Icky Tick

Icky tick report:

When I placed FlirtyGirl in her crate to eat, I noticed a bump on her ear. I took her to a table and looked. It was a plump dogtick. When I was inspecting the ear I saw a rush of blood inside the tick. I put FG into her crate to eat and came back 1/2 hour later with hydrogen peroxide, paper towel a string to try the tie -and -work -out- the- tick method I saw on FB the night before. (as if she would stay still LOL!)

Back to the 'operating' table. No tick, only a mush of dead cat's ear skin I cleaned up with the HP. SO! I spent the next hour cleaning out and burning the straw bedding in FG's crate without getting any of it on my skin. 

BY THE WAY, It's really hard to get straw to burn.

EASY GATES (Feb. 9, 2016)

ABOUT FENCE!

I must be living right. I have friends who know how to do things I can’t do and tools and materials to make things happen (in the right season).

Brit, PieFace and Shotzee in Tiger Fountain Garden behind cattle panel gate.
This gate has 2" x 4" fencing so cats can't go through it,
and a fence post scrap on the edge to stiffen it so determined dogs can't bend it out and squeeze through.

The Gate

Our ‘quick’ solution to the gate dilemma is using sections from 52” tall, 16 ft. cattle panels made from 4 gage (3/16”) steel wire on a 6” h. x 8” w. grid. They stand up to any animal and are infinitely reusable. You do have to use a long bolt cutter or a saw to cut them. I lay the panel on the ground, set one arm of the bolt cutter on the ground and push down to cut it.   Gate widths should stay in the 8” or 6” module. I have screwed wood strips together to cover the pointy ends but that adds weight to the gate so it sags and slides off if you don’t watch out. We add 2”x4” welded wire fencing to the gates for cat excluders.

I got back to the project a few days later; finished packing the posts which were already quite stable.  I 'tacked'  deck screws to both gate posts to line up and hold up the gate before I added the hinges and catch. For hinges I folded a two hole pipe strap so the holes lined up (in a vice), slid it over the outside panel wire (the hinge 'pin') and deck screwed it in place using my battery screw gun. This gate is a little bent so the middle hinge is an opened strap for more wiggle room.









I took out the tack - screw on the catch side to test the hinge and see where the gate would land before screwing the catch in place. I made sure it swings shut and latches on its own. That was it for the day so I propped the gate open so nobody would run into it while the dog racing track was open.

ABOUT FENCE! HOLLY HUMOR

ABOUT FENCE!  HOLLY HUMOR

I must be living right. I have friends who know how to do things I can’t do and tools and materials to make things happen (in the right season).

Burford Holly hedge behind Tiger Fountain

The south border of Tiger Fountain Garden is a dwarf Burford holly hedge.

Rotundafolia Holly and Althea shrub

There’s a Rotundafolia holly (named for the shrub’s natural round shape) around the corner to the east.

Burford Holly hedge and 'volunteer' under the hedge

Burford holly (in the background) has an oval leaf with a sharp point . Rotundafolia (in the foreground) has five sharp points on the sides and end of the leaf.  Every one of the seven volunteer hollies under the Burford hedge has Rotundafolia leaves. I always thought it was sort of a holly joke that all those seedlings favor the other parent but now I’m not so sure. 

Rotundafolia leaves and Burford leaves on same plant.
Wendell is getting clay off the clamshell digger as he digs  a posthole in background.

Wendell and I thought the plant we removed was one of those joke hollies because it had Rotundafolia leaves as far as we could see under the parent holly. When we moved it we saw, eight feet up at that the top, only  Burford holly leaves!  One of these days we’ll transplant those seedlings and one of these years we’ll see if they all change into Burford holly.

ABOUT FENCE! MOVING POSTS (Feb. 7, 2016)

I must be living right. I have friends who know how to do things I can’t do and tools and materials to make things happen (in the right season).

The Tiger Fountain Garden gate posts were all wrong and a holly was in the fence line so I brought in my friend Wendell Yoakum the genius gardener.  

Post packer label should stop folks
from throwing out the warped 6 ft. board.
(Fence stretcher board is on the right.)  

The bend in the post packer helps
keep knuckles away from the post.
Small enough to fit in the hole and
 big enough to compact the soil, it's
a 5/4" x 2 1/2"deck board strip.

The gate hinge side already had a post, but it was too skinny. A big post nearby was redundant; two posts to move. I’d Googled ’pull up wooden posts’ and watched demos on YouTube.  They fastened things to the side of posts and used a fulcrum or jack to lift them. Wendell simply dug a post hole (clamshell digger) next to the post, wiggled it, and pulled it out!  Then we had an object lesson on the water table as water filled the bottom foot of the hole in less than a minute. We didn’t need a crystal ball to tell us things were about to get messy. That water wasn’t going to stay in the bottom of the hole when he deepened the hole and then packed the new post. There was gravel in the bottom from the first time we set the post.  Wendell set that aside to put back in first. When the hole was more than 3 ft deep (for the 9ft. post) he added gravel, put the big post in, added a little more gravel/mud and packed it with my official post packer stick, repeating until about six inches from the top of the hole. He stopped there to let it dry out a day or two before topping it off.  We’ve learned that if you don’t pack it in small layers or mound it up when wet, a post can be wiggly forever. 

The skinny post he’d removed was rotten at the bottom and too short to use for the gate now. We went on a post hunt in the fruit orchard and chose one that used to support a long gone grape vine. (Mowing the orchard just got easier!)  

We’d set the first post so the center of the gate lined up with the garden focal point, ‘Tiger Fountain’ and the solarium doors to the north, and the other posts to the west (no tapes measures, just eyeball’d it). We held the gate next to it’s post where the hinges would be, lined up the new post with enough room for the catch to meet the gate, marked the spot, then dug the hole and planted that post too. To our surprise, we found grey gravel in the bottom of the new hole. Must’ve had another post in that spot before; North GA granite doesn’t migrate on it’s own.  

Before calling it a day, Wendell dug up the holly, took it to the garden and covered the roots with compost to hold it a few days until I decided where to plant it. I don’t have to hurry because this is winter and the plant is dormant.

ABOUT FENCE!

Dog Nuisance

Our dog PieFace can climb over a six foot fence to wreck havoc! To keep him away from the fence we put sideways tomato cages along the fence inside Tiger Fountain Garden, our formal herb garden. The electric fence wouldn’t work there because the ornamental shrubs next to the fence would short the wire.  A dummy line is no good; somehow, without even touching it, PieFace can tell if there is electricity in the wire and over he goes!

We’re fed up with taking out and replacing those cages to get to the herbs or through the gate so I’m taking Tiger Fountain territory away from the dogs. Originally cedar panels enclosed the garden. Once the hedges matured we took off the panels inside the yard (they were in bad shape after the dogs took short cuts). We left the wooden posts in place; my shortcut to fencing the dogs out.  I don’t mind trimming those bushes if I have to to put up a hot wire to keep dogs away from the new fence.

The Road to Mushroom Mountain

The Road to Mushroom Mountain

This morning I returned from the Georgia Organics Grits and Vigor conference.  I hadn’t taken my house keys with me, after all, Bond had stayed home and could let me in.  He didn’t answer the phone both times I called and only Stevie and Ernie came to the back door when I banged on the knocker. After I checked to see that the cat patio was locked (he hadn’t fed those cats yet) I went around to the garden gate.  I was delighted to go directly to the next gate, the Sunken Garden Gate, without dog company because I’d made a point to finish that project before the conference.  I entered the house to find Bond in his shower attire, why he hadn’t heard the phone or door knocker.  SO good to be home!

I moved my suitcase and 2 bags of conference booty into the house and shared the loot and good news.

After puttering all day, I tidied up the cat patio.  I discovered a chewed up plastic bag with a Mushroom Mountain label. WAIT! Where did the cats find this? Did they find an old bag from a past purchase? I’d used inoculant for legumes before. I’d better take a closer look.  Damn! It was the one pound bag of mycorrhizal granules I’d purchased yesterday to inoculate seeds I’m sowing on the Tilley Farm to help remedy years of conventional farming. I figured FlirtyGirl had nabbed it from my luggage while I was going around the house so I went to the back door.  I hoped she hadn’t eaten it; no telling what it would do to a mammal. To my relief, there was a little trail leading from the door, around and under the fence and ending under the oldest wood pile mixed in with all kinds of organic matter. I had no choice but to sweep it all up.  I’ll still use it.  I’d intended to make my own mixture from the abundant microbes here at home anyway.  Now I just won’t be able to compare them (unless I buy another bag.)

ABOUT FENCE! JUST DIGGIN' IT.

ABOUT FENCE!

I must be living right. I have friends who know how to do things I can’t do and tools and materials to make things happen (in the right season).

Just Diggin' it.

The clamshell digger (2ft. depth marker) has black topsoil.
The auger (3 ft. marker) has red clay subsoil on it.
Not shown, plywood scrap to slam the shovel onto to get the dirt off and make it easier to rake or hoe the dirt back into the hole. Use 2 to keep subsoil separate from topsoil.

30 years ago we began fencing Daddy’s lot in Parrott, as soon as we got dairy goats.  We began with a barn (shed roof apron around the old garage) and three 25 ft. x 25 ft. pens where we rotated goats and gardens.  The fencing had to be 6 ft. tall to keep goats in and predators out. 6 ft. fence, posts 1/3 in the ground = 9 ft. posts in 3 1/2  ft. deep holes with room for gravel at the bottom.  You can get most of the way down with a clamshell post digger and then have to switch to an auger because there's not enough room in a deep hole to pull the handles apart with a decent load of dirt. Bond got his workout putting in that first goat pen. We had cross braces in every corner, 28 holes or 98 running feet! Eventually we fenced in the south acre pasture, after we bought a one-person gas powered hole digger in a frame, that even I could use.

Time to Plant Posts 

We began fencing in winter. As the days grew warmer the ground got harder. Our neighbor, Frank Alston remarked, “Everybody knows there’s a time to plant and a time to harvest.  Around here there’s a time to plant posts. That’s wintertime. In summer this clay is hard as concrete; you may as well give up and wait for winter.”  I got around that with a single drip irrigation emitter on each spot for a day before digging. That way the water went straight down to soften the soil.

The goats are long gone.  The fences keep dogs, cats and gardens separated.  

South GA Sat night excitement!

Pieface (the dog) says: how (& maybe why) to kill a copperhead. 1. You and your best dog friends bark at snake outside the fence until the stupid snake comes inside the fence. 2. Bark really loud at the snake then grab it by the tail. 3. Shake snake by the tail and beat it on

the wooden fence and bushes until it comes apart and gets stuck in the bush. 4. Go into your dog run where Meg has a tasty treat to give you for going into your crate. She will shut you in and go see if the snake is dead, and if it is, bury it outside your yard. She will also take a picture of the snake. And keep an eye on you in case snake bit you. But also, she's not going to call the vet. It's Saturday! He deserves a day off!  And you got your poisonous snake vaccination booster last month. 

Our soil garden and a Meggyver

How to grow soil. 

1. Live in south GA where farmers till their  fields when it's breezy and where trees grow big, fast. 

2. Have a foot deep wading pool that doesn't hold water, in the middle of the patio. 

 3. Throw in twigs and sticks that fall from the sky. 

4. Add small limbs from shrubs you've pruned. 

5. Add some weeds you didn't pull before they went to seed. 

6. Set fire to it and enjoy the flames (stand by with rake and hose, just in case.)

7. Spread the ashes and repeat 3 &4. Also rake and blow in leaves and that south GA topsoil that lands on the patio.  

8. Remove wood for the stove as needed. 

9. In Spring, before weeds go to seed and you need a place to burn those, 

push sticks aside or pile them nearby. 

Meggyver the soil up by scooping it into a dustpan on a stick. Transfer into trash can to transport it. 

Three good sized piles!

10. Replace sticks and start over. 

Sometimes gardeners have to say "uncle!"

You'd think folks with the perseverance to pull dozens of wisteria like these out of the ground 

could transplant one old flowering quince. 

Friday after lunch.

Wendell, "let's take out the wisteria, smilax and cherry laurel bushes around the magnolia tree as far as the camellia."

Meg, when we got to the quince, "looks to me like it'd be easier to transplant the flowering quince than to pull out all the wisteria that's growin IN the shrub. Besides, the magnolia is shading it. See how it's growing into the tree to get light?"

So we trimmed the top, pulled and dug (puller bear, mattock, shovel). We sawed off four inch wide roots. 

Our reward- we split off two quince. We quit for the day; two hours was enough at this when we could start again Saturday morning. We filled the hole in so the roots wouldn't freeze. 

I woke up with a back ache so I was relegated to watching, cheering and walking the scraps to the burn pile. 

This time Wendell brought a small pointed hand spade and an iron pole his father had  used to find plumbing pipes in the ground. He continued digging for another two hours until he was down to the orange clay subsoil.  Still the quince wouldn't even rock back and forth. In the thirty odd years the tree had grown next to the ancient quince, magnolia roots had grown through the quince roots which grew down, around and under. 

Saturday afternoon.

Meg, "Remember when we started this I said it'd be easier to dig up the quince? I've been proven wrong. Its more like we'd have to dig up the magnolia to move the quince. And since the original goal was taking out wisteria, which you did, its time to say,'uncle!' and fill in the hole. "

Wendell, "After I do that I'm going to dig up some more wisteria and smilax just so I can quit and feel like I've actually done something. But at least we've learned how to tell flowering quince roots; they're as red as the flowers."

And he was right. 

Potting Mix Moments

Discovering that YOU didn't make all the holes in the potting mix bag that's been stored in the solarium for a year. 

Where did Mrs Mousie get the dryer lint for this nest?

And realizing, no matter what you do, short of fencing Birt out, he will tag this new herb pot. Happily, I have another pot to use as a pedestal and Birt is a short dog. 

I anchored the center tube with a weight on the ground, set the big empty pot over that and smaller one on top to tie the two together. Looking forward to nasturtium and Swiss chard if the seeds sprout, and transplanting lemon grass into the center when the warm weather settles in. 

Success! Only the herb pot can be 'tagged'.

Inheritance

The narcissus around our birdbath haven't bloomed well for years; in part because its in shade and then they haven't  been divided in a long time. Really it's best to take them all out and put some back.

Last week I got a huge clump out only to discover the ajuga ground cover both sheltered and over shaded by the next clump of narcissus. 

Steady she goes! Better wait a bit to dig the rest out so as not to sunburn OR freeze burn the ajuga. 

After a week I needed to do something with the dug-up bulbs; If they were to survive I couldn't just leave them in a garbage bag. As my left arm still isn't functioning 100%, preparing and planting narcissus in a flower bed was out of the question. I could've washed and then dried them to plant later but I already have too many projects on the back burner and probably would wind up just throwing them away. And then I remembered where I got them, in the field where the family mansion burned down. Grandmama told me, when she got married (before WWI) she'd gone home to Rome GA and dug up narcissus, daffodils and butter'n eggs bulbs from her grandmother's garden to plant around her new home.  They'd survived the fire.  Later when neighbors grew corn on the land, the plows spread the bulbs over the vacant lot. 

I planted my narcissus in the sunniest spot i could find, the orchard. With any luck they'll be there for another generation or two. 

Up cycle Michael Kors cashmere

1. To honor the lambs, rabbits and goats who gave their wool and fur so we can be stylishly warm and 2. To snatch

victory from the moths who ate holes in these sweaters - I pushed the navy blue sweater into the left arm of the white sweater and that one into the right arm. Voila! Fabulous cat cushion. 

But I must admit, I'll be using this as a hat if it ever gets as cold down here as it did last month!

I did this.

 When we arrived in S GA in 1978 we couldn't understand why our neighbor said 'I built that!' when we knew it was the three old men (employed by Daddy's great uncle since they were teenagers) who did the work.

Now we know. Whenever I have left workmen to finish a job, even though I think we see eye to eye, they screw it up. If I want to be sure the job is done right I have to observe. (this also means I have to know how to do the work).

For example, the patio on the north side of the house slopes IN to the shelter. We had a little bit of cement leftover from pouring the slab to the east and, after filling old barrel rings to use as stepping stones, there was just enough to fasten cement pavers to channel the water. They put down two pavers. One fellow saw that it sloped beyond those. I agreed we should add two more and went back in the house. Sure enough! We have a row TWO pavers HIGH now (not four long). They didn't even fill in the old foundation from the post that was moved. Sheesh! The water still seeps in over and around the mat to the left. 

Daddy 'Poked Me' From Beyond the Grave

Our dogs just loved my dad. He grew up with dogs worthy of the long stories he repeated whenever we asked.  But he only owned one during his adult life, and that great dane, Missy-dog, stayed at home with Mom while he lived in a apartment to teach at the University during the week or traveled.  At times we couldn't tell if he'd come to visit his house, us, or our dogs.

Birt, our newest house dog would've been especially enamored.  We've been taking him to work with us at our office/studio.  Although we provide rawhide chew sticks to keep him occupied, Birt prefers paper towels and napkins out of the office trashcan.  If Daddy was still around, Birt would have a handy supply at every table and in every chair because Daddy left a trail of tissue.  Whenever Daddy wiped his beard clean he'd put the napkin in his pocket so he'd have one to go with the rest of his kit, a pocket sketchbook and pen. And there's a limit to how much a pocket will hold.

Last weekend I finally got around to moving obstacles from the concrete pad in front of the ancient garage we use for storage.  In 1997 we had hurriedly  unloaded a mess of 16ft. long heart pine boards torn out during renovating our buildings where the office/studio is now.  We'd planned to return that week with a crew to put the wood up on racks and then use it for sculpture crates.  The strong young men who worked for us soon moved on to other jobs, and then the European Union passed a law that all wood shipping crates must be stamped 'kiln dried'.  That put that project on the back burner. For 16 years.  True, most of the wood had been eaten by termites and I could throw it on the truck by myself, but enough boards were heavy enough for me to welcome having two teenagers to direct.  Troy and Ka'Harie have been helping me clean up all the abundance ever since they moved to Parrott three years ago. It has been a long list.

With visions of "American Pickers" invading the garage, and room to park and fill up (finally! because we re-cycle) our curb side trash bin, the first storage item I got rid of was Daddy's suitcase with summer clothes.  I remembered seeing him in each shirt, pair of pants and even the turquoise swimming trunks, on our trip to Mexico the summer of 1966.  That trip was before he discovered guyaberras. Those were distributed to family members when he died in 2005. All these shirts were dacron polyester/cotton mixes no good for rags and too hot for us to wear even if we overlooked the paint stains.  Still, I set aside 2 and the only pair of cotton pants, tan classic bell bottom corduroy Wranglers, knowing it would be a miracle to get out the funky old garage smell.

I put the shirts and pants in to soak over night in 20 Mule Team Borax and Wool Light. 

This morning I finished the cycle on the heavy-duty agitation mode and spun out the water.  I pulled out the pants.  There were little pieces of paper stuck to them.  I checked the right pocket.  Sure enough, an ancient  much agitated wad of paper napkins. 

Hi, Dad!

Start of a Fungus Affair

For a few years I've been fascinated with the colors of various fungi  outside our 'front' door.  This video I shot in January 2012 shows one reason why I'm paying lots of attention.  

When tucked up in bed, be careful how you take your ipod earbud out of your ear.  In the dark, the cat at your shoulder may mistake it for a bug and snatch it, claws out!

Leaf blower haiku

Leaf blower, ginko
leaves fly off roof edge in waves.
Yellow rains below.


Leaf blower, ginko
leaves fly off roof in waves.
Yellow rain, not snow!


Leaf blower, damp limbs,
inspired, coals become inflamed.
Stand-by, chaperone!

'Black Friday" in Parrott

As most Americans do, we cooked and ate a fabulous turkey, then took Thanksgiving Day off; just lazed around the house or walked the dog.
However, unlike most Americans we did not spend the next day with the bargain hunters; we battled a clog in the drain to the septic tank because water came out of the shower drains when the washing machine emptied. We fed a snake and then a garden hose down the former kitchen sink drain.  Mom finally told me (after I'd lived in the house 33 years) that they'd moved the kitchen because there wasn't enough pitch and the drain clogged up several times that first year. Their solution worked as this was the first time I'd had any problem with the drain clogging.  But WE were unsuccessful.  Our snake and hose couldn't go far enough.
The next day we decided to look for a clean out (or put one in), and found it after vacuuming a few gallons of fill dirt out from around the shut-off valve under the front porch, a brick patio.   Termites had eaten the plywood that held back the dirt. It didn't help at all that our stack of replacement doors rests against the wall over the hole.
'Finding' and 'getting into' are not the same thing.  None of our tools were big enough to fit the end plug.  We called Laing's Hardware in Dawson (still open as it was before noon) and Jim told us they had no tool too, and we may as well make our own.  Bond set to work designing and building the tool (upside down in the picture above) out of plastic 'wood' screwed to the ends of 2, 2x4's with a dowel handle.
We got the plug out but not the clog.
Until we rent a powered snake, we 'll put corks in the ground floor showers and keep laundry loads small.  Perhaps the clog will fix itself......
We are still puzzled why the darned thing backed up all of a sudden in this year of drought.  Water has come up in the lowest shower twice during heavy rains when the ground was too saturated for the drain field to work (BOTH ALSO DURING HOLIDAYS!)   And we'd had the tank pumped out one time, just six months ago.
In my research I found that the day after Thanksgiving is Roto-Rooter's biggest day of the year for emergency calls.  Looks like we WERE having the same kind of Black Friday as many Americans...or was that a "Brown Friday"?

Tonight I learned that if you put the kitten's medicine in canned catfood, inside a cat crate, with the door shut, (on accounta the kitten is busy playing on the floor with a Q-tip) the dog can still eat it!