Past Week Review

My Staycation was last week and this morning on the way back to work I had a chance to mentally take stock of what I got accomplished.
Not as much as I wanted but enough.

Finally got the out building sided, painted, ramped, doored.

Saturday morning.

Sunday evening shots. Painted it to closely match the house.

I have to level out the ramp a little and secure it to the ground and build a step for the door. A lot of work when you do most of it by yourself. 

We also got our daughter-in-law moved out of their apartment and now she is a full time resident on our half acre. She brought her cat, Gunner, which likes to terrorize the dogs. Ginny wants to play and Chewie ignores him. They'll get along soon enough. 

I also built a berm bed for flowers at the north side of the garden. 

Speaking of daughter-in-laws, she has been good enough to start an herb collection this weekend, including planting out The Wife's herb bed I bought her. 

Tour some more.

Strawberries are finally coming in. We have a lot of sets on.

Two year old bush beans have come up but no corn sprouts yet. I did check to make sure the seeds were good. 

Blue Lake pole beans have also started up.

Garlic and onions.

Overall garden view as of Sunday, April 28th. 

Landscaping looking good after some minor clean- up work. 

Hope everyone has a good week!

Happy Easter

Hoping that everyone is having a Happy Easter!

Home Alone- 3

"Last day of freedom from tyranny and oppression." Not really but the people are on their way home today so we shall meet up this evening (I had a speech worked out after the first line but didn't want to bore you with it.) Also last day of work this week as I am off tomorrow! Yes!
Spent some time yesterday evening covering up what I could due to the frost warning. After looking at some other blogs today I feel lucky. Snow in mid- April? Nope. It's been a winter to remember for a while. I do predict a decent summer this year. Maybe a little on the cool side but none of the Ark- building rains we had last year (fingers crossed.)

Picture from webcam just a few minutes ago.

All of the plants seem to have made it through OK the last few nights. Surprising for me as usually there's something that always goes wrong. 

Case in point; walking dogs this morning, one pulls and phone goes flying out of my hand. Shattered screen. Something for tomorrow but something I didn't want to deal with. 

See you later. :/

Home Alone- 2

Well another day has sprung in NC and freeze warnings were everywhere. Sorry to say but I never got the chance to cover everything up last night as it monsooned all evening. I can handle warm rain, but not cold, 30 mph rain. When I left for work this morning it was 36 degrees so I'll see what happened when I get home tonight. Speaking of last night; go to walk the dogs as the rain lightened up some, Ginny walked outside and walked back in. Chewie had to go and of course as far as we get from the house it unloaded on us, then he proceeds to do something to his front leg and can barely walk back. Needless to say we were soaked. Wet dog and pissed- off Owner. Cat doesn't come out of room but is at least eating. Fell asleep on couch at 8:00, went to bed at 10:30, up at 5:00. Living the life here!
Turned webcam onto living room this morning and of course what do I see at lunch?

Smiling toy at the lower right. Almost like he's giving a thumbs- up! 

Interruption tomorrow as everyone is coming back home. 

Home Alone-1

Not really. I do have two WOFs and a psychotic cat with me on the homestead this week. Everyone else went to West By God for the week. Sad to say that I really don't do much anyway. By the time I get home, walk the dogs, feed them, feed cat, get mail, etc. it is already 7:30. Feed myself and that leaves about 1 to 1 1/2 hours to do something. Exciting I know. So while I enjoy the freedom of rolling over an entire queen size bed by myself I'll let you watch this video. I found it while visiting another site. It's great!

Absolutely

a beautiful weekend. We were able to get a lot done on the homestead. Raided the big box store Saturday for some more flowers and we were off and running. After looking at our progress it was decided that 'another' bed could be put in the space between said new beds and the older ones. So my Sunday was spent building said bed, running new water lines to all of the new additions, setting out all of the drip emitters, and mulching around everything as we had a ton of the stuff left over.

I was lucky in finding the old lines pretty quickly. I also installed the valves I wanted to on each bed so I can control what gets watered when.

Strawberry blooms are coming on and we already have the makings of some berries already.

Wife's Confederate Jasmine smells great right now. 

The lettuce has really turned around so we might get some of it before it gets too hot. 

Current overall view as of yesterday evening. Just a few more thing and I'm done for a while. You can see that the potatoes have really come on now. In the new, long bed I planted Blue Lake pole beans. 

After toiling away in the garden I went out and power- washed the front porch and sidewalk to rid them of all of the pollen flying about. My sinuses can't take much more of this stuff. 

The Wife, Boy and DiL are on their way to WV for the week leaving me with two dogs, 4 fish, and a deranged cat. The cat belongs to said DiL and son, and since he's gone and she is with us, so is the cat. On his defense it's new surroundings for him. Chewie could really care less but Ginny seems to want to play and is interested in Gunner (aka: odd cat.) We think this because Ginny was brought up with cats. She doesn't chase him, just scopes him out. We'll see who lives through this week. 

Cold front moving in mid- week so hopefully that doesn't affect anything planted or I'll be covering like a madman. Hope your weekend was productive too!

April 7th

It has been a little while. Things have been happening.

We got the additional 3 beds filled and planted most of everything out. Hoping we don't get another summer like we did last year. We'd like some green beans this year!

Thinking of planting the green beans between the new and old beds. I held them back to have enough room to get to the watering house. Still have to run the new water lines and install all of the drip emitters.

Potatoes have finally decided to make an appearance.

We had some more 50/50 mix brought in as well as a truckload of mulch to do everything we needed done; front, side flower beds and between the garden beds. The Wife did most if not all of this work. She did a great job. And we still have some left after doing the new herb bed too. 

While said Wife worked on mulching around the gardens Saturday, The Boy and myself played in a big paintball game we've been planning on for a few months. 

Didn't play Sunday as we had a busy day planned doing other things. The Oldest Boy went on his next deployment, leaving at (finally) 4:30 am. Needless to say when we got home it was straight to bed. Not sure how long this one will last. 

One with the family taken by his wife. 

We know this wasn't easy on her. 

That's what I got for now.