to look pretty out there!

And then I need to start over at the

new house...

but it will be FUN!

Who is THAT?????

 Poor Jim drew the short straw.

Which meant he spent the day laying

flat on his back on a scaffold and

sanding the ceiling!

He was wearing a hat, so his hair was protected...

He climbed down about every 15 or 20 minutes

and cleaned off....

They were both using power sanders, but

Kyle was doing the walls using a sander

on a long pole with a shop vacuum attached

(less dust...).

He got all the walls done today, so they

will be using that sander for the ceiling next.

He did the master closet that way and said

it was WAAAAAAAAAY better.

But Jim was already dirty.

Tomorrow is Hays Day.

So they get a break from sanding, but then

it's right back to it. They should be done

in one more day.

And then they need to put on a skim coat

of mud (thinner and easier / faster to sand)

and then they will be DONE with

mudding and taping.

EVERYBODY hates that job.

Meanwhile Rod got the shower all finished.

And I got more of the onions weeded.

And then I noticed a bunch of the onions in

the other beds are starting to flop over.

Which means they are ready to harvest.

I'm going to get it all weeded just in time

to pull them out and plant something else.

Hahahaha.

So I might switch and weed the beans.

Kyle started those the other day and

they look much better all weeded.

I planted some replacement cucumber

seeds today on a section of trellis that

didn't have any tomatoes.

The carrots are looking pretty good.

There are zucchini.

And some flowers are starting to pop

out on the delicata squash....

Now if we can just get some rain.

Which is what EVERYBODY in the west

is praying for.

While the east is kind of drowning.

Isn't that the way it goes?

Anyhow.

Enjoy your picture of the abominable snowman.

Or the guy from the band KISS.

I'm going to go make dinner.

Fun Tree!

 On the way into Hays,

along Highway I-70,

there is a hill.

And on top of the hill,

there is a tree.

It is a VERY large tree!

And it looks, for all the world,

like a buffalo!

Isn't that the coolest???

Since I first saw this one,

I've been noticing lots of trees around

that kind of look like that.

Rod and I saw one waaaaaay off in the

distance on our way to the butcher yesterday.

It was too far away to get a good picture of though.

Also, speaking of plants.

Last year I "chaos" planted the flower bed.

All that means is I dumped all the seeds

from the various seed packets into a bowl

and then sprinkled them liberally on the dirt.

There was this one plant that came up.

The leaves kind of looked like a squash.

And since we had random squash coming up all

over the yard (remember the spaghetti and

zucchini from the chickens?) we just let it

grow, not knowing what it would be.

Well, it turned out to be nothing.

And when I cleaned out the bed last fall,

it was still green, so I left it.

This spring it was still alive and started to

grow and then got these big buds on it.

Kyle and I decided it was likely some sort

of weed and considered pulling it.

But I didn't. No reason. Just didn't.

And it's a good thing!

It turned out to be a DEEP purple hollyhock!

There's another tucked in the bachelor buttons,

it has buds, but since it is so shaded, I don't know

if it will do anything.

We think that's why last year it didn't bloom.

It was buried deep under the zinnias.

But this year it got a head start!

Pretty, eh?

I also tucked some tiny little pansies under the

bachelor buttons hoping they will shade them and

keep them cool enough they can continue to bloom.

So far it's working.

I forgot to take a picture and I just watered out

there, so everything is wet.

Anyhow.

I'm nearly finished with my computer tasks this 

morning, (bill paying, ordered new garments,

some phone calls... that sort of thing) and now

I'm going to get dressed and head to the farm

to do some more weeding (shocked, I know...)

before it gets too warm.