Slowly, slowly.......

First let me wish all you Mothers out there a very Happy Mother's Day!  Mine as usual was very quite.  I got my usual calls from both our son and daughter and our oldest granddaughter also called.

The early morning was cloudy and breezy and I worked outside almost three hours.

So far I have planted lettuce,  Chinese Cabbage(three kinds),  spinach, two kinds of Asian eggplants (the long skinny ones purple and lavender striped), potatoes that are up about a foot tall, all the tomato plants (I have  lost track of how many), two kinds of sweet peppers and two varieties of pole beans.  I also broke  my rule on sweet potatoes and planted 6 Beauregard's in a short row by the  east end of the garden.

This is the month for iris and early clematis.

I was afraid  I had lost all of these pretty pale blue or lavender ones but these survived on the north side of the miscanthus.  I call it Barb's iris after one of my sweet neighbors who died shortly after telling  me to please come get some. Sure glad  I did.

My one red iris that I have been planning to move  for 3 years now...............

I enlarged this because I just noticed the alba roses are beginning to bloom (the pink in the background) and I hadn't even noticed....I did smell something wonderful but thought it was the locust tree that is blooming.  Note I have just cleaned  the front of the bed.......I am moving slowly along.  The iris is Fragrant Lavender and smells like  grape soda.

  I am finally braving a photo of me at work.  I wish I could Photoshop about 50 more pounds  off but alas it is much harder than that!  Working on that too.

This and That On the Farm

We have been having some abnormally hot,  windy and dry weather here;  does not bode well for the season ahead.

I am not feeling very ambitious this morning but I did manage a walkabout in the yard and took photos.  I will try to keep  them in order of the walk so you can get an idea of the layout of things, if not,  I hope you just enjoy seeing my little domain.

Beginning with the allee  in front of the house: This was created some years ago when an arborist told me the trees along the street were mostly hollow and would be dead  at some point and I should start new ones.  I did and it is a mix of threes and  shrubs with a flower plant or two thrown in.

Have I mentioned  we are having the screened porch enclosed as a sun room?  We are already enjoying it more than the screened version. Another reason is the cats (I raised the mama and her  4 babies out their) completely destroyed the screening.

This shows how it will look eventually.

The work on the sun room is going at the normal, work one day, don't work for two weeks, rate.

This is about midway through allee in front of new office.

We are walking west now at the corner of the front of the house heading around it. To the right is the earth  berm at the foundation  where I have started a hosta bed for ground cover along  with the vinca major vine.  I think most of the hostas survived the  winter.

Okay, enough of that.

I have been working outside part of each  day trying to catch up.  It is going very slowly  but I am making progress.

More about that in another post.

Here is a teaser picture:

How many kittens are there?  It is not that we didn't have enough cats to begin with....I  think 7 last count....before these surprised us!

Catch Up Time Again.

It is now 6:07 in the morning.  Been missing from the blog for a while.  Lots happening on the farm in the Ozarks.

First, the weather has settled in and it is going from very cool spring to summer temperatures....up to 80° with the accompanying severe storms in  some areas.  We have escaped so far and we are grateful.  We have been lucky to receive almost an inch of rain per  week.

The most wonderful  news  is my dear Sis and her husband from  Iowa came for a two-day visit!  I was shocked when she called told me their plans.  For a couple of years now she has told us they wouldn't be traveling this far again.  It is a 6-hour trip. 

We had the best visit.  She is a cook (as I have mentioned) and a gardener.  One day we cooked a new chicken recipe together; never cooked a meal together before and one morning as we were touring the yard, she said "get me a pair of gloves and get the tools together.  Let's clean a flower bed!"  I tried to talk her out of it but she persisted.  We completely cleaned the Kerria Bed.  She has severe macular degeneration and gardens (weeds) mostly by touch.  What  a picture we made:  her crawling around on her knees and me chopping with a hoe (I can't bend down because of my right knee).  It reminded me of pictures of Grandma and her sisters all garbed up to go gooseberry picking in the wilds of the Ozarks (a bluff above the James River if I remember correctly) so I had Max take some 'candid'  photos of us.  What a laugh.  I sent copes to her and  threatened her life if they ever appeared on Facebook..........she promised me.  We both treasure them.  I was wearing a very loose gardening apron (which I  may never don again!) and the wind  was blowing very strongly.  I look like a gray haired 9-month pregnant old lady.

Farm

Same  old; same old.  Grass is finally growing with the warmer temperatures.  We have had to graze  some hay fields but at least we didn't have to buy anymore of the very expensive hay.

Here are the cows we keep up close in the west lot:  The Jersey is my temporarily retired milk cow and the horned one is her daughter.  Not sure if the darker red one is Willow my permanently retired milk cow who hates me.  The black heifer's heritage escapes me  at the moment.

Food

My cooking has been uninspired except  for the honey-garlic chicken recipe from Facebook or Pinterest (not sure which) that Sis wanted to try.  Everyone liked it a lot except for my DH who isn't very open to new dishes (to say the least).  Yesterday was bread baking day (you know I love those days).  This was a mixed recipe.  I had about a cup and a half of white wheat flour and oatmeal flakes.  I ground this fine using the food processor and then used a mix of bread flour and AP flour, a mix of olive oil and butter, honey for the sweetening. and it turned out nicely.  It toasted well which is a prerequisite for me.