Zinnias and Tortoises

 I planted a lot of flowers this summer. Like a lot. I wanted to see blooms all summer so I tilled up the ground right out back near the fire pit and put down about a ton of zinnia seed in four giant rows. Once they were around 6 inches tall I mulched the heck out of them with old horse hay and then they took off. By the end of the summer some of them were as tall as me.

Throughout the summer I'd go out and snip off dried blooms and drop them into a big paper bag. I think I have 6 big bags of my favorite blooms to collect seeds off of for next summer. Late winter I'll pull the dried petals and collect the seeds.

I put down several pounds of clover seed in the outdoor tortoise pen and the tortoises are loving it. We also decided to get going on building them an outdoor tortoise house. It's been on the to-do list for a couple of years and it's nice to get something started. It's an 8X8 shed that will be insulated well.

Happy Birthday Max!

 Max turned 14 years old today! I'm super proud of the kid and can't wait to see what life brings him. He really wants to learn how to play the drums so we found a nice vintage set on marketplace and I hope to hear lots of drumming in the future from the basement. Love this kid!

Still loves Billy Idol (as do I!).

Blackberries No More

Many years ago I picked up two or three sad little clearance blackberry bushes from Lowes. I planted them near the back of the property and after a few years we were swimming in blackberries. I picked gallons of them each summer. It was awesome. Then a few years ago we had some horrendously cold weather for a couple of weeks in February which seemed to kill them off...kind of. They were mostly dead but not entirely dead so a few canes would pop up amongst this giant bramble the size of a semi-truck. It looked horrible. Then all the weeds started popping through along with trees and something had to be done. 

So we rented a massive skid steer with a brush hog attachment that went on the front. Sean mowed it all down in less than an hour. It would have easily taken us an entire weekend if not longer to clear it with the chainsaw. I think it cost just a little over $200 to rent the unit for 4 hours. Well worth it!

First Day

First day of school for my junior and eighth grader. Time is flying! 

Arch Nemesis

 I never knew I could hate something quite like I hate the little turd of an armadillo that lives in our yard. He wakes up each evening and tries to figure out how to piss me off for the following day. Usually it involves using his tiny cone shaped nose to root around for grubs right under anything freshly planted. He'll leave piles of uprooted hostas in his wake that I shuffle around replanting each morning. I find it absolutely infuriating. 

I started doing research on how to catch the little turd and found that they can be caught with live traps but it's difficult because you can't bait a live trap. They have to just be "funneled" into them using boards. Once an armadillo finds a wall it will travel down that wall so this works for getting them into cages, in theory. 

I found his lair out in one of the perennial beds. A giant basketball sized opening gave it away. So during the day I took several old boards and surrounded it and put the live trap as the only opening. It took two days but I finally found him curled up sleeping in the live trap one morning. I was ecstatic, even doing a little dance. 

I put him and his cage in the back of my truck and covered him with an old towel and we went for a nice 20 minute drive south where I found a nice dirt road on a stretch with no farms or house and lots of trees and a stream. I told him it's a much nicer place to live and good luck. He scurried off and I felt a relief that perhaps my gardening days would be more peaceful.

Or so I though. Two days later more hostas strewn about. No I don't think the original armadillo made his way back, I do think there was more than one. So now I have to go about figuring out how to catch another one. I'm nearing the point of having Sean sit outside in a chair with a rifle but I hate the idea of killing one. They are kind of cute in a strange way. My sister said they looked like a pig in a shell. 

Oh well.

VBS

 I try to help out each year with vacation bible school at our church. My role has gotten smaller over the years which I'm fine with. I used to teach the arts and crafts and it was a big job and now I take pictures for the daily slide show that they show the kids at the end of day. It's fun and much less stressful. This year they asked if my kids would want to have small jobs as well and they agreed. Max got to be the puppet that interacted with the leader who did the songs  morning. They had a little skit each day. He did a fantastic job and really got out of his shell while voicing "Mickey" in a high pitched voice. It was fun and the kids got into it as did the adults that were blown away that Max was the puppet. 

Wesley helped out in the audio/visual booth. He make sure all the mics were on and at the right volume and made sure the correct slides were up on the screen. He did a great job!

 

The theme was space and I couldn't resist adding these pictures. Crazy kids!

 

Happy Birthday Wesley!

Wesley turned 16 today! He's a big kid now and I'm super proud of him. He's a great student, has some good friends and does all sorts of activities at school. I can't wait to see where he goes in life. 

He and his friends Matt, Teddy, Tyson and Alex went golfing at a new venue in town where you whack golf balls off a ledge for an hour while hanging out. It looked fun!

 I got his school pictures in and couldn't help but do a comparison with his kindergarten picture vs his junior year picture. 

This and That

Sean found a new project that he's pretty excited about. It's a Torro Dingo with a blown motor. He got it pretty cheap and plans to gut it and turn it into an electric Dingo. I know I'd use the heck out of it cleaning animal pens outside.

 

It was a beautiful day so we took the kids to the nature center about an hour away. It's really a pretty place for a hike and we all enjoy it.

I tried a new vine this year called Thunbergia or Black Eyed Susan vine. I planted four little seeds and have this six foot tall vine. I'm sure it would cover the house if given the opportunity. I wish it would have bloomed more but I'll try it again next year in a different location.

I find Kevin to be very photogenic. He likes to lounge around sleep in a sorts of different positions. Kevin just turned three years old.

It seemed to get hot really fast this summer...quicker than normal. Which made us look for fun things to do inside rather than outdoors. We hadn't been to a local museum in a few years so we loaded up and spent the day inside.

I'm just throwing this in here because it made me laugh. Sean was clearing out some projects and sold a skid steer that he decided he didn't want to work on. Our skid steer didn't have enough lifting power to load the project skid steer onto the customers trailer so the customer (who looked like Santa) jumped on the back to give it more weight. It worked! They got it loaded and no Santa's were harmed.

I added a small water feature up by our front door since I was missing the sound of running water after we filled in the old koi pond. I added a couple of small goldfish to eat any mosquito larvae and a water lilly. One day I was diving home and stopped short after spotting a heron hunting in my tiny water garden. Pretty sure it got my two goldfish....darn heron. 

I'm still quite obsessed with hostas and am in the process of adding quite a few more to the gardens this summer. I've run out of shade around the house so I've decided to create a long hosta garden out in the walnut grove. Luckily its not all fenced in for the goats so I've got at least one row to plant in. Have I mentioned I love hostas?