October 14, 2013

Boy, it's been a long time since I've written.. I guess it would be safe to say that it's been a busy year. A lot has happened since I last wrote. I introduced you to my "girls" in a previous post. I'm sad to say that one of my beloved friends, old Cuddles, died a few weeks ago, and has been sorely missed. She'd been with me for 16 years. Thank you Gail Sutche for all these years with a wonderful friend.

But it's weird how things work out. In early June, we noticed a feral cat started hanging around. She looked wretched, thin, and just generally ragged looking. I wondered why she was hanging around and then saw this scrawny kitten run under the porch. The foxes are thick around here and the mama cat disappeared and left this tiny kitten that was as wild as a deer. It got skinnier and I knew it was not going to survive on it's own so I started setting food out for it. Then I caught Mom doing the same thing..... lol - well this lilttle thing apparently was hungry and lonely enough that within a few days, she came out of the daylilies with her tail raised in greeting and let me touch her, even though she quickly shied away. Within a day or two, I was carrying her around and now she is spoiled rotten. She's been wormed, treated for fleas, fed her own special food mixture that she seems to love, and now lives in the house. She had to beg for a while but we finally relented.

Mom named her Goldie and she has given us a lot of laughs since she came to live with us this summer. She followed us everywhere while she still lived outside but we worried that a fox might get her.I think we're all happier since she moved indoors.

Now on to the gardens. Wow! Where do I begin? I know I will forget a lot.......

I had thought I'd extend the electric fence further down into the yard to protect them from the deer but Mom wanted me to plant my "fancy" daylilies close to the house so she could more easily enjoy them. She wanted me to get rid of most of her old daylilies so this has added quite a lot to getting these daylilies planted. Mom probably had 1000 daylilies, if not more so it was a huge deal to get them cleared out.

Actually, I was lucky. Mom knew someone that would come in and dig the old plants, but with the amount that we're talking about here, that was still a huge project. Then the old rock gardens had to be tore down, level the soil, rebuild rock borders, put down cardboard, haul in compost, plant the plants, and then mulch them. I wish that I'd taken "before" pictures but I didn't........But let me tell you, I think Mom and I will both be glad to see winter get here..... lol

The tractor has been a tremendous help. I don't have a tiller for the tractor but I'm pretty handy at excavating with the front end loader and have leveled a lot of ground that was too rough to safely walk because of having so many clumps of daylilies dug out. Remember, we're both using canes.

Anyway, the first bed we've worked on was the biggest, I'm sure. It is still not done, but my plans were to get the potted plants dealt with first and worry about digging the plants I'd planted last year later. Now lots of Mom's plants were named plants so if I was able to ID it, I potted it to replant later. So here are a couple of shots of the first bed.




The first picture was 8/13/13 and the second was 10/2/13. This bed is probably a little over half done now. I got all of the potted single tetraploids planted so have stopped on this one and went on to the diploid doubles.

This diploid double bed is the first of two and has 179 plants. I have about the same amount of diploid doubles that still have to be dug and moved so there will be another bed on the opposite side of the sidewalk. This shot was taken from the back step.
Last week, we started the tetraploid doubles bed and planted the potted tet doubles.... then stopped on that bed and moved on to the mini bed. Here's the unfinished tet double bed, right alongside the tet single bed.

And here's another shot showing how far it will stretch when it's done.... all the way to the rock pile.

This weekend, we finished the first of two mini beds. This is the mini singles bed and we will build a matching bed on the other side of the sidewalk for the mini doubles.

 Here's a shot that shows the back yard beds that are built so far.......

Next project????? Plant the 2013 seedlings..... raised beds are waiting.....

And there are still 250-300 potted plants waiting in the pot ghetto.

Looks are deceiving here.... pots are sorted into groups - toothies, stipples, stripes, dip singles, and some seedlings. Hey! See the white arrows? That's a scape coming on. Actually, there are several little scapes coming on.

So we've got to start five more beds to handle these potted plants. I may have to just plant some of these in the wrong bed for the winter because building these rock gardens is time consuming. Actually, that's what I expect to do, to be honest. We'll continue building beds this winter and I'll haul in more compost so that when spring is here, we can dig and move the rest of the plants to their permanent locations. That should be a fairly quick project to move the rest of the plants.

Plus we have three BIG trees down here in the yard that have to be cut up and split for firewood. I'll be making use of that brand new Stihl chainsaw I bought last month. And one project that we did early this summer was chip up a gigantic brushpile. It was a terrible amount of work for probably a little over a pickup load of chips, but hey, after spending the money to buy a chipper, you know I'm going to use it. By the time I get done chipping all the brush from these trees, I'll probably be ready to give this chipper away...lol. And we've got 6 or 7 more big trees to come down that died after the aphid invasion last summer. Did I mention that I start mandatory overtime in about 6 weeks? Thank goodness! It will be great to get to slow down!

January 6, 2013

Wow, I can hardly believe it has been so long since I last wrote. I have been working all the overtime I can get. I've got daylilies to buy! Actually, I've been averaging about 60-65 hours a week so it's not nearly as much as I worked last year-end but this past season was so difficult, I will have to admit, I couldn't handle as much overtime as last year.

We've been getting some winter weather and the daylilies are buried under a foot or more of snow now. We survived Winter Storm Draco (when did they start naming winter storms?)

 They said this one would miss us................. mostly.  And then there was Euclid...........

Wow, what a storm! This one had us under a Blizzard Warning and dumped 11.8" of snow on us. But we were lucky. This came the day after Christmas and closed roads for a couple of days but it was still better than what some of the Southern states had to deal with. There was an all time record for the number of tornados that hit on Christmas Day. We got it the next day but it was on the cold side of the storm.

When it was over, it was a sight to behold. We skipped 2 days and got another 5" and then skipped 2 more days and got another 3". So we got more that week than the entire previous winter..... lol

Here's another shot during the storm.... trust me, it got worse before it wound down.....
But inside, things were pretty much normal......

As usual, Homeless is hungry, and Cuddles has stolen her bed.

After having to make a trip outside, Homeless thought perhaps the bed would be better to cover up with.....

But what I REALLY wanted to do was warn you to be careful on Facebook..... I had a close call yesterday.

I saw yesterday morning that I had a new friend request so as usual, I checked to see if any of my daylily buddies were friends with this fellow, since I didn't recognize his name. Yep, looked like a new Facebook user, and he was trying to build up his friend list, so I did the neighborly thing and accepted his friend request. Well, he must have really been anxious to make friends because just a couple of minutes later, he sent me a message and said Hello. Well, I figured he must be wanting to introduce himself, or maybe ask about one of the daylily pictures I have on Facebook so I said Hello back to him. Wow, this guy was FRIENDLY!

He told me that he was looking for a woman to make him happy and that he knew how to make a woman happy. He said he was divorced and had a 16 year old daughter that was just dying to meet me. (REALLY? I'M AMAZED SINCE 5 MINUTES AGO I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HE EXISTED). I told him I was NOT interested in another relationship.. that I'd just gotten out of a 33 year long unhappy marriage last April and then he said it was fate that we'd met and surely I wouldn't throw away the chance for love. (DON'T BET ON IT, DUDE!) Then he told me he know how to make a woman happy and that I am a beautiful woman. (REALLY? DIDN'T HE SAY HE IS DIVORCED? AND I AM SO GLAD I HAVE SOME TALL BOOTS) And then he asked me if I have "meetings" (NOT WITH YOU!!!).  Then he asked where I was and told me he was in France and then he asked me if I was "IN".... (IN WHAT?????). Then he asked what I was doing with my life. (UHHHHHH..... LIVING IT?). Then he asked if we could be friends?  (NOT IN THIS LIFE, DUDE!). He asked if I had an address so we could see each other while we talked. (I HATE TO THINK WHAT HE WANTED TO SHOW ME!!!!  GAG!!!  PUKE!!!! EWWWWWW!!!!!)

By then, I was SOOOOOO over this crap and decided two could play this game. I told him no, I couldn't afford a webcam. I was too poor. (REALLY! MY DOGS, CATS, AND DAYLILIES KEEP ME BROKE.... REALLY). I told him if he was really sincere about loving me, to send money so we could buy food.  THE JERK NEVER ANSWERED!!!!!!  I waited an hour .....  lol..... and I sent him one last message. I said I could tell he wasn't serious about loving me since he hadn't responded so I was unfriending him. I told him I did NOT want another relationship with a man like that.

I checked with some other ladies he was friends with and found out he was flirting with them too. (REALLY??? I'M CRUSHED) See!!!! I knew I wasn't cut out for this love game. I just don't have what it takes to catch a man.... lol   I told my brother-in-law, David, that I'd just had the shortest romance in history. He thought I needed to send the guy one of my "dressing young" pictures (THAT'S ANOTHER STORY, BELIEVE ME) and it would surely win him back. But now that I found out he was already cheating on me behind my back, I DON'T WANT HIM.  David said he figures it may take time, but I'll eventually get over Jean Pierre......

So friends, be careful on Facebook or you may end up like me....... with a broken heart..........

or not.....