My Zen Machine & July 4th Weekend

I've been busy with very little time to post. I'm off work today as tomorrow is my Birthday & I always treat myself to a day off at this time of the year.

Here's my Zen Machine. It's a 60" rear discharge mower. It's still new & a bit squirrelly but I think straight line are overrated anyway. And like 1st Man over at Two Men and a Little Farm I actually enjoy mowing & find it very calming. Greg was on his 72" machine & we got the whole place mowed in about 3 1/2 hours.

We had a long weekend in the Country over the July 4th weekend. The first day was spent getting the 9 acres mowed & trimmed & watering the new trees (I need to take pics for comparison, in case these actually live). The crepe myrtles are doing great. They were almost all flowering & should be in top form this weekend, but we won't be there. Hopefully they will hang on another week & I'll take a pic then. I did snap a pic of the wild gladiolas along the driveway. There are a bunch of them but only 1 or 2 flower at the same time. I'm going to put some fertilizer on them & hope we are there when more are in bloom next year.

The rest of the weekend was spent fishing, in the boat! IF we ever find time to fish it's usually just a few casts from the dock or the bank but we actually put the boat in the water on Thursday night & fished Friday afternoon & much of the day on Saturday.

The pond is filled with bass, bream & catfish. We mostly fish for bass because they are so much fun to catch. We like bass to eat as well. But it was all catch & release that weekend. Late afternoon fishing was the best, after supper it would cool down with a very light breeze & we would fish until almost dark. In laws were up as well & FIL got his fair share of fishing from the dock. All in all, it was a very relaxing weekend which was much needed by all.

I have some very exciting news to share in the next few weeks ......

30 More in the Ground (Plus Gladiolas!)

Last weekend wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. We arrived at the Country House Wednesday evening, July 3rd. With no plans for picnics or barbeque's the next day, we sat on the back porch a while before retiring a bit late, for us at least (it was around 10:30p).

We got up early the next day & headed to Lowe's to pick up posts, lumber & screws for fencing on either side of the gate. Once back we set about setting the posts on either side. Once we were at the gate to start work, we weren't sure if we could get both posts in because one side was exceptionally wet. We measured & set the first one. Since we were only going six foot out we decided that we could, in fact set the other one.

Once that was done we set out to plant the 30 smaller Crepe Myrtle trees we had brought with us. These are from the same Mother trees that FIL had grafted his from. We had dug the holes two weeks prior & some had caved in a bit & needed to be dug out. Easy compared to digging from scratch. We got them planted in about an hour & making the wells around each since we were on the ground anyway. Next, I got leaves & compost & commenced to put in the wells around each tree. Greg unwound water hose to lay along side. He secured the hose with some stake wires & drilled a tiny hole in the hose at each plant. We hooked it up to a timer to run 15 minutes 3 times a week. We should be able to remove the hose & reuse in the garden area by this fall.

Looking out from the carport.

Looking back down old driveway.

From old gate.

They are about 1/2 the size of the In-laws trees but they were free & things are now starting to look like a homestead with defined spaces. I want to plant some fruit trees in that large field this fall. Thinking about peaches, plums, pears & maybe an apple, if I can find one that grows in the area. Oh, and a table grape vine as well.

The weather was quite nice for July 4th. Not too hot with a steady breeze. After lunch Greg decided to go ahead & mow since rain was predicted for later afternoon. I decided to clean house a bit. It gets very dusty with farmers in the area plowing & cars & tractors riding the dirt road that runs along side the property. I shook rugs, washed rugs, swept, vacuumed & dusted, glad to have that chore behind me.

We got up the next morning & worked on the fencing, trying to decide what to do as we worked. We finished what we set out to do, that weekend, but realized we put the boards too close together. We'll space them out when we put in the next section. The gate is a crooked as we are having a time swinging it open across the drive because the drive is higher in the middle. We'll find a solution for that in the future.

As we were riding to the gate we looked to the side of the drive, about 1/2 way & saw something bright red in the woods along the fence line. Since it was about to rain we decided to high tail it to the house & come back later.

After the rain, the ditch by the gate.

Later, we stopped by the red sighting & realized the red was gladiolas! There were only two blooming but there are hundreds in 2 or 3 different spots.

There is an old well head almost directly in front of these in my Dad's field. There used to be a house there years & years ago so we guessed whoever lived there must have planted them. There were also yellow buttercups in the wooded area but I didn't get a pic of them.

So, in addition to passion flowers, we also have buttercups & gladiolas!

We got a solar driveway light put up as well as a game camera. We've seen bobcat, hog & deer tracks along the driveway so we are hoping to catch a picture of something or another.

As we were leaving on Sunday we noticed these mushrooms growing in the side of a tree. They are about 5 inches across.

We've also been finding rusted junk treasure here & there. I can't wait until we live there!

It is now Sunday, July 14th & I canned peaches (8 pints), made peach jam (12 1/2 pints) & peach butter (7 1/2 pints) yesterday all.day.long. The jam didn't set very well but it's thick enough to use as an ice cream topping. The butter came out perfect. I don't like to peel peaches but I love the end products.

Today, I got tired of jockeying all my bags of frozen vegetable pieces & meat bones & meat pieces so I've got 2 large pots of stock going. I am taking next Friday off so I'll probably spend the day canning the stock.

That's all I've got for now. Have a great week everyone!