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We are not getting much done around here for the past 5 days. I cannot get myself excited about creating art, nor Carl with stained glass since nothing is selling and students are at a stand still. But here is what has been going on here for the past 5 days.
4/22/11
I awoke to a rainy day this morning and it was cool. Carl was up and we headed into the village for breakfast at McD’s and then to pick up some top soil at Fred’s. Carl went back to bed for a quick nap about 9:30 am and slept until almost 1 pm. I lazed around all day and never turned on the computer until now.
4/23/11
We had hard rains during the early morning and we were not able to get anything done outside until about 10 am. Gloria could not come. Carl started working on the pump house. I did inside chores and then put some ads up. I got my column written and sent off. We called Donna this morning and talked to her for awhile. G and B came over tonight and we watched “The King’s Speech”.
4/24/11
We had another day of heavy rains today so we just lazed around today and went to G & B for Easter dinner today and movies.
4/25/11
A lot of rain today again and we dropped Glynis lawnmower off to get serviced as Carl could not repair it. We stopped to offer Kate and Marty our condolences and then off to Glasgow for a garden run. I am having computer problems with the new software from the new video cam corder affecting my Fuji film camera. George is coming over tomorrow morning to see what the problem is.
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4/26/11
It was another rainy day this morning and Carl said we had a storm around 3 am that was as close to a tornado wind as he would like to get. I slept right through it. George could not get the cam corder working so Carl and I took a ride out to BG and I returned it. The weather was lovely out there.
4/27/11
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We awoke to rain which had continued all through the night and Carl took the car in for an oil change and a brake repair. When he returned we had about 2 hours of no rain and Carl worked on the pump house and I planted to Supersonic tomato plants in the hanging tomato bags. I planted many of the geraniums in the big window box. Then it started to rain again and continued all day through the evening with the tornado box going off a half dozen times during the evening. So pictures today between the deluges.
We have had over 205 tornado warnings and so far we are lucky as they have been going around us and we only get the wind and rain.
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04-11-11
Yesterday, the day began sunny and soon became overcast and got to be around 88 degrees. There was just a small breeze so I kept the doors shut in the Bunk House as it keeps the house about 20 degrees cooler. Carl went over to the Creativity Center to install the new sink faucet and do plumbing etc. I went out and finished filling the planters with the 6 inches of top soil on top of about 3 + feet of straw bales. I was able to move and empty about twenty five 40 pound bags before it got to me. However I was able to drive in the 6 ft. metal posts and rods that I will string garden wire between for the climbing things such as cucumbers and tomatoes. I totally amazed myself with that feat.
I was able to pull up and drag away about 200 ft of buried soaker hoses that had been in the Mediterranean herb beds for about 10 years. What a job. I have about another 200 ft. or so to remove. Now I have to cut them up in shorter pieces so they can go into the plastic recycle container.
I was able to give a good plant food watering to many of the planters and I noticed my onion sets, radishes and lettuce are up and running now. I was delighted to find some good organic French Breakfast radish seeds yesterday in my travels. They are our favorite so hopefully I will get several rows planted in stages over the next two weeks.
A few weeks ago I had found about 9 or 10 rolls of very good tree matting reduced from $15.00 to $1.00 a roll and I purchased them all. I am putting it on the ground between the two planters and I got it about half way done before I finally got totally pooped. You can see the dark stuff on the ground between the two planters. I will try to finish it tomorrow. That stuff is really hard to cut. I was so wore out when I came in for lunch I had all I could do to keep from falling face down into my salad.
The entire Iris beds are looking good this year and a few of the yellow ones are in bloom all ready. When I went back out about 3 pm to trim all the rose bushes that Gloria seems to miss I discover that one of our lilac bushes is blooming and that was a delightful surprise. I also noticed that the white bleeding hearts are all out, but the red ones are seem only to have a few blooming right now. The various Clematis vines are sending up new shoots as well are the False Indigo. The Azaleas are loaded with buds so we should be seeing them soon. Both beds of Peonies have shot up and one of them is loaded with buds all ready.
I also got the big pry bar out and carried it over to the fruit tree stump that was sticking out of the ground. That thing is really heavy especially when you have to carry about 500 ft and back. However, I was getting nowhere trying to pry out 10 or 11 years of roots so I turned the bar around and rammed the large round top into the stump near the ground and it sheared it completely off. Now a mower can run right over it.
It looks like my experimental plastic mini greenhouses I created and put inside our big greenhouse have become ovens so I guess those seeds are goners. I will ride over to the Amish and see what the price of their tomato plants are. The ones in Lowe’s garden center are really expensive this year. Rosie says her tomato plants are not doing as well as they usually do.
The newspaper that prints my weekly art column has decided to stop printing the Saturday edition and that is where they usually put it so I may soon be out of business. I sent this week’s column in and asked the question and I will know soon.
It looks like Carl has just one small leak under the kitchen sink in one of the old elbows and he will replace that. So we are making headway around here.
We had a nice phone call from John Daniels, an old Navy buddy of Carl’s.
I made a wonderful loaf of caraway seed rye bread and it finished baking about 6 pm so we had a lovely supper of hot, crusty bread with Genoa salami. No sirree… it can’t get any better than this.
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04-09-11 The day started out looking very overcast but by noon it was 84 degrees. We had some tourists stop by this morning and they said they found our place on the tourist guide internet which cracked George up when he asked what they were doing here. They were here for about 1.5 hours and we gave them the big tour and demonstration and we made a very big sale. We enjoyed them and they really enjoyed themselves. They want to come back and learn how to do what we do.
We headed off for haircuts after they left and then on to buy all the things we needed to hopefully finish the mega plumbing job. We are really lucky Carl is a retired plumber because this job would have cost between $5,000 and $10,000.00 if we had to hire it done with plumbers and carpenters. I picked up the rest of the top soil and potting soil for the last planter and hopefully I can finish that tomorrow. We had missed a call from Donna while we were gone as she, Millard and Andrew were in Scranton, PA and they had just done the Hershey PA tourist thing. They are headed for a week at Tybee Island.
George had the big pry bar which I thought Kane had hauled off by mistake when he was removing all the stuff Linda left here over a year ago. George returned it so I can try and pry out the fruit tree stump that is left in the ground tomorrow. While out I noticed our woods and people’s yards are ablaze with Dogwood trees right now and the red bud trees are at their peak. Our grape hyacinths are covering the lawn all over the place and last year I had dug up a couple and stuck them into one of the bench planters and this year they filled it up.
We watched a really good Netflix tonight called The Amateurs about a little town full of friends who decide to make a porno movie. It is a riot and we heartily recommend it to you.
We were able to have all the French doors open until about 11 pm tonight and we were serenaded by the frogs and whatever out there. Life moves on slowly here and we seem to be aware of what is happening in the world, but we are really engrossed in our little world where the pace of life is at our speed, the wine is good, the food is tasty and we are most pleased each morning to wake up and see each other across the table. What more can one ask for?
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04-08-11 It was a beautiful day again today and it got to be 80 degrees by 5 pm today. Carl finished up the two planters and will go back into the plumbing game again tomorrow. I will work on filling them up and finishing them off tomorrow. I worked a little in one of my studios this morning and managed to annoy Carl twice today by working outside where he was working so I came back in and worked on the computer most of the day. I replanted the inside geraniums back out into the big planters today also as the weather looks like it may stay warm and hopefully no late frosts like we had last April. My 25 cent tulips are blooming all over the place and the 25 cent hyacinths are getting ready to pop. One of our 12 year old fruit trees died during the winter and I broke it off but have to get a pry bar under the remaining 8 inch stump and pry it out of the ground tomorrow so the mower will be able to work in that area. I do not think I will replace it. The fruit trees are the deer attractors.
It looks like the movie “Atlas Shrugged” will be opening in KY in Louisville on April 17th. I would like to see it, but that theater is over an hour away and I have to think about making that trip. I just finished reading the book for the 5th time in 34 years.
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04-07-11 It was a beautiful sunny day today and Gloria came and was able to give me 2 hours of work in the gardens before she had to head off to do other things. Carl took a break from the world of plumbing and built me on 8 foot x 4 foot waist high planter today. Now all I have to do is get it ready to have plants. He built it |
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around the straw bales from last year’s failed attempt at straw bale gardening. Not that I did anything wrong, it just was a mother nature battle with deluges, late freezes and incredible hot days in the summer. He hopes to build another one tomorrow if the weather holds.
I painted a pastel painting all morning. “Child’s Play” is the title. I was able to get 2 hours of computer work in before Rosie came over at 3 pm for 2 hours of decorative painting. She painted one small tile with pears and is working on a large tile with flowers. I am working on a small trinket box. It was a wonderful time as I truly delight in her company. She viewed the new planter and the devastated herb beds and said she would share a lot of her herbs with me and I told her she could dig up some of the stuff we have here and take it home with her the next time she comes. She is a brilliant gardener and mother earth person and we have a good time together.
We received a nice long email from my distant relative in Kent, England, Leslie and he reports he is busy with many things including aiding his wife, Pauline, in her hip replacement surgery. He goes on to say that he has to buy barrow loads of plants for his gardens due to winter havoc and rabbits and we know how he feels. He says he cannot get anything under $1.00.
He continues his search for old relatives regardless of how many times he is stumped and his recent discovery is some more Farrow ancestors which are the connection between us since Minnie Farrow is my father’s mother. After having come up something of a brick wall in my family researches, I have now found details of the baptisms of William Richard Taylor Farrow and siblings. For your interest, they are:
FRYERNING ERO D/P249/1/6 Baptisms 1825 - 1837 1830 July 11 Emily of Richard & Ann Farrow plumber 1832 April 22 Mary Ann of Richard & Ann Farrow plumber 1835 March 8 William Richard Taylor of Richard & Ann Farrow glazier 1837 August 13 Richard of Richard & Ann Farrow plumber Fryerning is a small country town in Essex. He says, “Maybe I will now try to learn more of My Great Grandparents. Like most of the population at that time they were no doubt as poor as church mice, and having been widowed with a young family Ann must have had a desperate life of poverty.”
So we end this sending our best wishes for a speedy recovery to Pauline.
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04-03-11
I awoke to another beautiful day today and after breakfast Carl went over to the Creativity Center to turn on the water. However, he did not come back for a long time so apparently there was no victory celebration water dance. At lunch time he said he has to tear the walls out for both showers and completely replace all the pipes. Oh well a stitch in time would have saved nine.
After doing some inside chores I got out and worked in the garden for almost 3 hours filling the big planters with all the new goodies purchased yesterday and by the time I got down to my 10 year old Mediterranean herb gardens I almost fainted. Gloria, who does a great job on most everything apparently did not understand yesterday’s directions and two 25 x 3 feet beds of herbs were completely bare of every weed and every perennial herb. Zip, da nada, nothing. I don’t know if she cut them down to the ground leaving the tap roots or pulled them all out. I had to come in and have a glass of champagne after that discovery at 11:30 am! The lesson learned is not to leave the hired help and go off to run errands.
Needless to say what is done is done. Carl asked if I could plant new ones. Sure I can, but it cost $500.00 to buy the plants and gravel and create the old ones correctly 10 years ago and these had become established herb beds. Plus I was 10 years younger.
However, my little farming challenges are nothing compared to Rosie and Sam’s with all their critters being born and kicking off and a myriad of trials and tribulations of their Waldhof farm.
George and Barbara arrived home about 4 pm from their 6 weeks in FL and came over to pick up their mail about 4:30 pm. It got to be about 75 degrees today so we all sat outside in the screened in patio for the first time this year. The winds have been very strong this past week and George lost his old, but no longer needed TV antenna on his house and we looked down at Fred’s old house tonight to discover that big outhouse he built in 1997 had been blown over and moved across our neighbor’s lawn. When that happened I do not know, but it has been a very windy week.
George said one day in FL it became so windy that it completely took his awning off his motor home in less than a minute before anyone could wind it back up.
04-02-11
Gloria came today to work in the gardens for 5 hours and she did a good job planting the new carpet roses, all the new gladiolus bulbs and general winter clean up. We pre-paid her and left her to do her thing as she is reliable and we wanted to leave early to head out to run our errands. When we returned all the work was done.
Today was a beautiful, bright blue sky day with picture perfect clouds and it got to be about 66 degrees in Bowling Green. We had lunch at the Olive Garden and then ran a lot of errands. We picked up our art from the USBank Celebration of the Arts Exhibition where one of my paintings, The Flower Child, had been sold. I have another exhibition coming up in about 2 weeks for the annual Women in the Arts.
The countryside is ablaze with spring. The red bud trees are coming out and just about every other flowering tree is in full bloom. The other trees are leafing out. Our back garden floors are covered with violets and hundreds of daffodils, grape hyacinths, regular hyacinths and tulips are all over the place. The forsythia is just starting to go by. Our roses are starting to have all kinds of shoots and our lilies are starting to shoot up all over the place.
I came across all kinds of perennial plants at Lowe’s today marked down from $2.00 to 25 cents each so I will be busy tomorrow morning filling in the bare spots and other empty containers since I bought $35.20 worth of them. Last week I thought I got a bargain when I got them for 50 Cents each and bought about $40.00 worth of them. Neither times were the plants anything but healthy and happy looking ones and both times were great bargains. There were some really excellent bargains on forsythia on the back clearance rack at only $5.00 each if someone needed them. There were other tempting things, but I restrained myself making it a habit to only spend the amount of cash I carry with me.
Carl goes back into the Creativity Center tomorrow and turns the water back on for the final acid test after a week of pipe replacement. Hopefully he will not find any other broken pipes and he can get on to building the new waist high planters I am waiting for. Plus I want to order the wood to have him put new siding on the well house. I want to have it look exactly like the waist high planters. It was built about 11 years ago and is the sides are painted blue and are quite seedy looking now. Plus we have one more outside project to do soon as we want to make a large roadside garbage bin holder for George for his upcoming birthday since his big can is always on its side in the swale whether it is full or empty and the bin holders Carl makes keeps it nice plus it seems the garbage pickup guys treat the bins better where there is a holder.
Come some time next week I will go into town early and catch our plumbing guy at his favorite breakfast watering hole since that is easier than trying to get him on his cell phone and make arrangements for him to come out with his back hoe equipment and dig up the ground and put in permanent shutoffs for the Creativity Center and for Glynis’ home. We have only one for our house and all the other buildings are connected to the same incoming water source but we cannot individually control them. I think George is going to want him to come and do the same for his house and it can all be done at the same time. That will make it so much easier for us next year. Plus we will drain the Creativity Center at the end of each Oct. and not put the water back on until April. We can still use the place, but they will just have to use the potty etc in the Stained Glass Studio and should we have students who want to stay overnight I will put them up in the local motel.
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