Monthly Archives: May 2008

Berries galore!

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I was happily surprised that our little berry patch is doing well this year. After the chickens scratching all around and kicking up so many roots, I didn’t think it would survive. But last week, I saw some red coming from the weed surrounded strawberries and found ~1 1/2 quarts of ripe, red strawberries! I’ve since picked another quart or so.

I wanted to get lots more strawberries so we could freeze a bunch. So, Kaia and I went out for Flying Cloud Farm for a little berry picking yesterday, and got ~2 gallons! MMMMmmmmm!! Their berry patch is huge! The strawberries plants are all so big and healthy, and everything is organic!! (I need to give my berry patch a little time and attention so I can try to get them to grow as big as the ones at the farm!) the patch is surrounded by flowers that you can pick a bouquet of for just a couple of bucks! So, Kaia and I had a really nice afternoon!

Last night we has a pasta dish with a salad topped with strawberries and a strawberry vinaigrette for dinner, and for dessert – strawberries dipped in home made whipped cream.

How’s this for a yummy treat??

Now that we are living in the house, and the projects have slowed down (a little), I feel like Toby and I are taking on roles parents that we haven’t been able to yet. We are playing family games at night, taking outings without having to hurry back home to get some building time in, we are sitting down to healthy, home made meals. It’s been very, very nice!! Though there is still the stress of completing the home projects and paying off the bills, it has lessened.

Howdy

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Sorry for the long break in blogging. I’m enjoying getting settled into the house and not wanting to spend much time in front of the computer. Things are getting unpacked… mostly just books and pictures still to be put away. We’ve moved all the boxes and furniture out of Toby’s tool shed, so now he has a place for carpentry. Mice and squirrels had gotten into everything and there was poop and seeds everywhere! I think I did 20-25 loads of laundry. Seriously! I had to wash every piece of Kaia’s infant clothing and diapers! All the toys, furniture and books has to be washed/wiped down. Ugh!

We’ve almost got everything out of the little house. Toby has started using the upstairs for his office, and I’m setting up the downstairs for my office/clinic. So at the same time as moving into our new house, I’ve been boxing up and moving everything from Viriditas! The new tenants are supposed to be moving in on Sunday, so that is just about complete!

Inside the new house, things are looking mostly settled. There are still little projects here and there that need to be finished… shelving in the linen closet, back splash in the kitchen and bath… stuff like that. And the yard still looks like a war zone with construction crap everywhere! We had planned to have a house warming party on June 21st, but have decided not to. I want the house done and the yard cleaned before having everyone over! I think Fall time seems more reasonable.

The roof has been planted. We had some friends over a couple of weeks ago and we got most of it done in one afternoon! It looks nice so far, but the little plugs are hard to see in pictures. I will take more pictures when they start to grow and post them. I can’t wait until they have filled out and covered the roof. It is going to look so cool!!!

I’m really enjoying my space! I go back into the little cabin and think, “WOW, How did we ever live here for two years!!???!!” 🙂

Planting the roof

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Our plugs were delivered this past Thursday and I’ve started planting.
First, I took some stepping stones and made a path to where we will have two hanging chairs and a little patio area. In between the stones and in other areas of the roof, I’ve put in some accent plants. They may or may not do so well on the roof. I added more compost to hold the water, and put some “hollytone” to bring down the pH (which is ~8). I’ve put in Calendula, Yarrow, Roman chamomile, thyme, Sage, Rosemary, lavender, Dianthus, chive and nodding onion, lambs ear, and a few other things.

The plant plugs look fantastic! Very healthy! The man who delivered them said they should do very well on our roof, and will love the 4 inches of soil. He thinks they will really take off in just a month or so. We will water them every 1 1/2 weeks for the first year, if we have no rain, and put a 10-10-10 fertilizer on them to give them some food to start with. I’m planting them 9 inches apart to allow for spread, and I’m grouping them in clusters, so there will be big splashes of color everywhere (as opposed to totally random plantings). It’s going to be so beautiful!

They are so tiny… can you see them???

Swarm season

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This year, for some reason, there seems to be a whole lot of swarming going on. Maybe it’s the bees way of trying to make a come back with all the hives that have been lost in the past few years. We started this year with 2 hives, and so far we have had 3 swarms! Toby caught the first one, but we missed the second one. We were actually outside talking about how it would be a perfect day for swarming when we saw them fly overhead, already having found their new home deep in the woods. Well Tuesday I caught my first swarm! All by myself! ME!! Who is just a little afraid of being stung because I tend to swell up like a tick, itch all over, get a little bit of a speeding heart rate thing going on. I was outside planting a few things on the roof when the air got louder. I looked over towards the hives and saw a swarm coming out and making a cloud over by the edge of the woods. They landed on a very low branch of a dead cypress tree.

I called Toby and he suggested we just let them do their thing. He knows how I feel about handling the bees, and he wasn’t able to come home from work. But I didn’t want to lose them, so I went out and put some Lemongrass Essential Oil on the top bar hive to try to attract them. Then I went over to the swarm and had a talk with them to let them know where the new hive is. They didn’t seem to understand. So, I started moving around, wiggling my butt, and doing a little bee dance for them. But that just seemed to make them agitated. (Maybe I told them to ‘get stuffed’ or something??) So I went back to my roof and had some lunch while contemplating what to do. I decided that I could do it and I wouldn’t get stung. So, I put on my thickest jeans, two long sleeved shirts, wool socks and hiking boots, padded winter gloves, and a bee hat and headed for the swarm. I brushed them into a bucket and dumped them in the top bar hive. It took two trips to get most of the swarm and when I went back for the third time they were all so angry that I couldn’t catch any of them. No Stings! But when i went to close up the hive, they weren’t really staying inside…

By that evening, they were all clustered outside on the front. Not a single bee inside. My happy high from catching the swarm started to plummet. I must have left the queen on the tree by mistake. Now I felt like a total heel! I’d doomed the bees!

I’d hoped they would go inside the hive, or at least fly off to find their queen. but they stayed that way for two days. So I called our friend Carl, a local experienced beekeeper. He said that he felt like they wouldn’t remain clustered like that if their queen wasn’t with them and that for some reason, they must not like the top bar hive. He suggested that we spray them down (to make them heavy so they wouldn’t fly off), and put them back in the hive with some sugar water (for food since they hadn’t eaten in 2 days) and open brood (to keep the bees in the hive to nurse the babies) and close them in for a few days, in hopes that they would make a home. So we did just that. We used sugar water to spray them off, so they would have some food to clean off them selves, and put a bag of sugar water on the bottom of the hive (with a little slit in it for them to collect the food). Toby tried to get some open brood from another hive but it had been raining and they were not happy to have their hive opened. Once the bees were in the hive, we taped the opening shut so they couldn’t just climb back out. Since it had been raining, the tape came off by the next morning, but it seems like they might stay. The true test will be to see if there are eggs in the comb in a few weeks.

Do you like my hat?

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Kaia and I spent Mother’s Day at the LEAF festival and had a wonderful time. It was relaxing and energizing at the same time. Kaia had brought $25 from her piggy bank so that she could get some fun stuff. We walked all around the fair and she passed up hand-painted butterfly wings and hoop skirts so that she could get this unicorn pill box hat! She’s worn it around ever since. She even wore it to school yesterday! Isn’t it fantastic!?!

Roof Soil

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We had the soil blown onto the roof today! They brought it in a mulch blowing truck and it took them ~3 hours total, not including all their travel time. Toby calculated that it would have been ~1012 5-gallon buckets for us to haul it all onto the roof by ourselves. I’m so glad we hired the blower instead!!!
Here they are, just getting started on the top roof. You can also see the finished painting. The color didn’t turn out all that bad.

Here they are almost done…

The soil didn’t always flow easily through the hose. Sometimes you would hear a change in the tone of the pump and you would know that a huge amount of soil was about to push through. The guys would brace themselves and hold tight to the hose while they waited for the soil monster to burst out. It was really cool.
Here’s a close up of the soil. As you can see, it is mostly chunks of slate with a little compost matter mixed in.

Our plants are being delivered next Thursday, so we hope to plant the roof next weekend! I can’t wait to see how it all looks!!

Crazy cats!

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The cats are having a grand ol’ time together and have really adjusted well in the last 10 days. Daisy is still a bit skittish, but calming down each day.
Here’s a nice picture where you can really see Isabella’s wavy coat. It’s extremely soft! You can also see her white ‘racing stripes’ on her legs. The white stripe goes down each leg and meets in the back, and leads to her white underside. She really has a cool pattern on her.

We got a new rug today and every one has really enjoyed it! Kaia used it as a dancing spot for a while. Then the girls (kitties) decided to fight it out to see who could be proclaimed “queen of the rug”.

Max decided to join the ruckus.

But quickly moved off to allow the girls to finish their Battle for the Rug!

Isabella has also decided that she likes to view her kingdom from above (way above!). That way she can be sure that all of her slaves are properly performing their duties.

And I don’t know if I have mentioned it, but within every 257th litter of kittens born in the world, one is born who possesses the magic of Merlin’s cat (remember how he had that cat who was really special to him, so he gave him the ability to do magic? Sure you do!) Supposedly, since cats can’t hold magic wands, they do their magic with a twitch of their ear. We’ll this magical gene is so rare, I never thought I’d have a magical cat of my own. But, today, Isabella showed her true colors. The sparkle of Merlin’s magic appeared over her ear as she wished up more wet food in her bowl! Guess I’d better keep a sharp eye on that kitty!

All is well

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Sorry for the slack in posting. All is well here.. just busy. We are settling into the house and really enjoying the space and amenities! Kaia and I are especially having fun cooking together (something that was really hard to do in the little cabin). We ate so poorly the past two years. I had no desire to cook and PB&J was often a main meal. So now, I’m trying to get back on track with healthy, whole foods and lots of local fresh fruits and veggies. I’ve singed up for a weekly recipe mailer through Cooking Traditional Foods. Every week she sends 6 recipes and a dessert, shopping list for those recipes, and when to prepare stuff in advanced. Her site also has recipe and discussion forums, and the recipes are loosely based on Weston Price’s ideas. It’s been really helpful in getting back on track with cooking. I figure I’ll do this for a while until I get into a good rhythm. My only objection is that 5 of the 6 recipes include meat. That’s a lot of meat for me (and gets expensive), so we may use bean and other substitutes.

The animals are doing pretty well. Ralph has decided she has had enough of being a mom and got off the nest. So, no chicks from those eggs. (We can’t invest in an incubator right now.) The cats are all adjusting really well. They have already started snuggling up together, which is really cute. Suki went to the groomers last week and when I picked her up they said a lot of her hair was falling out and she had redness and bruising on her skin. She looked almost bald in patches. I took her to the vet the next day and the blood work showed that her clotting time was a little slow. They think that she either had a really bad allergic reaction to something or that she may have gotten into some rat poison. So, she is on some Vitamin K to get her to stop bruising and increase her clotting time (this is the antidote for Rat poison, too). Her skin is looking mostly better already.

Business is going well for me. I’ve got as many clients as I can handle right now, which is nice. I’m excited to have my office space set up in the cabin. It will be so nice to be able to hear the frogs and the birds during my consultations and not the 18 wheelers rolling by. I’ve had to cancel a few appointments this past week, cause my forearms and hands are covered in poison ivy. Because of the pattern on my arms, I think I might have gotten it off of Suki. I don’t think I’ve ever had it this bad (I usually only get a blister or two). Both arms look all bumpy and scaly. I’ve been using high dose licorice powder (as a paste on my arms, and as a tea) to decrease the swelling. It works well.

I’m giving an herb walk this weekend at the LEAF festival. I got a free ticket the the festival in exchange for the class. So, Kaia and I are going to spend the weekend playing, dancing, swimming, hooping, and having fun!!!

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Some of our kitty friends,Lilly, Mu Shue, and Iris, lost their home in a fire. So, Camie’s Kitties is having a fund raiser for them. They are donating $0.50 for every blog that posts their favorite knock-knock joke with a picture. So here is mine. Kaia and I made it up on a long road trip. It especially funny to crazy 4 year olds!!!

–Knock Knock!
-Who’s there?
–Peace Up!
-Peace Up Who?
–AHHH HAAAAA! You said Piece of Poo!!!! HAHAHA Haaaaa HAaaaaa!