Weather, Vegetable Garden, Rose Bushes, and Flowers

Temperatures reached 76 degrees, with a slight breeze and the sun was shining.  Today turned out to be another beautiful day, so beautiful that I found myself outside planting more seeds, green Chiles (Hatch Green Chiles- YUMO!!!!), green peppers, and more lettuce.  I finally planted my celery ends that have been in water for several weeks (keeping my fingers crossed and hope the celery ends like the soil).

Two Celery Ends



Tonight, Bulldog man and Tank (our son wants me to use his football nickname now), picked up more soil, peat moss, and manure, mixed it up, and placed it in the garden box they made for me yesterday.  Guess what I will be doing tomorrow? Planting more veggies!  I’m so excited! Our garden is finally coming together.  I can’t wait until we can harvest our vegetables and fruit, and start canning.  

I’m going to pray that we have a summer that is not “hotter than the seven gates of hell!!!!”  Or a summer where it continuously rains, requiring an Ark be made to get around.

Today was an extremely productive day. I was able to clean the entire house, and get all the laundry done before the weekend. 

My roses have even started producing green leaves, and the branches are getting full.  Apparently, my roses love the handful of Epsom salt I placed in each pot a couple of weeks ago.  I love Epsom salt, but not just for long, hot baths.  Epsom salt is great for tomatoes, garden startup, house plants, trees, and grass. 

New Leaf Growth On Rose Bush

Gotta Love Annuals

Garden Work & A Bird

The cold and rain has given us a reprieve.  The last two days temperatures reached into the high 70’s – low 80’s. Spring is here, not officially though, lol.  The rain stopped for two days, giving us an opportunity to do some planting and yard /patio work.  We planted Lollo Rossa, Bibb and Mesclun Lettuce in one of the garden boxes with the onions.

In flower pots I planted cilantro, dark opal basil, sweet basil, thyme, lady lavender, heirloom black krim and big rainbow tomatoes.

The last two days, I worked on cleaning up the property and cutting all the grass. 

Bulldog man and Dakota made me another garden box for the garden.  We will put together some peat moss, compost and soil mixture for the new box.  Then I can start planting carrots, more tomatoes, spinach, and green peppers. 

 Bulldog man and Dakota also put together several bamboo surroundings for my experiment with sweet and Idaho potatoes.  I’m trying something new (new for me that is). We placed some of our compost in the bottom on the ground, secured the bamboo surroundings to our fence, placed the potatoes on top of the compost and then covered them with straw. Initially, I was just going to place the potato on the ground and cover them with straw but after reading a friend’s blog, I didn’t want to have unexpected snake friends visitingJ.  I found this experiment from a Better Homes and Garden segment found on YouTube.  I can’t wait to see how the potatoes turn out in the next several months.

Bamboo Surrounding



Sweet Potato Placed On Top Of Compost



Place Straw On Top Of Sweet Potatoes

While working out in the yard today, there was a beautiful male cardinal that kept hanging around. So, I figured why not take some pictures of him. 

Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge

Another great place to take the family for a day trip or a nice camping trip is the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, down in the southwest section of Oklahoma (close to Lawton, OK).  Buffalo roam free on this 59,000 acre refuge.  The wildlife is plentiful--deer, elk, fox, coyotes, prairie dogs, longhorn cattle, all kinds of birds and other little surprises. 

You need to visit The Holy City; a beautiful place that is within the refuge.   The play “The Prince of Peace” is presented at the Holy City every year around Easter time.

There is also a memorial for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Veterans Walkway and the World Chapel.