The Joys of Gardening

6/24/2012

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When I was growing up my Grandparents always had a garden. I remember spending summers at their house and in the evening we would sit on the porch with bowls between our knees and shell or snap beans. In the early mornings, I would watch my Grandmother water the garden and pick any vegetable that might be ready. We always enjoyed fresh vegetables whether it was tomatoes, okra (always fried to perfection,) beans, cantaloupe, and even a fresh watermelon or two. It always amazed me how she was able to grow so many wonderful vegetables and take care of my Grandfather, cook, clean, and take care of us when we were visiting.

    As I got older I took for granted all the fresh vegetables she would grow and never once offered to help her with the garden. I thought that it was too dirty of a job, too hot outside, or I thought I just didn't have time to spend with my Grandmother doing something I didn't want to do. I, thoroughly, regret that decision now.  I remember her asking me to come out and help her and telling her no because I  didn't want to get too hot and then later that afternoon walking (in the heat) to the swimming pool with my sister. My Grandmother could have taught me so many things about gardening that I wish I knew now. Unfortunately, now it is too late. My Grandmother has Alzheimer's and lives in a nursing home about 13 hours away from me. Every time I have a question about my garden I think of her and all the fun times that I missed out on and the many wonderful things she could have taught me.

    The one thing she did instill in me, although it took me a LONG time to realize it, was a love for gardening. It is amazing how relaxing gardening can be. The last few years we have had a garden and have enjoyed the fruits of our labor, so to speak, but we were living about five miles away from where are garden was located and sometimes it was hard for me to get over to it everyday. Now, we live at the farm and are only about 50 feet away from the garden so I spend a lot of time working in it.

    I love the whole process of gardening. From beginning to the end, it is exciting to get through all the steps so that you can provide fresh vegetables for your family and friends. Tilling is the first step in the process of gardening and I always let Cody (my husband) do that step for me because sometimes it is hard to get the ground to work up properly. The second step is to make your rows for your seeds by using a hoe to make sure you get the rows deep enough. The third step is to plant your seeds. Just dropping your seeds on the ground doesn't work very well so you have to be sure to space each type of seed according to its package. Then you have to cover the seeds with the dirt that you removed to make your rows using your hoe again and then tapping the ground softly to make sure the seeds are covered and protected from bugs and birds. The fourth and final step in the planting process is watering. You always want to water after you have planted so that the seeds have moisture in the dirt to start the growing process.
And then you wait! For what seems like forever. Each type of plant has a different rate at which they grow. Some take as little as 2 weeks to start to show and others take up to 30 days. So everyday I go out and I water and I hoe any weeds that might be trying to grow up next to my plants so that the weeds do not steal the moisture that my plants need to grow. While I am watering, I talk to my plants. Yes, that's right I said I talk to my plants. I have heard it said that if you talk to your plants they would grow better and let me tell you, I believe it works. At the beginning of the growing process I say a prayer and I ask God to bless our garden to that it might be fruitful and then I talk to my plants. I tell them to grow big and strong and I ask each one how they are doing each day and whether or not they need a lot of water or just a little water. Although they do not answer me, thank goodness, I always feel like they appreciate me coming out and watering and speaking to them.

    I like to think that I am doing some good by growing a garden because I am able to share, each year, with my friends and family. Already this year, I have sent my parents some zucchini and have given some more zucchini to my husband's grandmother's nephew. (yes I know it is one of those kinds of situations! LOL) And, I know that I will have so many more things to share with others that it makes all the work and sweat worth the effort.

    This year I plan to try my hand at making salsa. I have eight tomato plants, seven green bell pepper plants and one jalapeno plant. You might ask why I have only one jalapeno plant and I will tell you that is a funny story. I went and purchased my bell pepper plants in two four packs that were already growing so that all I had to do was transfer the plants in to the ground and water them. So I planted all eight of what I assumed were bell pepper plants. Well, after they got big enough to start growing I realized that one of the plants was producing long, skinny looking peppers. I thought maybe something had happened to the bell pepper and maybe the plant had gotten to hot but the other plants were producing regular looking bell peppers so I took one of the long peppers inside and cut it open. It only took one whiff of the pepper to realize it was not a bell pepper but a jalapeno. I guess somehow a jalapeno seed got mixed in with the bell peppers when they went to plant and I was the lucky purchaser to get the extra something special. Oh, well I guess I will try my hand at salsa! It ought to be good with fresh jalapenos!

    And, so ends my tale of gardening, for now! Just know, that if you know an older person or have a grandparent that likes to garden, take the time and effort to spend some time with them and learn not only about gardening but maybe just maybe a little bit about them and why they think gardening is important. You might just be surprised with some of their answers! 

    So, I am leaving you with a little song that used to be sung to me to make fun but I have decided that it is one of my favorites while gardening.

Mary Mary
Quite Contrary
How Does Your Garden Grow?
With Silver Bells
And Cockle Shells
And Pretty Maids
All In A Row!

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Snake Ranglin'

5/23/2012

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How do you get a six (or eight, depending on who you asked) foot snake out of the cab of a ten-wheel grain truck? If you ask most people they will tell you, "Don't let him in there to start with." Well, that is all well and good but what do you do when the little thief sneaks in anyway? Let me tell you it isn't an easy job. Three days, two men, me, three kids, three dogs, and a partridge in a pear tree and that silly snake was STILL in the cab of the grain truck. So what did we try you ask? Well that is a story in and of itself.

First things first. The discovery of the miscreant snake. My husband, Cody, decided he needed to get the ten-wheeler ready for the upcoming wheat harvest and so he climbed in the cab of the truck and relocated the truck, where it has been sitting for about 6 months, to a closer spot near the workshop.
While moving the truck he realized that he was not alone in the cab. He looked down when he caught something out of the corner of his eye and saw a coiled up black snake looking at him. Extremely unnerving, especially when you are not expecting it. He was able to keep himself composed long enough to move the truck and come to a complete stop before he quickly exited the cab.

Now you would think that being disturbed by not only a human being and movement from the large home you have been living in that, as a snake, you would vacate said premises and be long gone before someone took a gun or a hoe to your self. Not this snake. He had decided that he was taking up residence in the cab of my husband's truck and was not going to be removed. Cody assumed, like we all did, that he would remove himself as soon as the truck stopped but when he went back to get into the cab a little while later he realized the snake was still hanging out, taking it easy in the cab. So Cody along with his brother decided to try several things to remove the snake from the truck.

The first thing they tried was to leave the doors open on the cab and let the snake take his time overnight and slither itself out of the cab. So we all waited with bated breath, I can assure you, waiting to see if the snake had removed itself from the truck. Unfortunately he had not used his perfect opportunity to remove himself and had in fact buried himself behind the gas tank that sits right behind the cab's only bench seat. So we spent the better half of a morning try to come up with a better way in which to either entice the snake to come out so that we could grab it and remove it by force. We were only, once, able to get close enough to grab its tail and the snake was either so long and wrapped itself around something or was so strong that it held itself up that my brother-in-law (who by the way is extremely scared of snakes) was unable to get the snake to even budge an inch. By the time he let it go, the snake had crawled itself further up into the metal of the cab where he could no longer be grabbed at all.

The next thing we tried was to take a garden hose to the cab of the truck and try to wash the silly thing out or freeze it out with the cold well water that was spilling out of the hose. Let me tell you we had about 50 gallons of water that was sprayed and then washed out of the cab of the ten-wheeler with absolutely no luck. So we were back to square one.

Then my husband decided to remove the seat and the gas tank from inside of the cab of the truck so that he would have better access to the snake. With that tough job completed Cody realized that the snake had evidently been living in the seat of the truck for awhile because there was a perfect holed out maze that went through the entire seat! But still no snake removed from the truck. He could still hear the snake coiling and uncoiling and slithering through the back of the cab where he could not been seen or reached.

So now what? That was the next question so we did what anyone does about a problem they can't figure out they call whomever they know that might know something to try and then you look on the internet.

So I called my Mom because she grew up on a farm and had her fair share of encounters with snakes and I thought she might have some good ideas. She suggested that we bait the silly snake with a hot dog or two laced with some rat poison so that if we couldn't grab the silly thing when it came out to grab the hot dog the rat poison would surely do the trick right?! Well it was a great idea in theory only we learned later from our search on the internet that snakes will not rise to any type of bait that is not alive!

Well darn. OK, so we wanted to know what the all knowing internet could tell us about getting rid of our friendly neighborhood black snake. The advice we could find was that we should not allow the snake to get into places we did not want them. Well good grief we knew that so that was a big waste of time. Now what do we do?

Well we did what we thought we had to. Cody taped up all the holes in the metal and taped the windows closed with a hose that we attached to the tail pipe of our Ford F-150 and turned on our truck and tried to smoke the snake out. Cody left the hose attached for over an hour and filled the cab of the ten-wheeler with carbon monoxide. We left the cab taped up over night and in the morning went to check to see if had accomplished the task of smoking the snake out. Well, shucks, no such luck. The silly thing could still be heard slithering around inside the cab behind the metal that made up the back wall of the cab.

So Cody decided to give up and let the silly thing have his way with the truck and so he worked for the next hour or two to put the seat and gas tank back in the truck. When that was done he went to move the truck back to the place where he had had it previously sitting only to discover that the truck had some mechanical issues and was forced to leave it sitting where it was until he could get it fixed.

The next morning (the third morning of the fun snake saga) Cody came out to find that the snake had shed his skin and vacated the premises FINALLY! I suppose the snake just needed somewhere he could finish his molting process and when he was done he went to find something to eat. I would be hungry too if I had been almost drowned, had my tail pulled on and then almost suffocated from carbon monoxide.

So the moral to this story is what everyone told us in the beginning "Don't let snakes in to start with!" Much easier said than done but you have to try I suppose!
 
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The Joys of Livin' in the Country!

4/26/2012

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Oh the joys of living in the country are many! From the wonderful smells of freshly turned earth, the beautiful flowers that are blooming right now, and the smell of the crops growing in our fields to the awesome sights of watching young flowers and crops begin to grow and flourish and the nights with all of the stars you could ever want to see, there is really nothing like it!
Of course there are many negatives to living in the country too! Today my five pound wonder dog, Fluffy, reminded me of one of the biggest negatives, cow poop! He came home, from a romp with one of the big dogs that live outside, covered in wonderful smelling cow poop! I suppose it could have been worse, it could have been turkey droppings (truly "fowl" smelling) or covered in stick tights (those little weeds that get everywhere and you can never get them out!)
Another negative is the dust from the gravel road that travels in front of our house. It would probably not bother me as much if the wind never blew or some of the trucks and tractors didn't travel down the road like lightening was on their tales! Everything gets covered in a nice layer of white dust as if someone came along and used a sifter with flour or powered sugar on it and if you happen to be outside during these times you also get covered. I walked to the mailbox this morning, after have just showered mind you, and a truck traveling at a high rate of speed came barreling down the road and was quickly covered in a fine layer of dust. OY VEY! So much for the shower! You have to remember to keep your mouth shut during these times also or you will end up with a nice dusty tongue rather quickly! I found that out the first week we lived out here and have not made that mistake again!
It might seem that I am truly complaining about living in the country and that really couldn't be farther from the truth! There are so many other things that I really love about being out here. At night, especially, it is so quite that you can hear the bugs that fly around the light poles or hear the coyotes that frequent the edge of our land looking for a quick bite to eat. The stars are so beautiful out in the country because you don't have all of the lights from city blocks or the obstructions of buildings or skyscrapers! My husband and I have spent the last week looking for shooting stars and I have seen at least three and he has seen one or two. It is awesome just to spend time looking at the stars and talking over our day and just being quite in God's country!
Some of the other joys of living in the country are the lack of crowds, no smog or pollution, and the privacy the country affords you. Not having neighbors that can look in your window from their own window is awesome! Being able to walk to the mailbox in your pajamas is, as a friend once said, "the Bee's knees!" And, although cow poop might not be the best smell in the world it is certainly a definite step up from some of the smog filled cities I have been to or lived in.
Just being able to live simply and in your own way is a true blessing! My husband and I can sit of an evening and listen to the wildlife, coming to life, outside our front door or he can work, to his heart's content, on a piece of equipment with his country music as loud as he pleases without the interference from nosy neighbors or having to be mindful of someone that needs their sleep to go to work the next day.
It is an awesome feeling when you know that you do not have to be concerned whether or not you left your keys in your car or whether or not you left the house unlocked because you know no one will be bothering anything. Country living at its finest is a wonderful experience and it is something that should be shared in some small way or another. Whether it is from crops that we grow in our fields, cows we raise and sell, or just giving away or sharing in the bounties we get from our garden, we try in our own small way to share what we have here so that someone might benefit from our lives. It isn't always an easy way of life, living in the country, but it is not easy anywhere these days and so we do our best to make things work and keep moving so that we might share what we have with others!
So remember when you drive down a highway next to a large field of crops or cows that someone is living in the country doing what he/she does best so that they might share with you what you might need in way of food or clothing. And when you get the time, or make the time, stop and drive slowly down a gravel road and just enjoy the feel of the country! Let the windows down and smell the grass, the flowers and of course the cow poop and just relax for a minute and let it rejuvenate you so that you can move forward in your own life with more purpose and a little inspiration for your feet! May God Bless you in every way!
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