PARK STYLE GRILLS FOR THE FARM

So here is the purchase we made last weekend for the farm.  We have always wanted one of these grills.  They are the kind that are used at National Parks and Campgrounds across the United States.  In fact, when we've shown friends and coworkers, they say "we used those when we went camping!"  We really like cooking over wood and/or the hardwood natural briquettes, and these are the kind that should hold up for years and years.

We had to do some research as there are plenty out there that "look" like the originals but there is only one original.  The others are made with a thinner metal and probably don't have the longevity as the ones made for parks.  These are made by Pilot Rock, who has the contract to provide them for parks around the country.  We ended up buying them from Northern Tool because they have free shipping when it's "site to store".  When an item weighs a lot, it can save money in shipping fees if you live near one of the stores.

They do sell them through Amazon, click HERE to see the variety.  Just remember that the Amazon link does offer them from several resellers.

We didn't get just one... 

We got two!

Heavy Duty Park Style Grill

We think this is where we are going to put them.  Since they have to be put into the ground with post holes and then set in concrete, we should probably make sure where they are going to go before we make them permanent.

Locating grills at the farm

This is the area off the front porch (this photo was actually taken from the stairs of the porch).  It's fairly close to the house so we don't have to walk two acres with food and it's just around the tree from the future outdoor dining area that will be under Barnabas the old mesquite tree.  We think it's the best spot for them, give or take a few feet.

Eventually, once I get some holes dug, we'll get them in place and start doing some grilling!  Hopefully later this Summer.

TEXAS BARK SCORPION

SO...I lift a watering pitcher in the garden and...

Texas bark scorpion

...this creature was hiding underneath.

To say my heart skipped a beat or two would be an understatement.  I'm sorry to say, it is no longer among the living.

I googled it...striped bark scorpion.  This one is a Texas variety but all bark scorpions are similar and found all over the Southwestern United States.

Other than this, and a minor back strain unconnected to this event (that is much better today), it was a good weekend.  Hope you had a great weekend doing what makes you happy!

VINTAGE POSTER SUNDAY, MAKE DO AND MEND

Vintage poster image, "Make Do and Mend", courtesy of NYlibrary.org

This poster image if definitely a fun one.  During the war, the recurring theme was conservation and another way to do that was to ask people to repair their clothing instead of buying new, using up resources.

So this poster urged them to go through their wardrobe to "make-do and mend".  Not sure how many would do this today.  We seem to be such a society of just throw it away when it gets old and buy new.

Hope you are having a great weekend.  We are enjoying beautiful weather with cool and crisp mornings (unusual for us this time of year).

BEE QUOTE WITH PICTURE

Isaac Watts bee quote

I took this picture today when I was at the farm and thought I'd turn it into something pretty.

Enjoy!

RAINY DAYS ARE GOOD DAYS TO STAY INSIDE

Raining outside

This was the scene out one of the front windows at the farm recently when it was raining, as you can maybe tell in this photo.  So we stayed inside, on the couch and just watched it rain.  I think we might have even dozed off for a bit.

Sometimes we need a day (or two or three) like that huh?

This weekend however, it is going to be beautiful, so it will be some zen machine time, checking on and tending to the garden and adding some new friends to the raised beds.  More on that this weekend.

Hope your weekend is off to an early start!

FELINE FRIDAY

Brisbane the cat, sleeping on his back

Having had three cats for so long, and a couple outside kitties, and being around them most of my life, I realize they all sleep so differently.  This is Brisbane and he sleeps like this most of the time.  Just like a big dog, laying flat on his back, exposing himself to the world (not the most graceful of poses, ha).

We've read that it's actually a great sign of trust, because cats instinctively protect their stomachs "from predators".  Of course the only predator he will encounter here is us, giving belly kisses!

Hope you are having a good day, Friday is here!

More this afternoon/evening!

A WOW GARDEN, INSPIRATION THURSDAY

Kitchen garden, image via pinterest courtesy of http://www.ellenogden.com/book/

Isn't this a "wow" garden?  This image was found and sent to us by a friend of the farm (thank you C!).  She found it and thought of our Inspiration Thursday feature.  I did some checking and this image comes from a Kitchen Garden book  by Ellen Ogden.  Might be a book to add to our collection.

Anyway, this picture just amazes me at the work someone puts into something like this.  I love the arbor too.  I'm sure this is a lot of work to keep it looking so good but wow, I think if we had something like this, I'd just stand there and stare at it.  Of course, then I'd have to get busy keeping it clean and orderly, ha. 

Be inspired!

A LIZARD COMES TO VISIT

Houston green lizard....called Anole

Not sure how many other areas of the country/world have these little guys.  Houston is blessed with them all over the place.  They are called "anoles" or sometimes "green anoles".  They change from green to tan to dark brown.  I saw this one peeking out from behind a glass jar on the porch and snapped his picture.  I say we are blessed because they don't bite of course, they aren't big, and best of all, they eat all sorts of bugs.

Green Anole Lizard

Here, he was looking right at me as I got close with the camera.  Too funny.  He was curiously cautious, and then ran off shortly after the photo was taken.  Gardeners around these parts are quite used to sharing their space with them, what about you?  Would it freak you out?  

HOLE PROBLEM

Here is the dilemma:

Most of the ground at the farm is hard, clay soil.  I'm not sure how many of you have soil like this but when I tell you it's like digging into concrete, that's no exaggeration.  After a rain, it's a bit easier, but you have to get in quickly and dig.  Even then, it's still not as easy as it might be in other soils when just using the standard line of garden tools.

Remember last weekend I was going to dig some holes for the trees along the driveway?  I used a regular shovel.  Fail.  I borrowed 2nd Family's post hole digger.  Fail.  Then I tried a special shovel, I think it was called a trenching shovel.  Semi-fail.  I did manage to get a hole dug, but it took about an hour and the hole wasn't nearly as deep and wide as it needed to be.  Not to mention I was afraid I'd crack the handles on their tools!

Not me

2nd Family told me that "Ma" (the previous owner of our house) used to use a pick axe (!) to dig holes in the yard.  If it was just a few holes, I might be OK with figuring out something more manual.  But if we're going to have color at the farm, not to mention future fruit trees, nut trees, decorative trees and bushes, we need to be able to get holes dug easily so that those trees and bushes can go into the ground and start growing.  

So, we are thinking of buying one of these:

Not this one specifically, but something like this.  It's called an Earth Auger.  We can rent them of course, but with as many holes as we'll need, and at different times of the year we might be needing them, it seems like it makes more financial sense to just purchase one now so that we can use it on the farm for, hopefully, years to come.

Anyone have experience with these?  I have no problem with going out a couple of days after every rainy day and digging some holes.

WEEKEND UPDATE

It was kind of a quiet weekend...

Picked up a couple of things for the farm, went out and checked on things after Friday's rain, all looked good and it was a pretty nice rainfall so that's great.  It will keep everything green for another couple of weeks.

So all we did was just kind of hang out and relax.  Both of us have allergies hitting us hard (or possibly a Summer cold, ugh) and so sometimes we just need those weekends off, right?  Of course a weekend off still means we're thinking and planning.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend, see ya tomorrow!

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY

2nd Man and I have both lost our Mothers, too soon.

So every year, we think of them on this day and wished that we had just one more day with them.  But we know they are watching over us and making sure that we get the farm done just right!

So HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to them and of course to all of you out there who are mothers.  We hope that your children shower you with the love (and gifts) that you all deserve.

More later this afternoon!  

TEXAS WILDFLOWER PHOTOS

Texas Wildflowers 

Here are some photos (click them to enlarge) I took recently of the sides of the road leading to the farm.  For those in other parts of the country/world, Texas is known for its wildflowers.  In April and May, they just spring up everywhere in the state, in ditches, esplanades, sides of the road, fence lines, and if you're lucky, they can even appear in your yard.

Of course these pop up without any intervention and bloom with just our sporadic rainfall.  I'm sure if I scattered seeds around "on purpose" and watered them regularly, they would never bloom, ha.  

I've taken a lot of photos of them I'll post in the coming days and weeks.  Anyway, enjoy the pics, we're off to run some errands today for the farm, picking up some things we need, including a couple of neat additions for the property.

More on that later plus I will catch up on replying to comments from the last week.  Please know that we read them all, we just can't always reply right away!  Keep them coming!

Hope your weekend is off to a good start!

Texas Wildflowers

LET IT RAIN LET IT RAIN

The pin is the farm.

Storm intensity goes from light, the green and yellow, to heavy, orange and red, to apocalyptic end times dark red, LOL.

This is the farm just before the rain hit.  I don't think we'll have to worry about watering the garden and fruit trees THIS weekend.  Weather report is saying about 2-3 inches of rain.  I will have to check in with 2nd Family and see what the final total is.

Storm clouds at the farm

FELINE FRIDAY

Hobart the cat, on top of bookcase

This is Hobart...king of the hill.  Or would this be, king of the top of the bookcase?  LOL!  He is typical of a lot of cats, he loves to be up on something. But when I say he loves it, he REALLY loves it.  Lay a book on the floor, he'll go out of his way to sit on it.  Put a box open side down and he's up on the box. Bookcase.  Check.  Table.  Check.  Chair.  Check.  We even have these little tables that elevate their food bowls a few inches off the floor and he will spend an hour just sitting on one of them, just looking around.  

We think he must be part monkey.

More later today, Happy Friday!
  

THE LOSS OF A BELOVED BLOGGER

It is with heavy heart that I must post about the passing of Granny, better known to us as Annie's Granny from Annie's Kitchen Garden.  Sadly, she lost her short but valiant battle with cancer last night.  Her daughter Amy has posted a tribute to her at Granny's blog.  What a great life and sweet woman.

Our personal experience with Granny started when she somehow found our little blog corner of the world.  She wrote a sweet post about us and it drove a lot of new visitors to us and linked us up with some great new friends, many of whom still visit us regularly.  She actually went back to the very beginning of this blog and read through every post.  She must have been bored silly with some of those early posts, I told her at the time that she was a brave woman, ha.

She had so much garden wisdom and experience to share and it's sad that a lot of that is now lost to the gardening world.  I say a lot, but not all, because of her blog...she posted so much advice and tips and tricks (her SEED MAT TUTORIAL is awesome!), I truly hope her blog stays up for everyone to enjoy and learn from for years to come. 

She named her blog Annie's Kitchen Garden (more recently changed to Annie's Family Garden), in honor of one of her adorable puppies, Annie.  To give equal time, Otto is the other puppy (and equally adorable, ha).

How cute is this face?

Carol is survived by a large and caring family, her wonderful husband Jack, her children, her 8 grandchildren, and 5 great grandchildren plus one more great grandchild on the way.  Now THAT'S how you plant the seeds for the future!

Many of us have been "Gardening for Granny" (click link for details).  2nd Man and I will continue to garden in memory of her.  And I better do a good job of it, because she'll be watching now!

I asked her daughter about donations and she said that the one her Mother always donated to was http://www.humanesociety.org 

In one of her final posts, she mentioned that lilacs were among her favorite flowers and she said she must get some for her desk...

 ...not sure if she ever got them, so these are for her.

Goodbye sweet Granny, we luv ya.

You WILL be terribly missed.

Instead of replying to comments, I will just let them all stand as a tribute to this sweet lady that touched all of our lives. 

FRONT YARD AND DRIVEWAY NEED COLOR

Farm front yard

I just thought I'd share a couple of pictures of parts of our yard.  This is the front yard as seen from the driveway looking toward the future barn site.  The house is to the right, 2nd Family's back pasture is the fence to the left.

Below is where I was standing to take the above picture, and I just turned to the left to take a picture down the driveway.  To the left in this photo is more of our property and the fence line along the driveway is the side of 2nd Family's back pasture.

Farm driveway

When I'm finished mowing on the zen machine, we love just walking around and looking at it after it's all neat and cut.  It makes us feel like we're in a park, ha.

You can see however why we want color.  We have green, lots of green.  Now we want reds and yellows and other flower colors.  The next outdoor project, once the garden is up and running, is to start planting flowering bushes around the property.  So many of my Inspiration Thursday posts deal with flowering color and this is why.

Sometimes it's just so overwhelming because it's big and we look and think "we're do we plant something first?"  One lonely bush in the middle of the yard? Ha.  I'm thinking the fence line in both places is the best place to start.

COLOR!  Image from Sunsetliving.com

THRIFT STORE FINDS

Here are two random, but fun, thrift store finds.

Metal "Fresh Eggs" sign

Found this fun metal sign for $2.00.  Hey, we don't have fresh eggs yet, but it seemed like something fun to put up.  It's certainly not old, it's one of those reproduction signs, but still a neat conversation piece to put above the sink.

Metal desk bell

OK, this might seem weird, and I have no idea what we'll do with it, but I always thought it would be neat to have one of these.  It's a metal bell, the kind you might find on an old hotel reservation desk.  This one has a red metal base which fits the kitchen perfectly so I took it as a sign, LOL.

For $2.75, I couldn't pass it up.

FRUIT AND VEGGIE UPDATE

The garden is doing well!  At first we were watering too much.  I noticed a lot of standing water outside the garden area and the mulch (on the ground) was wet as well.  Last week, we changed it to MWF for about 15 minutes (the weather was nice and cool).  I noticed that they were still doing well but with the heat coming back, the soil seemed to dry out quicker so I decided to change it  to MWF for 30 mins in the morning.

The poblano pepper has a pepper on it!  Yay!  Hopefully there will be more, as there are a couple more flowers and buds on it and of course it's still pretty small.

This is the TAM jalapeño, it also has a little pepper on it and a bunch of flowers and buds just waiting to become peppers.  So far so good on this one as well.

This is a tomatillo.  It's probably doing the best of everything so far, covered in flowers.  Here is one that is already becoming the fruit that will be covered by the papery husk as it grows.  It's fascinating watching them develop.

This tomato plant (as are most of the other tomatoes) is covered in flowers and looks healthy so that's a good sign.

Here is the only problem I noticed.  This is the "Black Krim" tomato.  The leaves are curled and kind of crispy.  Is this lack of water?  Too much heat?  I've never grown this variety before so I'm not sure if our climate is just not good for it or what.  Any suggestions?

Here is the zucchini that was planted last week.  It's got blossoms all over it and has almost doubled in size.  The yellow squash is also blossoming out.  They both seem happy.

And these two photos excited us.  Above is the pear tree, it's COVERED in little pears!  Last year I plucked them all off so the tree could focus on root growth.  This year we have quite a few.

Below, what is this?  Why it's an actual PEACH!  There were several flowers and buds but this one is growing fast.  I'm guessing that unfortunately it will end up getting eaten by an animal before we get to it, but I'll let it do its thing.

HAPPY STAR WARS DAY

Yeah, we're children of the Star Wars generation.  We both grew up with the original trilogy of movies and they remain fond memories.  A few years ago, people started celebrating the movies and their legacy in pop culture by unofficially calling today "Star Wars Day".  The play on words of the catch phrase from the movie, "May the Force Be With You" is definitely fun.

Since today is when we usually post an image of a vintage poster, I think we'll go with one of these fan produced Star Wars "propaganda" style posters.

Hope you are having a great weekend!
I'll update the weekend later and reply to comments...

CANDLE SCONCES FOR THE WALL

Here is something really cool we discovered recently on Etsy.  They are called Freestyle Candle Sconces, by FreeStyle Works shop.

You know our love of all things candle related, and especially wall sconces.  Well this a modern take on the traditional wall mounted candles.  AND it has the bonus aspect of ''easy on/easy off' with no marks on the wall.  This means you are free to put them anywhere, anytime, making changing your decor on a whim by putting the candles somewhere else is simple.  

Wall sconces for candles

They go up easily, using the 3M Command Strips (genius).  This makes them tool free and more importantly, hole in the wall free, which is good for those renting or living somewhere temporarily.  The Command Strips come pre-attached to the backs of the holders so all you have to do is peel and stick.

We really liked the simplicity of them.  Made of a curve of wood in oak, pine, and walnut, each glass candle holder is held in place by a copper metal ring.  They are also lightweight with no worry of them coming off the wall.  

We've had ours up for a couple of weeks and even with the temperature fluctuations in the house during the day and night, there is no change in them, they aren't loose, they are as sturdy as when we put them up.  Best of all, they look so pretty with the warm glow of candles.  

Wooden Candle Sconces for the wall

As soon as we get some more wall art up, we will buy a few more of these and scatter them around the walls.

Check out their shop, CLICK HERE.

MONSTER PLANT

Thorny weed

I thought this was a crazy set of pictures.

It's a weed of some sort, covered in thorns.  From a distance, it is oddly beautiful...but up close, OMG, it's insanely scary!

All purple and pink and blue and covered in white, tooth like thorns ready to snap if you stuck your hand in there.  I swear, up close it looks like some sort of alien creature from a bad Sci-Fi/horror movie!  

Crazy monster plant

Today it's off to the farm.  On today's list is to check the garden of course, first thing.  I'm hoping the scaled back watering is working (I set it to every other day, at least while it's not the blazing heat of Summer, YET anyway).  Then I need to dig holes.  Holes for more trees.  Holes for some bushes.  The plan is to dig the holes (the hard part) in the cool of the morning and while the ground is still damp and then on Sunday, take a load of plants and bushes out there and get them in the ground.  Then I'll spend the afternoon on the zen machine doing the mowing that I haven't done in two weeks.

More this afternoon, including a really neat new item we found.

FELINE FRIDAY

This is GiGi.  One of our feral babies that was part of a litter that was born under the house in town.  She's been with us for over 11 years now.  

She's a beauty (we love her markings and her little orange nose).  For those wondering about her name, since we have the "Australia theme" going on for our inside boys, we didn't know what to call her.  For a year or two, she was "Good Girl".  We would pet her and play with her and say "you are such a Good Girl".  Then one day we went, "Good Girl?  GG?  GiGi"!

Friday is here, almost time for the weekend!

FLOWER BORDERS, INSPIRATION THURSDAY

We're not sure what types of flowers these are, but we love the look.  It's kind of free form, doesn't seem so deliberate, and just seems casual.  I can only imagine how pretty this would be to see in person.

We're toying with the idea of taking down a couple of junk trees in the front yard.  I think it would be lovely to replace them with some random looking flower garden areas like this.  I say "random" but of course they are "on purpose" but no one needs to know that, right?  

The weekend is almost here!

Oh and HAPPY MAY DAY!

Be inspired!