Weeding June 17, 2015 and Quail Pictures.

All this wonderful rain has make the weeds grow.

Picture number 1.   This is on the right side of the pile of rocks close to the garden.

Picture number 2.   This in on the left side of the rocks close to the grass.

This spot at the edge of the asparagus and parsley had turned into a never ending battle.  It is mostly grass that spreads from rhizomes under the ground.

Picture number 4.   Not so bad here.  I think this is a good place to start.

Another place that isn't so bad.  I need to take more pictures so you can see how large the area actually is.

I used the hula hoe on every part of the yard I weeded.  I'm thinking that is is the equivalent of vacuuming the carpets in my entire house with the nozzle used for cleaning cracks and crevices.

 

Got them all hoed out.  Well maybe not.  Looks like more right where the hula hoe marks are. The areas hoed with the shadow of the mail box and glass door is the lowest area in our yard, so the weeds there got extra water.

Well I got the ones in the picture above now.  All the weeds are raked into a pile.  Did I miss these or did they grow in just a few minutes.  Okay time to hula hoe again.  This is right in back of the trailer.

Okay.  Hoed and raked again.  Really there are more?  This is worse than vacuuming the entire house with the crack and crevice nozzle.

Well I guess the third time is a charm.  Here are the weeds and some rocks from the first two pictures.

They are even growing in the cracks of the patio.  Well these got sprayed with vinegar.

I went outside and took pictures of the weed areas showing larger views.

 Here is a larger view of the area from picture number 4.

This is from the fence to the trailer.  You can see the trailer wheels in some of the above pictures.  You can also see the edge of the blue barrel that is also in picture number four which is not the same blue barrels as in the above picture.  LOL. Are you confused yet?  Maybe Hubby will take a picture from the roof. A good aerial view would explain it all.

We should really move this trailer back to the corner it belongs. We parked it here on May 16. Actually I'm kind of liking it where it is.  Sometime between 5 and 6:30 every morning there has been a cat fight under or in front of the trailer for the last several months.  That is until we used the trailer and didn't put it back.  I don't know were they are fighting now, but I am thrilled not to have that as my alarm clock now.

 Here is a picture from the left side of the trailer.  You can really see the low spot now.

Can you see all the green spots.  This is just 9 days later.  I still haven't cleaned up other piles of weeds and rocks.  It looks like it is time to start again.

 Picture number 16.   Old dead weeds waiting to be cleaned up and lots of new green weeds growing.

 Another mess of dead weeds, rocks, grapevine pieces, and cat poop to clean up.

This area of new weeds is part of the area I cleaned to make the pile in picture number 16.  More weeds are here too.

So here is why I really went outside and took more pictures of the yard.  As I was posting pictures and writing I looked out the window into my garden and saw the quail at work.
Here they are.

They moved before I got the picture taken from the window.  You can see daddy at the corner of the bed with the gray bucket and the black bucket?

Cropped the picture.  Can you find mommy quail?

Cropped it again.  Can you see here now?  She is between the buckets under the screen.

See what she did?  The first hole is on the left front side of the black bucket.  She was just starting to scrape the ground on the back left side of the gray bucket when I went outside and scared them out of the garden.  I am holding the screen up to take this picture.  When that was done I shifted the buckets over the plants and placed the screen flat on the ground and up tight against the squash plant to make it fit.

Here is where they went when I came outside.  They casually walked away like they were on a stroll and not fleeing the scene of a destruction mission.  Hubby was hoping the bowl she made was to lay eggs in.
Oh no.  I'm glad they hide their eggs.  I would be giving them away as food.  I don't want more garden wreckers in training being flaunted before me.  LOL.


I'll tell you about the buckets in the next post.  Hopefully it will be this weekend.

Garden and Yard Updates 7-20-14

Here are pictures of what is happening in my garden and yard.

The Champion radishes I planted Thursday are starting to germinate.

Little Freckles Lettuce planted the same day is starting to germinate also.

The strawberry plants are are going to survive the transplant are growing now.

This group has a lot of runners.  I am happy to see them.  On some of the runners I put dirt over the stem, just behind the new plant, so the runner will stay in place and the new plant will root.

I didn't put cages around my tomatoes, so you have to look around in the plants.  I found a few Sun Sugar tomatoes today.  Sun Sugar are the sweetest tomatoes I have ever eaten.

More are in the tomato plant jungle.

Even more hiding.

More on the last side.  It is too bad that Sun Sugar tomatoes are a hybrid.

 This fatty is heading to his summer home.

Under this giant grapevine is the summer home.  It is cool, big, and comes with food.  The baby quail have a hard time getting up over the cement block.

Lots of orange bell peppers in the making.  I picked off all of the flowers until the plants got bigger this year.

Here they are from the other side of the plant.

These are Red Hot Cherry.  One of Hubby's choices.  He likes hot peppers.  There are a few round green balls in there.

Another hot pepper he chose.  These are Mucho Nacho Jalapeno peppers.  These are hard to see too.  Mostly they are in the center.

My Soapwort is starting to bloom.  I will have to make some soap from it.  I looked on-line for directions and it looks easy enough to do.

This is the bed where the squirrel ate all of the Grape Hyacinthe.  All of the Morning Glories growing here are seeds that dropped last year.

If the middle of the Morning Glories is a We Be Little pumpkin plant.  I didn't know flowers would be coming up when I planted the pumpkin there.

This is the view out of my kitchen window.  I enjoy doing dishes when I can look out at my view.  This is slightly to the left.

Looking almost straight out the kitchen window.

Looking slightly to the right out the kitchen window.

More on Fighting the Critters

Here are the strawberries covered with netting.  One gallon pots partly filled with soil are at the outside edged and in the center of the strawberries to hold the netting up high enough to keep the birds out.  Rocks are along the edges to hold the netting down.

Here is an overall picture of the garden.  Most everything is covered with something to keep the birds out.

This is the beets and lettuce.  The front half is the lettuce that was planted almost 2 weeks ago.

This is the spinach planted the same time as the lettuce that the birds ate.  There were only two screens at that time and they got in between them.  Replanted the spinach about a week ago.

The quail are digging holes around this pumpkin plant that is never going to get big enough to produce a pumpkin.  The plant was partly out of the ground so now there is a broken pallet and rocks around it.

The left side of the tomatoes and tomatillas have rocks between them.  The birds were making holes and the water wasn't staying in the wells around the plants.

 Here is the right side of the same bed as above.

 This bed has the pallets on it to keep the cat out of it.  Soon my garlic will be planted here.

 Mixed lettuce and Mesclun covered with screen.  The pallet is covering the unplanted edge of this bed and helping to hold the screen off of the plants.  Bird protection again.

Here are the Brussels sprouts and the broccoli that is bagged to save its seeds.  Pallets to keep the birds out.  The screen is over the garlic that some critter pulled a few out of the ground and ate a bite out of the tops of the bulbs.

Pallets covering the compost buckets to keep the cat from using it as a bathroom.  There is a tomato plant growing in one of the compost buckets.  A volunteer.

I have been looking for this copper for several year.  It was something my dad had leftover from his construction days.  I have heard that squash bugs don't like to walk over copper.  I tried putting pennies around my squash plants in the past, but it didn't seem to do any good.  This is about 3 inches wide and seems do be doing the trick.  I found one squash bug on the outside edge of one of the plants since the copper has been in place.  I did check for bugs daily and used a pair of pliers to pick them off and squeeze them with.  I also scraped off all eggs I found.  Now I check every 3 or 4 days and have only found that one.

Another squash plant with copper under it.  This is supposed to be a year with an abundance of squash bugs.  At least that is what I heard from the manager of one of the local nurseries.

Am I seeing things?  A critter that can stay!  Something must be wrong.  I guess this Praying Mantis doesn't know this garden has been the home for unwanted guests this year.  He stays in with the beets.  This is the second time I have watered and chased him up onto the screen.  Welcome Praying Mantis!

BACK TO THE UNWANTED GUESTS:

I have been spraying all the soil with white vinegar every two or three days.  It has been keeping the cat away fairly well.  It takes 2 quarts to get enough of the vinegar smell to do the job.  I have to spray it heavier in the more sandy areas.  This cat is determined to use my yard and keeps trying new places to use as a litter box.  I am determined to keep it away.  I WILL WIN!

The cat finally has no place to go to the bathroom under the trees.  We have bought five loads of  crushed rock and hauled about 5 or 6 load of river rock from Cindy's yard.  I can't thank Cindy enough for all of the rock.  We can only haul 1/2 yard of rock each trip.  Almost done.  Still need one more load of crushed rock and one or two more loads of river rock.

 Another view of the rock under the trees.  On the left edge is where I have just started a border of rock.

An up close view.

I have some decorative white wire fencing that my husband tied some green plastic fencing material to.  Several years ago I used this to go around the asparagus bed for protection.  The ground is packed down fairly well, but I found where the cat had tried to go to the bathroom in the the middle of the path so I put the fencing down and separated the two things where the walkway is wide.

A close-up of the picture above.

An open area between the riverbed and the shed is now covered with chicken wire. This was the cat's first choice of places to use as a litter box.  This is where the kids like to dig and play also.  Wish I would have thought of the chicken wired months ago instead of days ago.  I have noticed the bird tracks go along the edge of the wire now.  Guess they don't like it either.

This is the cat's second favorite place to use as a litter box.  It doesn't seem to like the steep slants.  Thank goodness for something.  Still spraying the vinegar in the places not covered with wire. 

On the hill I am slowly spreading out the pine needles that fall off of our pine trees.  Someday the entire hill will have a thick layer of needles.  It keeps the cat away, but not the birds.

 Another close-up view of pine needles.

 Another area with pine needles.  Can you see the hole dug by the quail?

A close-up of the hole the quail dug to sit in.

 HERE BIRDY BIRDY BIRDY.  Just got a quail trap made Monday.  Not sure how long it will take for the quail to be willing to go in it.  I sure hope Curt wants more quail on his property!

The next project is covering the Elderberry bushes.  The birds have eaten all of them for the past 12 years.  Now it is my turn to have some.  My husband has an idea for making a cover.  The berries are on the outside edges of the plant, so just putting a net over the bushes doesn't keep the birds out.  We are going to build some kind of structure to go around the bushes and hold the netting away from the plants.

Tiny green berries are starting to form.  The birds will start eating them very soon.  They don't wait for them to turn purple.  They eat them all green.

This Sedum has very few leaves.  I don't know if the quail, dove, or both are eating this.  The Sedum in the background is dead.  I think it didn't have a chance, because it was a new transplant that was constantly having holes dug around it and the water never stayed next to the plant.

This Hens and Chicks keeps hanging on even though the birds constantly eat it.

 I hope this Hens and Chicks lives.  I finally put rock around it to keep the birds from making holes that kept the water running away from the plant.  Going to get some wire and cover the Hens and Chicks and Sedum.  Oh yeah, another project.  I'm sure I need even more!