Finally Have Time!

After 8 months of law school, I'm finally free!!! Even in the first weekend, we have accomplished a ton! I got a full mowing of the yard, front and back, even under the brush pile! The brush pile is now two smaller "needs chainsaw" piles, and the chainsaw just needs to be cleaned out and refueled to get all the gunky old gas out of it. We had a good, but very fast and hot bonfire to get rid of the rest of the brush, and may have a smaller one to get the remnants of the chainsaw pile later on.

The garden is looking good! We're already getting tomatoes, tomatillos, and eggplant growth, so we'll see if they stay. Only one strawberry plant has survived so far, but I may try to plant some more dormant ones and see if the late planting will survive the heat of the summer. The berry patch is producing like wild! There are hundreds of blackberries ready to start ripening, most from the plants that came with the house! The new raspberries are too young to fruit, but I'm hoping for a good fall season with a few berries from those plants. My transplanted thornless blackberry was cut way back on transplant, and thus only has one flower on it. I'm looking forward to seeing how that one tastes! Finally, blueberries may form on the blueberry bush, but not too many, as the bush is still tiny.

The orchard is looking pretty good. The nectarine tree got scorched by the bonfire, but not badly enough do to permanent damage, just a little leaf wilting. It should be fine within a few days (especially with the rain we've gotten this week). The only tree without ample leaves at this point is the peach tree, but the tree is alive, and must be growing the roots out this year. We may see some foliage by fall, but my hopes of that aren't super high.

I've got an experiment growing in 3 glass cups in the kitchen. I bought the saddest, most wrinkly little organic sweet potato, and am trying to get a root ball growing out of 3 segments of it. I will then plant those segments in a cylinder like the red and yellow potatoes, and see if we can get a good crop this summer! Hopefully, if all these plants grow to fruition, we'll have too much food come July!

Beyond that, we did some major cleaning, inside and out, preparing for a Mother's Day lunch, which was a fun time! We're going to start focusing on the entryway and interior work again very soon! The next step is to tear out the 1/4" drywall that is currently up on the reframed opening in the entryway, and redo it with 1/2" sheets. Further, we'll tear out the bad drywall in the formal dining area, do any termite repairs that are necessary, and redrywall that area with 5/8" drywall.

I also need to spread more fire ant killer, and spray the house for bugs next weekend, so that hopefully we can keep any future insect damage to a minimum. Also, we've been getting some pretty big garden spiders (half dollar size and bigger) up near the house, so spraying for them is a high priority. Thankfully, the frequent mowing has seemed to cut down on the snake problems, so nothing further needs to be done at this point.

We also got a housewarming gift from one of the neighbors, a cover for the attic entry ladder! That looks like it will be a simple install, and hopefully it helps keep the house cooler through the summer here!

All the work last weekend made for some tired people and tired pets!

It was also quite hot! The shade was the only place to get cooled off!

It rained a ton last week! 3-4" worth of much needed rain!

The kitten, however, hasn't quite learned the lesson to look where you leap.

Crunch time! (Or the leaves are all gonna go crunchy in the heat)

I'm currently in week 2 of final exams to end my first year in law school, and things are starting to heat up in North Texas! It was well over 90 degrees yesterday, and 85 is about average this week.


After the late freeze in April, I gave the plants just under a month to recover and took stock of my losses. We lost everything out of the garden except for 1 strawberry plant, some corn, green beans, and peas. The potatoes were damaged, but appear to be making a comeback. The berry patch is fine, and all the trees but the peach are looking great! The peach appears to be alive (by the green bark test), but hasn't popped out any leaves. Until my green bark test fails, I'm going to treat the peach tree just like any of the trees with leaves, and just hope that it is spending its first year storing nutrients or something.

First strawberry of the year! (We've since gotten 4 smaller ones)

I ran out to the local home improvement store and picked up a bunch of starter plants to replace the ones lost in the freeze, and was able to find direct replacements for much of what I lost. We'll see how it turns out, but we're both excited at the prospect of good food in the next month or so! 

This, however, means that it is crunch time in the greatest sense. The drip irrigation system is still not finished, there is no sun shade ready, and the trellis is not built yet. These plants are weeks or even days away from vegetable armageddon if I don't properly prepare them for summer!

The ducklings in the pond at work getting ready for the summer

In other news, we've acquired another working cat for the yard! We've been getting a bunch of presents from the existing cats in the form of snakes and other creepy crawlies, and we decided that we need a fully clawed cat to patrol the area and help them keep our property clear of snakes, big spiders, and scorpions. She's not much to fear quite yet, but she's got a hunter's instinct, and the razor sharp claws to follow through! She already got me pretty good with a bite (she's still learning the difference between licking stuff off my finger and biting my finger).

Mrs. Claws, our new cat!

Happy Good Friday and Happy Easter: Death and Resurrection

As we approach the eve of Jesus' death and resurrection, I am confronted with metaphorical and literal representations of death and resurrection from God through nature. I happen to be a master at sentencing poor plants to death, but somehow, they mostly end up resurrected and thriving just a few months later.

A sad, pathetic pile of leaves that used to be a sweet mint plant

With a light freeze that came through here a few days ago, many plants have taken a beating, or have died. However, somewhere in the roots, they still cling to life, and they will come back with a vengeance!

This sad thorny bush surely had kicked the bucket when I transplanted it, but here it is sprouting new leaves!

This strawberry plant came to me a brown ball of roots, no life to be seen!

This lemon tree lost all its leaves during an earlier frost!

These poor vegetables are going through shock after the late freeze this week

I've unintentionally killed this spearmint 3 or 4 times through 2 summers, yet somehow it's still hanging around!

This hard to see little twig was a $1 clearance bin find at the home improvement store (i think it's a bush)

The grass itself is awakening from its slumber as the temps come back up

It's an amazing testimony to the grace and power of God that these plants have survived the months and years of neglect and torture! However, it's just a glimpse of the grace and power that we are commemorating this weekend! Happy Easter everybody!

Springing up!

After a couple weeks of working hard for law school and at work, I'm finally getting a chance to relax for 5 minutes and type up a post!

A few exciting things have happened in the last 2 or 3 weeks! First, I filled the raised beds with compost and mulch!

You would think that getting the dirt in bulk would be cheaper (and it was), but the margin between bagged and bulk was close enough with delivery fee that the convenience of having the stuff same-day overrode the cost savings.

I spent a few hours dragging bags of dirt and mulch the 50-100 feet from their staging area to the raised beds, and got them all filled up very quickly! I made sure to have a garden hose moistening the dirt as it went in so that some of the moisture was sealed in when I put the mulch on top. The next weekend, I planted crops in the beds, and I've been watering ever since!

Now, we're starting to see some of the results of the care we're giving those plants.

The trees are budding and growing leaves! All but the "southern" trees have some leaves on them at this point, with the peach and nectarine holding out for warmer weather.

The raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries are all growing some leaves as well.They handled the cold weather at the beginning of March really well, and they're now growing like weeds!

The strawberries are struggling with transplant shock, but the ones I didn't transplant are surviving and doing alright.

The potato cages and the raised beds are showing signs of life as well! I need to get trellises up to allow the plants to grow up instead of out.

Hopefully as we get some rain and some warm (but not hot) temps, the plants will establish themselves enough to make it through the hot summer, or at least bear fruit before the scalding summer hits.

Pangs of Spring

Spring is nearly here! I noticed the tulips coming up and the fruit trees budding, as there are clear signs that we're about to be done with the winter that lasted forever! We got a good soaking from a thunderstorm on Saturday, and the cold snap won't drop us below freezing.

I'll snap some pics of the impending spring growth and post them up! We should be seeing some flowers soon!

Planting and Building

It's the time of year when people start thinking about warmer months and the taste of fresh tomatoes on the vine.

Here in Texas, that's especially true! Last weekend it was sunny an 70 degrees, and led to a hankering for a garden to plant.

As I alluded to in the last photo post, I was working on an outside project last weekend (among other things). I knew that some of my fruit and vegetable plants were on their way, so I needed to prep for them!

Using this guide as inspiration, I prototyped a raised bed built solely out of cedar pickets. Why cedar pickets? Because I'm cheap! I had done some calculations to see how much it would cost to build 8 raised beds for my vegetable garden, and was astonished. Here were the approximate results:

1. 2x6 cedar or pressure treated wood - ~$450 for 8 beds

Spending nearly $500 on wooden boxes to hold dirt was waaaaay out of the question. That's just ridiculous!

2. 2x4 cedar or pressure treated wood - ~$200 for 8 beds

Now we were getting down to ballpark reasonable prices, but I had some concerns about the look of building everything out of 2x4s and it was still a bit expensive.

3. 6' cedar fence pickets - ~$100 for 8 beds

There was my winner! I had to compromise by going with a 3'x6' raised bed design, but it's well worth it to cut the price to less than half, and still get a good look out of it.

Cedar is somewhat important down here, as it's a natural bug repellant, and we have all sorts of creepy crawlies who are more than willing to steal the fruits of ones labor (pun intended). Besides that, it really looks great, and holds up well to the weather!

After prototyping the build, and being satisfied with the results, I have earmarked next weekend to finish the build of 3 more beds, and I will document the process for later on!

Beyond that, I have 4 trees in the ground right now, an almond, a peach, a pear, and a nectarine. I just got more trees in the mail yesterday, including two plums, two apples, another peach, and more! The orchard is officially started!