The killer roses

That's how we refer to these roses because walking through the garden gate can often be a treacherous endeavor. This is a "New Dawn" in all it's glory. It covers the entrance arbor to the garden and about twice a year we have to hack it back severely to be able to get through the gate! I love roses, but I'm just too lazy to grow the high maintenance kind. I only grow a few climbers and some of the new Knockout roses. I go for low (as in NO) maintenance types.

When we first moved here, the garden area was a big flat place where the elderly owners had planted for many, many years. The soil was not so great. When I decided to put in raised beds, I spent weeks digging out the aisle ways, heaping the soil into beds and then adding composted bedding from the sheep pens and the chicken house. Now the soil is almost too good. Not only does it grow great vegetables, but the weeds grow fast and big too. Since I'm trying to raise plants as naturally as possible, I don't use herbicides on the raised beds and have had to come up with a method for controlling the weeds without spending every waking moment out there weeding. Right now I'm putting layers of newspaper down around the plants and then mulching heavily with straw. This seems to do a better job than anything else I've tried. When I started planting this year, there were a few beds that still had the coverings from last year and NO weeds at all. I once read that every time you turn the soil over, you expose more weed seeds. Disturbing the soil as little as possible supposedly gives less weeds to deal with and this method seems to accomplish that. Every year my husband tries to talk me into letting him get in there with the tractor to flatten the raised beds and plow the whole thing up. His arguing point is that it will be much easier to keep the weeds in check if we can just run the rototiller between the rows. It's such a man thing to want to use a big machines to accomplish a task instead of doing it by hand!

I don't know what variety this rose it, but I just love the color. And it must be hardy or it wouldn't still be here!

A star is born

I'm going to indulge in some grandmotherly bragging this morning. Last night my son Chris and I went to see his daughter, Brooke, perform in "Beauty and the Beast". Brooke is 11 years old now and it's no surprise to any of us who know and love her, that she has a real flair for drama. She was wonderful (if I do say so myself) in the part of a "Silly Girl" and also did a bang up job as the knife in the flatware ensemble (you have to know the story to understand all that!) She danced and sang and, best of all, seemed to be having a great time while she was on stage. I'm continually amazed at how confident my grandchildren are, whether they are performing in music recitals, acting in plays or playing sports. I know for a fact that I was not that confident at their ages (and probably, truth be told, I am still not that confident). Anyway, it was great fun seeing Brooke perform and I'm so proud of her.

Yesterday was the first time in ages I have been away from the farm from morning until late at night and when I got in last night, it appeared that things had fallen apart while I was gone. My husband was dealing with a really sick ewe, having trouble with the bottle babies and thought there was a chicken missing. After putting in a very long day making house-calls, he was pretty frustrated with all the problems facing him when he came home. This sort of thing presents an interesting dilemma and we talk about it fairly often. We both love our animals, but sometimes we just need a break from the routine. It is so difficult to find someone to farm sit, or even do feeding chores to free us occasionally. We have mostly depended on my sons and Mike's son to help us out at various times, but they all have busy, complicated lives themselves these days, so that is not the answer. How do other people with livestock go about finding competent people to help out once in a while? If anyone has the answer to that question, I'd love to hear it!

My goal for the coming weekend is to get caught up on the mowing around here. The yard around the farmhouse is going to require a hay baler if I don't get it mowed soon! I hope you have good weather and easy chores wherever you happen to be.

The one and only

Yes, that little chick with Mrs. Dandy is the one and only. She started out with three healthy chicks and now we are down to one. I'm doing my best to keep them safe. I have had them in the dog kennel and somehow the chick gets out every day. So then, of course, Mrs. Dandy gets frantic and flies over the top of the kennel. Every night I put them back in and every day they get out again. Mrs. Dandy is ferocious about keeping the other animals away from the chick, but let's face it, we are dealing with a pea(fowl) sized brain here, so we'll just have to hope for the best.

(And, yes, I am embarrassed to admit that these two peafowl sized brains are figuring out how to outsmart me by escaping from the pen every day!)

Nap time

We've had such gorgeous weather this week. Bright, sunshiny days and cool nights. The grass in the pastures has grown at least a foot. All the creatures around here have been up and out early for grazing, but when mid-day comes, everyone looks for a shady spot and settles in for a little rest-period. Come late afternoon, everyone is up eating grass as fast as they can cram it in! This is the best part of summer, I think. Everything is green and growing and the temperature is just about right. Once the heat and humidity sets in (and Kentucky does a bang-up job with that), we'll all want to stay in the shade all day.You might have noticed in that first picture, poor, sad Pippi is not taking a nap. She's heartbroken to be separated from her mother, Strawberry (who is seen cooling her heels with the alpaca boys). It's been a tough week for Pippi. I don't think the Farmer's Almanac knew what they were talking about this time because she doesn't seem any less upset than she did on the first day of separation. I know eventually she will stop stressing, but it sure is hard to watch.