Tag Archives: Spring

Cooped up and Projects

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Things are greening up massively outside, Spring is here. I feel so cooped up though, with little access to the back yard, only through the dark hole like downstairs, which I despise to go through. It was supposed to be our “family room” but has just become a place where I don’t go, it’s dirty and junkier than I can stand. The children go down there and watch TV and spend time there, and just make the couch all dirty and make a general mess. We have things boxed up there too, with no storage in the house to speak of, so it’s a cramped space at best, and there is little light, so it’s a dark hole to me. It’s a concrete floor as well, so I do not care to try to make it seem nice, it just wouldn’t be for me and the baby, no matter what, for now.

One of these days we’ll get a new deck built and the sliding doors in the kitchen, then I will have back yard access again. :) And sometime later hopefully we’ll have a patio by the deck, which the downstairs “hole” will open up out onto, and a new door there as well, to let in more light.

We have indoor projects to get done too though, getting a new floor laid for the main level and completing the floors upstairs (which are partially put in) and then all those floors will need sanded and finished (a true tung oil finish.)

Then getting the kitchen cabinets “installed” and countertops ordered and installed, and more …

There is so much inside that needs done, and outside, including the house needs painted in and out. All these things are big deals, take $$$$ and hard work together, which are not anything I can affect myself, so I feel cooped up. Living with the not yet.

Speaking of that, we are super watchful of the baby since he can crawl and cruise, he’ll be walking anytime now. We have to retrofit the stair areas so that we can install gates. It’s been so long since we had babies to baby proof for, and “back in the day” it was a nightmare getting the stairs “gated” and it just won’t work out this time to try without re-building parts of things.

Baby has to spend more time in his play yard now, which he just ain’t happy about. That’s the price he has to pay though, so he doesn’t tumble down any stairs. It really feels more like MY price to pay, since I have to listen to the wails of “let me out” for 70% of his play yard stays. He’s content to play on the safe floor for awhile, then remembers the stairs to up … and off he powercrawls and starts to climb, and after him I have to go to get him off the stairs. Then it’s play yard time, or sometimes baby swing time, or crib time.

Play yard time is wailing time, but crib time is wailing an screaming time, and oh boy that just never changes. He wants to be with me, free to hold onto me if he wants, not separated at all. He’s so active though, as well, and that makes holding him impossible, even when he seems to want to be held, so it all goes in cycles, hold, put down, play nice, then crawl to stairs, into my arms, too squirmy, into play yard, or swing or crib, cry, cry, cry, or add in screaming, stay there awhile, come out and start it all over again. Getting the stair areas gate-able will really help me out. So that, I think is the one thing we must tackle. It really should cost $ or at the most $$. It’s necessary, but we can’t do it until we have the money to do that, and we are going out of town when we next get paid, and so it’ll be us living with this for another week, then leaving for a few days, then coming back to this and hopefully having the money and energy to tackle the project.

Just that alone will be a reassuring thing, safety is important.

Hennies 2008

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Our hens began laying in mid-late February, and are now fully laying, I think. We were away most of last week, so I’ll spend the next few days starting to track when they lay, and get a pattern down on paper to understand it all.

One bad thing happened, on Saturday morning I looked out the window of the kitchen and saw one of my beautiful big Black Australorps loose, just pecking at the ground gracefully. I ran out and picked her up and got her back in the pen. I couldn’t see any reason for her escape, and the only thing I can figure is that the night before when my hubby went out upon our return, it was nearly dark, and somehow he might have let her out without knowing, as he collected the eggs.

No harm in that though, the Australorps are very gentle and calm, and whenever it was that she got out, she hung around.

The bad thing is this though: I went out on Sunday afternoon to look at them all and see if there were any eggs and to talk to them. I got to the A-frame pen and counted and freaked, one of the black hens wasn’t in there, as far as I could tell.

I got my DH and he came out and indeed, there was one missing for certain. We walked all around the yard, but found not one sign of her. It wasn’t one of the big Australorps, it was the other black hen that looks like them, but is smaller, sort of bantam but not exactly.

Later I just happened to be looking out the window and saw the dog hovering over a small black mound in front of the swingset, as if he’d just put it there. I ran out, gathering my DH as I went, and sure enough, it was the missing little black hen, very dead.

It isn’t clear how that happened, was she missing already when I got the Australorp back into the pen on Saturday? I don’t know if I counted, or not. I must have “felt that they were all there” to some degree. I have no actual memory of “making sure” though.

So when we discovered she was missing, was she dead already, or alive, hidden or hiding? The one place we didn’t look was under the small tractor that’s sitting in the yard. The only other possible hiding place was under the crawl space, which was accessible due to the “screen” falling off the foundation wall, a small thing that covers the masonry brick thing which is open to air out the crawl space, covered with the screen to keep critters out. Since it falls off all the time, and was off already, maybe a scared little hen went in there to hide, then came out later when the dog was out in the yard and he got her? Or maybe he got her earlier and somehow hid her from us? At the time we looked for her the dog was inside still, from the night before. We let him out later after we looked all around the yard without finding even one sign of her.

Oh well, it was sad. I felt so horrible when we found her.

So we now have 4 hens in the A-Frame and then 3 others in the SuperYard. We lost a bunch of hens all the sudden one after the other, from the bunch that are now in the SuperYard, but were in a different pen before, about a month ago or so. The three that are left are plugging along and laying now. They are Rhode Island Red types (maybe mixed to some extent.)

The A-Frame hens are the 2 Black Australorps and 2 Golden-Laced Wyandottes. These are hennies we’ve had for a long time now. Started with more, but lost them here and there due to different reasons.

So our total hennie population currently is; 7.

That’s a drastic reduction in the number of eggs I expected to get this spring. Oh well. We had about 14 or 15 hens at the start of 2008.

But the ones we have are laying and seemingly doing fine. Spring is beginning and trees are beginning to come “back to life” as well.

Allergies and house stuff

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Goo … I feel miserable. My “normal” allergies have just been la, la, la all along this Spring, until about a week ago. They ramped up, but even moreso this week.

So here I am, 36+3 (wks+days) pregnant and it’s hard enough to get the energy I need to do stuff … forget it now. :wink:

It’s my eyes, they feel big and swollen and red, just the rims look it though; my nose is goopey drippey stuffy, not dry, very, very wet; my throat is scratchy, it’s getting more sore on one side, as it does in heavy allergy times (like in my earlier years in Florida); my nose is itchy as well. I’m sneezing off and on and always, always dripping.

Hubby is coming home tonight and so I hope I can get some Benadryl soon. I have a small amount of liquid Benadryl that I have started to take itty bitty bits of here and there since yesterday. I only take small amounts of it in the first place, as a “usual dose” knocks me out or over. I take a child’s or even a half-child’s dose and it’s bad enough.

I need to get the house A/C filter changed out again. It’s an allergenic sort, with a high value for use, but this house is full of dusty dust blobs, so it needs to be changed out more often than it might in another house. It’s not as big a deal when allergies aren’t high, but when they are … it’s a huge deal to get a new filter sooner, way sooner than usual.

Today I’m getting all the bedding washed and changed, I hope. I need to. One problem I have is changing the bedding, it’s difficult for me usually, being smaller than most “Normal” folks, as well as now being bigger bellied :smile: Another one is that our bed is a Queen size. We had used this one for awhile, then got a King size, and over the years the Queen size was rarely used, and the King size wore out, so we are using the Queen this past year or so again … hoping to get an entirely new setup ASAP from IKEA. As well, we have King and Queen sheets, and the labels are all worn down and so it’s like “Which size is this one?” and if hubby puts the sheets on the bed, he puts whatever on. If it’s a King bottom sheet, it’s too loose width-wise and comes off easily, which I dispise entirely. I am also realizing that the most sheets we have purchased in the last 5-years or more are flannel King sheets for the previous King size mattress set we had.

The other thing is that there is one sheet set that I know is Queen. The bottom sheet I have on the foundation. So it’s unavailable (the foundation looks hideous and needs covered.) I don’t have a dust ruffle for a Queen either, and as well the foundation rests on the floor, we took the old H-frame out a few months ago, it was so rickety and I knew it’d be easier for me to get in and out of bed with it on the floor anyhow.

So yesterday I was in the hall closet looking for pillowcases & sheets, and found one ugly dark green sheet (which I had for a Queen futon “couch” that we don’t have a futon mattress for anymore) and one pillowcase for that, and another pillowcase from a nice white pair with a pretty eyelet thick edge but I have one covering a window.

I need more than that, and it comes down to looking and pondering and knowing that there must be more somewhere, but where. Ah, some are worn, ripped, or just hideous (as in “why did we ever buy that color, pattern, etc.”) and are probably in some of the stuff in the garage, or in the laundry room, buried.

Our master bedroom has no finished floor and is supposed to be quite the opposite by the end of this holiday (Memorial Day) weekend. This should aide somewhat in the dust and blech in the house. (The other thing is to get the basement ceiling finished!) We have 8″+ wide unfinished Heart Pine. It’s so pretty. We are going to do all 3 bedrooms eventually, as well as the hallway, but will just do our bedroom and the hallway for the time being. The children have Pergo currently and that is sufficient for the time being (though it’s not very nice IMO.)

That is that –for now. :smile:

April Freeze Damage

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I posted the other day about the “freezing weather” and wanted to post an update on the situation.

When I looked at the back yard after the sun came up Sunday mornig it was obviously “frosty” out — the grass was not the bright verdant color that is usual of late. I waited awhile for things to warm up, then waited longer … and finally set out to spy the damage or not.

The apple trees are in a sad state of affairs. They did not have that blooming pink look from afar, and getting closer it was obviously brown droopy looking, the blossoms that had opened mostly all were affected from what I could see. There are many blossom that aren’t opened yet, and I don’t want to disturb any of them yet to check for damage.

The white dogwood (in the back yard too) looked sad, the blossoms just hanging there, the leaves mostly looked alright.

The Eastern Redbud tree is close-by the dogwood, and it was totally drippy looking, the blooms had already faded before the freeze, and it was leafing out so nicely, but the leaves were so delicate, they were black and drippy looking, gooey, icky. The whole tree is full of that black sludge which used to be sweet spring leaves.

We have 3 Autumn Flame Maples in the back yard, and they are done with their bloom and have been leafing out. They are not fully leafed out yet, and the leaves are fairly small. From what I saw they look a bit droopey, but not totally affected –maybe.

We have 2 Paperbark Maples as well back there, and their little fresh leaves that have been coming out lately are super-droopey.

We have other trees that are fully leafed out already and they faired fine.

Out in our front yard the 2 Cherokee Chief Dogwoods we have faire alright, their only blooms are high up and seem pretty much unaffected.

We had planted a new tree a few weeks ago, and it began leafing out just in the last week or so. It’s leaves are pretty much like the Eastern Redbud that I described above, drippy and black-ish. :sad:

My Hostas were coming up, quite large and lovely, and they are brown sludge now. :sad:

The peonies have been putting out growth and they seem alright, we’ll see later. There are a few buds starting and time will tell.

The little irises I have have been growing up, but they look a bit dippy, it’s just the “leaf” part, no buds or blooms started yet.

The Japanese ‘Bloodgood’ Maple is fully leafed out, but the leaves aren’t as big as they’ll eventually get, and they look a tad relaxed. Time will tell whether or not they rebound with strength this week.

That’s most of the damage.

The weather was forecasted to be very much below freezing last night, but I didn’t check the forecast as nighttime drew closer. We did not have freezing temps, probably 39 in reality as a low, if not a bit higher. So there shouldn’t be any further damage to what’s left.

I haven’t seen a Spring Freeze like this since being in GA, and before that I was in S. FL for many years. So I don’t have any experience regarding what will occur. I have seen trees drop their leaves in Summer from drought, and re-grow some later on, FWIW. We had long drought conditions in past years on this property, but that’s not been the case for a little while now. I was looking forward to a vigorous growing season all around, trees, flowers, garden, and it’s the phrase of April now, “time will tell” — time being “the progressive movement of the season” –not the ‘clock’ sort of time. :)

April Freeze and Gardening 2007

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From Friday night to Saturday morning it was supposed to be really cold, just below freezing. I don’t think that actually happened on our property … yes it was cold, but not quite to freezing, from how the grass and blooms and herbs and such look in our yard(s) as of Saturday afternoon …

Now it’s the Saturday night to Sunday morning freeze warning time, and temperatures are supposed to be even lower, in the 20′s tonight/morning as well as tommorow night (Sunday to Monday AM.)

One clue for “how cold is it right now” that I employ to reason about what’s going on outside is the heat pump, which sits outside on the ground with pipes going into the house and up the wall into the attic space … and that’s right behind our master bedroom, right where the bed is situated, of course (the only “real placement” for the bed, unfortunately.) When it’s really cold the heat pump doesn’t do a good job, the closer it gets to freezing, there isn’t enough “warmth” in the air to pull it into the house for warmth inside via the houses air system. It makes a horrid racket when it’s actually freezing or lower and the heat pump is running.

Friday to Saturday it sounded similar to how it sounds right now. It’s the Saturday to Sunday time currently, 5:30am approx. and accuweather “says” right now it’s 28 degrees. Well that’s not exactly right, since our property doesn’t have a weather station nearby, and when I have had a decent temperature gauge for outdoors I was able to compare and know for sure that our temps here are not the same as what ‘they’ say (nor actual weather, like clouds, rain, snow, etc.)

So we are waiting for the daylight hours to see what it’s like outdoors, and I hope things will be alright. We have three dwarf apple trees that don’t always bloom so nice. Guess what? They sure are THIS year, ALL THREE of them at the same time. So it does figure that we have the first late cold snap ever since living here … this late, April.

Not only that, usually the two trees that are alike, Liberty variety, don’t actually “bloom” with their opened blossoms until later in April, and the third tree, MacFree variety, blooms after that (which isn’t really helpful since two varieties are needed to fertilize for apples.) There was definitely something funky going on with the MacFree and I was finally able to prune out major parts of it last year, when they suddenly got such long branches growing, it was obviously the root stock trying to take over. What’s is left untouched now is the real MacFree, as far as it seems, and this Spring 2007 is the first time it’s actually produced masses of buds.

We planted these trees in early Spring of 1998, and then did move them to another area a few years later. In any case, the Liberties have blossomed well in the past, but given us few apples. The MacFree never did blossom very well, though when it did better it was not of use to the Liberty trees. Last couple of years there were a few apples on the MacFree (so there is something else in the area that bees are using to fertilize my trees, obviously.)

Such promise I put in the apple trees this year, and then the Spring was so warm, and the trees started to form buds in March. That is not usual. We didn’t have a freeze in March really, it was regular last freeze around March 15, but nothing major, and temperatures were very warm most of the time, very warm indeed. Last (2005/2006) winter was a warm one, and things were so very mild, but the apple trees still didn’t set blooms until into April in 2006. This past winter (2006/2007) was fairly mild overall, and we didn’t have much “weather” in the way of ice or snow, no major storm at least. We did have rain more often than usual, though not so much overall. In any case, everything has been blooming so nicely this year, and that includes the apple trees, and unfortunately for them it’s not a good thing this year. :sad:

Dogwoods are blooming right now too. The Cherokee Chief variety we have in the front don’t have a lot of blooms, but where they do is at the top and they are lovely (we need to do some work on those trees, pruning.) We have a white dogwood in the backyard and it’s in full glory of bloom. It’s gorgeous. Driving around the area, Dogwoods are bursting forth in massive color and bloom. It’s a grand year for Dogwoods. Or it was. We’ll see later on. :sad:

So many other plants are past bloom already and in the process of leafing out, some leafed out in full already (like our Japanese ‘Bloodgood’ Maple tree, our Weeping Willow tree, and our wild Blackberries are in full leaf and actually setting blooms and some are opening already.)

As I write this the heat pump is starting to struggle for the first time this night-time. It’s not super bad, but does sound bad enough, so it’s near 32 or below a tad … but doesn’t “sound” like it’s in the 20′s, while currently accuweather says right now it’s 28, oh I just loaded the page again and now they say “30″ but that’s where anyhow? Miles away.

Hubby did put a blanket on my herb garden (which doesn’t have much in it, but does have a super-duper verdent perennial Chives that is just about ready for harvesting — already!) — it’s the whiskey barrel garden. I have lots of new herbs to plant in it, we got them last weekend, but I didn’t plant them due to the weather outlook. So they are in the garage awaiting their time to transplant.

I have lots of seeds to start and since it did snap so cold I’m fine with the fact that I haven’t even started my seeds yet –it is something I do need to do in the next couple of days, though.