Gardening and the Outdoors

I worked in my garden all day yesterday and man I can tell it today in my body!! The grass was starting to take it over so I weeded it and put the pine straw around the tomatoes. Then I also put the shingles down in the paths to keep out the weeds because it’s really hard to till it to keep out the weeds when there is pine straw all over the place. The rows to the right of the pic was suppose to be squash and snap beans but not all of them came up. So I replanted them both yesterday. I also have another garden this size to the right of those white chairs in the top of the pic.  The tomatoes are taller than they appear in the pic because the straw is a foot deep. The little plants close to the naked row are peppers.

Another angle of the garden. I went ahead and put my soaker hose in place on two rows of the tomatoes because it was nice and cool yesterday and I figured why not get it all done while it’s cool? ;) We have 4 rows of tomatoes and one row of peppers and half row of squash. Then we have a row of cucumbers, 2 1/2 rows of snap beans.

Then I just had to share my babies with you! This is a nest of bluebirds. I love bluebirds, and there is 3 in this nest. I have nesting boxes all around our almost 12 acres of land. They are really demanding. Both parents are feeding them and they snatch it out of their parents beaks before they even go inside the box. Looks like they are about ready to leave the box. I will have to keep an eagle eye out for them so our cats wont try to get them. 

Then below I have some tomato supports my hubby made for our tomatoes. There will be one of these on each end of the rows and I will attach the strings to the ends of the cross pieces. He welded washers on the ends of the cross pieces to attach the string to. The tomatoes will be in the middle of the two strings. In other words, there will be a string on each end of the cross piece stretching from one end to the other end of the garden. Then I can tie the tomatoes (as they grow) to the string to help support them. I have tried the tomato cages and they just aren’t strong enough to support the tomatoes. Last year my tomato bushes got heavy with tomatoes and the limbs broke. It made me sick because there was a bunch of them that did that so needless to say I lost good tomatoes due to those old cages. ughhhh so hopefully this support system will work great!

Then here is our families field of corn. They planted two different batches of it so it wont all come in at one time. We all got together and paid for the corn and fertilizer to plant it. They have tractors and can do a whole lot with the tractors.

Then last but not least…. another project of mine. I have 3 of these little chairs a friend gave to me. I am going to paint 4 of them black to match a black wrought iron table I have. Then the other two I am going to paint to match another little glass top table I have. I am still in the process of cleaning and organizing our shed and these were in the shed so they need to be dealt with and so when I can, I will be dealing with them as well. As you can see I will have to give them a good sanding and replace the bottoms. I thought the black ones would be sooooo cute with black fabric and white polka dots.