Seed Swap #2: Virginia Creeper

What? No takers on the dill seed? Maybe I can entice someone with Virginia Creeper seed. I found piles of it on my back deck and swept it up with a paint brush. You can see what the full grown plant looks like on a rainy day here.

I certainly didn't expect to be including the Creeper seeds so maybe there will be some other surprises along the way.

Seed Swap #1: Dill Seed

Right now I'm sitting on a gold mine in dill seed with more to come. I sprinkle them on salads, sandwiches, everything. It occurred to me that maybe someone else might like some to plant for next year???? I'm going to make an effort to start saving seeds from all of my veggies and flowers and at the end of this growing season I'll be prepared to swap seeds with anyone who's interested. Email me at pensacoladailyphoto(at)gmail(dot)com and we'll start negotiations.

Kitties Passing In The Light

They have more than 35 years between the two of them and a multitude of health problems, some of them serious but they've finally adapted to the borders of our property and we let them roam free now. We've spoiled them rotten and wouldn't have it any other way.

Here they are passing by each other near the sailboat DH is refurbishing. Sometimes Digit (the tabby) likes to climb the ladder and inspect any new work. She's pretty severe with her criticisms. I provide the tissues.

Willem likes to eat grass, I just wish he would work on the verge growing around the base of the boat.

Lettuces

I love to pick a pile of lettuces from the garden and put them on everything. They're so tasty, I feel like I'm mining minerals. I've also discovered that I like to pick half ripe tomatoes and cut them up in my salads. Now where did I put those pics....burp.

The Big Haul

Today was a day filled with rare occurrences: I watched a filly, Rachel Alexandra, run the Preakness and spank all the boys from the 13th post position, I scored something on Freecycle (this never happens), I took a ride in Old Paint, my husband's contender for the world's ugliest truck, and then I scored beautiful flowers for free. It happened like this:

After seeing Rachel Alexandra (a big girl physically to be sure) secure her place in history we loaded up in Old Paint - something I thought I would only ever do again at gunpoint - and then we headed out to our first stop, picking up a batch of leonotis leonurus - Lion's Head - seedlings, my score from Freecycle. Lastly, and this is the sweetest part, we traveled over to N Old Corry Field Rd just above Srant Dr and dug up some of the hundreds of wild growing Alstroemeria - Peruvian lilies - that are there, just free for the taking. I'm telling you this, if you're local, with a caveat: take someone with you just to be safe. Having said that, this is what you'll find if you feel so inclined.

Thank my lucky stars for Old Paint. If you click on my Abstractions blog you can see the view from the ditch.

Our First Green Beans From The Garden

Not a great photo but they were very tasty. After I steamed them I let them cool and then ate them in a salad with balsamic vinegar. Home grown is best.

Hi There!

This is a hand held macro so it isn't very focused but worth sharing. I've never seen a napping bee before but this one was just lollygagging about in the ligustrum. It was moving but seemed content to just bee.

Kinda Corny

I took these pictures late this afternoon and while I think my photography skills are improved by the exercise it doesn't alter the fact that these corn plants are too small to be producing ears, or so DH says. We used seeds left over from last year because we thought our previous problems were related to poor nutrition. We corrected that after having the soil tested but still, the results aren't too impressive. We didn't do any research on what grows well in our area, just grabbed something off the rack so I think that's definitely the next step. Yup, we're gonna have to get scholarly and the like. When it's all over I'll know way more than I ever wanted to.

Sensible Swine Flu Information

I don't watch the news anymore, I keep expecting the news readers to break into song and dance to get their point across and I just don't think I could ever recover from that. So when people began talking about a swine flu outbreak I went to the CDC for info. As luck would have it you can sign up for email updates on prevention (not much to be done except hand washing/wringing and staying home/hyperventilating), confirmed cases, etc., all to calm your inner hypochondriac. Unless, of course, you're deep into conspiracy theories and then you'll need to reference something a little more, shall we say, esoteric, which leaves me wondering what you're doing hangin' out on this blog anyway...Hmmmmm?????

Everything is better with dewberries

Dewberries picked fresh.

These later found a home on vanilla ice cream.
Later, they'll move in with muffins, or better, in my pancakes.
It just so happens I have my own oat roller and there's nothing better for breakfast than uncooked rolled oats. So, I'll add that to the list, especially since the season is just getting started.

Pollen and Bumble Bee Pt 2

One dab of falling pollen, one fuzzy bear.

Well looky here...

Talk about your chaos theory...I still don't know what I'm doing when it comes to this new camera but I thought, how often do you get to see pollen flying through the air????

It's a first for me.

Can you see it? Just to the right of its wee little bumble bum?

I posted about bumble bees earlier here. Now, seeing all this pollen I have to assume bumble bees make honey but I don't know what kind of hive they have. Must. Google.

I can't see! I can't see!

I don't feel so good...

Having health insurance used to mean a round of regular check-ups followed by a round of attemps to decipher my insurance company's billing methods before a final round of paying my share. And pay I did. Now we don't have that kind of insurance and because of that something unthinkable has happened. I'm not speaking metaphorically here, I'm talking about a shift, a sea change, a transformation. I'm talking about a door closing, the curtains being drawn, the passing of an age.
Before my existance without health insurance I could contemplate the possibility of an outcome, could cope with a surgery, make decisions, work with my physician. But now, I've simply stopped thinking about health care altogether, not because I can't pay for an exam but, because I might not be able to pay for the outcome of the exam, really, why bother? Who wants to be the person who bankrupted the family, who wants to put everyone out, literally, which could happen if a serious illness occurs?
So when I got sick last week I simply saw it as a headache, something for which I could take two aspirin, get a lot of sleep, drink a lot of liquids, and then just see what happens. But it was much worse than that and it wasn't until I finally went to the doctor today, six days after it started and over an interminably long weekend avoiding the emergency room or the walk-in clinic which simply leads to the emergency room, that I realized just how bad things could have been. Instead of being diagnosed with a particularly pesky intestinal virus I realized it could have been E. coli or salmonella and I would have been in much worse condition than I ever realized. Like my friend who called me one day and told me her daughter was in the hospital with dehydration although her father IS a doctor, but kids, being so small are easily dehydrated so it takes a dedicated parent to spot it and then quickly get them the care they need. But big people are supposed to have a kind of self-awareness that lets them seek help before they're in trouble, they don't need spotters. Unless they lose their health insurance and then, they get used to thinking that, really, they're okay and the doctor will just have to wait.

I have to add that my doctor is a dream and willing to work with me, even on the day she's due to deliver her first child. She's a gem, a real gem. And maybe the most radiant pregnant woman I've ever seen.

The Big Yellow Composter

I've tried several times to create compost but never could get a pile to actually decompose. That's right, if I try to make things decompose they refuse. Instead they just shrivel up and blow away. To tell the truth, my very best composting experience was growing and harvesting Roma tomatoes from a compost pile that I quit adding to because I didn't want to lose the plants that had sprouted up. Those were GOOD tomatoes. Now we live with live oaks and pecans so we have leaf litter to add to our kitchen waste and miscellaneous clippings. We thought we would give it another go.

We started with two barrel composters, which are pretty icky - no one tells you about the flying critters that like to congregate in them and putting soil in them to cover up the kitchen scraps makes them really heavy and hard to turn. If you can't turn them what's the point of having barrel composters? None, that I can see. Unless I read something new I've decided that they're definitely a warm weather, quick decay method of composting so I'm going to spare myself the misery next winter.

After that we started a worm bin composter which is not icky but full of worms, which are very icky. Well, not in person but on vermicomposter.com they are. For some reason people looooove showing off their gobs of worms. Handfuls of them. Ewww.

Now we've designed a set of mobile composters. When the first one to finish is done we'll lift it up, move it down the line to an empty space, the finished compost gets worked into the garden, and then a new round begins. Think of it as a kind of shell game. We made them from some failed demolition chutes - the kind you see jutting out of the sides or windows of buildings when someone wants to eject debris from upper floors during a renovation. Only these weren't heavy duty enough for the things that were being thrown out and after they were replaced hubby brought the damaged pieces home and turned them into composters. And that's right, they feature a stainless steel cable handle and fasteners. It took less than 30minutes to make both of them.

Still, they're a little too colorful for my taste and I suspect, and this might be my main objection, if you didn't know what they were for you might think that we had an industrial waste project going on in the backyard. I don't know, maybe I really do care what the neighbors are thinking. I suspect there's a fencing project looming on the horizon.