Rain!

Finally, we had a nice, drenching rain. Hopefully it will help the farmers. The fields were brown and parched, and Mr. Patterson across the road from us had already begun feeding his beef cattle hay. From what we learned last year, that's a sure sign of a tough winter ahead, since most of the farmers try not to feed their cattle the hay rolls until the fall. The pasture should be enough right now for them, but everything was brown, parched, and eaten to the quick. We saw more evidence of cattle in the road and more of the youngesters breaking through the fence as they searched for grass. The remnants of hurricane Fay were so welcome. We can only hope for more hurrican remnants coming up through the southeast to drench us all and keep the resevoirs full!

The garden took quite a beating, with most of the perennials flopping this way and that from the torrential down pours and wind last night. The thunderstorm was quite fierce, with thick fog too. "It was a dark and stormy night" pretty much sums it up. I noticed that the perennials are blooming again, especially the ones I deadheaded to collect seeds. Seems like collecting the seeds encouraged them to bloom more.

We can't work on the sidewalks, edging or pathways until the thunderstorm banks pass us by. For the next several days we've got clouds, rain and storms forecasted for the area. More rain please!

In the meantime, we're enjoying the time to catch up on work, clean the house, and plan for next year's farm.

Invasion of the Big Green Worms

This week has been invasion of the big green worms here at Seven Oaks Farm. On Wednesday, I went out at 8 am to water the tomatoes. I let out a shriek that frightened the dog. Munching away at my tomato plants was the biggest, nastiest green worm I've ever seen. Over an inch thick and four inches long. Alas, it was a tomato hornworm. John helped me pull it off and we found more. Each morning has now been devoted to removing these nasty creatures. I asked my father in law to plant his famous marigolds around the tomato pots. I've written for years on companion planting and have always touted marigolds to repel the tomato hornworm. Now it's time to put my money where my mouth is, or my plants anyway!

And if you have any extra vegetables from the garden, please let me know. I think my tomato crop is history.

The photo is by my very gifted sister, Mary Fassetta.

Enjoy this beautiful day!

Building the Farm

I completed my first masonry project! All right - I started it. I actually worked with concrete. This may seem like a no-big-deal kind of thing, but for someone like me, it's a big deal. As a child, my father wouldn't teach me about tools, home improvements, how to fix things. I'm not sure he really knew how to do these things, so he may have doubted his own abilities to teach me how to do them. Still and all, my husband often gets frustrated when he asks me to hand him a tool while he's working on a project and I'm fumbling around on the workbench for something that seems obvious to him.

John's a great teacher. He mixed the cement, and used metaphors to help me understand in my own way how to do the same thing. For example, as he mixed the cement in the wheel barrow, he said, "Add water and stir it until it looks like chocolate cake batter." Got it! I know what the consistency of cake batter should look like. As we connected the edging stones we'd picked up from around the property to frame the front garden, he handed me the trowel (hod? What is the tool with the pointy end you use to spread cement?). "Spread it like frosting." Got it!

The result is about ten feet completed of the edging around our front landscaping. We finished laying the landscape frabric, spread the mulch, and selected the stones for the edging. All the stones are from our property. The sparkling quartz, with pink and white veins running through it, catches the sunlight.

I purchased the remaining edging blocks for the front sidewalk and stumbled on some great plant bargains at Lowe's. I purchased two already planted mixed containers for fifty cents each. Huge, overflowing with petunias, bacopa and what looks like some sort of allysum, the matched set perked up my front steps perfect. I began pricing the lumber for the raised vegetables beds too. The Master Gardener at the Kentucky State University Arboretum recommended the plastic wood, the type used to make permanent decks, but the cost was astonishing. $25 to $30 for each 12 foot section. We hope to make nine raised beds total and fence in the area with board and post fence covered by chicken wire to keep out the critters. If I use that stuff I will be spending hundreds of dollars. Instead, I'll opt for the pressure treated lumber at $4 a board. I know that the pressure treatedl umber is controversial, since some critics content it leaches chemicals into the soil. But I just can't afford the PVC option.

We mapped out the area for the shed and I reiterated my desire to have my chickens in by next spring. A small hen house for three to six hens is sufficient, fences in against predators.

But if I get my vegetable beds in place I'll be a happy woman. I'm really disappointed with the produce selection down here in the country. I don't know if it's the growing season or what, but we found better produce back in New York at the supermarket. Everything is very expensive and not the best quality. Even the Amish farmstand this weekend had a poor selection. I managed to pick up a cantalope that's delicious, some squash and a tomato, but everything else either looked bad or was commercially grown (I checked with the lady running the stand; she pointed out to me what was local and what wasn't.)

So the solution for me is to grow my own vegetables. I hope to document the process for my eHow articles as well as the new gardening book I'm writing.

This morning the flock of 20 turkeys came out of the woods and made the rounds around the house, pecking up all the bugs. They traversed the back field, made their way through the fruit orchard, and ended the show by marching in a line down my driveway and into the perennial garden. I prayed that they would eat every Japanese Beetle they could find in the perennial garden, but after some half-hearted pecks, they departed into the woods. One flew up and perched in the pine tree. I hadn't realized they could fly that well!


Enjoy your day and let me know how you like the blog! The photo was taken by my sister, Mary Fassetta.

Gardening Day

Today's is gardening day at the farm. I'll step our for a few minutes to visit the Amish farmstand in Pamplin City. Since we didn't grow many vegetables this year, I like to supplement what we have with some fresh or unusual produce from the farmstand. This time I'm going to leave Shadow home, since she was a barking maniac in the car and I think the little boy who stays at the stand with his mother is afraid of her.

We're planning to finish the front garden today - put down landscape fabric, add mulch, and edge the area with rocks picked up on the property. John completed laying the foundation for the remaining sidewalk near the front and we decided to add yet another flower garden to the area. I told him that's on my 2-3 year plan. Next year my priority is to get the vegetable gardens productive and add a few farm animals, such as the chickens we've been talking about since spring.

Gardening chores at this time of year are fairly routine. I'm weeding as usual, and mulching like crazy. The drought is back on, with The Farmville Herald trumpeting that the Appomattox River has the lowest water flow on record since 2002. We walk to the creek that creates the border between Prince Edward and Appomattox County every evening, and in the spring it was a rushing torrent. We even saw a muskrat swimming there! Now it's a trickle, and the little side creeks that feed into the main creek have dried up. I hope it rains soon. The ground is like concrete.

The photo is baby Pierre, about four months old...asleep, which is rare. His latest tricks are jumping onto the kitchen counters ("No! Bad kitty!" Pierre laughs, while Shadow cowers) and placing his toys in the garbage can in my office. I have to go through the garbage to make sure I'm not throwing away furry mice.

African Violets

It's too hot to garden outside today. I could have pulled weeds this morning, but I hit the computer at 7 am. By noon I'd written four articles for one client, two short hotel descriptions for another, Skype chatted with one of my favorite clients, answered emails, and started Site Editor training for Love to Know.

So at noon it was time to take a break, but I can't bear to look at more housework, other than Mount Washmore the laundry pile which must be tackled today. I took out the beautiful yellow cachepots Anna Polina sent me. I really like how they set off the green walls in our Florida room, and my African Violets needed repotting, so off I went to repot them.

These African Violets are special. My sister Mary gave me leaf cuttings at Christmastime and I grew them from leaves from her plants. She gave me six leaves, two of each of three colors she had in her living room, and one died. I have no idea which surived. Imagine my surprise today when I saw a white bud on one!

I seem to have a knack for raising African Violets. The one in my office blooms profusely, and the ones in the Florida room are thick, green and healthy, and now budding.

I transplanted them into larger pots and got a surprise bonus; a tiny little offshoot plant! It went into a third pot. A little water, and now I have three gorgeous cachepots on the windowsill filled with African Violets, waiting for Pierre to knock them all down.

A few tips on raising great African Violets:

• East or West light is best...think diffuse, bright light
• Let them get pot bound. This means let them get too big for their pots. They bloom more that way.
• Let them dry out between waterings. More African Violets die from overwatering than anything else.

Coyotes

I forgot to mention the COYOTES!

Shadow has been waking us up with her growling, watchdog bark. Three mornings ago at 5:30, she was in a frenzy barking at the yard. I got up in time to see a large black dog like creature standing near the propane tank. In truth, I thought it looked like a wolf, it was that big, but I know that no wolves are around here. On the other hand, a friend who hunts spotted coyote scat on our driveway last fall, so I think it's a coyote. Then two nights ago at 12:30, Shadow was once again barking into a frenzy. Last night John and I heard the yip-yip barks we'd heard out west by coyotes. So I've got a pack somewhere in my woods. This would explain why my compost keeps disappearing. Something has been eating entire watermelon rinds, cantalope rinds, and egg shells. We can't get compost because creatures have been raiding it. We haven't found tracks except some hair. I'm betting its the coyotes.

Asiatic Lilies, Coyotes, and More

John asked me to weed the pathways so that he can jump right into laying the slates this week in the perennial garden. Yippee! Since he hurt his back and the summer heat kicked in, I've been looking at packed dirt, weeds and sand spreading through the lower edge of the garden. We went to Boxley Block in Lynchburg on Friday and ordered more slates to complete the walkway, and John speaks now as if he'll finally finish the cement work. His back really bothered him, but I gave him my FlyLady tip and said he should simply work for half an hour at a time, or an hour, and a little each day and the job would be done in no time at all. He and I are much alike in that we both jump into projects and work until exhaustion sets in. We can't leave a project half finished! Sometimes though, you have to....

Diversity of Work and Wildlife

Being a freelancer means diversity...and lots of it. Diversity of tasks, diversity of information, diversity of clients. Today's day began with answering emails, snagging my article topics for the month for Love to Know, editing an article for Suite 101, and pitching several editors on my credentials to write for their magazines and newspapers. Next, I updated my own consulting website. I had one very satisfied client this week who raved about my work, but because she wants to keep her company anonymous, she isn't comfortable letting me post her name. No matter - she was happy and that's all that counts.

Pierre was a bad, bad kitty today. He's into that gangly, awkward teenage cat stage. Adolescent kitty! He knocked over my water glass on my desk, spilling icewater all over the computer and electrical outlets. Next, he bit the edge of John's brand new, leather bound book - one of the books he collects. He tested his Houdini-like skills by wiggling into the pantry, then proceeded to vomit all over the pantry floor. Luckily he had been busy shredding a plastic grocery bag, and managed to get most of it onto the bag, so it was a quick cleanup. Shadow meanwhile was her usual sweet self. She accompanied me out to the garden where I picked fresh tomatoes, basil and cucumbers for a lunch salad, and came willingly when I called her back in.

This morning Shadow woke us up at 5:30 with her fierce watch dog bark. I raced downstairs to see a dog-like creature about a hundred feet from the kitchen. He raced into the woods when Shadow continued barking. It was too dark to really see what it was, but I found what looks like coyote scat in the driveway the past two mornings, and it looked a lot like the coyotes we saw in Montana. Philip identified tracks and scat last year as coyote, but we haven't seen nor heard from them all winter long. Perhaps this one came back for some reason?

This week I also spotted a young black snake in the driveway, and Shadow and I had a chipmunk run right under her paws on the driveway. I often wonder how much wildlife is teeming in these woods - we see so much on the driveway alone!