My Garden

My garden has things I did not plant.  Things I try to keep out of the garden. 

It is full of sunflowers, mint, and children.

Today I am planting hope. 

We dream of ripe tomatoes, cucumbers from the vine, and potatoes deep beneath the soil.

We search for the perfect plants at greenhouses near and far.  We choose them by how healthy they look.   

But the ground is not good. 

So the plants wither. 

We add compost, manure, leaves.  We till and hoe until we think there is not one weed left. 

But we always miss one.  And from one come many.

And the plants die. 

We water, water, water, but it is never enough.  We pray for rain.

Then the rain comes and the potatoes rot. 

The cucumbers yellow. 

The tomatoes die. 

Let’s plant something else say the children.

So we plant flowers.  It is too late in the season to expect that any vegetable will grow before it gets too hot.

Then we water, water, water, but it is never enough. 

Then it becomes a water fight. 

Then it becomes a slip and slide.

Then we are muddy. 

Then we all have sunburn. 

And the flowers die.
 

But the sunflowers, mint, and children grow.

The Orange Kitten

"Happy is the home with at least one cat." - Italian Proverb

I am not a fan of orange cats.  It’s not that I think they are any different from any other color of cat.  I just don’t care for orange ones.  And I believe there are enough stray cats in the world, that should I go to choose another cat, I should be able to find one that is not orange in color.  Orange cats are also known as “blonde” by my 7YO. 

Second in line on my Cat Color Hating Scale is a calico cat.  Not a fan.  Probably because of a black and orange calico cat name Kiki that would not let me pet her when I was a child. 

So the 7YO’s cat, Mittens, had been killed by a car late last summer and a cute little mostly gray kitten had shown up at the neighbors.  (She undeniably had peach colored calico mixed in with her gray fur, but I was willing to ignore it because she was a nice kitten.)  The neighbor didn’t want her, so I said I would take her home with me.  The 7YO promptly named her Mittens and she became his own. 

Fast forward to about a month ago.

I’d thought about getting Mittens fixed, knowing she was borderline on the preferred age of six months to have her spayed.  But was she getting fatter?

The 7YO noticed first that she had “milk suckers”.  Great!  Maybe I could still take her in…

Let me just say that nothing riles up the pro-choice/pro-lifers at this house like an unexpected teenaged cat pregnancy.

How could we not let her have the kittens? 

And so, our ignorably calico Mittens has been ballooning up over the past several weeks.  The kids couldn’t wait until she “pooped out her kittens”.  They had already begun petitioning to keep one of the kittens as a “family cat”. 

“If there is a blonde one, can we keep it?” my 7YO asked. 

“I don’t really like orange cats,” I told him.

“Why would you say that?  When they grow up, they get all shiny and nice, and they look professional!” he told me. 

Professional cats. 

What will they think of next?

And so the days had been accomplished that the cat was either to have her kittens or explode. 

Yesterday morning, she wasn’t waiting at the front door to be let into the garage for breakfast.  She wasn’t in the garage at lunchtime.  I got to thinking that I hadn’t seen her all day and I’d been home for most of the day.

I checked with the neighbor lady who said she hadn’t seen her either. 

I decided to check the barn.  On my way out to the barn, I peeked my head under the roof of the well house.  There was Mittens and her kittens.  Four little dark blobs. 

But wait…. 

She moved her front paw.  And there… what did I see?  ...but another blob that was undeniably ORANGE!

I could almost hear God laughing!

I kept the secret until the kids got home from school.  My 7YO was so excited that he “happy cried”.  We relocated Mittens and her kittens to our back porch so they would be protected, and the kids could pet the kittens every day to keep them tame so that their fate of leaving this house to go to a new one will be as expeditious as possible.    

My 7YO then prayed, “Dear Jesus, thank you for my blonde kitten.  It is just want I wanted.  It’s my FAVORITE!  In Jesus' name we pray, amen.”

It looks like we’ll be keeping a kitten, doesn’t it?

Like a Herd of Turtles

"Try to be like the turtle - at ease in your own shell." - Bill Copeland

Here we are in the throes of Springtime, and what says Spring like a herd of turtles?
 
Sunday we saw a giant snapping turtle who was trying to cross the street near our church.  Unfortunately his story did not end happily, as the road by church is not a good one to cross if you're not in the crosswalk and can't travel faster than a 1/2 mile per hour. 

And so, at the mandate of the 6YO we are now destined to pick up every turtle we see on the street.  Sometimes I just don't point them out, but on the way back to Kindergarten on Monday we saw one on the overpass of the highway. 

He turned out to be cute, and friendly, so we took him to Kindergarten where they watched him all day.  He had more fun when we got home that evening, trying to be fed and enjoying the false hope that he was escaping many, many times before nightfall.  My son even built him a "pond".  It was more like a hole that he filled up with the garden hose, but the turtle ended up with a bath nonetheless.

I finally coerced my son to let him go before he himself had to get into the bathtub.  He chose the neighbors' pond as a turtle oasis.  Much better than the highway overpass, I'd say.

Today, after dropping off the kids at school, I saw this little guy crossing the road by our house.  Naturally, being a good turtle herding momma, I corralled him for the kids to play with later this afternoon.  

He is not so friendly or as curious as the other turtle, and appears to have had a liquid diet for breakfast.  His bladder also appears to have control issues, but I'm sure they will love him just the same.   

I'm sure he'll enjoy the turtle oasis that is our current designated release spot. 

Perhaps that's where he came from. 

Or perhaps that's where he was going. 

Perhaps he'll forget after all this trauma!   

Good Kitty!

"So the Lord God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals!  You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.  And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.'"  Genesis 3:14-15

I have a lot of enmity for snakes.  Perhaps not as much as some, but don't get me wrong, I hate them. 

I know some people think there are beneficial snakes. 

These snakes are not beneficial to my health because they still give me a heart attack if I see one not behind glass at the zoo. 

So, if you're a snake lover, STOP right here! 

This is what we found in the driveway this morning.

Crushed head for sure. 

Not by man, though, but by cat! 

Mittens was very proud of his kill.

The hub is even less fond of snakes than I, but sometimes chastises the cats because they are fat and lazy. 

I believe Mittens just earned a year off!

And my 6YO thought he needed an extra special breakfast for doing such a good job with the snake. 

So much for fat and lazy!

Horse Ideas

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." - Oscar Wilde


I like to think that I have good ideas. I like to think that if the world would only follow my instruction, things would go a lot more smoothly.


Ok, maybe I should add “for me” to the end of that sentence.


Anyway, sometimes when I get a good idea, the other party involved isn’t too thrilled about it.


Such was the case on Tuesday night.


It was a bit chilly outside, probably upper 50s or lower 60s, and we were all outside. I had brushed Roany Pony the night before and decided that I should probably get Scooter out of the pasture and give him some TLC too.


Now Scooter has had, for as long as I’ve had him, a sensitivity to flies. I believe his condition to be called sweet itch, or the horse version of eczema, but it usually results in fist-sized patches on his back that eventually lose the hair and look like they are disgustingly dirty. The flies collect along this patch and eventually during the summer it would begin to get kind of a scab on it. I’ve tried creams and salves and fly sprays and everything else I know to do to get him some relief, but every year it returns.


Last year I finally hit upon something that worked great. Whenever I would see him standing by the water tank during the day, I would walk out there and hose him down. It got to where this became a three or four times a week habit. Whenever he would see me out in the yard, he would stand and stare at me until I came to give him a squirt with the hose. Then he would happily walk off and roll in the dirt, giving himself a wonderful mud coating.


Apparently the mud worked better than any fly repellent I’d been using because he didn’t lose any hair on his back last summer and looked the best skin-wise since I’ve had him.


Now cleaning him up to ride was another matter, but who cares?


So on Monday night I notice that he already has a huge hairless, filthy looking patch on his back that was covered with flies. And so, debating the cool weather and the fact that he is an animal built for the outdoors, of course, I decided to go ahead and give him a bath.


I readied my soap, bucket, brushes and hose, and then tied him up to the fence just before I brought the hose over.


The appearance of the hose apparently tipped him off to my idea.


His idea was to get the heck out of there before I had a chance to give him a bath.


And so it was, with all the force a 1200 pound animal can muster, that he set himself at war with the nylon lead rope and steel pole.


He leaned back with all his weight, while I’m on the other side of the fence screaming, “Ho! Ho!” (Some people say “whoa”, but I’ve always pronounced it “ho”.)


And then this happened:

Major equipment failure.


You just haven’t lived until you’ve had a slow-mo moment with a 1200 pound horse, breaking free of his lead rope while all his weight had been focused on his hind quarters. First he kind of sat down hard, like a giant dog, and then fell over on his side with a giant groan. And then…


He popped right back up and pranced around the pen like he’d really done something great! He had his neck arched and tail up and looked like a movie star horse.


I was calling him names that were very un-Hollywood. Well, I guess that depends on what kind of movie you went to see. Let’s just say I probably broke the PG-13 rating audibly and to myself.


Horse – 1, Me – 0.


It is a rule of horse ownership that you can’t leave on a bad note. You see, if you let a 1200 pound animal get the best of you once, guess what they will try the next time? My horse is 20 years old. I’m pretty sure he has a few tricks up his sleeve that I haven’t even seen yet.


And so I had to get another rope, catch him again, prepare to outsmart him, and give him a bath.


This time, I strung the lead rope up through the halter, over the poll of his head and back down through itself before tying him up. This made in essence a “war bonnet” that would put pressure at the back of his head should he try pulling back again. I also tied the rope up to the top rail of the fence on a horizontal plane instead of the perpendicular pole he’d managed to get away from.


My work was not for naught. Heavy with confidence from his first flip over backwards, he tried it again.


He must like falling over on his rear is all I can say!


More R-rated words and thoughts and a lot of screaming “HO!!!” came out of me.


The rope slid on the horizontal cross bar this time, clamped down on itself over his head, and he stopped pulling.


Victory!


Horse – 1, Me – 1.


I’ll settle for a tie any day where I’m not injured!


He finally tolerated a bath. I made him work on the lunge line a little after all his antics, just to make sure he knew I was still the boss. Then I gave him some feed to make sure he’d still love me in the morning. And then he took off across the pasture to go find the neighbor horse and tell him how he almost got the best of me this time.


Tail in the air.


A few bucks and farts to show his wildness.


Rub it in my face, why don’t ya???


You old nag!!


Sometimes I have good ideas.


Sometimes my ideas cost me a lot of work!


And a few lead ropes.

Yes, it melted.  Nice work, Scooter!

Around the World in a Couple of Days

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson


Spring fever has hit in the form of temporary school brain loss for my children and, rather than suffer with three days of state mandated tests last week, we decided to run away.


And guess where we went?


Branson.


I know! We’re going to wear that place OUT.


WorldFest is going on at Silver Dollar City and having the foreign husband and all has always made it a draw for me, but I’d never gotten to go before. They have their festivals at the same time each year and this one is just after Spring Break, but before school lets out for the summer. Perhaps the Missouri summers are too hot for some of their internationals? I don’t know. They are too hot for this girl, for sure. Thank goodness for the water rides.


But, we didn’t have to worry about that this time.


We got there on Thursday and spent, oh, about SIX HOURS, at Silver Dollar City. We watched a Russian circus act (I love how they are denoted on the website with an asterisk pointing to pending visa approval), a musical and dancing and fire limboing group from Trinidad and Tobago…

I still don't know how he did this:

Another musical group from Rajasthan…

They were jamming out to rhythms I couldn’t quite hear. Unlike any music I’d ever heard before.


We walked around through the different vendors from all over the world. Our favorite stuff was from China (definitely not the stuff you find at Wal-Mart), and we had to return the next day to take home dragon marionettes that would surely bring the kids good luck as the lady told them.

I personally liked the puppets she had and secretly wanted to buy one of each. But I didn’t. Maybe next year.

One of them kind of looks like me in the morning. I’ll let you guess which one.


Such a good time was had on Thursday, we returned on Friday for more, more, more. We watched a Russian band:

You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a Russian sing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” Or maybe that was “Vat a Vonderful Verld.” And we’re still singing their rendition of “I scveam, you scveam, we all scveam for ice cream!”

It was awesome! Probably only paralleled by my own Russian singing Willie Nelson songs.


Rain and cold weather on Friday drove us out of Silver Dollar City and into the outlet malls and swimming pool of our hotel, but not before we had German apfel dumplings with cinnamon ice cream, Irish stew in a sourdough bread bowl, and black forest cake. We truly felt we’d really been somewhere!


And there was more that we missed. We missed the Irish. We missed the Canadians. We missed the Ecuadorans.


I have to say, though, that this was my second favorite festival for Silver Dollar City (my first being KidsFest and previous second being Christmas), and that we’ll probably be skipping school every Spring to attend for at least a few days!

Spring Bragging

"Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.'  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'  As it is, you boast and brag.  All such boasting is evil.  Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."  James 4:13-17


Ok, so today I'm just bragging (but I'm forgiven!), but I have to show you all my little garden endeavours and how they are panning out. 

Remember when I thought I was too early?

Well, my timing was impeccable for the first time ever in my whole life.  I am proud to report (brag) that my garden plants are actually bigger than my neighbor's for the first time ever.  And I'm proud to report (brag) that everything I purposely planted, and some things that I didn't, have all come up and are doing quite well despite my less than stellar gardening skills. 

I hope you're enjoying warmer weather where you are, and I hope a unseasonably late frost doesn't kill everything I'm so proud of (and like to brag about). 

My yard in photos...

This is about half of the "garden".  Notice the new and improved board border this year.  It will hopefully keep errant balls, dogs, cats, and boys from trolliping through the plants and then swearing they didn't know they were in my garden.  Cats can be that way, you know.  I like to think it makes it all look more Martha Stewart-ish, but Martha would have a stroke if she saw all my weeds.

The turnips are really outdoing themselves.  I actually thinned them (like you're supposed to) this year, and they appear to have liked it.  I don't personally eat turnips, but the husband likes to eat them like apples. 

Potatoes that I planted all wrong that are defying the odds.

Radishes that will eventually be too hot to eat.  I don't eat these either...  husband again.



Broccoli, which I will eat, but has never made it before the heat got it.  Look at the weeds!  Someone get Martha the smelling salts.  

The peas are cute with their little curly Q handle thingys reaching up.  None of these will make it into the house, as we eat them raw off the vine as quick as they will make. 

Two rows of carrots that we will dig up and feed to Roany Pony.

Volunteer pumpkins from the birthday party last year (pumpkin chunkin') that have sprouted by my lawn chairs.  They can handle the weeds if I don't forget and mow them. 

And the strawberries are blooming and making little tiny strawberries.  Birds usually get these before we do.   

And now for my flowers.  My daffodills and grape hyacinths are D-O-N-E.  I will probably mow them this week.  I had one tulip bloom this year, but it is also a shriveled mess.  But here's what I have this morning...

I don't know what it is, but it came from a wildflower mix.  Last year I had one.  This year I have five. 

Same goes for these guys...

And these...  They are getting kind of shrivelly.

I am most excited about this one.  I planted the bulbs last fall and couldn't really remember what they were until the bloom showed up. 

My weigela is also blooming today.  They are first year bloomers too for us.  I was hoping they were a darker pink, but hopefully the hummingbirds will still find them attractive.

I also like how my hand looks like it is 100 in this picture. 

And finally, my lenten rose, or hellebore.  It has been blooming since just after Snowmaggedon melted sometime around late February.  I've had it a couple of years now and it seems to bloom better every year. 

So maybe you're not having the best of weather today, or live in a colder climate than I.   Perhaps my bragging will bring a glimmer of springtime to your Monday.  I always feel like I'm coming back to life this time of year after being in hibernation all winter long.  I hope your spirits climb right along with my peas and raspberry vines.  And I hope that if you're inclined to brag today, that you too are forgiven! 

"'Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.'"  Acts 13:38

I'm Cultivating Something

“So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” 1 Corinthians 3:8

I bought myself a wonder product on Tuesday and I have to tell you about it.

It is an electric cultivator.

Last year, I tried borrowing my neighbor’s tillers for my tilling needs and his are gas-powered, hard to start and emit noxious fumes that almost killed me. Oh, and they seem to outweigh me. They were terribly heavy and seemed to have a mind of their own.

After purchasing an electric leaf blower in December (read about my debacle here), I decided that electric is my friend over gas-powered anything in the lawn tool department. I’m sure it is greener or something, but for me, the #1 reason I would choose electric over gas any day is…

I can start it!

You push a button.

Even I can do that!

Pulling the cord seventy five times after priming the thing and then flooding it and having to pull the cord another seventy five times makes my arm hurt. It seems like exercise. And we all know how I feel about exercise. At least any exercise involving me. I’m sure it is good for OTHER people.

So I got the electric cultivator on Tuesday, screwed on the handle, hooked up the extension cord, pushed the button and started cultivating. I’m pretty sure I did just as good a job with my new friend as I did with the beasts of burden I borrowed last year. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t go quite as deep, but I’m pretty sure that a garden like mine (where it is survival of the fittest for the most part) won't care.

I tilled the whole thing up in about thirty minutes (my garden area is pretty small). I even ran the thing through a section that didn’t get weeded much (OK, at all) last year and had a gazillion strands of bermuda grass. Yes, it bogged down a little, but it kept going and all the bermuda strands eventually looked like a giant rolling hairball stuck on the tines. I began to rethink my weeding strategy when I realized that I had to clean all that out, but guess what? I just pulled out a pin, took the tines off, separated them and stuck them back on, clean as a whistle.

Ok, a whistle that had been rolled through the dirt, but was at least grass free. E-A-S-Y!!

In other words, I LOVE my new electric cultivator, especially after having experienced the “other side” last year. I’m thinking it will be good for my flowerbeds too and I have high hopes of making the children a small corn maze with it in the front yard once the weather warms up a little more.

I have dreams of broccoli and peas and tomatoes and cucumbers, and maybe, just maybe, my little cultivator will help them put their roots down a little better than they would have otherwise.

I know my arms are already happy!

Here’s wishing you spring thoughts and garden dreams today!

“But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.” Matthew 13:23