On 6/16/2015 7:02 PM, songbird wrote:
finally seeing the light at the end of the
planting tunnel. two more gardens to go and
i'll be done. the two that are left are outside
of the fenced area so they are always left
until last.

we've had plenty of rain recently (and i see
that George is getting another round from the
hurricane down there in Texas) with three inches
of rain in the past several days.
We had almost three inches today Bird, but actually welcome. Managed to
sit out on the front porch awhile at oh dark thirty and it was nice and
cool. I need to get the "magic" screens up on the front and back doors
and let the nice breezes pass through.
the ground
is pretty soggy, the ditches are getting full
and some areas along the rivers are flooding.
we had a nice sunny day, a good breeze to keep
the biting flies off and mid 70s temperatures
and not too bad of humidity. compared to
yesterday (hotter and much more humid and not
as much of a breeze) it was beautiful.

more chances of rain yet this week, but that is
ok, as it's nice to have rain instead of using
the well water.

in other news we've been using buckets, ramps
and sunflower seeds to reduce the chipmunk
population. the semi-feral cats have not been
around very much at all and the chipmunks have
been running all over the place. we've captured
18 in six days and there's still plenty more. in
other critter news i thought i'd chased the
groundhogs off last fall but they returned a few
days ago - a whole pile of kits... i've captured
one of them and been using the air rifle to chase
the rest of them off. so far it seems to be
improving (if i want much of a bean crop i have to
fight for it). the rabbits too are very thick.
I've not eaten chipmunk because we don't have any here but wild
squirrels and rabbits are in season year around in Texas with large
limits or no limits depending upon which county you're in. All those
critters are very edible and easy to clean, cook, and/or freeze for
later. My father-in-law had a war on with groundhogs back on his old
place. Wife, kids, and I came for a two week visit once and I cleaned
the groundhogs out with his old Stevens .25 caliber falling block rifle.
Being young with good vision and a lifetime of hunting critters helped.
We ate one of them and it was right tasty and traded the rest to a
neighbor for other foods they liked. Growing up in the country people
used to drop their no longer wanted dogs and cats near our house. We
couldn't feed all of them and there was no Humane Society around there
then so we just put them down and buried them. We always had a few barn
cats and a couple of hound dogs just to keep the varmints down.

i should take all of these critters being around
as a good sign and i do as it means the system is
capable of supporting a diversity of life. today
i saw the first large toad i've seen in a long time
and we have a good snake population too (the toad
probably got flooded out of their home in the rocks).
We were sitting on the front porch about two weeks ago, just after
another heavy rain and we heard something singing in the front flower
bed. I poked around and there was a huge toad singing his heart out.
Reckon he was looking for a mate as the water had pooled in the garden
and all the clay bowls we had set out to attract the toads. Every spring
we get hundreds of baby toads hopping around and we're very careful
around them. Useful critters that they are.

the strawberries came in nice enough this year
and i've been putting up jam and berries in the
freezer. had some folks over to pick Sunday and
they had about 30 quarts when they left. more to
pick yet, but i'm tired today - perhaps tomorrow.
it's about half the crop as compared to last year.

everything else is growing pretty well, having
some sunshine today has helped.

that's the news for this day the middle of June,
hope everyone else is doing well?


songbird

We've been meaning to go out to one of the berry farms but it has been
to wet to get in there these past weeks. Maybe this week we can get a
break. Sounds like you've got it all set up the way you want it. If I
were even thirty years younger I would still be living in the boonies as
we did when young.

George