This time last year I had corn up.  This year farmers are over two weeks behind due to all the rain and a bad cold spell we had the end of March with snow flurries. April 10, the temperatures were in the eighties.  Tennessee River Valley weather forecasters have a fit trying to guess what the weather is going to do.  The redbuds and dogwoods, two wing silverbells and yoshino cherry trees are blooming.   The daffodils are finishing up and the iris is just starting.  This time last year my peonies were in bloom. This year they are up about six inches.

   

    

 

   

Last weekend I watched a fertilizer spreader tractor raising dust as it went across the field in front of my house.  A couple of hours later it was pouring down rain as a planter rushed across the field until the rain made it too gummy to continue.   

    

    

 Eastern Bluebirds are making their nests.  I replaced two boxes the wild woman on a John Deere knocked off with the finishing mower last summer.  Right after I installed them, I noticed a couple checking out the new digs.  

   

    

    

Wednesday of this week, the temperatures were in the eighties.  I plowed up my garden and planted a short row of corn.  My hairdresser asked me the next day what my definition of a short row.  Twenty four feet is a good short row for me and he agreed.  He said his Dad used to tell him to go hoe his short rows and they were a couple of hundred feet long.  A long row was all the way across the field and back. 

Thursday storms rolled through and I had another 1.77 inches of rain.  We lucked out and the severe weather hit east of us. I don’t know if my corn will come up through standing water now.  I’ll probably be replanting later. Friday’s temperatures were over twenty degrees lower.  Here it is the middle of April and I’m cranking up the heat.  

   

The Hooligans fear of thunder since they were shot hasn’t gotten any better. While I was at work during the storm, they went through the screen on my screen porch, tore out a window screen on the house and on the fench doors trying to get in the house.  I’m surprised that they didn’t set off the bugler alarm. The cruel things that humane do to a dog have lasting effects on them. I’m still accessing the damage. I give them a melatonin pill when I’m at home to calm them down.   

  

  

Locally Saturday we had our Earth Day Festivities and Master Gardener’s garden tour of nine gardens, a wildflower walk and historical walking tours in Florence, Sheffield and Tuscumbia. The walking tours are running each Saturday in April and are good for educating about our historical structures in the area, which we are blessed with. I decided to do the garden tours and go to the Earth Day festivities when finished even though I needed to do some serious weeding in my flower beds. I finally mowed the yard Friday afternoon after work, picked up the hay and hauled to the compost pile to make me feel better about going on the tour. Then I worked on weeding my flower bed along the driveway between the front walk and house. By dark I had a pile lying on the driveway large enough to make a bale of hay.  Patches used it as a bed for a couple of days until I hauled it off to the compost pile. 

 

 

 

I set up on the back steps and got a few bird pictures and heard my first hummer until the Hooligans came thundering up and scared everyone away. I left the house at 9:30 and left the last house at 6 PM. Needless to say since the Earth Day celebration ended at 5 PM, I didn’t make it. I needed to pick up some old windows to redo my greenhouse.

 

 

 

 

Levi was glad to see me get home; somehow he had gotten his front leg under his collar and was hopping around on three legs. I talked to Mom after I got home and she said that Patches was lying on the driveway close to the house most of the day and thought it strange and wondered if she was sick. I told her she was taking advantage of the pile of weeds and was taking a nice snooze on it.  I guess it’s like sleeping newly mowed hay patch. 

    

    

   

   

    

    

   

    

   

    

    

    

   

    

  

    

    

You know that Ray Stevens song about where do my socks go when I put them in the dryer. I kept wondering what was happening to my yard socks until I looked under my desk. When I come in from the yard, I’d sit down at my desk to check my e-mails and FB and was kicking them off.  We grew up walking around barefooted in the summer and my feet need to be free.

My doctor tells me I need to exercise. This is my typical summer off day:

  

I went to Coldwater Books to deliver some of my prints. After leaving I drove down through Spring Park to get a few pictures.  We really need a geese roundup.   It’s nice to have them in the park, but they’ve overpopulated so that you have to do the cowboy step trying to walk around. Then I drove back up down so I could check on the status of the construction of the locomotive turntable and roundhouse.  This day they were testing the turntable to see if it would hold up a locomotive and still turn.

    

I went by the Colbert County Tourism office and picked up a 75^th Coondog Cemetery anniversary Case knife for a neighbor and delivered it. Then on to a landscaping supply in Spring Valley, and bought a load of bagged composted manure and mulch for Mom.  At first she started out wanting one, then two, then called back and upped it to three.  I bought eight.  After I got home, she landed up with four.  I unloaded the compost on a pallet I have on the other side of the underground fence to keep the hooligans from dragging the bags all over the lower forty.  I put the tiller on my tractor and tilled part of the garden area and a meditation circle I’m working on.  It has a circle of star magnolias around the outside of the circle and a sugar maple in the center.  When the maple gets tall enough to shade the area, I plan to put a sitting area under the tree.  If you pull in my driveway, the maple is in a direct line at the other end of the property.  I’m debating whether to plant a circle of peonies or daylilies or a combination of each.  I worry that if I plant a circle of peonies and the shrubs get too large, I may have to move the peonies.  They don’t like a change of scenery.  Daylilies don’t mind a move.

  

  

    

   

I spent a while walking around taking pictures of my daylilies that were in a late bloom. I bought some purple sensation allium bulbs a while back that I needed to plant in my University of North Alabama section in among some yellow daylilies called El Despardo, but, first had to find the flowers.  As I cleaned around old W21 I thought to myself, my doctor says I need to exercise.  W21 was my old favorite shovel.  I used it so much and wore it down so thin it cracked.  I took it by Leon at the Rebel Shop and he said that there was just nothing left to weld together.  So now it’s garden décor along with a broken tater fork and Mom’s shovel my cousin broke the handle.

  

I parked my John Deere where I was working.  As I pulled up grass and weeds I threw it in the loader.  Levi one of my  hooligans, likes to drive my tractor when I’m not using it.  He had his back feet in the seat and front feet on the fender looking down at the two girls jumping up trying to grab him.  Every once in a while they are able to grab his tail or foot and drag him off and the hooligan ruckus starts.

  

  

    

 As I filled the loader scoop up to capacity, I smelled the distinct fall odor of cotton defoliant agent orange of the south.  Cotton picking and soybean harvest season is almost here.  Corn has been combined and wheat is being planted in its place. Be aware that slower traffic will be sharing the road with you.  You can be up on a tractor before you can sing fly in the buttermilk, shoo fly shoo (at this point you younger folks Google I Love Lucy where she tries to ship herself to Europe in a trunk).  That song never made sense to me.

  

     

I crawled up on the tractor and dumped my load on the compost heap and ran to the house to get my camera.  Actually I trotted. Well actually it was a brisk walk.  Well….actually after crawling around on the ground pulling weeds, it was a labored crawl.  By this time this huge spray rig was working on the field in front of the house.  By huge, I mean my 32hp JD 3032E tractor would fit in one of its wheel it’s so big.

   

I ran back to my tractor, well …..you know, and crawled back up on the tractor and drove down the road and waited for the rig to come back in my direction.  I started taking pictures of the spray rig in the distance and it looked so little. As it got nearer it increased in size until the booms thirty feet or more in length with the chemicals spraying could be seen.  It looked like a giant dragon fly coming at me.

  

After taking my pictures, I went back to cleaning out my daylily bed and planted my alliums.  As I crawled past ole W21, I thought my doctor says I need to get some exercise.  Another trip to the compost heap; picked up a load of mulch, walking to the barn to get a pitchfork and back to the garden. Got the mulch down, back to the barn to return the fork grabbed the shovel and planted a rhododendron I had purchased on sale under the large hackberry in the back yard and a Hydrangea Delights Star Gazer in one of the beds in the front yard.  Afterwards I walked down to the garden and brought back a couple of hooligan cages to place around them.

   

The cool spell we had a couple of weeks ago has really started the fall color show. It should be at its peak this weekend when I go on a barn, old churches, cemeteries and house picture taking trip out in the boonies this weekend.  The dogwoods are just loaded with more berries this year than normal.  Hope that’s not a prediction of the type of winter we are going to have.    The hooligans are enjoying the cooler weather, so much that they are coming up lame from chasing each other over and under things.   The hummingbirds have gone south to Mexico for the winter.  It seems they migrated early this year.  A frost will be coming in the next couple of weeks.  The dogwoods are just loaded with berries this year.  Are they predicting a hard winter?

    

   

I went down to the compost heap to see if I could find where the yellow jacket nest was that got me a couple of weekends ago and they were still angry. Just hearing my truck set them off and Blackie and Levi were attacked even though they weren’t near the nest.  I must have hit the nest dead center when I turned the pile with the loader as the entrance of the nest is now on the side of the compost heap. I think the best course will be burning the pile to get rid of them.   I really hate wasting good compost.

  

  

1830 Tuscumbia Alabama was the site of the first railroad west of the Appalachian Mountains. The two mile rail connected town with the Tennessee River at Tuscumbia Landing and utilized a horse-drawn car.  Back then the Tennessee River in our area was not nice to navigation as it was mostly shoals and rapids.  To take a keelboat through the shoals required a lot of muscle, hence the name of one of the cities in the area known as Muscle Shoals. A means of getting around the bad stretch of river from Tuscumbia to Decatur was needed and a forty one mile railroad was built. The first steam engine was used in 1834 and horses were phased out.  This route was a major route of the Trail of Tears 

   

      

 The tenth annual Walk to Tuscumbia from Tuscumbia Landing along the Tennessee River in Sheffield to Spring Park took place Saturday September 8, 2012.  It is part of the Oka Kapassa Festival which commemorates the kindness of the citizens of Tuscumbia while the Indians were forced to relocate to Oklahoma.  Along the way they had encountered hardships, beating, starvation and theft of their property along the Trail of Tears corridor except in the city of Tuscumbia.  Here they were given food, clothes shelter and a doctor before living the area through Tuscumbia Landing. 

    

    

    

 The tenth annual Walk to Tuscumbia from Tuscumbia Landing along the Tennessee River in Sheffield to Spring Park took place Saturday September 8, 2012.  It is part of the Oka Kapassa Festival which commemorates the kindness of the citizens of Tuscumbia while the Indians were forced to relocate to Oklahoma.  Along the way they had encountered hardships, beating, starvation and theft of their property along the Trail of Tears corridor except in the city of Tuscumbia.  Here they were given food, clothes shelter and a doctor before living the area through Tuscumbia Landing. 

    

    

 I was honored to be invited to the Colbert reunion potluck dinner the night before and met several of the descendants of Chief George Colbert, who my home country is named after, and some of those who would be participating in the walk the next morning.   I was treated to some of the best chicken stew I've ever put in my mouth. 

    

    

    

I ventured down to Spring Park a little early before catching the trolley to Tuscumbia Landing The day was overcast and the clouds threatened rain again. A generous rain had occurred during the morning hours and combined with the abundance of geese made walking using the cowboy step (as my Dad called it on our dairy farm) necessary.   The empty rocks of the waterfall added to the dreary feeling.   The silence in the park was interrupted by a gaggle of Canadian geese flying into the park and landing in the pond near the bridge.  

    

    

 The walk from Tuscumbia Landing to Spring Park would take place even if it rained. After all those coming through Tuscumbia from as far away as Georgia suffered a lot more misery going to Oklahoma  Annie Cooper pitched the idea of the walk to Tribal Council and the annual ‘homecoming’ walk was born.  Instead of walking from Spring Park to Tuscumbia Landing, the walk commemorates the return home.   Back to Oka Kapassa, meaning Cold Water, the name given to Spring Creek by the Chickasaws.  The first walk had twenty participants. This year the trolley was packed and several walkers followed the trolley to the Landing in their cars.  I didn’t do a head count, but this year’s walk had a lot more walkers than the first walk even with rain threatening. 

    

    

 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 which forced approximately 100,000 Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles to move from their homeland in the South to Oklahoma from 1830 to 1850.  Approximately 3,500 Creeks died in Alabama during the removal. 

    

    

 My most emotional moment was watching those who came from out of state and made the walk for the first time.  Watching them put their hands on the Tuscumbia Landing historical sign and realizing that this was the site that their ancestors left on their forced removal in 1830 to Oklahoma. 

    

    

 We took the trail from the parking lot down to the site of Tuscumbia Landing.  All that is left of the building blown up by Union forces during the war is the foundation.  The path of the railroad bed can still be seen, the tracks are long gone along with the oxen, horses and mules that pulled the first train.  As I walked around the foundation and looked down the site of the track, I imagined what history this site saw, and what the Indians felt as they were removed from their homeland forever.  A light rain started falling.  I pulled out a plastic bag to wrap my camera in to protect it.  After a couple of minutes, the rain went away.

    

The time came and everyone formed a circle. Robert Thrower was at the head of the circle started talking about his feelings and thoughts about what happened during the removal and the connections he had to Tuscumbia.  Next representatives of each Tribe present shared their thoughts.  A prayer was said at the end and it was time to start The Walk to Tuscumbia.  The two mile walk started in silence by all for the first mile of our journey.  The trolley followed behind for any who grew weary and couldn’t continue. The lead walker would rotate as we walked along.  As we neared the city limits of Tuscumbia a buzzard circled. Then some one started singing in the native tongue.  The chant continued until Oka Kapassa was reached.    The walk finished as it had started, in prayer

    

    

    

 The second year of the walk, a Native American Festival called Oka Kapassa (Return to Coldwater) was started at Spring Park.  It is a Native American gathering of the Alabama, Caddo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Coushatta, Creek, Euchee, Miami, Muscogee, Navajo, Seminole and Sioux tribes. 

    

    

Nine years later the first day of the festival on Friday is dedicated solely as an education project for the schools of the area.  Activities such as arrowhead making, dancers, hoop dancers, basket making, dug out canoe demonstrations, stick ball, beadwork, potter, native foods, language and storytelling are demonstrated for the young and old alike.   The second day is The Return Walk to Tuscumbia with dancers, Native American crafts and music and demonstrations.  

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

On the home front, the air is filled with aroma of cotton defoliant.  It’s almost cotton picking time. I think about ‘Agent Orange’ each time I smell that stuff.  The hooligans are still busy chasing the rabbit that is staying in the flower bed along the under ground fence.  Every so often, I’ll see it run by me with the hooligans in hot pursuit.  Sometimes it’s hard to get the girls to come and eat.  I’ll put up the pan I use to measure out the dog  food and see the panic on Levi’s face when he realizes he’s not getting fed right now.  I’ll come back later to feed.  Levi is not going to miss a meal.  With all the festivals I've been attending, my flower beds are really looking abandoned.

After a long dry hot spell in the 100’s, we finally had a lot of rain in a short period.  Then the hot temperatures, not seen since the 1930’s returned, this time with high humidity.   The first spell was easier to take since the humidity was low.  We eventually had a little over five inches in a week, but are still over seven inches below normal.

The weather has been hot, hot without rain.  So far we are over seven and a half inches below normal for the year.  Three weekends ago, the weather folks predicted two to four inches of rain, only they forgot to inform Mother Nature of it.  

   

The Gulf coast received around 18 inches that weekend and is getting drenched again this week.  I’ve been watering from the time I come home from work until dark each day.  Cotton loves this weather, but the corn crop is tassling out and needs rain.  No rain is predicted for the next week and most of the corn crop will be lost unless irrigation is being used.

   

    

Time not watering is spent hauling wood chips from the utility company and mulching.  I finally got my heirloom tomatoes out in the garden and gave away the excess. I kept waiting for the ninety degree temps to moderate, but it was past time to have them in the ground as they were over two feet tall.   I dug a deep hole, and place water retention crystals derived from a plant source in the bottom of the hole and sprinkled some Epsom salts and fertilizer and back filled to a level an inch below the surrounding soil.  I have more of the Cherokee Purple tomatoes this year.  They seemed to be a favorite of my give aways.   Before mulching I put newspaper down around my plants and mulched heavily.  The tomatoes responded by doubling in size and putting out some nice tomatoes.  I received similar results after mulching my squash plants.  This weekend I plan to finish mulching. And no I didn’t  use a string line to mark off my rows.  After one day in the lower nineties, temperatures will be back in the hundreds.  Some of my re-blooming iris which normally bloom in September to October are blooming early this year.  Some of my daylilies are in re-bloom and some of the later bloomers are just starting.

    

  

  

Around here, a successful garden bragging rights is measured by when and how many tomatoes you receive in your first picking.  I over wintered two tomato plants in the garage this past winter expecting to have the bragging rights for the first tomato.   They had come up in some compost containing potting soil I had made up.  After planting them in the garden and they started to set fruit, I realized that they were these rather large tasteless salad tomatoes that were supposed to be Brandywine seeds last year.  I pulled the plants up and tossed them into the compost pile.

  

After our last rain I planted a row of peaches and cream corn.  I haven’t run a water line down to my new garden area yet, and the corn was looking bedraggled.  I filled the loader on the JD with water, drove down to the garden and pour a good dose down the row.

The Japanese beetles are just about under control.  I’ve capture over 15 gallons of the little varmints in my traps.  I had to empty the traps daily of the beetles into zip lock bags , sealing and placing in a recycled sink I have in the garden until all of the beetles died.  Dying Japanese beetles stink like a dead corpse. Some time during the night, either the hooligans or coyotes pulled the bags out of the sink and ripped the bags to shreds.  I had trouble getting to my greenhouse due to the odor.  The hooligans rolled in the bugs and besides being very stinky, had dead beetles matted in their hair.

  

  

  

This is the time of year is the beginning of the festivals.   Usually we have an unusual heat wave during the festival time. This year is no exception.  The Helen Keller Festival was this past weekend and temperatures were in the hundreds all weekend.   These young folks who spend too much time playing video games aren’t used to being outside in the heat as a number were hauled off to the hospital.  I was a volunteer photographer and spent Friday afternoon and all day Saturday walking around town visiting the car show around the courthouse, the Tuscumbia depot, and down town.  Down in Spring Park, vendors were set up and various bands played on stage.  Since I was one of the photographers, I got to take pictures behind the scenes before and while the bands were playing.   The Alabama Blue Brothers, The Spring and Diamond Rio were some of the bands on stage Saturday evening.

  

  

  

  

Next up is the W C Handy Festival Shoals wide from July 20 to July 29.    September 7 and 8 is the Oka Kapassa, Return to Coldwater, a special Native American gathering. 

  

    

I’ve been battling with a Carolina wren that somehow was getting into my barn and decided to make a nest in my tilt trailer that I haul around with my riding mower. Normally I don’t mind, but I had visions of the little birds fledging and coming home total destruction of everything in the barn from the hooligans trying to catch the birds.   Since it’s summer, I really need to use it for hauling things around the yard.

I thought maybe she was coming through the dog door that was dangling by one electrical tie instead of the two I normally have it hanging from.  I need to replace the door, but the company went out of business and a new one is a different size, so it means a redo of the siding of the wall the door is mounted in. I repaired the flap and threw the nest out only to come back two days later to a completely rebuilt nest.  She was either coming in a chewed off corner of the flap or through the bent in the roof. 

Again I threw the nest out and watched the trailer for several days and around in the barn for signs of a third nest. Not finding one, I was smug thinking I had won.   That is until Friday evening when I was closing down the doors, I thought I saw a bird flying around in the darkness.  I turned the lights back on, searched around the barn, but didn’t find anything.  Sunday when I went to the barn to feed the hooligans, I noticed egg shells on top of the bird seed barrel.   I hadn’t won.  I have a recycled gutter tacked to the wall above the stairs that I put small boards and pcv pipe in along with a small flower pot.  Inside the flower pot were two babies and two eggs.  

Now what?  Wonder if there is any way I can slowly move the pot outside without the Mom abandoning her babies?  I hope they decide to fledge on one of my off days so I can shoo them outside.  Crazy wren.

The hooligans are terrified of storms since they were shot.  Monday evening I got a big scare.   I heard my back door knob rattling. Looked around the corner from the hallway and it was Patches with the knob in her mouth trying to open it. It was thundering and she tore a hole in my fairly new vinyl screen door.  I've got a piece of a roll somewhere from replacing the screen on a front window after they went through a window screen after some critter. 

I've been working out in the garden a lot cleaning up overgrown flower and shrubbery beds and mulching.  I hired some one to help and spent two Saturday’s working the bed along the property line. We got it cleaned up, but broke several of the daylily blooms off in the process.  The blooms are at their peak for the next few weeks. I’ve been bringing cardboard boxes home all week to put under the mulch. After two years of neglect, there is a lot of grass and weed seeds for restocking new growth. The cardboard didn’t go far so I switched to the newspapers I’ve been saving up. I hope to finish it up this Saturday, but it’s supposed to be 95. August temperatures.  We’ve skipped spring again this year. 

I plowed up the garden  again so I could start planting for the third time.  I had my seeds in a cup sitting in the cup holder.  But Mary decided to dig around a bald cypress and with the next pass, I noticed this shredded stuff.  I’ll have to make another trip back to the Co-op for more crook neck squash. I’ll have to reorder the pan squash.  I bet I’ll get a good stand of cucumbers and squash in that one area near the tree.

This coming weekend I plan to work in the garden weeding and mulching. I will take time off to attend the Memorial Day ceremony in Tuscumbia. This year is a special year. I recently found out about a great uncle killed in WWI, and buried in France. I'll be posting his story on a new Tuscumbia and Colbert County historical blog a friend and I started recently.  We named it 'The Tuscumbian' after the old theater in town long gone.

 

It’s been a very busy last few weeks.  It’s also been unusually hot, more like August weather.  I started cleaning out my flower beds, putting down newspaper and mulching and tilled up the garden area.  I replanted corn, but with the dry weather the second planting hasn’t come up.  Watermelon, cucumbers and cantaloupes started coming up and were promptly eaten by bugs.  I’ll replant this weekend just before the next rain. I finally put my volunteer tomatoes in the garden.  I had a couple of beautiful plants coming up in a compost pile, so I dug them up and into the garden they went.  

The warm weather has encouraged some of my daylilies into an early bloom. Late irises are finishing up their bloom cycle.  I had planned an open garden with a brunch on May 26^th, but there’s no way I’ll be ready both in the garden and the house. My house is still a wreck.    For some more blooms this week check out my gardening blog.

 

April 2012, I reported 1.18 inches of rain from my reporting station to CoCoRaHS. After planting corn twice I began to wonder if it was fruitless putting in a garden again this year.  Last Thursday it finally rained 0.92 inches, almost as much as last month. Monday I measured 1.78 inches in my gauge and more is expected.  I may have to think about putting catfish in the garden.  The rain gave me an opportunity to separate and move my heirloom tomato plants into larger containers in my greenhouse.  I’m not sure what I’ll do with all the plants as I have a lot more than I can use. I also got flower seeds started.   

Some times, those of us who live in the country take for granted what we have.  Sure there’s a lot of work involved, but it’s the little things that loose sight of.  A couple of high school friends came out to see my flowers.  All of a sudden Richard said, oh listen, a Bob White.  I haven’t heard that since I was a boy he said.  I’d gotten so use to hearing it, that I wasn’t paying attention to it. 

The cities of Tuscumbia, Florence and Sheffield all had historical walking tours each Saturday in April.  I made all of Tuscumbia’s and posted a lot of the pictures on the Remember Tuscumbia page on Facebook. On Confederate Memorial Day, a ceremony was held at the cemetery to honor over 100 unknown soldiers from the Civil War.  New headstones were made for each grave recently.

 

 

The hooligans have been busy chasing whatever runs or flies.  A chipmunk made the mistake of trying to cross the driveway. Blackie was on the job and charged in hot pursuit. The chipmunk ran into the garage hit the front wall, made a turn, hit the side wall, and made another turn toward the other garage door.  While Blackie was still looking for it around my pile of tools and newspaper I shooed it toward the open door. Levi came walking up to the door about that time and the chipmunk ran between his front and back legs, and made a turn toward the front walk. Levi and Patches started the pursuit outside.  Once it disappeared, Levi soon lost interest and took a nap while Patches hunted for it.  Blackie was still going through everything in the garage. 

You know it's past time to mow for the first time if ...

• Your neighbors ask if your lawn mower is in the shop.
• Lawn services leave business cards in your mailbox.
• Your dogs can’t find their toys.
• You can’t find your dogs' toys.
• You can’t find your dogs when they lie down.
• The weeds have gone to seed.
• Rabbits have invaded your yard dispute three hooligan Border collies.
• You can’t find your flower beds.
• You can’t tell the difference between flower beds and yard. Well, actually you can see a few azaleas and iris blooming, and get an idea where they are.
• The hooligans are walking on top of the retaining walls of your shrub beds trying to keep their feet dry.
• You can’t find your front door.
• You need a machete to get to your outbuildings and garden.
• The hooligans have already killed two snakes.
• Your Mom, next door, complains she can’t see your house.

 

Things are slowly getting back to the normal abnormal with the hooligans. With temperatures in the eighties, bumble bees are out and Blackie has worn herself out chasing them, and Patches has been busy chasing the shadows. Blackie has reminded me of Gomer Pyle sticking to Andy like glue after Andy saved his life.  Every time I turn around I’m tripping over her.  She was like that after her surgery and was getting where she wasn’t so clingy, now she’s like Velcro again.  

 

She had a something dead smell and I thought she might have gangrene under all that thick fur.  Trying to check a wiggle worm energizer bunny Blackie is just about impossible, so while she was eating, which is the only time she is still, I took the scissors to her back end.  Apparently the dead smell was from either the snake or the rat she killed as I didn’t find any infection.  Patches is still not doing her Trigger impersonation at feeding time yet. She really looks awful now with her back half cropped like these kids that wear their hair pointy and spiked  all over their head.  If you remember one of the hooligan’s New Year’s resolutions was for Patches to stop doing her Trigger jumping, but we didn’t imagine that a shooting would make it happen.  

The weather here has been warmer than normal all winter. The last official day of winter we have record temperatures predicted.  We did have a brief snow storm in February that caused unexpected delays getting across the Tennessee River.  The saucer magnolias, star magnolias and daffodils are finishing up their bloom cycles. Dogwoods, flowering almond and silverbells are starting to open.  Iris should be blooming shortly.  We had a warm winter like this in 2007 and had snow and a hard freeze in April which killed corn, strawberries and blueberries and fruit on the trees. I hope this year won’t be a repeat of that year. 

 

 

One thing I know is that fire ants are going to be bad this year.  I got into them several times today.   My neighbors already have their corn planted.  My heirloom tomatoes are up. I’ve planted my favorite Cherokee purple again this year along with Black Russian, Giant Pink Belgium and Mortgage Lifter.   I had tried the Mortgage Lifter a couple of years ago and it didn’t do well, but neither did anything else in the garden due to the extended weeks of 100 degree temperatures.  I planted two or three seeds per cup, and the germination rate looks good.  I’m one that I can’t kill off the extras.  I divide when they get a little bigger.   If they all do well, I’ll have enough tomatoes to feed an army.

 

 

My flower beds need cleaning and mulching and grass mowing, but first I need to get new underground wire in the ground to keep the hooligans in.  I tilled my garden area and pulled the tiller off and put the middle buster on my John Deere. I decided to install the PTO adapter someone on tractorbynet forum recommended to make it easier to get implements back on the PTO but I had bought one with the wrong threads.  So Monday it’s back to the Co-op to exchange it.  The PTO on my 3032E won’t turn in order to get equipment attached and I’ll spend an hour trying to get something attached, so I hope it works.  It is a community forum of tractor owners and it’s a great place to get answers to your tractor problems, or to help another owner if you’ve had the same issue. 

 

I dug a trench around the lower forty to bypass the section of wire that has corroded and put the wire that I had lying on top of the ground in the trench and used a rock rack to pull the soil back into the trench. Later I’ll get the landscaping box on and try to smooth it out a little better before mowing.  Next section to get in the ground is the front yard.  I had used a flat bladed hoe to install the last one, but the zoysia is now so thick, a hoe or shovel won’t cut it and I had to use the middle buster.  As I tried to cut just an inch deep trench I could get a stable cut, it was either too high or pealing off huge chunks of zoysia like you would use when sodding a yard.  After getting off and putting the sod back down, it occurred to me that I had cracked the blade trying to dig up a rather large privet bush last year and hadn’t replaced it yet. 

 

Blackie was busy looking for lizard that was in a stack of plant containers by the barn.  I’m not sure if it got away, I hope, but I had to restack the pots twice. Then she turned her attention to digging up a field rat and soon had her quarry.   As evening came Levi started picking at her and she chased him around and up and down the pile of wood chips the power company had dumped.  At the end of the day she was limping on one of her bird shot filled back legs.  Patches was busy fussing at the Black Angus calves and continuing her ongoing feud with the filly next door and sitting staring at something across the dry creek.   

 

Since it was St. Patrick’s Day weekend, I’ll leave you with a couple of Irish Blessings: 

 An Irish Prayer 

May God give you...
For every storm, a rainbow,
For every tear, a smile,
For every care, a promise,
And a blessing in each trial.
For every problem life sends,
A faithful friend to share,
For every sigh, a sweet song,
And an answer for each prayer. 

An Old Irish Blessing 

May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life's passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!  

I had a senseless act to happen to my hooligans.  Someone chased them around a hay field two weekends and shot my Blackie with a shotgun. I'd been working on my underground fence for a week trying to find a break somewhere on 3.5 acres.  The old transmitter wasn’t giving a break in the line signal, but Patches would be waiting for me by the side of the road each day when I came home from work.  I decided to replace it, and as soon I plugged it in, it alarmed that a break in the line existed.  I spent days digging up connections and bypassing each section with a new wire.  Each time I bypassed a section and plugged back up the transmitter, a break in the line alarm was received, so off to repeat the process on another section.   I had one more section that I planned to check Saturday.  The break had to be in this section. 

When I went outside to get the paper Saturday morning, Patches and Levi were just laying in the driveway looking forlorn. Usually all three act like it’s been months since they’ve seen me, even if it’s only been five or ten minutes. I couldn't find Blackie and rode the main roads looking for her. Before going down into the creek bottom I decided I needed to bypass the last section of wire trying to find the bad area so the other two wouldn’t follow me.  While I walked down to the end of the property I heard Blackie bark at me from across the creek. I told her to come home and she just sat there with her tongue hanging out looking at me. I knew something was wrong and started back to the house. She started continuously barking.  I had to go through a couple of neighbor’s property to get to her.  When I got out she showed me she couldn't walk.  I called my veterinarian office telling the receptionist I think she had been shot and ran by the house to get my purse.  I didn’t think about changing my dirty jeans and torn up yard shoes.  I just wanted to get her some help. 

At first the vet thought one of her feet was broken. After taking X-rays, she came back in and said your first diagnosis was right and took me back to see them. She had 3 or 4 dozen shots in her.  She’s been on antibiotics, pain killers and something for the swelling since then.  From a dog that usually gives me a lot of trouble taking pills, she seems to perk up when I reach for the pill bottles.   Can dogs get hooked on pain killers? 

After we got home I went back to work on the fence checking the last section. I expected the fence to be working after bypassing this section, but it said that the remaining wire had a break, and all sections had been checked.  I then took a section of wire and laid it in a circle in the garage, and the box said there was a break in this short section also.  When I plugged in the box I used the electric cord from the old box, maybe the cords were different.  When I plugged in the cord, the transmitter wouldn’t even power up.  I had a bad transmitter out of the box.  I contacted Petsafe very irate asking if they are letting their customers do their quality control now instead of hiring someone.  After going back to the big box store and exchanging transmitters, the new one worked, but the collars were only working within a few inches of the wire instead of ten feet as before. 

So it was back to square one bypassing sections again.  The first section I bypassed, the transmitter was working.  This section was also the first one with the defective transmitter, so if the defective transmitter was working, I would have found the break the first of the week and my dogs wouldn’t have been across the creek to get terrorized. 

The company had recently started using a solid plastic coated wire instead of the multiple small stranded plastic coated wires that I had installed when I first installed my fence five years ago.  I had replaced a section last year along the creek with the new wire due to groundhogs, landscapers and this woman with a John Deere tractor and mad tiller. I noticed at that time several sections of the wire had corrosion issues and wondered if that was the reason a switch was made to the solid wire.  My next few off days will be spent replacing all of the old wire instead of just the corroded bad section.  In the lower forty, I can come in about 5 feet from the old wire and dig a trench with my middle buster.  The part around the house, I’m digging up the old wire with a shovel.  You can’t place new wire close to an old wire, as the signal to the collars will be cancelled. 

Patches hasn’t been doing her Trigger impersonation since Blackie was shot and was favoring one back leg.  I took her to the veterinarian to get her yearly shots and tests and asked them to check her out. What was so funny, here I'm telling them when we checked in that I think she's been shot also as she's having problems getting around and she then crawls up on the benches around this dog and foal statue and then crawls up with the bronze.  My suspicions was confirmed, she also had a few buckshot in her. 

Next week my income tax money goes to replacing sky lights that the contractor installed upside down and threw away the outside brackets, and also sealing up the valley where the porch comes into the main roof at an improper angle.   I had planned to use next year's refund to replace my garage doors.  Last night while closing down the door on the side where I’m over wintering my plants, I heard a crunch and glass breaking.  The cheap doors the contractor installed had come out of the track again, this time it was fatal.  A few years back I had the doors braced to keep them from wobbling so I could get a few more years out of them.   

There is one bright spot, my daffodils, star magnolias and plum trees are blooming. Spring is getting close.  The daffodils that I saved from the old home sites are blooming. I’ll add to them again this year. In a few years it will be wall to wall daffs.  The piece of Bridal wreath spirea twigs that I also dug up at one of the old home sites is blooming.  Nothing as hardy as the old antiques. 

  

  

  

  

  

These days you can’t buy a nice full size pickup loaded with all the gadgets unless it has wheels 20 inches or larger.   In order to get into the cab of the truck, especially if you have a short 5’2” Mom like I do, you have to add running boards. That solves one problem.  It made it easier for me to get into the truck also, but we won’t tell Mom. I told her that I had them installed just for her. 

     

The second problem comes the first time you try to crawl into the bed of the truck.  As one who had back surgery and a knee replacement, crawling up into the back of the truck to unload a load of bagged gardening products was exhausting and painful after the first up and down, especially if the ole “Arthur” is acting up. 

  

Three years ago I drove my sales rep crazy looking for something to help me, and he referred me to an accessory shop that the dealer uses.  They had stopped carrying one that mounted in the tailgate as they had so much trouble with breakage, and showed me a ladder that mounted to the inside of the tailgate and folds out and down to the ground.   I recently noticed one of GRIT’s advertisers selling one that mounts into the hitch receiver and runs parallel to the bumper.  

Life is much easier now that I don’t have to do broad jumps.  The ladder did create another small problem, well two. If you drive down the road with your tailgate down, nice people are yelling at you at stop lights that you are about to loose something out of the back of your truck.  The second problem is when you get a load of bagged goods, the loaders are trying to move the ladder out of the way. 

    

Blackie checking out things.

On the hooligan front, I have a problem with Patches breaking jail again.   She’s the one who constantly tests the fence to see if it is working. She has it figured out just how close she can get once she gets the vibration warning before getting shocked. I tied her up while changing batteries in her collar.  I check it after replacing the battery and it still didn’t work. My attention turned to the connections as they are the first area of problems with an underground fence.  One connection at the bottom of the property was in standing water.  I cut a section out and redid the connection with an exterior wire nut, and it still didn't work.  When I first installed the fence, the wire was a small multi-stranded wire that corroded easily and was easily broken by critters such as the groundhog living in the nearby dry creek.  I replaced a problem section hit by lightening and chewed by the groundhog with a newer solid strand wire, and it looks like it may be time to replace the rest.  Going through the zoysia in the front yard will be a chore as the old wire will need to come up before the new goes in.   If the new fence is near an old section, it cancels out the radio signal to the collars.  Pulling up the rest down the property line between Mom’s house and mine should be easy with all the rain we had.  Down in the lower forty, I’ll just dig a trench with my middle buster a few feet in. 

We’ve been getting a lot of rain.   Even 0.24 inches just sits on top of the saturated ground. Last summer 0.24 inches of rain would have quickly soaked in, and the ground would still be cracked.   I might need to stock the garden with catfish this year. 

 

  

  If you have a soggy area around your place that you don’t know what to do with, have I got a plant for you?  Japanese iris (Iris ensata) has the largest flowers of all iris, anywhere from four to eight inches across.  They have lovely large flat either single, double and peony-type forms, in various colors and patterns. Singles have three falls (the lower flower petals of iris), doubles have six and peony-type has nine or more.  Bloom time is from late June to July about a month after the tall bearded and Siberian iris 

    

Japanese iris leaves are taller and thinner than bearded iris leaves and similar to Siberian iris.  A good way to distinguish Japanese iris is by the rib that runs lengthwise down the leaves.  

   

They require full sun, a rich, acidic soil and ample water.  They prefer a rich soil containing organic matter, which helps in water retention as well as adding nutrients. Japanese iris are heavy feeders.  Use an azalea-type fertilizer in the spring, just after bloom. I like to use cotton seed meal.  You can get a 50 pound bag at the Co-op and use left over’s on your blueberries and azaleas. Keep the pH between 5.0 and 6.5. Do not use lime as it raises the pH and will kill the plants eventually. Use a with a biweekly application of a water soluble acid fertilizer such as Miracid on the leaves and around weak plants. Japanese are generally vigorous growers and a spacing of three or four feet between plants is needed.  Two to three inches of mulch will help hold in water and reduce weeds.  Two to three year old clumps usually have the best blooms.  They grow in zones 4 through 9.

      

    

I have mine in a low area that gets the runoff from the down spout drain of the barn as well as run off from my Mom's yard.  They really like water.  Lack of water will stunt the plants and produce miniature blooms. A good place to plant them is near a pond or stream.   

    

   When planting allow plenty of room for Japanese iris to spread. They should be planted two to three inches deep in a depression which will allow it to catch water.  Mulch well and do not let the plant dry out.  New roots will grow above the old roots and after three or four years the roots will start coming out of the ground, a signal that it’s time to divide. Another sign that division is needed is a clump that has formed a solid ring with a bare center. Best time to divide is in the spring.  After the plants have been divided, trim the leaves to a height of four to six inches.  Do no plant in an area where other Japanese iris have grown as the plants will be stunted and eventually die, unless it is an area that has lots of water leaching through it such as soil under a downspout or by the side of a stream.  They can be replanted in pots if fresh potting soil is used and the old soil discarded. Apparently they secrete some sort of toxin into the soil while growing that is toxic to other iris.  When replanting in an area which contained Japanese iris, plant something else beside iris.   

  

   

For overwintering, remove and destroy old foliage after the first hard frost which may contain borer eggs or thrips.   

    

    

Back to this year’s goals as I call them instead of resolutions; I thought I was in great shape until I received a 15% off card from Bluestone Perennials if an order was placed by a certain date.  I had made a wish list that I discarded, but after logging onto their website, my order that I thought was discarded when I logged off was still there. Well —- you know the rest of the story.   The weather has been wet and a tad on the warm side.  Water is standing in my garden paths and even with just a couple of tenths of an inch, water puddles.  When ever my plants come in it’ll be to soggy to get in the ground.  My daffodils are blooming; bluebirds are building nests, daylilies coming out of dormancy and fruit trees budding.  I can hear my John Deere calling me to come out and play.  Two years ago we had a warm January and we had snow and a hard freeze in March that destroyed whatever fruit was on the trees and strawberries.  

The hooligans are doing okay as far as their resolutions, except Levi. He just loves to rub on me, especially if he’s wet.  I’m not sure what pleasure he gets, but he rubs and moans while doing it.  The rest of his resolutions, he’s been too busy sleeping to think about. One morning I’ll get my video recorder charged up and show what I go through in the morning with these three when I open the garage door.   The other morning I was running late for work and opened the back door of my truck. He jumped in with his wet feet autographing a invoice I had placed on top of a calendar, put his, back feet on the back seat, front feet on the console between the front seats and looked straight ahead out the front windshield saying lets go.  While trying to get him out, Patches decided she was going to go also.  

  This past weekend I visited a nearby wildlife refuge and was able to get a couple of shots, err better make that pictures of a couple of the endangered whooping cranes over wintering there.  Next weekend, it’s down to Wilson Dam trying to get some pictures of the bald eagle that fishes between 9 AM and 9:30 every day like clockwork.  The next weekend, I’ve been chosen for an artistic show at Coldwater Bookstore in Tuscumbia. I’ll be showing off some of my calendars, cards, and pictures. 

  

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.  The hooligans enjoyed Christmas as Santa came to visit them.  They got some chew bones, a pull rope, and a tire with a rope.  When Patches saw the tire, her eyes just lit up and she grabbed it and just shook it whacking my legs.  She used to have one that was her favorite that disappeared. I don’t know if a visiting dog took off with it or if one of them buried it.

 

Me, Santa came and fixed my hot water pipe.  During the remodeling about five or six years ago when I added the utility room on to the house and moved my washer and dryer  into it, a finishing nail nicked the pipe when the baseboard was installed.  The weak spot finally blew and was spraying on an antique tiger walnut sideboard when I got home.  Santa will need to take care of my surgery bills now starting to come in after insurance settles. Christmas Eve I placed a bid on a 1915 post card of a trolley going across the Tennessee River on the old railroad bridge.  This was a neat bridge that had car traffic on the lower span and train traffic on the top.  The next morning with less than twenty minutes left, I had been out bid by fifty cents, so I upped the bid fifty cents and won it for a whole $2.94.  The electric poles were removed from the bridge and the trolley connection leads nowhere.  Santa was a big spender this year.

  

The last weekend of the year was great. Temperatures Saturday was in the sixties.  I was able to get my John Deere out and haul wood chips the power company brought me and spread them out along the paths in the former veggie garden I took over in flowers.   My new garden area should be ready to go this year after all the organic matter I’ve been adding to it.  Monday we’ll return to winter.  A skunk decided to trespass across the yard and was met by one of the hooligans.  The large roll around garage can that the country uses for trash pickup got the worst end of the spray.  It’s a good thing I recycle so much that I only put it out on the curb one a month.

  

Ever wonder who started this New Years resolution thing?  I’m not one who usually makes resolutions, as I can’t keep them for very long, so why bother?   Last year I made a resolution not to buy any more plants until I had the potted ones from 2010 in the ground. I’m not sure how many times I broke that one.   Before my November knee surgery, even up to late in the evening before surgery, I worked diligently to get potted plants into the ground and moving and dividing plants from one bed to the appropriate theme bed.  Problem was that I kept adding to the collection.  I only have a few peonies that didn’t make in the ground.   A couple of weeks after surgery, I found a close out of shrubs ninety per cent off.  I can home with a truck load of Encores, gardenia, sky pencil and rhododendrons, normally around two hundred for a little over eighteen dollars.  I put them in the greenhouse until my knee is back in digging shape.  Later in the week when I went to water them, I noticed that several of the shrubs had limbs chewed off; field rats had gotten in the greenhouse and were eating everything they could in sight, even the half length toilet paper rolls that I use for starting seeds. After feeding them bait traps for several days, I was disposing of the casualties inside while Blackie was outside digging up tunnels; she leaned on the siding and a piece broke out and that was all she needed to burst through.  The sun pounding on the western side has made the plastic brittle.  I have a left over piece in the shed that will just cover the hole.  For now a hooligan cage with a couple of concrete blocks covers the hole.

   

1. Number one would be to do a better job of making sure that what I purchased is creating jobs  in this country and most of all locally, and each time I purchase to make sure they haven’t switched manufacturing out of the country.  I think this is the only way we are going to bring this country back to greatness again in the world economy.  I had purchased my favorite womans work glove, called  the ‘Origina’l  as they advertised that they were made by women for women.  The last pair I purchased didn’t last a full gardening season as normal and when I looked at the name tag, it was made in China. I e-mailed the company that I wasn’t pleased and that it wasn’t original if it wasn’t made in this country. They said it was the original style still & their other style gloves which I didn’t want were still made in the USA.  Why should I have to change?  Same thing with socks.  Fort Payne Alabama used to be the sock capital of the world, not anymore. It took months, but I finally found some at a dollar store. Blue jeans, I’ve been hunting for some since summer as all of mine have holes in the front legs and everything that I work on in the yard falls into the holes and down to my socks.
2. On my try to do list again this year is not buying anymore plants until I get the rest of my potted plants into the ground.  I ordered my plants and seeds the first of December so I have that one in the bag.  However a couple of seed packets, Kiphofia hirsute traffic lights and Courgette zephyr, I have no idea what I ordered and will have to go back to the Thompson & Morgan website and find out what they are.
3. Decide the location and whether I want an arbor or two pergolas.  I put up 2 poles a few years back for a pergola and then decided to do an arbor for kiwi on the other side of the garden and put 2 poles up there.  Then after thinking about it again, I thought about doing a pergola in each spot.  This year finally there will be a decision.
4. Put up new sheetrock and repaint the wall where the water pipe ruptured.  I hope the two colors of paint are still good, I don’t’ have to repaint the whole room as I ragged rolled it.
5. Run a new waterline along the creek to replace the one the mad tiller chopped up last summer.  I have a couple of 100-200 foot sections that I took out when I should have hee’d instead of haw.  While the ground is moist I’ll take a middle buster down as deep as I can so it’ll be safe from shovel or tiller. 
6. Finish the stackable retaining walls around the house and garage.  I started this project a couple of years ago.  Sore knees have slowed this one down.
7. Help to save the Lustron home & others in town.  I recently found out that we have one of the Lustron homes pre-fab homes built just after WWII, a porcelain coated metal home in town.  Only 1200 of them survive across the country.   The headquarters for the railroad in the late 1800’s is in sad shape and won’t last long.  Carl a fellow high school classmate and I started a ‘Remember Tuscumbia’ page on Facebook to call attention to the history preserved, as well as that in peril.  It’s also become the community events page of things going on in town. 
8. Research my own family history. I recently found some lost cousins and  also I have a great uncle killed in WWI who is buried in France.
9. Start a business on the side selling my flower and historical prints.  The historical calendar I did for Tuscumbia was well received and I’m working on next years.
10. Work on a hooligan’s book for children of the antics they get themselves into.  I think I have enough material for a couple of books and would like to call attention to adoption, and responsible dog ownership.
11. Do something on my bucket list.  Life is too short.
12.  Bring pleasure to others. You never know how the small things you do affect others.  Before I started my gardening blog, I would e-mail a few of my flower pictures out daily to friends who wanted to see them. I found out later one friend would print them out for her Mother afflicted with Parkinson’s.  Before she got sick she gardened a lot, and the pictures brought her much pleasure.

  

 

The hooligan’s resolutions:  

Patches  

• Stop playing with skunks.
• Stop playing with skinks.
• Don’t help Blackie dig up trees chasing after mice.
• When Mom walks to the barn to feed us, use dog door to get in instead of standing scratching on the  walk through door.
• Don’t worry Mary when the batteries get weak in our collars. 
• Chase Noah up a tree when our collar batteries get weak. 
• Stop bumping those feeding me in the rear with my nose while I wait for my bowl, maybe I’ll get mine first.  (She’s the last one fed as she is the first one finished.  She’ll butt you while getting food out of the wall bins and jump up and down like Trigger while you are taking food to her bowl.)
• Stop picking fights with Blackie.
• Stop pawing visitors for attention.  It’s okay to paw Mary even if she doesn’t like it.
• When playing with sticks don’t poke Mary in the leg.
• Don’t fling around tire toy and hit Mary in the knee
• Continue to play keep away when Mary reaches for something I have as she really enjoys it.
• Stop playing with skunks

 Blackie  

• Stop playing with skunks.
• Stop playing with skinks.
• Don’t help Patches dig up trees chasing after mice.
• When Mom walks to the barn to feed us, use dog door to get in instead of standing scratching on the walk through door.
• Don’t worry Mary when the batteries get weak in our collars. 
• Chase Noah up a tree when our collar batteries get weak
• Try not going through walls after mice, Mary seems to get upset.
• When Mary opens the garage doors stop, say hi first instead of running past her looking for mice.
• Stop playing with skunks

     

 Levi 

• Start playing with skunks.
• Start playing with skinks.
• Start chasing mice.
• When Mom walks to the barn to feed us, use dog door to get in instead of standing scratching on the walk through door.
• We have a battery in our collars?  Why?
• Don’t moan while rubbing on Mary especially when wet, as she doesn’t seem to like my singing.
• Help Mary drive the John Deere more.
• Relax more.

   

What the hooligans and I wish for you in the New Year:  We wish you health for those sick, prosperity for those with out a job. Take time to enjoy the beauty that has been given around us.  Stop long enough to watch a sunset and take time to smell the flowers. Take time to enjoy your friends.

      

Oh my, I just got in garden catalogs from two of my favorite companies. Piece of cake?

  

The last few days have really been up and down and have put a damper on Christmas. My Sister-in-Law Joy’s Mom died Friday night and the funeral was Sunday. Saturday I went to Helen Keller’s birthplace to take pictures of the Christmas decorations. My sister Linda is in the hospital and I hope she gets well enough to go home before Christmas.   

This after noon, I stopped at the 3 way stop near my house, and noticed a three or four month old kitten looking at me from the ditch.  I rolled down my window and asked what it was doing, and that was all it needed as it came running, then here comes another one and then another.  Last year around this time I had a similar experience with dumped puppies. I saw this one and stopped, got out and called.  It came running and I put it in the back of my truck. Then another one showed up and I repeated the process of putting it in the back of my truck a total of six puppies.  Back to the kittens, I got out, picked up one and the other two are running around my feet, and I’m wondering what I was going to do with them.  The hooligans don’t like cats so taking them home wasn’t an option. I threw the first one in the back seat of my truck, turned around and went after another, while the first one jumps out of the open front door and runs after me.  After doing this round robin routine for what seem like ten minutes or longer, I rolled the window down, closed the door and threw the first in, then the second and finally the third.  Now I’m outside and three kittens are standing up looking out the window. Finally I was able to open the door, hold all three in and get in.  Now I’m sitting in my truck with two cats in my lap purring and rubbing on me and one is under my feet.  I called Sonny & Bob my neighbors who have cats and asked for a cage and cat food. Sonnie said she wasn’t coming out and look at them as she didn’t need anymore cats.  She had Bob bring the cage and food out.  We managed to get all three in the cage and I decided to take them and put them in the drop off cages at the shelter.  I felt like a dog while taking them out of the cage and putting them in one of the shelters cages. They were still purring and rubbing on me. 

When I got home, walked in the back door, threw my shoes and stepped in wet. Water was everywhere. I ran and got a bunch of towels and put them down and turned on the light with a wooden yard stick so I could see where the water was coming from as it was standing in the middle of the room.  I started sopping up with the towels under an old late 1800’s tiger walnut sideboard and a felt cold spray under the sideboard.  When I pulled it away from the wall, I saw the hole in the wall where a pipe comes from the water heater in other room.  When I turned off the hot water cut off on top of the heater, the spray stopped. I dried my feet, and flipped the breaker off with the yard stick.  At least I have cold water until I can get a plumber out.  After taking a shower, I’m wide awake now. 

  

 I wish everyone a Merry and Blessed Christmas from my family and the hooligans.  I might be a little inconvenient, but its minor compared to what some of our service personnel are experiencing and those who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. 

 I would like to share a story how we found out how Santa got into our house without a chimney to come down and this years Christmas card I sent out to my family and friends along with a copy of their letter to Santa on the back along with some of the pictures I took while trying to make the card. 

I would like to wish whoever dumped the kittens out in the cold for the coyotes to have the same Merry Christmas your kittens are having. 

  

    

    

 The Christmas we found out how Santa gets into our house 

My siblings and I grew up on an active dairy farm in NW Alabama.  Dad would get up early milk, bottle it and then head out on his milk route. In the afternoon, they would hit the fields, come home to milk the cows, and come in late, so we didn’t get to see much of my Dad.  It is rare that Alabama gets snow, much less a white Christmas, but this year in the early sixties we got snow on Christmas Eve! 

Christmas morning we went out to play in the snow and there in the snow were two sled tracks, small hoof prints in between the tracks going across the yard stopping short of the basement door.  We also found Santa’s boot prints going to the door.  At last!! We found the answer how Santa got into our house without a chimney!  He came up through the floor furnace!  

Years later we found out that the boot prints were those of my Dad going to the basement to bring out a hidden merry go round, which explained the sled tracks.  The melted out hoof prints turned out to be the dogs following behind Dad. Our parents had spent half the night putting together the merry go round in the kitchen and then had to get up early to milk. 

  

    

    

    

    

    

    

 This is the greeting inside of the card:

Merry Christmas from the hooligans!  

Mom decided to that we needed to make a Christmas card again this year. After we nixed Christmas bows last year, we thought she wouldn’t try anything this year, but no she decided that we were going to wear Santa hats. We had other ideas. She even got Grandma to help. We kept them busy for a while and gave them the run around, especially when Patches ran off with the hat.  After Mom chased her around for a bit she gave up.

We hope you have a Merry Christmas,

Blackie, Levi and Patches, oh, and Mary. 

    

    

    

    

Hooligans letter to Santa:  

Dear Santa, 

We’ve been very good doggies this year.  Mom hurt her knee last April, and we tried to help her weed by digging holes around the yard.  Mom said we dug the holes too deep and also dug up the good plants along with the weeds.  She didn’t explain to us the difference between a good weed and a bad one. They all look the same to us.  We kept telling Blackie not to dig around a couple of trees after mice because Mom told us not to last year, but she wouldn’t listen.  Patches ran and told Mom and got Blackie in trouble.  Patches really enjoyed that. Blackie had surgery in October for bladder stones as she refused to eat that nasty food to get rid of them.  Mom had knee surgery the middle of November. She’s been walking around with a couple of sticks under her arms. Grandmother has been feeding us and when we really act like we are starving she’ll give us a little more than Mom.  After all that’s what Grandmothers are for aren’t they?  Anyway Santa, please bring us some chew bones and another one of those tires with the rope on it. We lost the two you brought us last year.  Also bring us another one of those roll around play balls. Blackie left it the front yard and Mom accidently ran over it with her tractor. 

  

    

    

     

    

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ONE AND ALL!!! 

This years Christmas card is still a work in progress, so I thought I'd share last years Christmas card that I sent out to friends and family.  I got this idea that I would make a Christmas card with the hooligans.  I bought each a big red bow and tied one on the collar of Blackie, Patches and Levi.  The idea was for me to sit in a chair with all three sitting in front of me with their bows on and Mom would take the picture. Well I never got a nice picture I could use for a card.  Patches and Blackie almost got into a fight and I grabbed the collar of each keeping them apart until they settled down.  Levi pushed me out of the chair and  the girls don't like him being up on things and started trying to pull him out of the chair much like they do when he jumps up in the back of my truck or my tractor.  Mom thought she could get them settled enough for me to take a picture, but had as much success as I did.  Afterwards I'm going through the pictures and there is not one I could make a nice card with, so I came up with the idea of  doing a collage and a story inside the card, along with a letter to Santa from the hooligans about how good they were during the past year. 

  

Merry Christmas from the hooligans  

Mom decided to that we needed to make a Christmas card. We nixed the Santa hats, so she decided that we were going to wear Christmas bows. But we had other ideas. She even got Grandma to help. We kept them busy until it got too dark and they gave up. Hope you have a Merry Christmas, Blackie, Levi and Patches oh, and Mary 

Hooligans letter to Santa: 

Santa we’ve been very good kids this year.  Mom was digging in the garden and lost some daffodil bulbs and we found all of them for her.  Wouldn’t you know it she lost them again and also some finger looking like bulbs. We found those for her.  She’s so very forgetful as she lost them another time and we had to find them for her again.  When she is planting in the garden we help her by digging holes for her.    

When the wireless fence was broken we didn’t want to worry her so we went visiting the neighbors while she was at work.  We meant to get back before she got home, but she came home early that day. We just hate that she had to be out in the cold all day Saturday putting a new wire in the ground because of it.  

We keep busy catching mice for her, but for some reason she got upset when we dug up those trees down in the lower forty. We just thought they were in her way while she was mowing grass and really thought we were helping.  And we thought those daylilies and iris that we dug up chasing mice were big clumps of grass that needed to be weeded out of the garden. After all, the best thing in life is to be able to roll in fresh garden soil.  How were we supposed to know that she had just planted those new beds that we were running through and wrestling in?  She had just dug it up and we thought the fresh dirt was for us.   

Those things that we drug out of the garage into the yard, we just wanted to put them in the trash for Mom, but we couldn’t open the lid to the trash can. Honestly Santa.  And if we knew that she was going to send out our Christmas card with all of the tom foolery on it, we would have posed nicely, honest Santa. We will do better next year when she makes us wear reindeer antlers.   

And that downspout we pulled off of the house, it was an accident.  We were shaking it trying to get the lizard to run out, honest Santa.  That screen we tore out, well the lizard ran out and we grabbed it and accidently bit into the screen instead. Those lizards are faster than a Border collie.   

We’ve really been good Santa. When Mom comes home after a long day at work smelling like the hospital Levi rubs himself all over her to get the country smell on her good clothes.  When it’s been raining and we’ve taken a bath in the garden, we are very good to share with Mom and get her wet just like us.   

 Please bring us a large bag of raw hide chews and each of us a big bag of dog biscuits, but don’t bring those healthy ones that Mom gives us each day.  We also want a triple amount of our dog food. Mom had us on a diet and dieting time is over now that it’s Christmas.  Honestly Santa, we’ve been good this year.  

 *****I'll update you on this years card shortly.  I've gotten off of my crutches and graduated to a cane and I start back to work this week.  This past weekend was busy taking pictures at the Plantation Christmas at the Belle Mont mansion.  This event is a fund raiser for the continued restoration of this magnificent home rescued from ruins in the 1980's. Next weekend we have our first Dickens Christmas ya'll celebration and tour of some of the historical homes in Tuscumbia.

The Arc of the Shoals in Tuscumbia, as most schools in the state of Alabama has been hit hard by proration. Older folks in the Shoals still call the school for adults with special needs Hope Haven. The Arc consists of Hope Haven Adult Training Center, Phyllis Lyle Work Center, semi independent living programs and group homes. It is a great organization with wonderful employees who care for the clients they support. The organization is on a very tight budget and makes full use of the funds intended to support its programs. 

  

One of the training programs is a gardening class. Plants are grown by the clients and are available for purchase at the school. There's one little problem, our greenhouse is not complete. The ventilation fans and heaters don’t work. Here’s were you come in, and it won’t hurt you a bit, all we need is your vote. Listerhill Credit Union is sponsoring a “Cash for your Cause” sweepstakes. You may vote only once per e-mail address until October 27, 2011. The winner will receive $3000 toward their cause. Please watch the fantastic video located at the top left of the applicants is the Arc of the Shoals and cast your vote hear? Pretty please? Voting ends on October 27. Thanks in advance for your support! 

Whippoorwill Hollow Films made the Arc’s entry possible by filming the video required to enter the contest, and here's a big THANK YOU to to them for their gracious help.  

     

One of the fall painting class projects is painting pumpkins of local high schools and your favorite college. 

     

 Monarch on Profusion zinnia  

This past weekend was just gorgeous; sunny with clear skies, temperatures in the mid eighties.  I divided and replanted a lot of my iris and daylilies and chased around a Monarch that was feeding on my Profusion zinnias. The Dogwoods, maples and sassafras trees are showing their autumn colors. Rain was forecast for Tuesday with dropping temperatures and possible frost.  As I contemplated bringing in my container plants for the winter, I thought back a couple of years to an unwanted guest that came in for a winter hibernation after bringing in these same plants.  

 It was pouring down rain when I got home.  The hooligans shot into the garage when the door opened and flopped down soaking the area. They looked like drowned rats, so I let them stay and closed down the door  down to a height where they could get out if they wanted too. There is a dog door on the back barn so they can get out of the weather, so where do they stay in all kinds of weather? You guessed it in the front yard or front porch. After the rain slacked off some we all went out to the barn to feed and they shot back into the garage when I went back to the house.  Later I remembered I had lain my mail on the hood of the truck and I knew that I would have confetti in the morning if I didn’t get it.  I picked up the mail and after going back into the house, Patches’ kept barking at the door. Blackie was barking on the other side of my truck. Levi was no where to be found. That should have given me a clue. I finally got tired of listening to them and went back out to see what the uproar was about.    

Half of the garage was full of potted plants and hanging baskets I had brought in for the winter. Blackie kept lunging at a group of plants sitting on the floor.  I got closer leaned over and told Blackie she was imagining,  turned my head and looked at the hanging baskets inches away and stopped talking in mid sentence. There stretched out across two of the baskets was a rat snake. Now I had gotten comfortable after feeding the dogs, and ladies you know what I mean, no shoes, and just sweat pants and a T-shirt on. I put one glove on, grabbed the snake, tried to get to the opener button and locate an umbrella, while Blackie was jumping up and grabbing the snake’s tail.   Did I say it was pouring rain and the umbrella I found was only attached and covered one side?  

So here I am standing out in the pouring rain in the driveway, barefooted with a snake in one hand, umbrella in the other and Blackie jumping up and biting the snake’s tail.  The snake is not happy with it’s tail being bitten, and I’m trying to decide where put it so  Blackie can’t get it.  I finally decided to take it to the road and put it in the ditch on the other side of the road. Since Blackie couldn’t get to the road because of the underground fence it would be safe. Just as I turned it loose Randal one of the neighbors  came up the road, so my hope for secrecy was dashed. Here I am standing on the side of the road in a pouring October rain storm, one glove on like Michael Jackson, no shoes, only sweat pants and a T-shirt on holding half an umbrella. He drove by real slow.    

After getting in the house I had to call Jessica his wife and explain why this crazy woman was out on the road like she was. Moral of the story, if Blackie and Patches are chasing something and Levi is not around, it’s longer than a mouse.

When Dad milked in the old milk barn he fed cotton seeds hulls, molasses and cotton seed meal. The barn was a stanchion type with sixteen cows on each side and a trough in front of the head locks and a walkway in front of the trough.  The cotton seeds were stored in a side room on each side, and we would carry a big scoop down the walk and drop in front of each head lock. That would be followed by a small hand scoop of cotton seed meal followed by the molasses over and around the mound. The molasses was kept in a metal 50 gallon barrel stored laying down on the foundation remains of an old milk truck shed. The barrel was in full sun and during 100 degree weather would get very hot and the contents expand almost to the point of exploding. It didn’t have a spout on it so it was opened by un-screwing the small cap in the lid. When the last bit of thread lost its grip, the molasses would shoot out like a rocket. 

One nice hot humid summer day, this two year old decided that she wanted to help pour the molasses from the barrel.  My uncle kept telling me to move out of the way, but Miss Smarty Britches wouldn’t listen and kept telling him to let me do it, and I got a bath when the plug was removed from the barrel. Dad brought me back to the house and had a good laugh, telling Mom to take me down to the cows and let Francis (my pet cow) lick me off. Mom was extremely upset as she had just given me a bath and had me smelling so nice, and now I reeked of the odor of burnt molasses.  It took her five wash changes to get all of the molasses off of me and out of my hair.   

   

     

The hummingbird migration is almost complete. This weekend I had one straggler at my feeders. In a day or so she should be moving on. A hint of fall is in the air. The leaves are starting to show their autumn colors. With the lack of rain trees are quickly loosing their leaves. However, the apple trees are confused with the crazy weather we had and are in an spring bloom. The last of the daylilies are finishing their re-bloom. Cone flowers and blanket flowers are still blooming strong. The sedums are showing their red signaling that fall is almost here.  

    
Rose 

    
 Blanket flower  

I had a beautiful couple of weekends and spent the time moving iris and daylilies out of and into my Deshler High and Auburn sections. During Auburn’s games I listened to the game on my head phones while working and recorded it on my DVR for later viewing. I moved orange daylilies into my Auburn section along the driveway. I now have Tuscawilla Tigress, Bold Tiger and All American Tiger daylilies in my Auburn University section. Putting a deep red one called Scary Mary (name is the reason I got it) and a double red called Fires of Fuji in my Deshler section on the opposite side of the driveway. Now I need to mulch everything before the rain comes back. I still have a lot of potted plants to get into the ground before my knee surgery.  

     
Clematis Carnaby  

    
Charming Ethel Smith daylily  

    
Cradle Song daylily  

In my Born in the USA section, I have American Revolution, Empire Strikes Back, Forty Second Street, Sticky Fingers, American Bicentennial, Pearl Island, Shortening Bread, All American Chief, Making Double Time, and America’s Most Wanted daylilies; Millennium Falcon, Starship Enterprise and Jitterbug iris; Mount Saint Helens Azalea; and Cheatin Heart hosta. 

    
Mangus cone 

Blackie had major surgery last Wednesday and had four large stones that looked like the smooth brown river rocks removed from her bladder. I’ve been told that a lot are the result of poor quality dog food and biscuits. She was two years old when I rescued her, and I think she had the stones when I got her as she has gotten a good quality Purina Pro Plan food since she arrived. Thinking back, I noticed her squatting a lot after I got her, but she also loves to drink and play in water, so I didn’t realize there was a problem until it got much worse.    

While sitting in the vets waiting room with Blackie, I read a poster listing poisonous foods for dogs found in the kitchen such as grapes, chocolate, yeast dough, diet sweeteners and caffeine. After leaving her there for AM surgery, I came home and made a cup of coffee and took it outside and laid it on the folded up ladder I have attached to the tailgate. It makes it much easier to crawl into and out of the back of the truck when the tailgate is down. I left my coffee and went around the house to the flower bed I was working on. After the first wave of mosquito attacks, I turned around and went back to the garage. Levi shot out of the back of my truck like he’d been shot out of a cannon which was very usual for him. Usually he jumps in the back when I’m near the truck so he can get some love without the girls interfering. When I check my coffee, half of it was gone. First thought was of the poison poster I saw at the office and coffee was on the list. Next was the bill I’ll be getting with Blackie’s surgery, and now I have a poisoned dog.  Thirdly I got to wondering how many other times he had jumped in the truck and drank some of my coffee and I didn’t notice it and finished drinking it. Lucy after being kissed by Snoopy came into mind. Luckily, I like a little coffee with my milk, so he didn’t get too much caffeine, it fact it didn’t phase him, rather he snoozed all afternoon. 

     
Blackie enjoying her pool 

 The two days she was gone was like a morgue around here. The other two hooligans moped around and wouldn’t play. They kept smelling Blackie's collar in the garage and looking upset. I got her home Thursday afternoon, and by Saturday she had Levi running for dear life around and around the house barn and garden as she chased him. Things were back to normal; well ... maybe abnormal.

It’s been a long hot spring & summer, actually no spring at all. We went from unusual snowy winter to summer.  A couple of weekends ago, temperatures were near one hundred degrees and two days later, it was in the mid seventies.  It was a record low high for the date.  The following couple of cool days signaled the start of hummingbird migration back to Mexico.  Each year it seems like I have more hummingbirds than the year before, and this year I’ve hit the big time.  I haven’t been able to keep my feeders full.  (Have I told you not to use the red dye commercial stuff?  It’s not good for them.)  When I take down an empty feeder, the ruby-throated will swarm around the empty ant moat and hanger just flying around and around looking for the feeder.  When I walk back with a full feeder, I’m being buzzed, and they are feeding before I can get it hung back up.  I have a couple of videos of the migrants at my feeder for your pleasure.  One was taken about a foot away.  

   

  

    

The other video is from a few feet away so you can see how many are in the area around the feeder.

  

    

Daylily Condilla  

    

Daylily My Ways  

    

Daylily Powerful Praise  

Since my knee blow out accident, the beds which weren’t mulched yet have been an ugly, embarrassing and overgrown mess, especially after a couple of seven plus inches rain spells. The wet weather has raised a hungry horde of mosquitoes that seem attracted to every repellent out there.  We haven’t found anything to scare them off.  I read some where that Vicks Vapor Rub was a good repellent.  It worked for about five minutes, and then the attack began.  With the excess rain, fire ant mounds are everywhere. I’ve gone through several bags of grits in order to control them. Small mounds don’t take long to eliminate, but the larger mounds with several queens take several feeding to control.    

The Pittosporium shrubs that the so-called landscaper I hired a couple of years ago planted are not cold hardy enough for this area, so I’m replacing shrubs for the third time along the front and west end of the house.  This weekend I worked along the driveway beds.  It looks like I have enough piled up on the driveway to make one large bale of hay.  The beds that I hired some one to clean and mulch back in the spring looks just as bad as or worse than the ones not cleaned.  And I didn’t have to worry about loosing over two hundred dollars in plants in the beds not touched.  With the rain and cooler weather I have some re-blooming daylilies in bloom. 

    .

A big mess ready to go to compost pile 

 While working, I noticed a truck stopping at the three way stop at the bridge sitting a while and then going up the dirt road which would be the fourth leg of the intersection.  We have a lot of trouble with parkers met labs, and dumping of trash and animals on the road.   I heard them go down the road a piece and turn around and stop just before getting back to the intersection.  I walked down the road and saw one guy standing behind the truck and yelled at him that he better not be dumping. He looked startled and got into the passenger side and the driver pulled into the intersection. I held up my cell phone like I was taking his picture and he said that “we ain’t doing nothing Mamm, we were just taking a leak”.  I hope he was far enough away to miss my red face as I told him that it was okay to do that.   I told him we had a lot of trouble with dumpers and wanted to make sure he wasn’t dumping trash or dogs. 

Back to my yard work, I took the John Deere and tiller through an area between my place and the dry creek where I had burned up rooted trees and brush.  I found a few surprises. One was a large leg bone that I was 99.9% sure wasn’t human and a part from old farm equipment or wagon.  Just to be sure I took the bone to work and showed it to one of our Pathologist and told him I thought it was from a cow, but before disposing of it wanted to be sure. He confirmed it wasn’t human.  The hooligans have been dragging it around and chewing on it. The metal thing looks like it might be a step up on a wagon maybe? It has a hole drilled into each end. I figured if anyone would know what it was would be a Grit reader.   

    

What is it? view 1 

    

What is it view 2.  

By the end of a long hot day weeding and being hit with reflected heat off of the brick of the house, I was ripe. So ripe a buzzard flew down within inches of the ground, flew back up and came around and swooped down within inches of the ground again and flew off.  The hooligans were ready and went on the chase the second pass the buzzard did and scared it off.   The hooligans are good for something every once in a while. 

Some of my water hoses are in bad shape, so when I saw that one of the discount warehouses had some industrial made in the USA on close out, I couldn’t pass up a chance to replace a couple. I have one of those fancy Ram’s with a remote start and when I can back out my truck was sitting there locked and running. Oh course the AC was also running full blast.  While going in I had put the keys in my front pocket, and didn’t like how I had it bunched up and pulled it out of my pocket and must have pushed the remote start button a couple of times.  I pushed the unlock button on the remote, got in and I’m sitting there wondering now what? Finally I stuck what they call a key in the little slot for the chip and turned it to accessory but I couldn’t shift it. I finally turned it to the start position and was able to put it in drive.  I wonder how many people went by and tried to turn it off, or get in and take off with it? 

Blackie is still on Uroeze for her bladder stones, but looks like she is headed for surgery to remove them.  She feels a lot better and Levi and the mice are getting the brunt of her energy. She drug up a large field rat and left me a present of it at the end of the driveway.   

I finished the historical calendar and note cards for Tuscumbia and have them at the printers. They will be sold at a local incubator called Fiddledee D ran by the down town retail woman’s group and will help promote retail development.  The note cards were supposed to be ready three weeks ago for Fourth Thursday last week and still aren’t ready.  One set of cards is all Helen Keller’s birthplace and the other two sets are historical homes in the area. Hopefully they will be a hit and I’ll do a series of our big snow we had in January for Christmas. 

  
Hooligans being hooligans.  

Hooligans: Taking close up shots of flowers does involve some hazards. One of the biggest nuisances I have is while trying to take pictures of butterflies. I don’t like to use a telephoto lens when shooting butterflies.  I think I get a sharper and better quality photo by using a regular lens. You chase one around for a while, and finally it decides to light, and you finally get the angle you want. Just about the  time you get ready to press the button one of the hooligans decides that the butterfly or flower is going to attack you and bites at it, or all 3 decide to stampede through, scaring your subject or breaking off the flower. Whenever Levi sees my camera he bugs me until I take his picture then he goes off. He’s such a ham. Other times it’s either a nose under your arm or pawing at the time the picture is snapped results in a sky or ground picture. If you pet that one, the other two jealous hooligans also have to have attention and a tussle starts between them which results in me sitting on the ground with all 3 on top giving you a face wash. It must be a ploy so that I’ll pay them attention. Patches and Levi are scared of gunshots and thunder, so with dove season they are right underfoot or sitting on my foot making themselves a tripping hazard. Not to mention, they scare off the birds. I use the sports setting on my Canon Rebel Xti when taking pictures of birds or butterflies. Close up setting is used for flowers. 

While on the hooligan front, another hazard is the holes they create from digging up field mice or moles. However hooligan holes are an everyday gardening hazard.

    
I was wondering why the hummingbirds weren't coming around. 

  

Insects: Of course you also have the bugs to contend with. I have several re-blooming iris which bloom in the spring and again in late September to October.  The fall bloom season seems to have a longer blooming than the spring one. They are usually still blooming when frost hits. I was taking pictures of one re-blooming iris called Harvest of Memories when all of a sudden I had claws coming across the view finder. A huge praying mantis decided that the camera lens was a good place to hang out while hunting for bugs. After calming down, I placed it back on the iris bloom and got a picture of it.  I have found several paper wasps nest this year on the ground or just above the ground. Wonder if this is a prediction for the type of winter we are going to have?  I was almost stung by bees getting the picture of the swallowtail on Joe Pye weed.  I was so focused on getting shots that I ignored the numerous bees on the plant.  

    
Harvest of Memories re-blooming iris 

  
Swallowtail on Joe Pye weed 

    
Buckeye on Profusion zinnia  

Mowing neighbors: A neighbor (Mom) who constantly mows their grass is another issue.  This doesn’t affect flower photography, unless she sprays grass clippings on the flower you want a picture of. The mower will scare off any birds or butterflies you’re trying to capture, though. Big low flying helicopters are unsettling to birds also.

    
Neighbor Mom 

Crawling things: Then there are the long crawling things such as Fred. Fred is a very large what we in the south call a chicken snake, and the biggest one I’ve seen. Fred has lived under my house for several years feasting on the colony of field mice I built my house over. Fred comes out from under the house by way of my central unit every once in a while to get some sunshine.  I first learned of Fred from the termite inspectors a year or so after building the house. They would come out from under the house talking about the huge snake skins they were finding. The first time I saw Fred was right after I got Patches. Patches had this thing about dragging sticks. She can’t pass by a stick without picking it up and dragging it or putting it in my face while weeding. I was working out in the yard one day, and there was Fred all stretched out having a nice snooze in the sun. Patches saw this big stick and tried to pick it up in the middle, and it was too limp and she couldn’t drag it well. Then she decided to drag the stick by the head end. Fred decided that he had enough and didn’t like the idea of being drug by his head and reared back flicking his tongue. Patches decided real fast she didn’t like that stick. Once I had to rescue Fred from the hooligans, so he’s not so friendly now. 

This weekend he surprised me while I was making a video to send to my landscaper friend for recommendations for replacing Pittosporium shrubs, which cannot take the cold.  I was concerned that the hooligans would see him. 

  

    
I call this one the 'Hand of God' 

Traffic: Trying to pull over in traffic to get a shot of something. Nuff said, that one’s self explanatory.  

Missed shots and timing issues: I took 1671 hummingbird pictures last Saturday, filled up my card, came around the corner of the house and there posing so nicely on a cone flower were 3 gold finches, ugh!!  The other morning while driving to work I noticed a couple of dozen crows hanging beautifully on corn stalks in a combined field. After I stop I should have rolled the window down. As soon as I opened the door, they took off. Another ugh!! 

Sunrises and sunsets: There is a narrow time window as far as getting the best color in your shots.  One sunset I took a picture of an upturn cloud with sunrays coming off. I called that shot the hand of God. Five minutes later, it looked like a dinosaur. 

    
Same cloud a few minutes later, now a dinosaur. 

Camera straps:  For some reason I hate to wear the camera strap around my neck. It’s just a nuisance and if you try to reach closer to something you have to take it off.  With it hanging, it gets caught on a flower that you are reaching over and breaks it off.  The strap hanging will scare off butterflies.  I saw one of the professional photographers at the W C Handy Festival with a wrist strap on his camera. I need to find one.

Trying to weed around a flower to clean up the scenery a little gets you the same results as the camera strap, flower on the ground or full of trash or dirty

    
El Despardo daylily 

    
Camera strap victim 

* * * * *

On the hooligan home front, we had several weeks of near 100 degree temperatures without rain.  Sunday of Labor Day weekend, tropical storm Lee hit. From Sunday at lunch until Tuesday morning we had 7.44 inches of rain with a record low high for the day of 61.  Previous low high record was 70.  After all the hot weather, 61 seemed like a winter day.  I considered breaking out a space heater. 

With the cooler weather, the hooligans have been very active.  They are busy chasing field mice and rabbits around the garden. Vegetable gardening has been a bust again this year.  My tomato plants are all plants and no fruit.  What tomatoes I had rotted during the several weeks of near 100 degree temperatures.  When we had rain, it would be several inches in a few hours only to be followed by no rain for weeks with around 100 degree temps.  Blackie must have a little beagle in her somewhere.  Levi and Patches will lie around the house until they hear Blackie yipping and it’s off to the chase.  Yesterday while trying to get pictures of some of the hummingbird migrants feeding at my feeders, I kept hearing Blackie fussing.  She had something trapped in an ten foot long sewer pipe I use to hang shade cloth. She kept running from end to end and started pulling the pipe across the yard. Fully expecting a field rat, it turned out to be a full grown rabbit. I carried the pipe across the wireless fence and dumped out the contents into a ditch near the dry creek.  The poor bunny looked dazed for a moment, and then took off in the opposite direction away from the hooligans.

The weather here has been hot, hot and humid. We’ve had 6 months of summer this year, no spring. Rain comes in spurts of 3 or 4 inches in hours which don’t stay around to soak in and takes off with the mulch cover.

Since I’ve been digging, dividing and moving plants around I’ve ignored my other flower beds and the grass and weeds have taken over to the point I’m embarrassed for anyone to see my garden.

 

On the flip side our sunrises and sunsets and full moons have been spectacular. Thursday night one of my co-workers left me a message on Facebook that I needed to take a picture of the beautiful moon we had that night. I came out my front door and tried to walk down the sidewalk to the driveway. Between the weeds and the volunteer Profusion zinnias which seem to be hugging the edge of the walk instead of in the flower bed, I needed a machete to hack my way through. It was that bad. As I propped my camera up on top of the compost bin, I heard a low growl coming from under a Japanese maple at the corner of the house. Levi of all hooligans was growling at me, but he was too lazy to get up and check out the intruder. Bravery at a safe distance is his forte.

 

Saturday the mess to the front door had to be tackled. I parked the tractor near by and worked all day on the beds taking several breaks to get water and cool off. As I would haul a load down to the compost pile, I would take the long way around to and from the pile and my bagged pine bark and mow grass along the way. After about five trips I had the lower forty mowed. I put newspaper down around a new red Pygmy dogwood on the other side of the steps and mulched until I ran out of bags. Saturday I’ll pick up a truck load and finish. A couple of days later while watering my dogwood, I noticed some of newspapers were pulled out from under the mulch. I wondered …… the hooligans had struck again (at this point I was going to show the mess they had made, but I decided to put in another hummingbird picture at the end). They've been so busy chasing field mice in the garden around the greenhouse, I'm having trouble getting them to come and eat. I need to go and find out how many daylilies I have left or if I still have the siding on the greenhouse.

 

Sunday I took Mom on a small river boat luncheon trip for her birthday. Normally the Pickwick Belle is at Florence Harbor, but this month is in Decatur. Mom didn’t enjoy this trip as much as leaving from Florence as Decatur has the boat going by a lot of the industrial parts of the Tennessee River instead of undeveloped.

 

The next Tuesday I took a vacation day, slept late and missed WAAY televisions station showing my hummingbird video from my last Grit post on the early morning news program. Breakfast caught me sitting under the pergola watching hummingbirds while I ate.

Since I’m allergic to dew covered Bermuda grass, I headed to the barn after it burned off. When I purchased my John Deere 3032E tractor I purchased a quick hitch with it. After struggling trying to get the tiller on my old Yanmar I thought it would be a good idea. One thing I’ve found out is that the connection system for equipment is not standardized, everything has a different setup. The 5 foot Big Bee mower has a floppy connection on the part that attaches to the adjustable bar on the back of the tractor and would slip off the hook on the quick hitch. I have a short chain tying it down to a side bar on the mower. If you change from the mower to the tiller, you have to lower the hook thingy on the hitch from the highest setting down to the lowest setting. If I could find manual for my tractor, I could give you the name of the parts. I really like my tractor, but have two issues with it. As much as you pay for a tractor, you’d think John Deere could give you a manual on CD or let you down load it from their website w/o charging you. The second is that PTO thingy on the back of the tractor that the PTO shaft from equipment attaches to (note to JD, my tiller manufacture e-mailed me a copy of my manual) cannot be turned while trying to attach the shaft. My old tractor had a hole that I could insert a screwdriver in and turn the PTO thingy so you could easily attach the shaft.

I finally got everything hooked up by turning the tiller blades and checking the PTO shaft. Except one little problem, I couldn’t get the 3 point hitch pins to go down so the quick hitch would lock, so I started bouncing it lightly and it didn’t drop down. I bounced it down harder a couple of more times and the tiller completely bounced off of the hitch and landed front side down on the ground. Now what? I thought. Then I thought times like this I needed Dad and then it hit me that it’s been 15 years on this date he passed due to his smoking and I started crying. Finally I told myself that crying is not going to solve my problem, so I turned the tractor around and placed the loader under one of the pins and up righted it. No problem mondo and without a scratch on the tiller. After lowering the hook down to the lowest position I got everything hooked up and locked down and started digging my overgrown garden.

 Black and yellow argiope

After I finished digging I picked a few Cherokee Purple heirloom tomatoes and. The Yellow Brandywine tomato seeds turned out to be some sort of a large cherry tomato. I e-mailed customer service at the seed company and so far they are ignoring me. I’m going to send them a picture next and have them define what a Yellow Brandywine tomato looks like. You spend weeks growing the seeds and taking care of the plants only to get marbles instead of something big enough to cover a slice of bread. How can you make a good mater sandwiches out of marbles? BTW, I use honey mustard salad dressing instead of mayo and a little garlic salt on my sandwiches.

 

I decided to check on my watermelon patch. A month ago I had softball size melons and today I couldn’t find a trace of the vines or melons. The area is grassless and only contained this tall weed that looked like a sticker weed without the stickers. I found a huge Black and Yellow Argiope spider with a locust and a grasshopper in these tall weeds. The next day I again looked for my watermelon patch, nothing, my patch had been stolen, no melons, no vines. After all I have a picture of one of my little melons to prove it wasn’t a figment of my imagination. It was in a low area and several inches of rain in a few days must have washed it away.

Since the ground is as hard as a brick, I decided to water some of my daylilies that are the wrong color for my Auburn University orange & blue section by the mail box so I could dig and move them. Much to my surprise there was one of my missing watermelons and it had doubled in size. Imagine that. Now I have to worry about the mail lady or late night parkers getting it.

The garden area has gotten so overgrown since my knee injury and the over bearing hot weather. The hooligans have been so busy chasing field mice and rats that they were too tired to eat one day, even Levi. He is always ready to eat. The hummingbirds are really hitting the feeders since the flowers aren’t as plentiful, and my photography interests have changed to the flying flowers.

 

  Male ruby-throated

  Male ruby-throated

  Female ruby-throated

  Get away from my feeder and no one will get hurt

  Male ruby-throated

  Male ruby-throated starting to form his gorget (red throat)

 

  Male ruby-throated

Check out more hummingbirds and some of my late blooming flowers on my gardening blog: Hummingbirds and a Few Late Blooms.  

Hope all Moms had a happy Mother’s Day this past weekend.  My Mom was born in Yugoslavia.  Her Dad was German and Mom Hungarian.  After WWII broke out a German officer rode up to the door of their house and told my Grandfather that he was to report for duty, and if he didn’t, they would come back and shoot him. After much discussion with my Grandmother, he decided to report. He came home a few times, but is listed as MIA in the area of Yugoslavia now known as Bosnia.  In the mean time, my Grandmother was taken to a Russian concentration camp. Mom at seven years old was left to fend for herself, begging for food, after her Grandfather’s death, her brothers took off for Germany.  After a year on her own, she eventually found her Mother, who was rented out by the Russians to work in farmer’s fields during the day.  She was then also placed in the concentration camp with her Mother for 18 months until they paid to escape with a group of 60 from the camp. 

After going to Austria, somehow they were united with my two uncles and came to the U.S. as refugees aboard the troop carrier USS Hanselman. How did Mom and Dad meet?  My Dad requested a family to come and work for him through the Catholic Relief Services. Another family was to come and work for him, but their children developed the measles, so Mom’s family was selected.  After a brief courtship, mostly hiding and kissing behind a stack of milk crates, they were married and had five children. 

Mom is one tough lady. She recently had an aortic aneurysm repair.  Her doctor told her she was not to get on her riding mower for six weeks.  I had to hide the keys to her mower to keep her from getting on it before the six weeks were up. 

The hooligans have been busy chasing the 13-year cicadas that started hatching this weekend.  They are everywhere and raising a lot of racket -- like a bad water pump.  Patches has been breaking out at night and waiting at the end of the driveway for me to let her back in when I go to work in the morning.  I checked her new collar and for some reason, it only gives a warning a few feet from the line.  I swapped collars with Levi, and she sat for the longest time just staring disgustedly at me.  She’s staying at home as of this moment. They sat and watched me plant my tomatoes yesterday, and before I turned in for the evening, I put newspaper down and mulched them and placed a hooligan cage around each. My tomatoes were still there today in great shape.

 
  

This evening they kept stopping in front of my tractor while I was trying to mow and fussing at the horses in the pasture next door.   I’m not used to having a roll bar yet on this tractor. I keep forgetting that minor point when I try to mow under my fruit trees. The black mulberries are nice and juicy, and my clothes are full of black spots from those knocked off by the roll bar.  Being bombed by green plums doesn’t feel great either.   My last of my late blooming iris are finishing up. Oriental lilies are starting to open and some of the daylilies will be open within a week. Last week temperatures were 15-20 degrees below normal; this week they will be 10 degrees above normal.  The morning sunrises have been spectacular.

Clean up and searching for the missing continues in the areas hard hit by last week’s tornados. The stories of the survivors have been amazing.  Stories told by some of the first responders put a lump in your throat. The Phil Campbell & Hackleburg area have a large number of chicken houses that were destroyed, and now the task of disposing of three million dead chickens is underway.  The number of volunteers from surrounding communities as well as from other areas of the country helping with the clean up makes you proud to be an American.