Busy Sunday, big dreams

So ... today. Typical kind of Sunday on the homestead. Quiet. He did some mowing. Griped about how much gas it uses. (I TOLD him a reel mower uses no gas and would be quieter and would mow easier through all this tall stuff, but he HAD to have a gas mower!) I got trash out and burnt, laundry put up, dishes done, water is heating for showers, supper will get made once that is done, cat box cleaned, floor swept. I did some gardening, too. He mowed my flowers down and my iris didn't come up - maybe they will next year. I want to build raised beds for everything but that is pricey as all heck. ONE day, one little bit at a time, it will happen.

Got more dug up for the teeny garden I have going. The tomatoes I bought as starts are nearly up to my knees and one of each of the Rutgers and Cherokee Purple have blooms and buds on them. The corn and squash I planted before haven't even started to grow, so may be duds, but the beans have at least 50% germination on old seeds. Planted the rest of that pack of beans, some more squash in two places and a pack of corn from this year (Stowell's Evergreen). Nothing showing in either of the flats yet other than one tiny something (it's either a pepper or a tomato) in the one. Considering I've been collecting seed in the late summer at BOGO prices for a few years, I'm surprised ANYTHING is growing, so if stuff stalls, I'll just replant.

Picked up two short u-posts at Home Depot yesterday. HE pounded them in for me without my asking him to do so, and then proceeded to pound them in deeper than I wanted so they would "stay in there good." Never mind that I plan on pulling them up in the fall so if I can get a tiller, I can till and won't break the tines! Also picked up some jute twine at Wally World yesterday and ran that back and forth through the holes in the posts to give the tomatoes something I can tie them to and the beans something to climb on. I didn't get the twine as tight as I would have liked, but that's ok. At least it isn't sagging and will help hold up the beans. Ran out of daylight before I ran out of ground I had dug up, and hopefully this week, I can get out a bit and do more digging to expand the garden.

If all else can get done, over the fall and winter, I will get 1" x 6" pine boards and build me some 4' wide by 8' long raised beds so I can do my square foot gardening better, and have a truckload of good dirt brought in for planting. The dirt here is really nice, but I'd like to have raised beds, and that means expense and work, which is fine. Eventually, I'll have fruit trees, bushes and plants of all kinds (apples, pears, peaches/nectarines, plums, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and so on and so forth), a few kinds of grapes in a small vineyard (planning on red, white and Concord for eating and jelly making). As much ground as I have, I may even be able to grow some of my own grains, such as wheat, oats, millet, barley and amaranth. Plans for way down the road are a small hoophouse for year round growing and for the more tender trees like some citrus (I do love my oranges).

Lots of work to do ... so much work and so little time and money, but as things progress, more things get done so more money is freed up. Just wish it was all going FASTER.

More garden stuff started!

So for Mother's Day ...

I put dishes to soak.

Swept the floor.

Put away laundry.

Mowed.

Emptied the camp toilet (fun job, really, just doesn't sound like it).

Changed oil in the gennie.

Trash out and burnt.

Made the bed.

Napped.

Mostly puttered in gardening type stuff.

That last, I got to full cell flats started, a six-pack each of:

Large Red Cherry Tomato

Brandywine Red Tomato

Super Sweet 100 Hybrid Cherry Tomato

Roma Tomato

Mortgage Lifter Tomato

California Wonder Sweet Pepper

Grand Bell Mix Sweet Pepper

Jalapeno Hot Pepper

Hot Pepper Mix (Anaheim, Serrano, and a couple others in the packet)

Hales Best Canteloupe

Black Beauty Eggplant

Shooting Stars Eggplant

Early Acorn Hybrid Winter Squash

Waltham Butternut Squash

Straightneck Early Yellow Squash

Buttercup Squash

Dark Green Zucchini Squash

Sugar Baby Watermelon

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce (that's going to be succession started for a long while - I like my salads)

Sumter Cucumber

Marketmore Cucumber

Straight Eight Cucumber

Calabrese Broccoli

De Cicco Broccoli

Now on to digging up more ground so all this stuff has a place to go in a few weeks!

Photos from a couple weeks ago:

 The baby blanket I finished

An old Chevy Bel Air I saw in the parking lot at TSC

Kizzy

Stars and the twins, Shelby and Mazda

Trouble staying OUT of trouble for once

Fuzzy

Oreo

A fairy ring in the yard near the house

Still can't get the rest of the cats to be still long enough for photos! Missing Bouncer Jr, Smokey, and Cocoa.

Also gardening related, my beans at least are starting to sprout and my tomato transplants I'd bought and stuck in the ground are going gung ho! I might get a decent garden this year yet!

Quick update

I'll post some photos in the next few days, but basically ...

I got a little more garden in today - a packet of corn, planted beans with the corn, and a few acorn squash seeds in the middle. My four tomatoes that I bought as starts are doing great and have shot up a couple of inches in the last week. With no tiller and no one TO till, I am having to do a few square feet a day on this darned garden, but if it grows well, I should have a serious bounty of food later this summer!

I got reasonably good photos of most of the cats. I've been washing a few more completed baby thing out of the totes every week so I can photograph them (been doing that) and get them up in the webstore and on Etsy. Adding more daily to the stores. Promoting like crazy on my groups to try to make more sales, because I seriously need more money coming in so I can get things done that need doing.

HIS "tool shelter" got redone today. HE spent the whole day on THAT. Not on mowing, not on anything important, just on that again. For all the time and money HE has spent on it, we could have had a prefabbed kit purchased and assembled in an afternoon. Nooo ... he wants "something to be proud of." Sorry, bub, but pallets and tarps do not make a shed to be proud of. It works but it's not something that adds to the value of the place.

Little by little, things are coming together. It's just extremely time consuming and sometimes depressing on how slow things are going.