Monthly Archives: September 2013

What’s wrong with this picture?

Our county school board approved a swap of over a million dollars in land, buildings, and equipment to a church (where the county board chairman is in a position of responsibility) for property valued at $80,000.  And from the pictures, it appears the equipment included overhead projectors (which were very hard to come by and had to be shared when I was teaching) wall mounted televisions, tables, chairs, desks, office chairs, and myriad other things.  All this in exchange for a piece of property to be used as a football practice field (which, if I’m not mistaken, was already being used by the Mt. Zion school, with the county doing the maintenance and upkeep).

Keep in mind that they can throw this kind of money around, while teachers have told me they got no supply money for paper, crayons, glue, and other consummables last year.  I dont know about this year.  I guess those overpaid teachers are expected to buy that out of their pockets.

I believe that one of the reasons they decided to do this swap was to help out the taxpayers of Carroll County.  How can giving away this much taxable property to a church which pays no taxes, be a good deal for the county taxpayers.  I think the citizens of this county need to rise up and take notice of the shenanigans being perpetrated on us by our elected officials.  Maybe it’s time to clean house from the board to the superintendent and the other flunkies at the county office.  Enough is enough.

 

If I have misread or misinterpreted any of this, please feel free to correct me.  I certainly don’t want to be angry about the wrong shenanigans!

And there goes the weekend….

Of course, every day is a weekend day when you’re retired and doing your own thing.

Saturday we had such a great rescue.  The bulldozers are moving in slowly, but surely, so we have to rescue as many plants over the coming months as we possibly can.  I brought home about a dozen ferns-maidenhair, broad beech, royal, cinnamon, lady, and Christmas- along with some blue lobelia, litaris, purple asters, rattlesnake orchids, and more tiarella.  A person can never have enough tiarella-my favorite flowering native plant.  It’s all potted and getting ready for the plant sale at the Native Plant Society workshop next Saturday.

Today we had a big family lunch at mama’s, who’s looking a little ragged after she fell and bruised her face last week.  On Wed. she had two black eyes, but today, the blood had drained and she had two black cheeks.  We’re very blessed that she didn’t suffer anything worse.  She said her nose was sore where her glasses bumped it and cut a place.  But other than that, she didn’t have any soreness to speak of (or at least none she would ‘fess up to).

Ahh, for a calmer week starting tomorrow,

 

 

Here we go again…..

Another ‘not busy’ week has turned into a corker.  Monday I plowed, shoveled, raked, and planted all morning.  Tuesday I spent the morning wondering why I was so ‘stove up’ as my mama would say.   Well, duh!  I had just spent a day wrestling with a tiller and working with tools that don’t have an off/on switch.

Most of the day Tuesday, I spent running errands, then quilting and sewing.

Wednesday I  spent on errands and more time in the garden, cooking a big supper, more quilting time, and more sewing time.

Yesterday, I got my hair done in the morning, worked at the Open Hands Ministry for the afternoon, , cooked supper then went to MG meeting last night.  Then I quilted til bedtime.

Today, I plowed, shoveled, raked, and planted another vegetable bed, hauled water from my rain barrels to my most newly planted things in the yard (with help from my retired post hole digger.  He’s also quite handy with a wheelbarrow.) and to the potted plants I’ve potted for the plant sale.  Tonight Scott is going to the ballgame, so I’m grocery shopping (if I can remember how to do that, since he usually takes my list) to cook for a dinner at Mama’s house on Sunday.

Tomorrow it’s another native plant rescue, hoping to get some native liatris, blue lobelia, more ferns and native magnolias for the native plant workshop next weekend.

So how’s next week looking?  Rescue dig on Thursday, trip to Gainesville on Friday, trip to LaGrange one day, board meeting one evening, and hopefully starting the paint job on mama’s bedroom.  And Saturday will be spent at the Ag Center hosting a native plant workshop.  Whew!  I gotta change my phone number!

 

Work or Fun?

I pulled out my new electric tiller today and tackled a job I haven’t done in the garden in several years-double digging!  I dug as deep as the tiller would dig (and that little baby can really turn up some soil), tossed the loose soil to the side, then dug as deep as the tiller would dig a second time.  Then I put the first soil back in the hole.  It wasn’t too hot out there this morning, but I still came in the house without a dry stitch.  Of course, part of that was due to running under the sprinkle in the flower bed to cool off.

After I got it dug, I put in cabbage plants, then covered the plants with bird netting.  Hoping this will keep the cabbage moths from getting to them.  I’ll have to keep an eye out and spray them with BT if I see caterpillars.  Wouldn’t it be awful if they have already laid eggs and I just trapped them inside with my cabbages!  Later I’ll cover the plants with a frost blanket, and I should be harvesting cabbages til February!

Tomorrow, I’ll repeat the process for the spinach bed and another rutabaga bed.

Then Scott is helping me put in trellising for the thornless blackberries.  They have sprawled and rooted to the ground, so I clipped and dug the rooted plants and potted those up for the plant sale.

Tomorrow we’re also estimating the size of the greenhouse I want to build (since I already have the windows, cement blocks and bricks from various other projects).  It will probably require our dismantling and moving the arbor Scott and I built several years ago and transplanting the native wisteria.  That may cause me to wait for cooler weather.  I would sure hate to lose that beautiful plant.  We’ll also have to dig up the  bird feeder pole we cemented into the ground.  Not sure if I’ll put it back up or not.  I do love the birds when they feed, but sunflowers are so messy, and I’m not about to buy the preshelled seeds.  I already spend a fortune on those silly birds.  We’ll be digging out lots of yellow iris and some Phlox Davidii (which was supposed to be resistant to powdery mildew, but is absolutely not!)

I’ll be adding the first super to the brood box of my honeybees, so that’s a big job for another day.  Those silly bees are eating us out of house and home, but since I got them so late in the spring, I’m having to feed them to be sure they have enough food to get through the winter.  But they are doing a great job in the flower and veggie garden as they collect pollen and nectar.

Sounds like a good night’s sleep tonight will come in handy for tomorrow.

Fall Gardens

I have been putting in some fall veggie plants, and have found this gardening to be my favorite time in the vegetable garden.  The mornings and evenings are cooler, there aren’t as many pests to attack my greens, and it promises good eatin’ all winter.  With shade/frost blankets, I’ll be picking lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, rutabagas, collards,  and spinach until Feb. or March.

I took cuttings from my best performing tomato plants and rooted them.  The rootings are now off to a good start to get me some late fall tomatoes.

The bees are so busy storing  up honey I can’t keep ahead of them with the sugar water.  Since the supplier was so late getting the bees to me, I am having to supplement their foraging so they will have enough stored up to get through the winter.  This afternoon, I’ll be suiting up to add a ‘super’ box on top of my brood box.  I’m enjoying my foray in apiary.

I still am harvesting enough ripe tomatoes for us to enough, plus some to dry in the dehydrator for bruschetta later.  Here’s my fabulous bruschetta recipe.

Two Tomato Bruschetta

4-5 servings, 2 bruschetta per serving

Prep time:  10 min.   Bake time: 5 mins at 350 degrees

Ingredients:

  • 1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese with tomato and basil
  • 1/3 cup dried tomatoes (not oil packed) chopped
  • 2 Tbsp snipped fresh basil
  • 2 Tbsp snipped fresh Italian (flat leaf) parsley
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • ¼ tsp. freshly ground black pepper
  • 2-10 slices whole grain baguette (each about ½ inch thick)
  • 2 Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced

Directions:

  • Preheat oven to 350°.
  • In small bowl combine feta cheese, dried tomatoes, basil, and parsley.  Set aside.
  • In another small bowl, stir together the oil, garlic and pepper.  Brush mixture on bread slices.  Place bread slices on a large baking sheet.  Bake for 5 minutes, or until lightly toasted.  Remove from oven.  Top with tomato slices.
  • Spoon feta cheese mixture on top of tomato slices.
  • Serve immediatly or broil 3 to 4 inches from the heat for 1-2 min. or until cheese is slightly melted.

Happy gardening!

 

 

Where does the time go?

I thought I had a slow week coming up.  No big plans, nothing to take me away from the garden or the sewing room.  WRONG!

Monday was a lazy day due to the rain, but I got a little more sorting and sewing done in the basement.

Tuesday required a quick trip to D’ville to the fabric store after I discovered that the quilt mama pieced for one of the grandkids needed just a little more fabric for the lining than she had bought.

Today, someone donated a bunch of seeds for the save sharers cabinet at the Ag Center, so I spent the morning out there adding seeds to the cabinet and taking out the summer veggie seeds.  Tonight was family night supper at church, so I helped with that a while.  And while I was out that way I stopped by Lowe’s and picked up a gallon of paint for the bedroom I’m redoing.

Tomorrow I’m traveling with two of my also-out-of-their-minds friends halfway across the state to rescue plants from a bulldozer.  What time does 5:00 in the morning happen anyway?

Friday, it’s a trip to Bowdon to show mama some paint chips I collected so she can pick out new paint for her bedroom, which I’ll start on next week.

Saturday, I think I’ll take a break, right after I get my lettuce planted.

Looks like next week is shaping up to be a little busy too.  Boy, I love my life!

 

My Chauffeur

My chauffeur drove me to D’ville today to buy fabric.  As if i don’t already have enough.  Just needed a little piece to finish up a quilt I’m making for my niece.  Hope to have it ready to take to her on my next visit.

Did a little shopping at Tuesday morning and Pier 1.

It’s  a great thing to have a chauffeur.  He drives and goes wherever I tell him to go, drops me right at the door, waits quietly in the store while I shop, then takes me to lunch.  Sometimes he even whips out his credit card and pays for my purchases.  He even encouraged me to buy a couple of frivolous things today.  He doesn’t even make note of my catnapping and snoring on the drive.  And when he drives me home, he  totes the packages into the house.  Not many people have a chauffeur that they love and appreciate like mine.  I’m a lucky person.

Random Thoughts

As I sit here with the gentle rain falling, my mind tends to wander.  (Although it does quite a bit of that without the gentle rain.)  I wonder how many farmers would celebrate just a portion of the rain we’ve had this summer, but I fuss about missing a day in the garden.  I wonder how many people would love to live in a safe neighborhood, in a snug little house, hearing nothing but the gentle rain falling.

With a pork roast in the crock pot getting ready to be turned into barbecue with my mama’s special sauce, I wonder how many people are hungry right now.

As I look out the back window at the beautiful stand of hardwood trees and all my flowers, I wonder how many children look out their windows and see only asphalt, concrete, trash and filth.  Makes me sad that some grow up in these circumstances.

Looking at the fresh tomatoes and okra I picked from my garden, I wonder how many people don’t ever have fresh fruits and vegetables.  I wonder why huge corporations are growing foods with harmful chemicals and pesticides that are not good for human consumption, while taking our tax dollars as subsidies for this.

And after it all, I keep hearing the refrain from that song:

Who am I that the King would bleed and die for?
Who am I that He would pray not my will, Thy Lord?                                                                      The answer I may never know, why He ever loved me so
But to an old rugged cross He’d go for who am I?

Have a blessed day, and use this quiet, still time to ponder Who are You?

 

 

What a treat!

I went to the Hummingbird banding event at Gail Woody’s house yesterday morning.   It was an amazing sight to behold.

A young girl would catch the hummers when they flew into cages set up with feeders. She put them in mesh bags, then hung the bags in the shade under a tent until a worker could measure it.

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The first thing the workers do is to put a miniscule aluminum band around the bird’s leg.  This band is so small it doesn’t even register on a very sensitive digital scale.  it assigns a number to each bird so that, if caught again, it can be reexamined for growth, migration information, etc.

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They measured its wing length and inspected it with a loupe.  This helped them determine the sex of the hummer.

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After the wing was measured, they would measure the tail feathers.

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Next, they measured the beak length and looked at it closely with the loupe for striations.  She explained that they were going to study the striations, thinking these might be a way of aging a hummer.

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Adding insult to injury, they turn the baby over and blow on its belly through a straw, checking for body fat.  They found one who weighed over 5 grams, or about 5 standard paper clips.   And it was considered huge!

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They weigh them, then hold them to a feeder so they can get some energy before being released.  The kids were allowed to hold the tiny birds and release them.  What a memorable thing for a child.

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Thanks, Gail, for a wonderful experience.