all a twitter

I have neglected y'all here in blogland.  I hope you'll accept my apologies.

We're all a twitter, here in Rogers Country, because we are anticipating the forthcoming honor of a visitation from my beloved Mom.

O.k., that picture's a few years old, but it's cute, so here it is.

In the days and weeks up 'til now, i have taken notice of the surprising percentage of my friends who don't have their mothers on this earth anymore...reason to be even more grateful for the wonderful blessing of my mom.

And now that i'm already crying, all early in the morning, i'll just tell you that i'm picking her up from the airport this afternoon.

And i can't wait.

Maybe i'll get an updated picture.

Duck Miracles

I've posted some half blurry pictures of my beautiful super-fast growing ducklings.  I love these ducks! I find that i look forward in the evening to rushing home so i can watch them swim and play.  They're therapy for me.  

But that's not why i got them, remember.  I got them so that they could make little babies for us to eat.  That's the long and the short of it.

Well, now that they're about 8-10 weeks old (they're not all the same age), i've been thinking that i should be able to start telling who's a boy and who's a girl.  

But they all seemed to look the same.

This morning, i started doing some reading and found that at this age, the best sign of gender is size.  "They" say that the boys will be much much bigger.  

Hmmm.

So, this morning, when i should have been getting ready for work, eating breakfast, making a lunch, putting on make-up, drying my hair...

...i was in the coop instead.  Eyeballing ducks, early in the morning.

And i finally learned something.  I looked at their feet.  Their feet have identified them from the beginning.  Each has different coloring.

I discovered that the duck foot that used to be the smallest is now about twice the size of the other ducks' feet.  Twice the size.  That's the indicator.

 Do you know what that means?  It means one boy, and three girls.  A perfect breeding group.  Extremely pleased doesn't even touch how happy i am about this.  :)

House Bugs

I told you about my husband's experience with the giant moth a couple weeks ago.

Well, the other day, another giant moth somehow made it into our house and set up residence on our kitchen wall.  He/she has been there for a couple of days now.  I wonder how long he'll just sit there?

Anyway, he's beautiful.  And he holds still for me to take pictures.  So i took lots of them.

He's also about the same color green that i've been thinking about painting my walls.

Isn't he gorgeous?  Look at that furry back!  

 And these crazy feather antenna things!

 I've decided he can stay as long he doesn't start eating my clothes or having babies in my coffee cups.

I also have several mosquito hawks in the bathroom, keeping an eye on the mosquito population.

But they don't hold still for pictures as well, and they're not as pretty.

God lessons from becoming a farmer

Learning to be a farmer has been, and still is, one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.  I'm definitely still just a wannabe farmer, but as i learn and grow in experiences, i learn more about God and have a deeper understanding and experience of life in general.

Last night, i had to make the decision to end the life of a sick chicken.

This is definitely not the first time, but i remember the first time.

I think that making choices about the lives of your livestock must be the most challenging part about being a farmer.  A farmer values the lives of his animals.  Yet he has to make decisions about their lives, almost as if the are commodities, which they also are.

Last night, i found that the sadness in my heart and the tears on my face were pretty much the same as the very first time that i finally came to the conclusion that my charge's suffering should be ended.  This time, the decision making process was much easier, because i knew my options, and i knew expected outcomes of the ailments involved.  But the tears were the same.  A tiny beautiful feathered life had to end, for her own sake.

This made me think about God.  Now this might be a leap, but i'm going to say it anyway.

I've heard argue against the goodness of God based on decisions He is recorded to have made, in which people were punished for their sin, or even entire people groups were ended, at God's direction.  How could a good God claim to love us and do that?
Maybe, just maybe, it was a matter of knowing the outcome of doing differently.  Maybe because He's sovereign and all-knowing, He knew that He had to do one seemingly horrible thing in order to prevent some future suffering of His people.  I don't think the pain was any less for God to make those decisions.  I think it broke His heart.  But He has the wisdom to make the best decision.

It makes me trust God even more.  Even when things in my life may not seem, at first appearance, to reflect the actions of a loving God, He knows so much better than me, and He does love me, and so i just must trust Him.

Shaping Up

This weekend, i made a major step in my goal to build a keyhole garden.  I made an outline, sort of the shape of a keyhole.

Sort of.

The next step is to line all the sides with cardboard.  Cardboard that has been sitting on my porch and that my husband is very happy is no longer sitting on my porch.  The thing is, lining a vertical area with cardboard is a LITTLE harder than it sounded at first.  I had to get really thoughtful and creative about making flimsy thick paper go vertical against a flimsy wire support, but i managed it sort of.

Sort of.

Also, the neat little picture/diagram that i am using as my guide http://www.debtolman.com/keyhole.pdf is definitely not happening here.  It's quite a bit more chaotic in my version, but i have a feeling that the worms and the vegetables will like it just the same.  At least that's what i'm hoping for.

At the end of the weekend, my beginning garden consists of cardboard, phone books, a pile of weeds that i pulled up from our expertly manicured yard, shredded paper i got from work, pruned limbs from oak and sweet gum trees, dried fallen limbs from the yard, and a couple of old t-shirts.  That's right.  You want recycle.  I got your recycle right here.

Sadly, after all that, my garden is less than half full, and i have a lot of more gathering of compostable materials before i plant anything fruitful.

One step at a time.      

One small step...

Recently, i had almost come to the conclusion that the nation of China had a worldwide corner on the making of socks.  I have been looking and looking for a decent pair of socks that weren't made in China.  Oh woe is me.  Nothing.

Until yesterday,  miraculously, i ran across one package of nice black socks made in the USA (i dared not dream it) by No Nonsense!

Today, i went to their website, and i found a lot of words about supporting workers in America and giving to American and .... ideas this country girl can get behind.

So here i am, encouraging you, to buy from No Nonsense, a firmly established company that is making decisions to help our country, instead of only their profit margin.  I'd like it very much if they accomplished both and kept employing more and more Americans, wouldn't you?

Getting Started on becoming a gardener

Sometimes, if i'm smart, on my way home from work, i think about what i want to get done in the couple of hours i have before the bed begins to call my name.  And in the few minutes i have before the dark sets in.

Tonight i was making a list in my head and out loud, which is the same if you're in a car by yourself.

• check on the birds
• re-fill the duck pool
• collect the eggs
• have a baked potato for dinner
• feed the kitty
• get the rebar out of the car

I have rebar in the floor board of my back seat because we bought it with an idea for how to frame up my key hole garden.  But i'm getting to that.

I got home at 6:02, breathed for a very brief moment before my hubby called to say he would be extra late tonight.

• checked on the birds, all accounted for
• collected the eggs.  two?  what do you think this is?
• fed the kitty...or attempted to feed the kitty food he didn't want to eat
• put a potato in the microwave
• started the water running in the duck pool
• started on rebar

But i couldn't just get it out of the car.  Images of key hole gardens have been dancing in my head for much too long to just get the rebar out of the car.

So lemme show you what i'm up to.

So here's the basic idea.

I'm going create a raised bed garden (don't tune me out yet) that is a six foot round diameter, with a one foot diameter compost basket in the center, and a small piece of pie cut out from one side, to the compost basket, to allow shorties like me to put compost in the compost basket.  The round will be (roughly) four feet high in the middle at the edge of the compost basket, and three feet high on the edges, so there's a slope.

Further the idea is to create walls with something and then line them with cardboard and then fill with various compostable materials.  This is meant to be a cheap garden.  Not an expensive one.  And it is meant to weather both drought and flood.  Or so i'm told.  This particular brand of key hole garden is made popular by a lady named Deb Tolman.  You might like to check out her ideas.

A couple of weeks ago, i got a little stack of cardboard from my local Family Dollar, who, when i explained i didn't need good boxes, just cardboard, was very happy to let me take their trash.  I laid out the makings of 3 big boxes and taped them together to create a big enough canvas to draw my six foot circle on.  Here it is now.  Sorry, the picture's pretty crumby.  But you can kind of see the lines.  Sort of.  Look closely.

Tonight, i used the rebar to outline my circles, and i placed my compost basket in the middle.  Like so.

Next is to secure the wire to the outside border and then find a way to make it strong enough to hold all the stuff i'm going to put in it.  Preferably, i will find free cinder blocks or some such.  100 free cinder blocks would be great!

The beginnings of a dream, such as it is.  I had to stop building as the night was growing darker, the mosquitoes more bird-like, and the supplies less plentiful.

Now for a baked potato.

Moth Whisperer

I am often awed when i see the way things in nature seem drawn to my husband.

The other night, my hubby and i were standing outside in the beautiful evening air, chatting about whatever, when i heard a strange disturbance in the bushes.  When i investigated, i discovered a GIANT grey moth fluttering like crazy along the ground. Every time i tried to get near it to take a picture, it would flutter even more, and try to get away.  So i backed off, and the moth made a bee-line  moth-line along the ground for hubby's foot.  It crawled onto his shoe and proceeded up his pant leg, up his shirt, all the way up his neck, and then settled in behind his ear, where it finally got still enough for me to take a decent picture....or five.

And then, it pooped.  And hubby helped it go some place else.