just something funny

Haiku are easy...
But sometimes they don't make sense...
Refridgerator.

Hail Hail go away

Go away hail and take the dang snow with ya!


Cold frames... they are soooooo on my list.

So this is part of my daughter's playground. The fort section that I had enclosed in curtains, way back when she could actually stand up under the smaller section. We had a table and small butterfly chairs so they could picnic on snacks I packed in a basket. There were neighbors just a few doors down that had 2 daughters. The youngest was a few months older than my daughter and the oldest was 3 years older.

The girls would drag a wagon loaded with supplies I packed up to the park. Cell phone, blanket, picnic basket, drinks, kites, bubble wands, sunscreen.. all set. They would meet up with several other kids also intent on trying to fly kites on a windless day.

The dog would be soooo excited to go with that he would bounce around making it difficult to get a leash on him. He wasn't exactly protection... he was there to clean up anything spilled by the girls. A job he does very diligently.

So it snowed a bit today. Nothing stuck but it was enough to send me scrambling to drag in trays of tender seedlings and cover the tomatillos.

The chilly weather was perfect for beef barley stew and to do some baking. Double chocolate cherry cake, cinnamon bread, herbed garlic rolls and apple crisp. My house smells amazing. And what did I have for dinner....undressed salad. I'm trying to be good. Actually I have to be. Although my blood sugar levels are somewhat decent I have been dizzy as all get out for the last few days.

I've been to the doctor about it several times in the past... and as usual they saw my blood sugar was ok and blew it off. The only way I can explain the dizzy spells is imagine spinning like crazy on a chair and then also getting up super fast. That's what it is like... the spins with the sensation of almost blacking out. It hits out of nowhere like an Acme piano. Scary when it happens in the kitchen. It has made me topple out of the shower a few times taking the curtain and sending everything flying. Iron levels are fine too.

Anyways... no salt, no sugars, no cholesterol, low fat, no processed food diet maybe bland and somewhat torturous but I'd rather deal with that than almost taking a header into the stove while making the family dinner.

Oh yeah... whoooooole lotta fiber when you eliminate basically almost everything except select veggies.

Water with crushed mint... an odd thing I have been enjoying. Coffee was one of the first things nixed off the list... I miss you oh lovely steamy cup of joy.

Time for sleep... right after I finish this cup of tea.

Farmgirl Fare

Farmgirl Fare

Vermicomposting and Cocoons

The bins are active and although they are screwing like mad, I was unable to snap any worm porn at this moment. There are tons and tons of cocoons and I need to harvest very soon before the hatching starts. There are anywhere from 1 to 4 baby earthworms per cocoon. Major pain in the ass to harvest when they do hatch out. I usually end up screening the material as best as I can, putting it into a sterlite container for 2 months, and then pull out the juvenile worms.

In the meantime, the worms are rolling off cocoons every few days. Several of the darker ones above most likely will hatch out any day now. I was going to screen a bin or 2 today, but the weather had alternate plans. Tornado warnings, sheets of hail, rain and lightening kinda put the damper on those plans.

The cocoons when they are freshly rolled off a worm are white and have the consistency of .. well... a booger. They turn yellow and get more firm with age.

I need to sort my bins ASAP, otherwise the current inhabitants will start feeling crowded and try to make a mass exodus out of the bin. That happened one year when I had moved the bins to the porch. I was planning on screening the next day, but overnight they bolted. I didn't have the lids secured on as I was letting the bins air out. So I woke up to probably a thousand plus worms all over the porch and some of the happiest, fattest robins on the planet. They tried so hard to clean up every last one that they couldn't fly. They didn't even want to hop away. After a few hours and recovering from food coma, they spent the day in the hops encased aspen (which they then covered in enough bird poo to make it look really gross.)

It's not that I have some sort of love for worms, I have the bins because the vermicompost is wonderful stuff. I originally started the bins to add to my other assortment of cultured live foods for my fish. I would hand feed the neighbor's oscars the adult worms. The oscars would slurp the worms out of your hands. They got more than a little crazy about the live food offerings, and eventually any time they saw your hands they would attack your fingers. It didn't hurt, but boy did it scare the bejeezus outta me more than a few times. Those fish can have quite the personality.

Some people have the stackable tray vermicomposting systems. To each their own. It is all pretty basic, you really only run into trouble when you over think things. Worms have very primitive "brains". There is no personality, no higher thought. If they are bolting out of the bin it is because there is a problem with the environment, not because you have a invertebrate revolution.

I vermicompost (VC) in rubbermaid bins. The big ones. Some have holes for ventilation, some haven't. I start a bin by tossing in a few handfuls of bedding (shredded news paper, straw, dried grass clippings, etc.) I toss in a few scoops of dirt from the garden and several scoops of VC along with the wiggly workers. I might toss in food right away.. veggie scraps, root balls from weeds, weeds, coffee grounds, tea bags (not the plastic ones and staples removed), etc. Then more bedding on top. Mist with a sprayer that has rainwater or unchlorinated water so that it is damp, but not soggy. Pop the top on and put the bin in a cool location. The key is to make sure the contents do not heat up (hot composting), they need grit to digest food, they need moisture as they breathe through their skin, darkness (15 minutes in the sun is enough to give them a lethal sunburn), they prefer mild temperatures, oxygen and food.

I fill a bin or two in the fall with leaves, iris trimmings, root ball of pulled up tomatoes and squash as well as those plants entirely and stuffed a bin pretty full. Added the grit and VC... covered it and moved it into the garage where it sat all winter. I put in about 2 or 3 pounds of bedrun worms (bedrun means mixed stages of maturity, from juvenile to breeding age), and as many cocoons as I fished out of other bins that were being harvested for VC. It is ready to be harvested now. The population has definately doubled at the very least. I have pulled from that bin 3 times already to make starter cultures for friends.

I would check that bin maybe once a month. The other bins I alternate feeding the kitchen scraps. I toss the scraps in a plastic coffee can and keep it in the freezer. If there are any fruit flies, the freeze will wipe them out. When the can is full, I thaw it and dump it into the bins. If the food is particularly wet, I will toss in newspaper shreds to absorb the liquid. If the bin contents get too wet, I pop off the lid and cover it with cheap gauze and bungee cord it in place. That way the moisture evaporates, but the bin does not get invaded by ants, gnats or the like.

The quality of the casts depends on what the worms are fed. If you offer a variety, you are going to have good quality casts.

About 20% to 25% VC mixed into the soil of container plants and you are good to go. Slow release fertilizer, high in beneficial microbes and natural plant hormones. You can top dress around plants.. you can't every burn plants with VC.

VC tea.. just a few scoops into a watering can of rainwater and then gently stir it around. You can use it as a foliar drench, it is a mild fertilizer.. and it is great stuff if you are transplanting.

It is pretty balanced, so while you are able to fertilize your plants, you don't have to worry about accidently over fertilizing, or too much nitrogen issues (where fruiting plants, like tomatoes, if they get too much nitrogen then they produce a lot of leaves but fail to flower or set fruit.)

There is no 1 ultimate soil amendment. Variety is always best. This just happens to be my favorite amendment as I know what it is made of, that it is a quality compost, and I can make it at home year round for next to nothing.

If you have poultry... the worms are actually a good calcium source.

Just don't get ripped off when you get the worms. I got mine from my compost heap. Check around well if you are going to purchase any. Not all Eisenia Foetida are actually EF's as less than 1% of all the people selling worms can even kinda identify species. They are in actuality usually guessing, or going off what someone else told them what they thought they were. If you find mature worms (they have the band around them which is what actually rolls off to be a cocoon) that are under 4 inches, pigmented and hanging around in a cold compost heap... they will work for a VC bin just fine. Just collect enough of them and a bit of the compost they were found in to start your bin.

Flowering Chives and Randy Robins

The chives have been in this pathetic pot for several years. They don't seem to mind that the only attention they get is an infrequent watering and maybe some soil to top it off every other year. It has self seeded a few other locations in the yard too. Once the flowers open, they will be broken up and tossed in our salads. I still will have a ton left for seed.

So the robins have raided my worm bins. Free meals and apparently building supplies. These may well be either the laziest or most brilliant birds yet. The nest is only 5 feet off the ground in a pine tree that is literally inches from one of my gardens. They wait for me to turn the soil and snatch up any worms I unearth. Then they pop back into the nest and wait for more... or they dive bomb me. It's more of an obnoxious fly by than dive bombing.

They have been at it all day, and it seems they have had success... or at least they now have their first egg. They really should be less brazen. I mean if they were to pull these antics in a yard with a real cat or dog, there would be serious issues. My dog don't hunt. Neither does the cat... well, her thing is inanimate objects.

Anyways, the nest is actually really pretty. She may be the Martha Stewart of the robin society. She probably thinks her spouse is a daring stud as he hops within a few feet of the scary human. Now if they would just stop raiding the worm bin... garden worms are a free for all, but plucking my wiggly workers out of the bin is just going too far. The escapees from the bin they can have (and they have made quick work out of several hundred that bolted one morning.)

Speaking of which, I need to make a screen to harvest some vermicompost. The bin is showing signs of an impending mass exodus. Eggs everywhere and very high population makes them want to look for less crowded locations.

copper and ketchup

I am really not sure how wise this is, but it was an experiment out of boredom.

Heinz ketchup... aka how to take the tarnish off a copper pot without trying. Oh yes... wipe on... wait 10 seconds... wash off. I do suggest using a pair of gloves or rubber spatula otherwise after a few seconds you do realize the zippy feeling is an electric charge. Very mild... but still a bit annoying.

I swear I will do just about anything to put off weeding. Battling the bindweed and thistles while they are just evil little sprouts right now. And birdhouse gourds my husband chucked into the garden and tilled under last fall... they are sprouting by the billions.

On the upside... I seem to have gotten a rather weedy lot of tomatillos. I hope their flavor is good as they are growing like mad, already transplanted outdoors (oh please no snow... nooooo snow...) and are setting flowers.

Many more decade old seeds are sprouting from a stash I misplaced long ago. Vermicompost is good for that. The nitrogen, gibberellins, auxins, and other plant hormones plus the other nutrients in viable vermicompost works wonders for waking up old seed that may otherwise not have the energy reserves to germinate.

Oh no... wife aggro

So every time the neighbor's wife drives him crazy, he talks my husband into disc golfing. That's about as hard as talking an addict into doing something 1 more time. His wife drives him crazy on a regular basis. Knowing the woman.. I can say a bakery or dandruff convention is less flaky than she is.
He has now put himself in jeopardy of WOA (wrath of Anne). I need to get out... I NEED OUT NOW!! I need a change of scenery. Bali... Bali sounds good. Mellow people... no ching ching ching of freakin' disc golf baskets to be heard. Gimme a hand of bananas.. being attacked by the monkeys in Ubud might just be the diversion I need right now.
My husband was supposed to fence up one of my gardens this weekend. Actually it was supposed to have been done a few weekends ago, and he promised this weekend, but the neighbor called... I figured yesterday, no biggie... he will do it Sunday. He played poker until the wee hours of the night, so I let him sleep in until 11am.
Well.. the dog pranced through the garden trying to protect us from the fence dwellers... and destroyed my cold crops.
Now, gardening in CO is not like say... almost anywhere else. Arid, super sweet soil, even the water clinks coming out of the tap. So when you compost like mad, and amend the soil religiously, one watering because of a dry spell and the ph just goes to crap. I would have an easier time making ice cubes in hell.
So as I kiss another crop goodbye and resign myself to having just warm weather crops to look forward to, along with the inevitable hail storms that will pummel the crap out of them...
Meanwhile I am breaking out the blender. Electric lemonade sounds really good about now.
Must... not... comment... on... facebook. I really would love to leave her a comment like "WTH woman! Every time you drive your husband nuts and make him feel the need to get the heck away from you, he drags my husband out because he needs a buddy. Which so far is almost every day."
I swear... the man is like a teenage girl going to the bathroom... someone is coming with because going alone is not an option.
So when he finally wanders home... WOA may be in full force. I may just spell it out as to why I am pissed... puppets may even be involved so as to completely get my rage. Or... I may just make him guess repeatedly.
In another lifetime I would have gone shopping for outfits for the spontaneous trip I desperately need to take.
I wonder what would be needed to get citizenship in Bali. Or maybe Palau...