jeebie chreesie it's hot

it's august in texas which means it's quite normal for it there to be entire weeks in the triple digits. upper triple digits. high of 105, heat index of 111. thankfully the humidity has only been in the 40% range or it would be truly miserable. everything looks like death warmed over. warmed well over.

im counting the days until fall. ive always been partial to fall - it's when my birthday is, when sulla's birthday is, when halloween is, when, at least growing up in the midwest, the weather gets crisp and it's sweater and jeans weather.

my love of fall has grown in the last 5 years of living in DFW simply because i can finally get to projects that have been utterly ignored for the last two+ months because i dont want to die from heat stroke - and folks who hire others to do their lawn care because they dont want to sweat are assholes. there i said it. plants and flowers get their second wind and it's almost like spring again. jeans and sweater weather usually comes in november, but i can wear colours darker than a deep blue without turning into a walking solar oven.

it is also back to school time which means i will have more time to do things. sad but true. this fall the plan to:

• continue to mulch the backyard. Mr. R from next door continues to give me cardboard and i also found out the local petsmart doesnt use a trash compacter and has an entire dumpster for cardboard. theyve got large thick boxes for their live fish deliveres and then the smaller flats for canned food that are perfect for laying against the fence or over gaps and along seams.
• build mini pergallas or archways for living awnings around the south and west windows come next spring.
• take out the walkway stones
• burn the piles of wood from the last storms
• weatherise and insulate the metal awning over the back of the house that makes the back porch a sweat box and not as usuable as it should be.

dirt in places you can't even imagine

i borrowed the urban homestead from the library. some of the content was stuff i already know/have, but it contained a few inspirational gems that really got me thinking about what i want to do and where i would like to go with my own sub-"urban homestead." one particularly nice underlying factor is that the authors/blog owners live in L.A., California. They are zone 10, while I am zone 8a and colder, but their ideas work for areas prone to droughts and extreme and extended heat.

They have five "essential projects."

• build a compost bin
• vermiculture - a worm compost bin
• "mulch your yard"
• build a raised bed
• build a self-watering container

I've already built my rolling compost bin and im not sure im ready for a worming bin. building a raised bed is out of my budget right now and i havent had good luck with container gardening. it's been my experience that in the summer, when most stuff looks like death anyway, you need the ground and lots of mulch to keep the soil as cool as possible. pots and containers turn into little dirt ovens regardless of constant watering. or you can shuffle them around to shadier parts during the day but that's just a pain.

While thumbing through I found their page on Lawn Facts - lawns require 2 to 4 times more water than shrubs and trees, the average home owner spends more than 40 hours mowing the lawn. Ive had my own conflicting ideas about what to do with my own 1/4 acre backyard. I want to put in native buffalo grass but then i like it in it's feral, overgrown state. Then i hit this paragraph.

Kids and dogs are often held up as reason why any decent family would keep a
lawn in their yard. The truth is...that kids love hunting for food in vegetable gardens...and playing in little pockets of wildness....Kids and dogs alike benefit from the sensory stimulation provided by permaculteral yard. A lawn is a flat void. A little jungle is a whole world to explore.

That was the sticking point. As it stands, the boys dont play much in the back yard, despite much effort on my part. It just doesnt hold their interest. They prefer going to parks where there are other kids or paved areas where they can ride bikes. In the spring it has some cooler weather weeds that die back in the hotter summer, only to then be replaced with grass burrs - horrible spikey seed that have microscopic reverse spines that hurt just as much being pulled out as they do when you step on them. All those weeds, especially the grass burrs, are a sign the soil is extremely devoid to nutrients. Even if we had money to sod it with buffalo grass, it would require truckloads of mulch and topsoil to create a medium the grass could grow on successfully.

It's one of those weird moments when all signs point to a certain outcome, but you just didnt realise it until it's given a name. I've already made the conclusion I will probably have to take a year off to build up the soil after having a less than stellar year with the summer garden and focus on vital landscaping projects. I've also been trying to kill back bermuda grass in the front of the house, a yard so small and exposed to the hot western sun, mowing is tedious to the point of utterly annoying.

So yes, I'm going to "mulch the yard." In one fell swoop I can: get rid of the useless patches of invasive grass (i dont have sidewalks but i do have devilstrips), build the soil for future garden beds, and create a surface the boys might actually play on. Who knew doing one thing would solve all those problems.

And best part, i can do it on the cheap. I'm lucky enough to live 1.2 miles from a free, constantly refreshed, pile of native and partially composted wood chips and 4 miles from a horse stable where i can get unfinished horse manure. in theory, you should never used uncomposted herbivore manure - unless it's rabbit poop and just the poop as urine in bedding will burn - because the nitrogen overload burn up plants. but if what you want to burn and kill is weeds, then it fits the bill. it's called lasagna mulching. first on is a layer of compost/composted manure, than a compostable weed barrier - newspaper, cardboard, cotton sheets or towels, then you put more layers of mulch and compostable material on top. I also live next door to a business which will give me their cardboard boxes (lower the trash bill). And one of the employees said i could borrow his pickup truck to bring in mulch. The only cost to me will be time, which i have plenty of for at least one more year, and gas.

I put this into into affect yesterday.

This is the south side of my house. Ive got a black berry in the foreground and towards the back, there is a blueberry bush with some heirloom tomato plants. You can see the patches of grass taking over and bare dirt from some spring peas that died back in the heat.

I threw down a car load of raw horse manure over a particularly pernition patch of bermuda grass and then put mulch over that.

Four hours and six or seven trips to the wood chip pile and one trip to the stables - which was only possible due to weather cooled by two days of rain and an overcast morning. Here is the finished product:

The wood chips go to the property line and it feels very pleasant to walk on the soft ground. After this breaks down some more i will probably put a week barrier down to put down more mulch and inundation of leaves that blow down the street in the fall.

holy shite, im posting something

the agrippa and sulla are taking their yearly summer trip to Poppy and Putzie's house for 2 plus weeks and i am Uberhausfrau-ing it up. yesterday i cleaned out and switched around the pantry and baking implement cabinet. i also washed the dining nook's walls as well as some of the cabinets and the outside of the fridge.

today i met a lady who will be my rabbit poop connection and made a composting barrel. now it is mid-afternoon and too friggin' hot to be outside so i need to find something inside to do. i wanted to rehang the bedroom/laundry room door, but i need to head to the hardware store to buy a chisel to imbed the hinge in the door frame.

i made a video about my compost barrel. this is my first video ive made. please excuse the amateurish nature. i tried to keep the hems, haws and ums to a minimum but i dont think i succeeded. a transcript will be up soon.

just a little update

"Spring" gardening in DFW starts in january with another push in early february and then one last big one in march. oy. ive been busy and am soooo hoping to make back the money ive already invested. Time to start picking up more horse poop again, me thinks.

I'm crossing my fingers for potatoes, salad greens, spinach and two types of carrots. Next week i start with broccoli and some other stuff i cant think of off the top of my head. I've got seeds sitting on the top of my fridge that im fretting over like a methed out mother hen. And there's still more i need to do!! AAAAHHH! Not enough hours in the day!!! And when I have them, im puttering on the interweb!!

And now that im talking more food stuff, the google ads are finally getting away from binkie and formula adverts. hurray!

dreams (or nightmares) only gardeners have

last night i had the worst dream that tobacco hornworms had started attacking my tomato plants. this late in the season! It's getting down into the 50s at night so most pests are gone (with the exception of the army worms and cabbage worms noming on my collard greens, though the later are mostly gone. ive been letting the boys pick them up and step on them.) and my tomato plants have about 10 fruits on them and are growing like crazy ever since the temperature dropped and we had several months of consistant rain. ive been telling myself i need to harvest my basil before i lose all of it to an early frost - besides, it's crowding out my broccoli - so my brain must have picked that little point to focus on.

in my dream im going out to harvest the basil and i notice the typical signs of hornworms - nubby little stumps where there used to be lush foliage. i bend over and these suckers are HUGE! the length of texas brown snakes! fat like leopard geckos! cabbage worms were like green garter snakes with nubby little feet hanging out just for a change of scenery.

so im taking the hint and making boat loads of pesto. guess what we're going to be eating a lot the rest of the year.

try doing that with miracle-gro!

another plus for organic gardening.

i spread and watered 50 pounds of hort. molasses in the front yard and now it smells like ginger snaps.

it had to come to an end

today is my last full day without sulla and agrippa. so im:

• getting stamps
• going to two libraries
• going to green mama's (i found a coupon!)
• getting a hair cut
• thrift town - for a toaster oven and shirts for sulla

last friday, husband and i went to his co-worker's house for a party thing. they just bought it and it festooned with BUTLPs (pronounced butt-lips. kinda unattractive, right? that's the point, keep reading) - Boring, Unimaginative Texas Landscape Plants - crepe myrtles, boxwoods, youpon holly, photinia. the only thing they were missing was asiatic jasmine. plus they had some lantana that's taking over. one plus is their beautiful vitex (chaste tree). it was late and there was alcohol involved (diet coke for me!) but i told them i would love to be their landscaper - i thrilled everyone with my plant knowledge. i told husband to get on them about it. maybe that could pay for agrippa's school.

topical gardening post

it's july in texas so while everything is dying around you (or at least looks like 13 shades of death) you start thinking about next year. and as gardening is a constantly evolving learning process, this is what i learned this year.

• mulch, mulch, mulch - didnt do near enough of it. the leaves from last fall and the wood chips put down from the previous owner have pretty much all but decomposed into the soil.
• fertilizer - again, didnt do near enough. besides some soil ammendments in march and watering with fish tank water and menstrual blood (yep, im that crunchy and now you all know it) i havent added much new stuff.
• compost - gotta get a better handle on composting. im hoping to get a better composting set-up if we can swing it and find a new location for it.
• dont wait until you see bugs eating your plants to get the beneficial ones - i waited until May to get preying mantids and tric wasps and by then, my greens and squash were toast
• better place for carrots - i made the mistake of putting my carrots right next to the dirt patch where sulla and agrippa play. they took to pulling them all out to see how they were growing. well, they didnt grow much.
  

another interesting developement

im outside enjoying the relatively mild june weather, reading a book about bugs to the kiddos and i read about the atlas moth and what does this moth's caterpillar eat? according to the book, ailanthus or tree of bane of my existence. but they live in the tropics and subtropics of china and india.

google also gave me tree of heaven silk moths. the scientific name is completely different though they look very similar. actually the above gal's website looks like a good resource. she's from the UK and it appears she rears her moths inside. we've got enough non-human animals in the house, im not really interested in mothing.

but, as im already on a beneficial bug kick - im anxiously waiting for my preying mantids to hatch and hope the trichogramma wasps hatched - i need to find out if these moths are safe to release into the wild. from the looks of it, the tree and it's moth was already released in the US hoping for silk production so that gives me hope. the next step would be calling Texas A&M or some other extension.

happy birthday to meee!

first the bad news, I seem to have misplaced my grocery money envelope. granted it only had 20 dollars left in it, but im still pissed. so i had to take from my gas money. kroger had fuji apples for 97cents a pound and they had a bag of bananas for 50cents. there's nothing wrong with them. one i had wasnt even ripe. and strawberries were cheap so we now have lots of fruit in the house, if nothing else.

saturday was my birthday. husband took the boys to the air show with grandpa. i stayed home and puttered in the front yard. i trimmed the hedges, raked leaves, mulched with said leaves and hedge trimmings, put my butterfly bush (that i started from a cutting) and lemon balm in the ground, did some decorative edging with stones around the yard. and i even cut down two of the weed trees along the property line. one had grown through the chain link fence so getting it out is going to be a pain in the dupa. and i put down some buffalo grass seed in a bare spot. then husband and i went out to medi cafe, ate good middle eastern food and shared a hookah. and before that we got a bottle of wine (it's a B.Y.O.B. establishment) and i found a thomas DVD for only 5 dollars - one more present down for buddytwo (the other one i got at a garage sale for 50cents!) then we came home and watched the bourne ultimatum that i borrowed from the library.

when husband gets his bonus, im getting my bike fixed. and i found a double burley on craigslist. i just hope it's still available.

buddytwo said his first sentence this last week. "hi, kitty." and he knows a lot more of his body parts than i thought. i was "type a" with buddyone to get him to learn vocab. lately he has been pointing to his eyes and saying "eye-eeee" so on a whim i asked him where his head was, and he points to his head. mouth, mouth. leg, leg. ears, ears. and just tonight buddyone used the word "delicate." i dont think ive ever really used it. fragile, yes. delicate, not so much. maybe he learned it from word girl or martha speaks.

kittens

while putting buddytwo to bed tonight, i noticed a cat on our patio. ive seen her a couple of times before. she was playing with a piece of pita bread i left on out there, then she walked towards the back of the yard and i saw a kitten run after her from the fence, then another, and another. there are about 4 or 5. *squeeeee* i went out there and was able to look at them. i think they are weaned, so im not too concerned about catching the mama and not the babies. damn they were cute. there was a grey and white, a pure grey, and a "marbled" one. if i can get one of the babies, husband might let me keep it!! i need to see if SIL still has a cat box from gizmo. im contacting feral friends about getting numbers for them and maybe i can find foster homes for the rest.

husband finished the fence with our neighbour and did habitat for humanity for work and is feeling really handy so he said he would put up a real clothes line for me. aahhh!! he's so sweet.

i made a quick second vegetable bed and am trying roma tomatoes, basil, green onions, carrots, more broccoli and artichokes. i also moved my zuccini because the pumpkins are taking over. but i do have two nice sized yellow squash.

for dinner last night, we had 'white girl does middle eastern.' i made falafel from a box - it was 50cents (love town talk), wheat pita from the day old rack for 1.29, home made hummus - it's hard to figure the exact cost because i did it all by sight/taste, and tabouli - probably 3dollars all told and will feed people all week.

herb, bud, weed, and other drug references

so the mass-tastic amounts of rain we've finally gotten has been like crack for my plants. went to home depot over the weekend and got a huge 32 gallon garbage can for a water barrel. just putting it under the drippy part of the porch, it filled in two hours.

the spinach and mesclun (husband thought i said mescaline) has done really well. the wildflower seeds are coming out gang-busters. my purple double-bloomed datura is finally showing life. the backyard vegetables are going great - the cantaloupe seeds i thought were dead actually were alive. i need to check the seed packet, it must have just have a long germination time. i lost the carrots and broccoli, but threw some new seeds in the ground. the raspberry bush might not be completely dead.

i also transplanted some morning glories along the chain link fence; hopefully they will work. i just need to clear away all the kudzu/viney weed crap. and speaking of weeds, rather than put done chemicals, ive been clearing away all the chickweed and other stuff in the backyard by hand. slowly but surely, it's looking more like a yard, and less like a vacant lot. ive now got a huge pile of crud lying on a pallet to die before i add it to the compost bin.

AND!!! And!!....i have a redbud tree!!!! the tree next to the pecan on the property line between us and the business is a redbud!!! theres a beautiful redbud at the end of the street ive been coveting and then, the other day, we were riding bikes in the parking lot and so some purplish petals were on the ground. i look up and see more on the branches. i was so excited. it's not in full bloom like a lot of the others ive seen around so im hoping it's healthy. all this rain should give it a kick in the butt.

whatelse... finished reading the world without us. not as completely depressing as i thought it would be, though the section on plastic made me want to never buy a non-wooden toy again. now, im dividing my reading between corpse, rackkety tam, lord brocktree, and taggerung (book on tape).

and i tried the lentil and rice casserole from tightwad gazette II. i had to season some cast iron grates for the grill we bought i figured if i was going to have the stove on for 2 hours, i might as well have something to show for it. i would make again, just tweak it a bit. the stock i use doesnt have much salt so it needed a bit, i also put a bunch of ritz crackers in it and that made it quite tasty.

spinach and gazingus pins

it would figure that when i put my hydrangeas and lavender in the ground, we get snow. but a tarp and a rubbermaid container later, and we are safe. i took a cue from the cooler weather and planted spinach and mesculen blend. im really hoping we wont have any other frosts - i really want to get the pumpkin and broccoli in the ground.


i also have morning glories, sunflowers, roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, carrots, zuccinni, and pie pumpkin sprouting in egg crates in the kitchen. my blueberry bush looks like it's starting to do something. the raspberry cutting, not so much. i found two thorny vines in the back of the yard but im not sure what it could be.


and my mom bought the three tightwad gazettes. a few hours before they showed up i was about to ask jeremy if i could go ahead and order it from amazon after unsuccessfully looking for at resale outlets. it doesnt have some of the articles the complete one does, but if i need those, i can get it from the library.


husband and i looked at the budget and while we did well in many categories we still spend too much dining out. i used to be so happy about steering clear of a lot of the more expensive convience foods, but then we would spend even more money ordering pizza or getting bueno on the days i just didnt feel like cooking or didnt start dinner "on time" from activities from the day, or because i just didnt feel like cooking. so it makes sense to to have a $5.00 bag of nuggets in the fridge than spend 15.00 on pizza.

and i have a bad habit of buying something because it's cheap. like these two thermoses (thermosi?) that were in the clearance cart at the grocery store. ive used them twice. and i got two because gawd forbid agrippa use octavian's thermos. theres other stuff, but ill be damned if i can think of it. the other day i had a chance to go to goodwill sans kiddos and grabbed 10 shirts and then realised i really didnt need them.

and i splurge. it was something my mom did. it was nothing to go get ice cream, just because. or get candy at the grocery store. or just go buy something, just because. octavian gets something almost everytime we go somewhere.

i should probably get my AP card taken away, but i really like sonic and chick-fil-a. i appreciate that their kid's meals toys are thinking toys and not just the lastest movie or kid crap tie-in. and i really like that chick-fil-a gives plastic placemats that stick to the table and bendy straws. just little stuff that only a parent would think about.

so ive given myself $20 dollars every pay period on taking the boys out for lunch or a treat. it's cash and went it's gone, it's gone. what i dont spend goes in their bank.

my gazingus pin is everything. i just need to not be places where i spend money because i inevitably end up spending more than i wanted.

and this week is "eat out of the freezer" week. i had veggie fajitas and they were awesome.

"got me a pretty, pretty garden, a pretty garden, yes"

with my front yard semi torn up, i finally decided to throw down some seeds for my butterfly/wildflower bed. it's supposed to be nice this week and im really hoping we are done with frost for the year. if not, whats another bad or two of wildflower seeds? buddy one had fun dumping them in the ground and playing with the hose. buddy two was eating dirt, again.

and i finally figured out what to plant in the front part shade bed. a pizza garden of sorts. the full sun is way too hot for tomatoes but the shrubs will protect them from the hottest time of the day. and tomatoes and basil grow well together some im planting regular and thai basil (from seeds i took from a plant i found when taking a walk. i took them from a portion of the plant that had gotten broken and was dried. so it's not like i butchered a random person's plant.) and if i have room, some spinach or other lettuce.

my blueberry bush is in the ground. just need to drive to azle to get the raspberry bushes. and start breaking ground on my garden. im a bit disappointed because the pomegranate i put in the ground didnt sprout last fall. all the baby leaves i saw were weeds. dammit.

also have to return the huge as bag of weed and feed to home depot. i dont have the receipt anymore so im probably just going to get store credit. what a shame. wonder if ill have enough for a roto-tiller.

congratulations...it's a griddle

we took a trip to weatherford this weekend. it was a gorgeous day and a fun drive. towards the end of the day, we went into an antique store and i found a cast iron griddle. and a dutch oven. im in heaven. ive been trying to replace my cheap stainless steel cookware and was giddy when i saw all the cast iron. i havent been very successful at the local thrift stores.

but i was able to finally find a crock pot. sweet!!!

i love tighwad gazette. just flipping through i got and implimented (or will soon) a few ideas

- a friend and i will be dumpster diving when the local college lets out. ive never been so im hoping to get some good stuff from rich, entitled college students with too much stuff.
- there was a letter about a woman who contacted owners of local abandoned properties looking for plants. well, across the street there is an abandoned house with a swing set in the backyard that looks like it's in decent condition. i want to find the owner so i can see about getting it, if it's worth it.
- the business next door left and i talked to the owners and got some pallets - i now have a wood pallet compost bin.
- and just other stuff. i need to own it. im just going to keep looking for it at half-price books. until then, ill keep borrowing it from the library.

and tomorrow im doing a home depot run. i started attacking the stump in the back yard and most of it was rotted but there is still a part thats alive. i need an ax and dirt to fill the hole. i also need to start preparing the dirt for my garden. we started some seeds (the brocolli has already sprouted) but it's still going to be a while until i can put it in the ground.