I keep making mistakes!

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We have been suffering a very dry summer. Last year we were floating up to our eyeballs in water. I think I read somewhere that the month of June 2009, it rained all but 2 days in my region. This year it has been the exact opposite. There are 2 rainy days committed to my memory and they were this past Saturday, and yesterday. So you can imagine that either way is challenging for the garden. I noticed this morning out of my one open eye when I was emptying the puppy at 6am, that the larger bed I had planted squash, pumpkin and melon in looked like a jungle! Yesterday when I was inspecting, it looked like a garden! The water we received yesterday has made these plants so giant and so beautiful that I am getting ready to write down in my garden journal (yes I keep one of those) how you SHOULDNT plant melon and squash in one bed together!

When I put them in the ground, my thought process went something like this:

me: "hey are you sure you should put pumpkin, watermelon and squash all in the same bed?"
me: "yeah it will be fine, why"
me: "welllll I have never seen them grown before but I am pretty sure you need a huge plant to make a 20lb pumpkin"
me: "bah you dont know what you are talking about, I am doing what I want"

By the time they reach maturity, it will be a tangled mess of leaves and fruit! Pumpkin doesn't mature for MONTHS yet and already it has completely overtaken the bed. When I get home, I will take pictures, either today or tomorrow. The weather was raining again this morning but now its sunny so I can't even imagine how large these plants will be by end of business ;)


At least I can laugh at myself!

Dude, What Is That?

If you think about it, its actually pretty funny that I do the things that I do. For example, remember back when I started all my seeds for the garden? Well, I was very careful and meticulous in planting them according to the packet, making sure they had the appropriate light for the appropriate amount of time and finally, I was very careful in MARKING all of my seedlings with those funny little plastic pointy things that you can write on. I made rows and rows. I started 3 different kinds of tomatoes you see, and I was so sure this was going to be my year!!

Shortly after planting, maybe 3 weeks or so, my tomatoes started dying out, whole flats just pooping out. We weren't sure why, maybe over watering, maybe not? not sure! In a panic, I planted the last of my seeds. Do you see where this may be going?

Fast forward to planting them on the deck and in the planters, removing the neat little plastic things, trying to remember which ones were which. Wait, I dont think these are grape tomatoes, they died and I think I replaced them with beefsteak... or was it cherry? or... SHIT!

Thats right.

Even today we aren't sure what is growing on the vines. We have identified ONE tomato plant of 10. This sweet little number which is apparently bestowing many fruit upon us.
Even in my glory I still am somewhat of a garden failure this year. Maybe next year I will get it right?

The peas seem to think so :) And although I know what they are, (sugar snap peas), I am unaware of anything else about them. Including when I planted them lol.

There is alot to learn in gardening!! Thankfully at this current time, I am not trying to grow our main food supply because I am afraid my family would STARVE.

Weekend Recap!

Friday we took the day off, set our alarm clock for 5am (yep that’s right) and then headed out on a 2 hour drive to Mt. Moosilauke here in NH. It is the first over 4,000 foot mountains in NH on the Appalachian Trail standing at a honkin 4,802! I have climbed this bitch mountain before but Dave couldn’t make it the first time due to some stomach nightmare so I promised him I would hike it again. I just needed some time to forget how hard it was. Bet your bippy I remembered how hard it was about 30 seconds on the trail. Ahh it was so worth it though*. I mean what a gorgeous view and the weather was incredible! The snow covered mountain in the picture is actually Mt. Washington.

Saturday I did the last leg of a rescue transport for an adorable 9 month old Great Dane puppy. I had to evaluate him and then bring him to the foster family’s house. He was so cute but so inappropriate! Hopefully he will settle in, learn some manners and be ready to go to his new home!

Yesterday, as a family**, we tended the garden. I prepared the beds and planted the seedlings that were started back in March. Andrew planted seeds (beans, peas, spinach etc), Tarynn raked and Dave added more fencing to the chicken pen to expand their area into the back yard. They now have the entire fenced in back yard to scratch in. Our reasoning behind that was basically, the dogs*** yard needed some TLC with tick removal and long weeds. Why not turn all that into yummy eggs?

I also attempted to make cheese yesterday using the vinegar and milk method. yes it turned into cheese but it was the blandest cheese I have ever tasted. I would love it if someone would speak up and tell me what I did wrong! :)

All in all it was a very busy but productive weekend. I am really looking forward to kicking back and relaxing!
Next weekend we bring home Noah! So much for relaxation!

*worth it now that I am done. ** when I say as a family I mean the kids got paid. ***Django really is the only one thus far that would not eat the chickens, frank has a bit of a prey drive ;).

I live under a big black cloud

As I scroll through all of my favorite blogs, I cannot help but wonder what are we doing wrong? Everyone seems to have this fabulous garden except for us! I keep looking and then I run to find out WHERE they live, Oh it must be Alabama or Texas or somewhere that they have warm all year. I am unfortunately finding that many of the blogs I follow are in such places as Maine, New York and even Scandinavia... sigh... so much for that excuse!

We are still making our first attempt at gardening. We have out in the garden, tomato plants, bean plants, lettuce, carrots, radishes, green peppers, hot peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, garlic, corn, watermelon, eggplant, squash of some sort but forget what I put in the ground because I am THAT gardener and strawberries. Unfortunately, the sun is not shining on Swood South *sigh*. We have had only a handful of sunny warm days. For example, today's high was 58 degrees and no sun. Yesterday was lower 50's and rain. Our plants are not loving the lack of sunshine at all.


Here we have lettuce (sadly these are the only thing that really ENJOYS water and they are still not growing in all this rain) and in the background we also have beans.


Corn... this is the one I am most excited about... It is also the bed that Django keeps JUMPING INTO! So i have many corn plants that have been trampled by the dog.


This is a tomato plant. I would love to tell you that this is one of the tomatoes we started but that would e a lie. We actually purchased this one. The started plants are behind, maybe at like 3 inches tall... (sigh again)



Dave has managed to engineer this contraption. Here we have a miracle grow feeder that we bought years ago, and a 2-liter bottle. We are going to be putting our own home grown fertilizer that we are making with our composter (mmmm compost tea) and putting it in the bottle and spreading it with water. He rocks.

There is one thing that we are growing fairly well... that is eggs. You are viewing 2 eggs, both came from my chickens. The one on the left was given to me by our biggest chicken Pearl. The egg on the right was a gift from Marge this morning. She is the smallest chicken we have that is laying. (we only have 2 laying, the others are only 13 weeks old)



So thats it for me. I hope you are all well! We will see you soon!

Chickentopia and other things

Things are happening in the garden! Personally, I feel this is a huge accomplishment for me. I have never been able to grow anything. We have some starters that have met their demise due to cats or other horrible reasons (such as the great dane sweeping them right off the counter top with his tail after being excited). I am happy to say that alot of the things that we have planted are actually growing!
Here is some update:

This is my very first strawberry plant ever. We now have 3 pots full of them. I decided to hang them because they are easier for us to keep safe from birds and other critters as they are hanging right outside our door in the back yard.








On the far right, is our onions, we got these on a "whim" at the farm store when we went to get prices on some dirt. And the big bushy things... those are some bad ass eggplants! They are BEASTS!! they don't care about wind/cold they just keep growing!




















Course plants are not the only thing we are growing here at Shmoopywood South... no my friends...we are also growing chickens, and coops. SO I have included some chicken cuteness just to keep those of you who are so chicken oriented happy.
Incidentally, anyone else notice that having chickens is like having an addiction? After greeting my dog at the door after work, I greet my husband and then its outdoors to greet my chickens.
We have a pen but there is currently no chicken way into it, as it is not attached yet to the coop. We also have not finished the top or cover to the pen at this time. We will get to it, Dave made a cat house that models our home a long time ago for a cat that used to live here and it has stood abandoned for years, so we moved the tiny little house into the chicken coop so they can go into it to get shelter or get away from Uncle Ted :)



On the right we have my favorite chicken, this is Cotton. Cotton is showing the other chicks how to take a dirt bath.











And for our last shot, here are some of the girls (Patty, Myopic chicken, and the unnamed chicken in the back) checking out the little house. I can't wait for them to start perching atop the house.