Flowers of FAR Manor: Thistle

To follow up on the alien onion, until I have something else to talk about, I will post pictures of the flowers currently blooming around FAR Manor this week.

This thistle was actually in the pasture on the way to the chicken houses. It’s kind of like a rose — it has pretty flowers and nasty thorns — but as Mrs. Fetched puts it: “Cows won’t try to eat roses. They’ll eat thistles, and choke on ’em. You should have sprayed it after you took that picture.”

I suppose I could have peed on it.

[Taken with the smellphone, 5/31]

Some Sunday Musings

This plant kind of sums up my feelings about many events at FAR Manor: it came up in an odd place, nobody has any idea where it came from, cutting it down just seems to encourage it, and after a while you just want to sit back and see what it’s going to do.

To give an idea of the scale, the highest part is nearly six feet high. It sprang up from under the cross-ties between the driveway and the back yard, and it doesn’t look like anything else we’ve planted. The bulbs like of look like onions until they tear open, and it’s obvious that it’s some kind of flower.

Now that I’ve given up trying to kill it, I’m looking forward to seeing what it looks like when it opens up. It would be nice to know what it is, though. Help?

Speaking of weird things, The Boy had his first public performance last night. He’s officially part of the band after their concert last night, but they had him come along and do a solo piece by way of introduction. He wanted us to be there, we wanted to be there (and get video for his Myspace page), but as usual the chicken houses got in the way. He called just before he was to go up on stage, and Mrs. Fetched said he sounded really excited. He’s supposed to have an outing in the 'burbs later this month, so we’re going to go to it.

Chicken houses… what would a weekend be without them getting in the way? They’re bringing a new flock in tomorrow morning (as in, early tomorrow morning) and so there are certain things to be done to prepare. One of those is to run feed — and it would have really helped if they’d brought feed Friday night like they were supposed to instead of 5 p.m. yesterday. We managed to run feed through one last night (which is why The Boy had to perform without us), and everyone else is over there doing the other three now. Being the song leader at church sometimes has its advantages; I can’t just blow off church.

I’ve been needing to do some drill work, and Mrs. Fetched reclaimed the drill I put together when cleaning up the fireplace insert, so I’ve been needing to do something. Home Despot had a sale on Ryobi drills (with two batteries) for the same price as it would have cost to order a new battery online for my Skil, so I went ahead & got it. I hate doing that, but I can still get a Skil battery later.

One (or two) for the Road

A couple of cellphone shots to wrap up the week…

Besides the huckleberries, we have some higher blueberry bushes growing wild on the place. They run a couple weeks behind the huckleberries, for whatever reason. Last year, I was waiting for them to get ripe and then they… disappeared. I guess the birds were waiting too, and they got there first. I was bummed out, but hopeful that we’ll get some of them this year. Maybe I’ll get some cheese cloth or hang some tinfoil around the area to keep them out.

On the way home from work, I took a ride out a back road that I knew dead-ended at a river. I just wondered how far it went and what was out there. Looks like it might have been a bridge at one time.

Well, that’s the end of the road for the flower pix, at least for now. FAR Future episodes will be posted at least on the next two Mondays, and I should be able to make it three. I hope things will continue to work out that way.

The Fruited… whatever.

I started cleaning up around the front and side of the manor over the weekend, and re-discovered the huckleberry (blueberry) clump. The plants themselves are about twice the size they were last year, and promise to give much more than the handful of small (but quite sweet) fruit this time around. All I have to do is keep the birds away (fat chance).

Mrs. Fetched is pretty sure that we’re seeing them now because we had some timber people remove many/most of the pines around the manor grounds two summers ago (they were getting pine beetles & they paid us to take care of the problem). It makes sense.

I’m thinking that once they finish doing their thing this year, I'll dig up and transplant some of these to give them all some more room to grow. But prolific producers like this guy? I’ll leave completely undisturbed, to make sure they have the room they need. I don’t think I’ll worry about having nice regimented rows like many blueberry farms have; I’ll just give them all some space.

That was the side. Around front, across from the driveway, there’s a pretty good stand of blackberries. I debated about mowing them down, then thought better of it — I won’t have to walk very far to pick them. This stand should be good for half a gallon of berries.

I like to get at least two gallons of blackberries every year. Mrs. Fetched’s mom helps to make jelly & jam, and I got like 14 pints last year. When January comes around, I open a jar and spread some on toast… and remember just how dang hot it was on July 4 weekend when I was picking them. :-P

Sage

The sage is absolutely covered with these purple blooms now. Up close, they look like tiny iris flowers, don’t they? As long as it’s blooming like this, I really can’t cut it back. Clever little beastie.

I like the lighting in this second shot. The detail, not so much.

Rhododendron InSAnItY!

I needed an excuse to try out Blogger’s new “scheduled post” feature, so I went out and took pix of some of the stuff sproinging up around the manor. We’ll see how it works over the next few days.

The rhododendron out front of the garage is, to say the least, happy. Then again, it doesn’t care what time of year it is — it’s either blooming or about to. It runs down the long side of the garage and is clearly visible from the kitchen window (about 20 feet long). But this spring, it’s even crazier than usual. This particular cluster is about the size of a child’s head.

Click for larger versions, of course. I’m pretty happy with this shot; the IBs are pretty clear (although the rhodo is a bit of an exhibitionist in that regard).

I couldn’t decide which shot to post… so I posted both!

Potpourri Monday

It’s Monday. Work is being crazier than usual (or perhaps it’s the new normal… shudder), with two major projects coming due before I escape FAR Manor in two weeks. You know things are getting squirrely at work when I entertain thoughts of quitting, ditching FAR Manor one way or the other, moving back into the old place, and taking up the chicken-ranching business. So if I’m getting that loopy, veggie-pr0n is the least of my worries.

My beer is fermenting along nicely; the yeast is eating sugar and malt, producing alcohol and farting CO₂ out the airlock. The A/C in my car may not have died after all; it didn’t do well sitting in stop&go traffic in 100-degree weather but seems to cope with better traffic and slightly cooler weather. If it holds out three more weeks, I probably won’t miss it after that.

I managed to get a walk in this evening after supper. Since Mrs. Fetched demurred on accompanying me, I set a fairly aggressive pace. That doesn’t mean I didn’t take time to stop and sniff the flowers, and pick this kudzu stalk (no, it’s not growing through the blinds, although it would probably root if I spit at it once or twice). It was kind of tough to break off the stalk… and no, I’m not concerned about running afoul of wildflower laws. Kudzu is an aggressively invasive exotic on Planet Georgia, and has been known to grow across lightly-travelled roads (I’ve seen it happen).

The Boy called to let us know he has a construction job. I hope he’s telling the truth; having a job he likes might give him the desire for a little structure (and he likes construction work). He was talking about getting a Golf GTI for like $500… at that price, I figure it has a horrible gouge through the VIN plate though.

Call the Volunteers!

Not the volunteers for the revolution, although if Congress doesn’t put a leash on Bush-league — and soon! — it might come to that. But for the mid-week Independence Day festoovities, I can show off some of the volunteer plants around FAR Manor:

Last year, this was a flower bed. Mrs. Fetched decided she wasn’t going to plant anything in here, so I put in some garlic. The drought nailed most of the garlic, although you can see a couple of shoots managed to survive. I stuck several basil plants in here as well, because I needed to put them somewhere. But the flower (that’s trying to overrun one of the garlic shoots) and the tomato (near the bottom of the frame) decided to appear on their own.

Of the flower, Mrs. Fetched said, “Yeah, I put one of those in there last year… but I thought it was an annual.” It must have self-seeded, because I tilled up that bed pretty good early in the spring.


Several varieties of blueberry are native to Planet Georgia, but I was surprised to find these on one of the more neglected parts of the manor grounds, let alone doing so well. I think the April cold snap may have done them some good. They’re small — pea size or maybe a little smaller — but quite tasty. They take the concept of “low-hanging fruit” to a new low: they’re only a couple of inches off the ground. For some reason, these low-down berries are the first ones to ripen.

The blackberries are also going great guns. I have no clue how they managed to get so big, especially with the dry weather we’ve been having. Perhaps the cold snap helped them as well.


There are three or four bushes out here too, probably of a different variety. These berries are nearly twice as large as the ground-huggers, and still working on ripening. I’ve learned that there’s such a thing as “bird scare ribbon” so I might have to get some of that soon (it will also help us remember the right bushes when we go a-pruning come winter).


I’m not sure if this is a cucumber, squash, or melon — but it came out of nowhere (actually, near the compost pile). I threw half a watermelon in the compost heap last week, but that’s nowhere near enough time for it to grow nearly three feet and start flowering.


I’m about inundated with jalapenos. I’m thinking about picking a bunch of them to take to the farmer’s market on Saturday; I might clip some herbs as well (the parsley and mint especially need a trim, and I have almost as much basil as I do jalapenos) — Mrs. Fetched says I ought to sell them; I was thinking about just trading for produce we (or my mother-in-law, the Master Gardener) don’t have growing. I’ve picked a few bell peppers, and they’re doing quite well too, but we’ll probably use them ourselves. We loves us some bell peppers at FAR Manor, and they’re just too dang expensive at the store.

Tomorrow, I’m planning to get another gallon of blackberries. That (and the gallon I’ve already grabbed) should make enough jelly to get through the winter. One of the few comforts of a cold winter morning is to spread some blackberry jelly on toast and remember just how dang hot it was when I picked those berries in July.

Dwarf Lilies

I noticed these dwarf lilies (as Mrs. Fetched found they’re called) springing up where the tiger lilies usually prowl. She said, “they just came up on their own, I don’t know how they got there.” In other words, another pretty nuisance plant.



Click the picture to get a closeup. The blooms remind me of the wild violets that came and went earlier in the year (but are still growing all over the place).

Plants, flowers, bees [UPDATED]

[UPDATE: I added a picture of the mountain laurel.]

Mrs. Fetched snagged me from the comfort of a lounge chair this evening, where I was reading Cell, to plant a few things out front in the dusk. I dug, she planted, and we both scooped dirt back in.

Looking out the bathroom window this evening, I saw a huge mountain laurel in full bloom down at the edge of the woods. Click the picture for a closeup of the flowers.

Some of the lilies that run riot around the manor grounds are also starting to bloom, purple varigated with white, that look somewhat like large versions of the wild violets that I couldn’t get rid of even if I wanted to.

The mountain laurel was getting plenty of attention from the large carpenter bees, and my strange old friend the Hummingbird Clearwing Moth was also getting in on the pollination action. I haven’t seen any honeybees in about a month, when they were buzzing around the wisteria. Colony Collapse Disorder is a terrible thing to have happen, but it looks like other bugs are already picking up the pollination slack. I hope so, anyway.

Are you seeing honeybees at your place, or are other bugs stepping in?

Steppin’ Out

The steps leaving the porch out back have been in a state of disrepair for some time now. Daughter Dearest nearly hurt herself when the top step gave way on her one day, as she was carrying the litter box out to dump. Since then, she’s been taking the big step down to the second one, and recently told us that it was starting to get loose too. Mrs. Fetched suggested that I take care of it, since I had the supplies ready for some time, and so I did (after resting up from a bike ride).

This is the end of the second step. You can see it's a little rotted-out, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the top step and I deemed this one salvageable. I cut a new tread for the top step.


The support pieces on the top two steps were split pretty badly, so I replaced them. The original ones had been painted, but not until everything was put together. I went ahead and painted them first, using some leftover paint from the gable job. Here, the top support is still getting leveled up before nailing it in.


While trekking to and fro to grab tools and other necessities, I noticed that the blackberries are opening up. We have vines scattered around the yard; if we get a normal amount of rain we’ll have some goodies for 4th of July.


Of course, the newly-painted step was much brighter than the rest of the steps, so I brushed off the dirt and painted everything to match up.

The deck above is a postage stamp, but the railing needed to be scraped and re-painted as well. The deck itself had never been painted, so I guess I’ll tackle all that next.


More work than strictly necessary, but with any luck I’ll never have to do it again.

Notes from the FAR side

Another roundup…

The Boy got out today! The paperwork was apparently sitting on the D.A.’s desk: he called the public defender, that worthy soul put a call into the D.A., and the latter sent it on. He now gets two months of house arrest, with the ankle bracelet thing, but he has two weeks to get it. The roar of a guitar is emanating from the garage as I type.

Mrs. Fetched’s mom also got out (of the hospital) last night. She was more than ready to leave; the retarded howler monkeys who run their billing department may have taken over the rest of the place from the sound of it.

One reason I haven’t been around much: what little time hasn’t been absorbed by other matters, I’ve been spending finishing up reading the Dark Tower series. I’m on the last book now. I still kick myself from time to time for not grabbing a copy of On Writing when it was on the shelves… I enjoy King’s stories, but I enjoy his “liner notes” just as much, and a book of nothing but liner notes would be killer. Next time I’m in Humpus Bumpus, to pick up WinterMaejic (ordered it for Daughter Dearest), I’ll see if they have a copy.

DD’s boyfriend is still in Indiana. He said he’ll probably come back next month, once his car is running right.

We’ve started the long-awaited (again, by Daughter Dearest) replacement of her white carpet with wood flooring. We’ve pulled up the carpet and padding… to find a couple of humps that need to be sanded down and some spots of blood on the plywood. FAR Manor wasn’t even finished yet, and it was causing pain. It seems to have mellowed in its old age; instead of drawing blood it just squeezes my wallet dry. I’ll have pictures of the proceedings soon.

During the really cold nights we had a couple of weeks ago, we tossed blankets over the rhododendron bush (shot from last month) out front. It either worked, or the bush didn’t care. It started opening up last weekend, when I took this shot; it’s in full-zoot bloom now. We’re waiting for it to stop blooming so we can trim it back some, but it never stops.



The pansies certainly didn’t care about a cold snap — I think the impatiens got nailed worst, with the butterfly bushes a close second (they look dead, and it’s nearly impossible to kill those dang things). The cherry tree was OK — the wind knocked most of the blooms off and the others weren’t affected. The dogwoods are a little frostbit, but the Flowering Whatever Tree on the garage side of the manor house looks like it got whacked a good one.


I took that strange “film” stuff that Clickzilla uses in for processing. I have a couple of portrait shots I took of some friends of ours, plus that hyacinth I posted a while back, so I’m interested in seeing how they turned out. (I tell you what, I’d pay $1000 for a 4–6MP digital back for that camera. The only thing I’d have to think about is how to get the money together.) I had them order me a couple rolls each of color & B&W film while I was there… I can put one of each in the two film backs I have. If I hadn’t been in a hurry, I would have checked out the lighting equipment they have on display… I have to go back anyway to pick up the prints. A roll of 35mm was laying on Mrs. Fetched’s night stand, and she doesn’t know what it is, so I guess I should take that in too. It would be a good excuse to have an early look at the lighting and other gadgetry, and they could do the 35mm while I was looking at Shiny Things.

Speaking of Shiny Things, I’m way overdue for a podcast. If I can get caught up on everything going on right now, I’ll do one. I recorded me reading a short story (that I haven’t posted here), which I was planning to use for the feature this time.

Sprouting!

It took a while, but the basil seeds I saved from previous years’ plants are starting to sprout. I was starting to wonder… and most of the marjoram pots haven’t shown anything yet. But a good dozen basil plants will give me more than enough pesto this year. I might take some to the local farmer’s market later on, when the plants are thriving in the hot sun and I have plenty.

The Pesto King is seeing his domain grow. Unfortunately, we’re in for some below-freezing weather this weekend, so I’ve hauled them all into Studio FARfetched and plugged the electric heater back in. That should keep things happy.

I also bought a spearmint plant and put it over by the rosemary last weekend. It’s already half again as big as it was when I brought it home. The parsley seems to have given up the ghost, but I can get some more. It will probably like the impending chilly weather. I need to get some more oregano, too. I thought I’d saved some seeds from the first plant, but have no clue where they went. One of The Boy’s friends probably tried smoking them. :-P


Meanwhile, the lilac bush out front is blooming better than I’ve ever seen before. Or I might just be paying attention this year. Trying to upstage the dogwoods…

The Downside of Spring

Very few things in life are purely good or purely bad, and that includes spring. The downside to spring, of course, is yard work. It was quite warm, bordering on hot, over the weekend, so there wasn’t much excuse to stay inside.


Mrs. Fetched decided that the entire front bed needed to be tilled up so she could re-arrange it. Figuring it would be easier to till up without the stepping stones in the way, I pried them out of the ground and stacked them off to the side. There were 25 of them all told, some of which were buried under dirt or plant-sprawl. This wisteria was hiding two, maybe three of them. I just probed around with the shovel, heard the tonk, and pried out the stone.

The hard part was when I started tilling around a couple of the butterfly bushes along the driveway: I’d forgotten those beds were graveled (easy enough to do when the gravel is covered with dirt, grass, and leaves). The Mantis about shook my arms off before I was done. We covered that area with mulch cloth and eight bags of pine bark. I also appropriated three of the stepping stones so I could cross it (on the way to Studio FARfetched) barefoot.


Brown Thrashers are Planet Georgia’s bird, which is appropriate. They get into your business, attack their reflections in car windows, and roost in inconvenient places. Like the little porch in front of the studio. They’ve been roosting there at night through the winter, and I’ve shoo’ed them away I don’t know how many times (and ducked many more times when trying to go in and they freak out). Although it was rather warm in the studio, I had stuff to do; the thrashers kept flying back & forth outside, waiting for me to leave.


Here’s one of this year’s houseguests, perched in the dogwood outside Studio FARfetched, waiting for me to get back to the yard. They’re going to love it when I replace the burned-out light bulb on the porch. I figure I’ll wait for the young to get gone, then I’ll put tack strips in the rafters. They can use one of the several bird houses we’ve put up around the manor.


The upside of spring, of course, is that I’ll be riding the motorcycle to work. Daughter Dearest is getting Cousin Splat’s parking permit, so she can drive herself to school…

Pretty weeds

One certain sign of spring at FAR Manor is that the weeds start waking up and (in some cases) offering bribes. One of the prettier weeds, the wild violets, are nearly impossible to eradicate. I even poured old kerosene on them over the winter, and they only died off temporarily. The lawn mower passes over them and leaves them pretty much unscathed.


This is what they look like up close and personal.


A few of them, for whatever reason, are more white than violet. I have no clue.


Here are some cheerful yellow flower-weeds popping up amongst the violets (and the grass).


Cutting one yellow flower-weed out of the herd.


Mrs. Fetched buys a lot of flowers and plants them in various places. She doesn’t really have to bother, but she likes bigger blossoms and putting them where she wants them. These don’t get out of the grass and are nickel- and dime-size. What do you want for free?

Hyacinth

Hyacinth

I got this for Mrs. Fetched on Valentine’s Day, and it had three blooms on it then. It has been busy in the last week!

I also got a shot with Clickzilla; it’ll be interesting to see how much detail got picked up on that film thing.

Winding down

I will always remember Christmas 2006 as the first Christmas where I woke up to thunder. Talk about starting off with a boom….

Now that Christmas is over, the crazy time is starting to wind down. Of course, it doesn’t happen all at once — there are clearance items to buy (and put away for next year) and some shopping to do for Three Kings Day (aka Epiphany) on Jan. 6. We have our major gift exchange on Three Kings Day at FAR Manor — it gives us an opportunity (not always taken) to reserve Christmas Day as a religious observation, plus it gives us a week & a half extra to get presents (often at steep discounts).

Yesterday it was cool and wet; today it was cold and wet. Two of my basil plants are still hanging on; I’ve managed to remember to bring them inside on the coldest nights and the frost hadn’t got them yet. On the other hand, they’re not going to perk up and give me enough leaves to make one last batch of pesto… but I can’t bear to kill good plants. The third basil plant went to seed and checked out a couple of weeks ago; I’ve moved it under cover to dry out and then I’ll harvest the seed pods. I found a couple of seed trays laying around outside today; they’ve also gone under cover. I’ll plant basil and cilantro in them first thing next year.

I took this picture with my new smellphone; a Samsung A707 (The Boy dropped the old Moto, which prompted it to retire). It has a lot of stuff that I don’t really need, like an MP3 player and a 2.0 megapixel camera, but the price was right (after rebate, which Stinkular has been pretty good about honoring). I’ve started to go through the manual (which, so far, I’m not impressed with) to figure out how to set up the camera and so forth… but it beats the heck out of the Moto (which isn’t saying much, granted). It’s too nice to not worry about, though, so I’ll probably have to get a case for it soon.

Back to work in the morning for a few days, then another three-day weekend.

Rosemary and visitor

There are many things I don’t know about plants. One of the things I didn’t know was that rosemary blossoms in the fall.

A little patience (and double-checking in view mode) is required to get good macro shots with this camera. If you click to get the larger image, though, you can get a good look at a tiny insect down on the bottom flower. He didn’t seem to be fazed at all about me getting less than a foot from him.

That yellow string-looking thing behind the upper flower is part of the parsley plant. The heat and drought knocked it way back, although it’s starting to recover with cooler weather. There were several stalks that didn’t hold themselves up, and that probably kept them alive, but now I need to stake them up so they’ll get what sun there is at this time of year. Rosemary, on the other hand, is one of the hardiest non-weed plants I’ve seen. Heat doesn’t bother it, drought doesn’t bother it, winter doesn’t bother it, getting run over by a minivan doesn’t bother it… you get the idea.

I’ll have to clip it a little before too long — I’ll be making a batch of beer and boiling rosemary into the wort really mellows it out.

Shorties

A handful of things that didn’t necessary merit their own posts…

Fury asked for a close-up of the yellow flowers growing all over the manor grounds; here it is. They’re about the size of a nickel. Whatever they are, they’re very prolific. Click on the picture to get something larger than life.

Mixed emotions: some time last night, I dropped my smellphone in the driveway. The Boy found it, after someone either stepped on it or ran it over (or Mrs. Fetched’s dog played with it). The screen, amazingly, is OK; but everything else seems to be in worse shape than it looks. The keyboard doesn’t key, and it doesn’t recognize the sync cable. I stuffed my SIM card into an old Nokia we had laying around, and it worked, so whoever smooshed the Moto didn’t do a good enough job. Yay, maybe I’ll get a new phone with a decent camera — boo, new phone = extended contract.

Daughter Dearest came down, asked, “are you blogging my singing?” (She’s working on a piece for her All-State Chorus audition on Saturday.) I hadn’t planned to, but since she said something…. Then she saw the flower picture and forgot about it. Man. She’ll also be 17 on Saturday — I hope the audition judges give her a b-day present, although she’s good enough that she really doesn’t need it.

Wow, did the Tigers open up a can of Whoop-Ass on the Yankers or what? I hope they have another one for the A’s. And one more for the Series. I might have to get interested in baseball for a couple of weeks.

Driving the Sunfire makes me miss my Civic. It does what it needs to, getting decent gas mileage in the process, but it feels as heavy as a truck in some ways. I’m sure new struts (like the Civic got) will help, but I don’t think it will ever feel as nimble. Not to mention the stereo. Or the lack of cruise control. Or the two-acre dashboard (seriously, I’m thinking of Velcro’ing some plants up there).

I guess kerosene heaters are like the last consumer product that don’t try to be idiot-proof and are designed to be serviced by the end-user. I haven’t tried firing it up yet, though: I need fresh kerosene, at $3/gal. I’ll probably get to it Thursday night or maybe over the weekend.

What little things are on your mind today?

Fall Plants

With the advent of cooler weather, the fall flowers (and weeds) are coming in. Some of the weeds are offering fairly decent bribes this time around, and the regular plants are also doing well. I haven’t done a pictorial in a while, so…

This bottlebrush (or whatever it’s real name is) is the centerpiece of the flower bed in front of FAR Manor. This is the best I’ve ever seen it; I noticed it this morning when the sun was shining on it as I worked at home. To give you a good sense of perspective, the tops are about seven feet high.


The butterfly bushes, on the other hand, have been relatively scraggly with their blooms this year. We get blooms in the spring and fall though, which is probably why we haven’t ripped them all out of the ground in self-defense — they’re invasive and would take over if we let them. Not that it’s all bad; they were nearly swarmed by butterflies today.

This is one of the better pods.


The goldenrod sprung up on its own, and is very bright this year compared to its usual muted yellow. It’s growing around the butterfly bushes, and everywhere else, and contrasts nicely with the blue of the butterfly bushes.


These weeds are offering us a cheerful bribe to let them live. The blooms are about the size of a nickel; I guess it’s some wild variant of a daisy…


…and they’re growing everywhere too!


Kind of ugly, but in a soft feathery way. I pulled up a bunch of these last month and a zillion more sprung up. They stand 3 to 4 feet tall.


Some other colors will come in soon. I especially like the muted orange of some of the wildflowers that will start showing off before long.