October 19, 2021
Hello, I’m so happy to be back on the blog, and updating you finally on what has been going on with our move, and how we have been settling in.
We have been without high speed internet until last week, so that has been a big delay in the blog, and a common problem in the country. Finally, we have been able to get a hot-spot for our internet, until a fiber optic provider will be coming through in, hopefully, a few short months.
One of the major reasons for moving to our new home in the country, was to have a large vegetable garden to provide food for ourselves. What we didn’t account for was having elk use our land as their breeding grounds! This has been delaying me in preparing the land for growing next spring. Just this morning we were entertained by the sounds of antlers crashing together as two bull elks fought, while the cows contentedly ate grass nearby.
I have already bought the seed for the garden, most of it. It’s important for me that I can save my own seed, so I don’t want hybrid seed that won’t come true on the next generation. I purchased heirloom seeds from Eden Brothers, and I am really excited about the crops that will come, depending on if we can figure out this elk problem. Two different ways to solve it, are deer fencing, and growing inside a hoop house tunnel. I’ll be blogging on that more later when we have more of idea of the cost.
Two of the larger crops I’ve been planning are for peas and beans. I got a fourth of a pound of ‘Little Marvel’ peas, and a fourth of a pound of ‘Kentucky Wonder’ beans. One of the more important aspects of growing a garden is to plant things that you already love to eat. I also got some broccoli, which I have not grown before, but we do like. I have a long list, so I won’t go into a long list, but, I’ve divided the crops into cool, and warm season crops. Peas are a cool season crop, and beans will be planted later when the soil warms up more. One other thing I bought was a black cherry tomato. I’m looking forward to that. Another purchase from the Eden Brothers was some seeds for flowers; Impatiens,Nastrutiums, China Aster, Zinnia’s, Mammoth Sunflowers, and African Marigods. It’s important to have those plants to attract the pollinators, and to beautify the property.
House Problems
Buying a house used has a few drawbacks, and unknown things to fix is one of them. Unfortunately, the RV bay, and the decking where it attaches to the house have some leaking issues, and a couple things in the RV bay have gotten water damaged. One of them is a Brio toy train set that my daughter-in-law has had since childhood. Hopefully, some of it can be saved, it was a very large set. So the leaks will take precedence getting fixed over installing some sort of central heating. For now we are heating with the oil filled plug in radiators, and the occasional use of the gas fireplace, which seems to be working to heat us OK for now. The people who built this home used it as a vacation home in the summer, so they didn’t put in central heating.
School Time
Our granddaughter is adjusting well to her new school. It has been live up till now, but with more Covid outbreaks, they are going to online beginning tomorrow for about a week, and will keep us in touch if they will start back up soon in person depending on how things go.
Her new school is more modern than her previous one, and has three play yards with a total of twelve swings. She is complaining to me of being “Too popular” like at her old school, I am glad she is doing well. Here is some pictures of her school grounds.
I joined the music group at church, and will participate in singing. I am also looking into joining a 4 H group with my granddaughter, and getting into chickens. My hours are changing at work, I will be going to three twelve hour shifts, and will have the weekend totally free, so I will have time to work on projects around the home.
A verse of the Bible comes to mind, as I finish up this blog.
‘Thy word I have gathered up in my heart, that I might not sin against thee’. Psalm 119 verse 11.I’m planning on reading my Bible more.
That’s all for now,
Grandma
Grandma's Garden 