April 24, 2007

Well, here we are again. A good two months plus since I updated the blog. Things have been so crazy busy around here. My stomach is still messed up and we are still taking tests. The last one was another blood test to check for Celiac Disease. I have good days and bad days.

Well, let me think. Since the last time I updated we decided to go with a raised garden this year. We built all the boxes 4 x 8. We have two boxes of onions, two boxes of potatoes, one box with spinach and lettuce, one box with carrots and okra, one box of green beans, one box of lima beans, one box with zucchini and brussel sprouts, one box with blackeyed peas and pinto beans, and one box with cantalope and cabbage. We also have a 4 x 4 box with my herbs in it. We planted four rows of corn and a row of cucumbers in the ground instead of in boxes. We also have our tomatoe plants and pepper plants in old tires instead of boxes. We moved the watermelon out of the garden and put them in tires also. They are next to the garage. We almost lost half the garden when we had a late frost. April in South Texas, and we get a cold front that dropped the temperature to about 34. Not freezing, but cold enough to hurt the garden. Jan saved hers by using the Miracle Gro food, so we have tried that too. It looks like most of it is going to pull out of it and do just fine. We extended the garden about 8 feet this year also. When we did that, we came across a pile of concrete that was buried in the back yard. I think it must have been the 'trash pile' while they were building the house. The slab was HUGE. It was about 6' x 10' x 2' deep. The hole we had to dig to get it out was awful! We had to buy a sledge hammer to break it up. We didn't even dig the whole thing up. What was beyond the garden, we just left and filled in the hole. Now I have a pile of broken cement in the back yard that I have no idea what to do with.

Ruby used to run free in the yard when she needed to go out. She loved terrorizing the cats and chasing them all over the property. Then she started to explore outside of the property. Kippy (our neighbor) called one day and told me that Ruby was headed for the highway. She has been pretty much grounded to her pen and the leash since then. She went through her first 'heat' and was under total house arrest for that. We decided it was time to get a fence up so that she could run free again. We marked out an acre immediately around the house and decided to put up a three rail with field fence across the front and one side. The back and the other side will just be the field fence. About the time we were ready to buy the materials, Home Depot had a big sale on landscape timbers. We decided to use those to build the three rail and the boxes for the raised garden, so we bought three pallets of them (231 timbers). We got the three rail done all the way down the one side, and about 1/3 of the way across the front of the property. Then we decided to get our neighbor (Cliff, who is Kippy's hubby and clears for a living) to clear an acre and redo the driveway. We stopped working on the fence until he can get that done for us so he doesn't have to work around the fence. It has been raining so much here that we haven't been able to get the clearing done because the ground is so soft. We still want the coverage around the house so that we are isolated though, so we plan on planting honeysuckle bushes all along the front fence, down the driveway and around my sitting area. In the front of the driveway is where we will put the fruit trees. We haven't quite decided WHAT fruit we want yet. We will probably also plant some nut trees out there. I want to get one or two Weeping Willow trees for the main front yard too. I still need to plant my flower gardens also. We have decided on three different perennial flowers for the flower beds in front of the house. We are going to put a strawberry pyramid in the middle of the circle drive. I also want to have a nice cactus garden in each end of the main flower beds in front of the house. I found a wonderful arrangement of perennial plants and flowers that do well in shade that I am going to put around one of the trees in the side yard. I saw in a magazine some molds to make your own stepping stones and edging blocks. One of them had a really nice set for both with an awesome celtic design on it. I have been thinking about using the stepping stones instead of doing another flagstone sidewalk in the front yard. Then I would use the matching edge stones for the flower beds. I haven't really decided on that yet. I am just so anxious to get it all done so that we can relax and enjoy it. Cliff came by this morning to let us know that he hasn't forgotten about us at all. We just need to wait till the weather dries up a bit.

On the critter front, things are growing rapidly. Sadly though, Mini Me has gone missing. We haven't seen him around for about 3 weeks now. He was just getting to the point that we thought he might let us pet him before he went missing. I don't know if something got him or he just decided to move on to a different home. Tabby has started coming around again a little bit and lately this grundgy looking gray cat has started coming around. Ebony went into heat again and cats started crawling out from under all the rocks. Schizzy, Ebony, and Whiskers (Whisky) are still our main cats though. Ruby is doing great. She is such a loving little thing. Very smart and very eager to please. About a month ago, we went to one of the feed stores in Conroe and saw that they had baby rabbits for the Easter season. I called Jan and told her we were going to get a couple. She had us pick up a couple for her too. They were too young to tell the sex, so we just picked four that we liked and hoped that one of us would end up with at least one male. Neither of us has ever raised rabbits before, so we weren't sure what to look for. Since we got them, we have done a bit of research about them. I think one of the rabbits we have is a Satin. The other one is a chinchilla mix I think. Last week we saw an ad at the feed store for a man that was selling all his rabbits and the hutches. I told Jan about it and she ended up buying all of them. She got 6 hutches that have four cages each and 24 rabbits with 6 of them being male. Out of the females she got, 2 and possibly 3 of them are pregnant. We are going to build another cage and buy one of the males from her and possibly a female. Jan's are mostly the New Zeland rabbits that are all white with red eyes. She has one black one and a couple red ones. Jan already had a small chicken coup on her place when she bought it, so they bought 6 chicks a while back. Charles went out and found some plans for a chicken coup for us. We got it put up last weekend. He has the nesting boxes built but we haven't installed them yet. We got it painted with a coat of fence and barn paint, but plan on going over it again with regular exterior paint. I think the rabbits will be moved out close to the chickens once the clearing is done. Also after the clearing we will finish the fence up and get our round pen panels back from Jack and Jan and buy the first horse. Which means we will be needing to build a barn. We both have our saddles now and quite a bit of the tach. We will wait to buy the bits and the cinches until after we have bought the horse. We still need to buy the feed buckets and water trough. We will probably buy a hay feeder also. Things are starting to come together. Just not quick enough for me. I want to just twitch my nose and have it all done. We also still need to build the well house and the storage shed.

Since Texas put the new tax on cigarettes the first of the year, we tried buying smokes on line. That didn't work out too well, so I have gone back to rolling my own. They have this really cool machine that pretty much rolls them for me. Doing it this way, my smokes only cost me about .67 a pack. Very nice..:)

Charles was talking to his mom one night and mentioned to her that we had talked about getting a dehydrator so that we could have other choices on how to keep the vegies we are now growing, like the onions and peppers and stuff. She said that she had one we could have as she didn't use it anymore. We have now fallen in love with this thing. We make beef jerky regularly and really love it. I tried to make fruit rolls, but it was a total disaster. I won't give up though..:)

Our neighbor Mr. Faulkner passed away a few months ago. We had talked to his son about buying 4 acres of the land, but at the estate sale he told us that they are really wanting to sell the whole property together without splitting it up. He said he would keep us in mind though. We went to the estate sale and got quite a bit of stuff. Chalres got some tools for really cheap. I got a whole set of China for 30.00. It is really nice. I have no idea what I will do with it, as I already have the set that mom gave me. I just couldn't pass them up though. Now I have a whole set to give to Shawn and a whole set to give to Jeff and Maggie.

We have been so busy on the weekends I don't have time to do the laundry, so laundry day has now moved to Mondays. Which means I usually have a horrible day on Mondays since doing the laundry usually sets my back off. I am really behind on the site too. I plan on spending the whole day working on the site today and trying to get caught up on the screencaps. I have about 25 tapes to get screencaps off of. Which means I need to stop messing around here and get to work..:)