Working on Changes, Graduation, Baby, Flowers, Shrooms, & More (Lot's of pictures)

Who doesn’t dream about having an amazing laundry room with enough room to move around, a sink to wash things by hand, a large table or cabinet to fold clothes on, and finally, an area where clothes can be hung when coming out of the dryer?  

This house we purchased doesn’t have any of the items I dreamed of in the laundry room.  Wait…..let me take that back, I did get the washer and dryer I wanted…you know; the ones with the big drums so you can wash all kinds of stuff……like a king size comforter and more than one throw rug.  Slowly, I will create my ideal laundry room…..even if that means I don’t get a large sink or more physical room. 

I purchased two wall hanging racks that retract when not being used for hanging clothes coming out of the dryer.  These racks come in handy when I want to have a shirt dry naturally.  Granted, we have a handmade clothes line outside for this reason as well; however, when it’s extremely hot outside, you really don’t want your good clothes to fade from the sun and heat.  

I am taking advantage of every bit of space in my laundry/mud room area. All the inside house tools were propped against the wall, I purchased a hanging rack to get the tools up and out of my way.  

 

In time, I will have Bulldog Man make me a table hinged to the wall next to the dryer.  This table will fold down when I have laundry to fold, and when not being used, it will fold back against the wall, out of my way.

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A goal we have living out here on this property, is to level out and raise some of the land around our home, and install several French drains, to move water away from our home and into one of our ponds.  Here’s the start of this process--one trench dug 75 feet, and another, close to the house, dug approximately 22 feet.  We had to initially pull the gutter we just installed on this side of the house in order to dig the trench against the house.  When we replace the gutter, it will run on the side of the house, and down into the ground, directly to the French drain, pulling the water directly away from the house.  Bulldog Man will be picking up the pipes this evening.  Tomorrow morning, I will be going into town with the truck, to pick up a load of gravel from the gravel yard.  Our goal is to have the French drain completely finished by the end of the weekend.  

We have another goal, to install two additional French drains on our driveway to prevent washout when storms come through.  As we all know, projects are set up on a goal list, and priorities take precedence.   

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The original faucet in our kitchen reminded me of a faucet you would see back in high school, in the lab of the science department.  Water wouldn’t flow through the faucet properly, and the pressure was terrible.  Bulldog Man had me buy a new kitchen faucet (I used a gift card we received from the phone company, when we switched carriers) and found a commercial type faucet.  Bulldog Man installed the faucet for me, after we had to go back into town and purchase hose extensions.  I love this new faucet, water flows with pressure and direction.  

 

Old Faucet

 

New Faucet

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In between projects, life continues on…….

Our Grand Daughter, Megan, graduated high school; we went down to Texas for her graduation.  We’re so proud of her, now she’s setup to start college in the fall.  Her goal is to become a radiology technician.  

While down in Texas, we found out our oldest son, and his wife, are expecting their first child together.  Bulldog Man and I are so excited, and can’t wait for our 6^th grand baby to be born in January 2018.  It will be spoil alert time by grandparents.  This child will have 4 sets of grandparents…..LOL!!!!

While down in Texas for the graduation, we stayed with my sister and had a great visit with her.  Of course we had to go eat some amazing Thai food before returning home.  There’s an amazing restaurant in the small town where my sister lives; you just can’t get good food like this up where we live.  

My sister knows how much I love orchids, and sent me home with an amazing Phalaenopsis orchid from Matsui Nursery on their 50^th anniversary. 

She also had an eagle, a piece of art made from steel, for my husband and me.  She had been holding on to it, because it would have been expensive to send through the mail.   I’m still trying to figure out where to hang the eagle in our home.

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I came across some more wild flowers and mushrooms from our property I wanted to share with you.

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A friend of mine asked me how many ponds we have on our 20 acres.  Well……we have 2 ponds and one lagoon.  The large pond sitting not too far from our home is the largest; approximately 1 acre in size, and 30 feet deep.  It’s stocked with fish, has a couple of turtles, and a few water moccasins (minus 2 I shot after coming at me aggressively).  The second pond is 8 to 10 feet in size, called the critter pond; because it’s natural and is fed by a spring, has cat tails, and we put a salt lick next to it.  Then there’s the lagoon (oxidation pond) which is part of our septic system.  Lagoons are commonly found in this part of Oklahoma, when living out in the countryside.  

Large Pond With Fish (need to weed)

Wildlife Pond Left Natural

Lagoon (need to weed)

 

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Another year has snuck up on me, I turned the big 55 on June 13^th and boy do I feel it…..LOL

In closing, here are a few pictures of the area and what it looks like living out on the prairie.

Mystery Solved, Garden, & Speaking The Truth

Last night, while watering my onions in their raised garden bed, I noticed what appeared to be an egg.  You heard right…..an egg!!!!   I directed the hose head toward the egg, to rinse the thin layer of soil off the top of this egg. 

I thought to myself, “what type of critter would lay an egg in a garden and cover it with a thin layer of soil…………………I know, I know………….a SNAKE egg!!!!”   I thought this, because, we’ve had copperhead snakes in the garden, in the past.

Think again; snakes, when laying eggs, will lay a clutch (multiple together in the same area), and will cover the eggs with loose soil or sand.   

After removing the loose soil on top of the egg with water, I picked up my hand shovel and scooped up this egg, called for Bulldog Man to come outside and investigate this egg. 

Bulldog Man picked up the egg with the shovel, and tossed it in our outside trash.  He said whatever was inside has to be dead.  The shell on the egg was cracked open and the mucus membrane was oozing out. 

Now being the inquisitive person I am, I thought about this egg all night long.  Once Bulldog Man left for work, I went outside, put my gloves on, grabbed my hand held garden shovel, and went to retrieve this egg.

The egg was no longer a formed egg.  It was totally cracked open, the shell of the egg was in one section of the trash can, and the strange looking critter was on the other side. 

I pulled out both the critter and egg shell to determine what we were dealing with.

I never seen anything like it before.

Come to find out, it was a Netted Stinkhorn…………..a mushroom!!!!

The actual egg looked like a hardboiled egg, the size of a goose egg.

Around the crack on the egg was a clear/yellowish film, which looked like a membrane.

Here is a picture of the cracked egg, and Netted Stinkhorn mushroom I found.

The cracked shell.

The mushroom broken.

I’ve also attached a You Tube time lapsed video from American Mushroom.com. 

This is the first time I have ever seen such a mushroom.  It’s my understanding, after researching this mushroom; it was named the Netted Stinkhorn because it puts off a terrible smell which in turn attracts flies.  Apparently, the outside temperature was too cool therefore the mushroom didn’t put off its terrible scent (stink).

Due to all the water we received, the moisture levels were high, in turn, producing all kinds of mushrooms throughout my garden.  This was a first though, for the Netted Stinkhorn.

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Speaking of moisture, here’s a look at the damage I created while trying to cut the grass.  Areas of our grass on the property absorbed the water, while in other areas, the water sat. 

While driving and looking in one direction to miss sitting water and destroying the grass, I found myself and the tractor stuck in mud.  It took me about 20 minutes to get the lawn tractor out of the mud by pushing it.  When finished pushing; my shoes and clothing were caked in mud.

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Every couple of days I place new homemade humming bird nectar in the bird feeders.  So far, we haven’t had one humming bird.  We do however, attract the occasional bee or hornet.

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Garden News/Updates 

Even though my green beans were battered from the storms, I didn’t pull them out of the garden for replanting.  I just left them in, and now you can see several beans appearing on the vines. 

My jalapenos, planted in 5 gallon buckets, have flowers blooming on them in preparation of peppers.

The celery ends planted in the ground 2 months back took a hit with water and bugs, only one survived out of 3.  The red cabbage seems to really be coming along, even after the water and leaf-eating bugs.  I continue to spray the leaves (with a water, dawn soap, and alcohol concoction) and recently cut off the outer bug destroyed leaves.  I will say this is a first for cabbage in my garden.

Two years in a row I planted cabbage seeds, and had no luck. This year, I planted healthy looking seedlings picked up from Atwood’s Ranch store and they’re holding their own. 

I added a few more cucumber seeds to these pots, because several of the seedlings ended up getting water logged from the storms.  They seem to be doing pretty good now.  Hopefully in the next 2 weeks, they’ll start climbing the trellis.

My tomato plants have really taken off.  They seem to really like the Okie drip system I installed.  To find out more about that system, go here.  Bulldog Man and I recently trimmed the branches affected by our recent storms.

During our 2 weeks of storms, the tops of my onions were shredded and destroyed (not all but most).  Bulldog Man and I clipped off the shredded and dead parts and now we have new green tops (green onions) and they’re looking really healthy.

On a sad note, the storms ended up killing off my Yukon potatoes.  There was just too much water.  I pulled up all the potato plants from my tires, and harvested what good potatoes were left, making sure to discard the dead potato plants and water logged potatoes.

Each tire was cleaned out and prepped to replant a new variety of potato in the next several days. 

Out of two containers full of sunflower seeds planted, only a handful lived through the storms.  Yesterday, I planted 2 more packets of sunflower seeds to fill in the areas where I originally lost flowers.

Sunflower and a little mushroom next to it.

A notation regarding health…………with all this sitting water from the recent storms rolling through, we have found mosquitoes rapidly breeding.  There have been several cases of meningitis found in the state of Oklahoma.  If you have sitting water and want to prevent a mosquito problem, try to get rid of the sitting water.

Clip Art From Letscoloringpages.com

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Several months back, I purchased a used stove top steamer at a yard sale/estate sale.  I was told by a friend (who will remain nameless) this steamer was a piece of trash, and I should have never purchased it. 

I‘ll have you know after thoroughly cleaning, and sterilizing this steamer it works wonderfully, and I’ve used it numerous times. Here’s evidence the steamer works good. 

Steaming Tamales

By the way, I can use my steamer on an electric stove, gas stove, or campfire; whereas yours can only be plugged into the wall.  My steamer cost me $4.33, yours $89.00 plus the cost of using electric.  So tell me, dear friend, whose steamer is a costly piece of trash now??

No digs……just speaking the truth.

Tell me Blogger friends, do you have a piece of trash you would like to share?