Random Thoughts

A little bit grumpy here towards my computer. I had a brainstorm last night about future blog posts and filled several notebook pages with ideas and notes. My computer isn't opening up my picture program and I cannot download any photos off my camera card. argh! We had a short power blackout during dinner last night, so I suppose that has something to do with not being able to open my picture program. A storm rolled through during the night and the day is overcast and cool. The windows are open and the breeze filters through, bringing with it that heavenly scent of wet earth. Much better than yesterday, when it was hot and some nearby farmer picked that day to work the manure pile and the wind would pick up and carry over the not-so-lovely scent of cow poop through the living room windows.

"Ew! Cow poop!" Oldest would exclaim.

When Youngest was asked what cows say, she'd reply, "moo!" When asked what cows do, she'd say, "poo poo!"

I got my kitchen garden planted and I am happy with the results. 10 various tomato plants, a row of snow peas, green onions and radishes. I'll be adding 4 sweet pepper plants today and that's it. The larger garden will get the corn, squashes, melons and a few others. The herbs are in pots near the kitchen garden. I am looking forward to harvesting already! I hope that when the baby comes, I can get him to take naps in large chunks of time so I can do canning and freezing without interruptions.

We put up the first batch of strawberry wine into wine bottles yesterday. Just under 2 gallons total and it already has a heavy scent of alcohol. The new batch is in a plastic bucket this time and so far so good. 10 more days and then we can bottle that batch. It will be hard to wait a year, but I'll just tell myself that we can finally taste it on our 11th wedding anniversary and it will be that much sweeter!

Previous owners planted wisteria along the garden fence. For those of you not aware of wisteria, don't ever plant near the garden unless you are willing to devote a lot of time to control and train the vine. Lovely purple flowers but the vines are blood-sucking monsters! We didn't know about wisteria and it was already left to it's own devices by the time we bought the house. It's vines choked up the tines in our tiller and we had to stop several times to cut out the vine. We tilled about 15-20 feet away from the fence, and the vines were reaching far beyond that. We ended up walking and pulling up every vine we could find, just below the surface, recognizable by it's leaves popping up through the grass here and there.

Last week, we made the decision to chop the wisteria down and hopefully ending it's reign over the garden fence. It grows so thickly and quickly that we cannot see through the fence to the garden area. I've already spotted deer prints in the fresh tilled soil and the wisteria helps to hide the deer well. Hubby chopped and the girls and I carried the remains to the fire pit. I must have touched some poison ivy, because now I have a very itchy rash on my arm. It's been a week now and no amount of "itchy cream" or "pink stuff" helps. I even have natural goat's milk poison ivy soap that usually helps relieve the itch, but not this time. Let me repeat myself: Do not plant wisteria unless you are willing to devote much time and effort to training and staying on top of the vines.

I currently have a pink explosion on my living room floor. The girls have been keeping the play room clean and their reward was to break out the BIG BOX of BARBIES with the promise that they pick them up afterwards. So far, they have been doing that, so the dolls and their many, many, many accessories stay out. When I start stepping on Barbie shoes and brushes, they'll be banished into the box again.

The natives are getting restless and hungry. I better feed them before they turn on me!