carolyncat353's Blog

Whew!  I don't know what I've been doing, but I've been sweating doin' it!  Yesterday I had a Yard Sale, that I hadn't decided I was having until last Tuesday (lol).  Didn't give me much time for preparation, but I thought, heck, if it's small, and I make $50.00 I'll have 'culled' some of the junk and have a few bucks!  WOW-there was only 3 garage sales in my little town-and just a few in Moss Bluff-to the north of me, not far away-and I DID GOOD!  After paying for the ad & rent for the clothes racks-I CLEARED $184.00!!  I sold all the plants I had out for sale except for 4 ( I think I had about 20 counting the Amaryliss bulb packs)  I even have the names & numbers of 2 people who want me to start a couple of plants for them, since someone else was buying what they wanted!  Now I have room to start more!  I could have sold lots of daylillies if I had them dug, since mine are all blooming and people could see what they looked like.  And CLOTHES!  I sold a lot of clothes!  Except for Baby clothes, I have never sold this much in clothing!  The state of the Economy is showing in yard sales.

While cleaning out a cabinet after the sale to throw some more things away, I came across a bunch of seeds given to me long ago by an old man that lived  a ways behind me.  I was walking one day, and he was cutting grass and I asked him about a plant in his yard-He was more than happy to bring me back to his house (which was a ways off the road), and he gave me seeds of several plants.  It was in the Fall of the year, and I put them away-and well, I lost them.  The year was 2001, cause I have one envelope marked. I went down that lane to see him a few weeks after Hurricane Rita, but his house had been totally destroyed.  A few months later  the whole lot was bulldozed (so sad-I would have loved to have dug up his yard!)and I heard that he had died shortly after Rita-it was more than he could take. Anyway! I found some purple datura seeds, some kind of purple flower on a stalk (!?), some zinnias, something he called a spider flower, a gout plant, Egyptian Lima Bean (which the seed looks just like some Reba sent me called Hawaiin Vine), Fireman's Cap and one that is un named-kind of a fuzzy seed.  I will have to carefully plant these to see what, if any come up!

I finally planted my Hummingbird Plant, Rabbit Ears or Jammie Mouth (it goes by all 3 names) in it's pot for this season.  I have found that it is a small shrub, but I want to monitor it's growth first, and then I'll decide on it's yard location-Here it is-in his new homemade pot!

Aw, the side with the crack is showing!  I took a Fleur de Leis pattern and cut it out and spray painted it on the side of this old pot I had painted black.  My Saints spirit is showing!  Pretty cool, if I do say so myself.  I think I'll do some of these for the next yard sale, which will be held in September.

We have had some great rain showers this past week (well, 2 anyway).  My back yard will flood up, and when the rain quits, within an hour it is all soaked up.  Nice. 

I am having a horrific bug problem in my garden this year (I thought the cold winter would have killed them off!).  Those ugly leaf-footed bugs are everywhere-I found one tomato totally-I mean TOTALLY covered in them this morning.  And the squash borers have found my zuchinni.  I have little, tiny black bugs that I am assuming are flea beatles on almost everything-and slugs & snails.  My beans are barely making this year (and I only planted one row), I have picked about 4 cucumbers, and they are terribly slow, too!  But man-do I have eggplant!  Those durn leaf-footers are in them bad, too, but so are the bees.  I have to be careful how I treat them-and hunting them with the clippers is too time-consuming1 :)   This is my first year for planting BrandyWine tomatoes.  Are they supposed to be skinny plants?  I have tomatoes, but the stems are long and not much in the way of leaves to cover the fruit.  I am worried about sunscald.  If this is normal-I don't think I want to plant these again. I will put all these questions in the appropriate forums-just wondering;

Now, lastly, tomorrow is Memorial Day.  Please take the time at 3:00 pm your local time to stop and say a prayer for our troops-past, present & to come.  For without them, we would not have our freedoms we have today.  All gave some & some gave all.  Thank a vet, thank a soldier. 

From my garden to yours-HAVE A SAFE & HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY.  

Carolyn

This has nothing to do with gardening, but everything to do with our eco-system.  My SIL just sent these to me, and I am crying as I type this.  This mess is so awful, and it seems no one knows what to do to stop it.  The wildlife and fishes in the Louisiana coast and marshes will be extinguised and livelihoods and the cajun way of life IS forever changed.  If you are so inclined, please pray that this well will be capped, and a solution for cleanup found before our whole coast dies.  It is already 10-15 miles into inland marshes and covering approximately 70 miles of coast line.  Go to:

Boston.com/bigpicture   Oil Reaches Louisiana Shore.

There's lots going on in my yard these days.  The daylillies are blooming like mad, the vegetables are growing-I've even picked ONE cucumber, THREE zuchinni (with 3 more to pick this evening :)), a few more beans, jalepenoes ready to pick and eggpant all over the place!! The tomatoes are coming along nicely, and SO FAR, not much bug/worm damage.  BER is a problem on one plant, but I am addressing that! I have already picked 2 bell peppers, and should have more in about a week!  Two of the red gladiolas are showing color-starting to bloom! The morning glories are finally taking off, and the orange, Pretty Boys are blooming now (those are asiatic lillies). Here is one of my daylillies-I don't know what it's real name is-I call them Bulls-eye:

I was pulling grass and re-mulching in 'daylily row' yesterday evening-I don't think it's going to be too bad to clean up this year-Last year I put down newspaper and then mulch, and it has worked well-I am doing that again. I found this little fella hiding out:

We finally got some rain-I had about 3/4's of an inch.  Everything looking perky!  Every evening when I come home I fill my bird feeders and I always wondered why the tube feeder was always totally empty since the birds really didn't seem to care as much for it as the others-NOW I know why:

You should see him climb that metal pole-Hand over fist-sits on top, then flops on the feeder! He throws out the seeds he doesn't want, and the pigeons are there to eat them up!

Have a great evening!

How ya like my little gator?  I bought him several years ago from a company that is now out of business-They had so many cute little concrete things-I am sorry they are gone.

Here is a picture of 'daylily row'.  I have several different colors in here-Red, yellow, brownish/orange, two-colored, and some with a 'bullseye'.  I will post close ups later. That is my bottle brush on the right-losing its blooms-it was outstanding this year, but didn't last long.

My arbor with my morning glories & moonflower are behind that picket fence.  I planted Grandpa Ott MG's there this year-this picture doesn't really show its true color-It is more purple than blue:

They are taking a long time to get started this year-Just now getting to the bottom of the arbor-I can't wait until they cover it!  My moonflower is just as bad-barely moving.         NOW-here is the picture of the Hidden Ginger.  Someone gave it to me a few years ago, and it bloomed the following year.  I divided it last year-forgot THIS pot outside during some of our coldest weather.  It took a long time to come back-but it did!

The leaves of it get very big and are very tropical looking.  For comparison-that is Cast  Iron Plant (aspidistra?sp) behind it. This is what was being sold for $5.00 for one  root/rhizome at the Garden Show! 

That's all for today!  See ya later, gators!

I don't know about where you live, but it is windy here and dry.  We have a slight chance of rain this weekend-We are extremely dry here-the sprinkler runs from the time I get home, until dark.  Things are blooming and growing, and the vegetables are in need of lots of water, and it is getting hot!  Reaching 90 almost every day-sometimes mid 90's.  It rained from December through March-haven't had any measurable rain since the end of March.  We had our driest April EVER this year!

I cleaned out the front flower bed and planted 3 Pentas and those midnight blue lobelias.  The lobelia doesn't look too good, but this morning they look like some will survive!  I lay down some newspaper and spread some mulch on top, but I didn't have enough-so, I'm not through!  I also have to dig up some St. Joseph Lillies and some Amaryliss in that area, too.  I'm  hoping to sell them in my garage sale.  If not, I'll have some of those to share if any one is interested.

My Parrot Lillies are blooming (peruvian lily)-I dug them from my grandmother's yard years ago, and never knew what they were until GG.  Told2B id'd them for me.  Such an exotic looking little flower:

I'm thinking about 13-14 years ago, my mother told me to dig this Calla Lilly up from her flower bed-she was going to stay with my brother,and I dug up this and the rose bush that I have.  This is the first year IN ALL THOSE YEARS that it has ever bloomed! Only 2 blooms-and it is fragrant, too!

I discovered that several of my tomatoes have BER!! I watered and limed & mixed the yield-increaser stuff and everything got treated with it-cukes, eggplants, squash and the peppers! I picked and ate raw my first Zuchinni!! I have several little ones and I've been watching for the squash borers.  Some where I read about putting aluminum foil around the base of the plant to confuse the moths that lay eggs under the leaves , so I did that too!.  The eggplant is taking off this year already-here's a pic of one of the plants:

And I will have another bell pepper to pick in a few days-I've already picked one!  And oh, man-my ONE jalepeno is producing madly!  I'll be picking some of those, soon, too!

I have some little cucumbers, too.  I'm hoping to have some of everything ready to pick when Clint & his girlfriend arrive on June 4!  He called me for Mother's Day and told me it had just stopped snowing-poor baby.  He is ready to come HOME! 

I'll show a full garden picture in a couple of days-

LATER GATORS!

Before the show-Peanut is home & doing well.  He has to be on a restricted diet until Monday-and that is tuff!  Science diet ID which looks, smells and apparently tastes bad cause he won't eat it!  I checked it's ingredients and he had a scrambled egg this evening.  Spoiled dog.

The show in Lafayette was so good!  And I forgot my camera.  It is twice the size of the one here, and has such a variety of unusual plants.  I found out that the deep purple iris I have in the back yard is called Louisiana Black Gamecock.  The Hidden Ginger that I have that someone gave me has multiplied  a lot, and ONE root sells for $5.00. (This is not the white butterfly ginger-totally different). I have a pot of toad lily that is not like the toad lilly that actually looks like a lily.  I found that Shrimp Plants now have a White flowering kind and a lime green one!  There was one booth with nothing but herbs-some I've never heard of, but I'm not an herb person unless its basil,sage, thyme, dill.  I bought a LIME MINT, that by golly, when you run your hand through it, it smells like a Margarita! (that's going on the patio! :)). There was also one called Coconut something, too and  I thought of Witt looking through that booth, but I couldn't remember what herb she was looking for the other day!  There was also a coleus called "duck feet", the leaves were shaped like tiny duck feet!  There was also a caladium that I have never seen before-Cream colored with specs of red & green-looked like freckles.  There is one I have seen that is similiar, but this was not it.  Expensive, too! For a caladium!

I bought a vine that I didn't write down the name of-I thought it was on the pot, but it's not.  It's little flower is tubular like a cigar plant and it was a man's name Jeane something.  They had a large one on display, not for sale, and the vendor said hummingbirds just tear it up! Then, I bought another plant called a Ruttya (Rabbit Ears or Hummingbird plant).  It's flowers look like a tiny hummingbird and is supposedly not a common plant-$5.00 for a 4" pot.  I hope it does well!  I especially wanted to buy some more cupheas, I don't know if mine is coming back.  They had the batface, and another kind I hadn't heard of (again-didn't write it down)-and I didn't go back to get it.  What I do, is go through the whole show, and then go back and get what I want.  Didn't write it down-Dang It!

There were vendors selling yard art, and I saw a cute little bird house with the roof made out of Bud Light Beer Caps-it was so cute! Oh, there was so much!  Here is what I bought:

The little vine that the hummers will tear up is on the bottom left.  The one on the bottom right is the one that the flowers look like a hummingbird:

If you look at the flower on the bottom right, you can see it looks like a little hummer!  I did not buy all of this at the Garden show, though.  I pass at least 3 nurseries on the way to the show, so I stopped at one.  I bought the large pot of hibiscus for $20.00 That's 3 different plants in one pot.  I bought the midnight blue lobelia there, too. I'm thinking of the front flower bed with the Pentas one either side of the bird bath, and the lobelia in various spots around it.  I bought the dill for the butterflies-I would have bought much more-but Peanut was $496.00 this week-so, nope, I restrained myself! I sure wish I had remembered my camera-there was such a tremendous amount of beauty there!

Ya'll have a good Mother's Day-I'll be cutting grass!

Still low white blood cell count, but it has come up a lot since yesterday!  Doc wants to keep him on the IV all day today, and this evening HOPEFULLY will let him come home.  Could possibly be just viral-tests are inconclusive, but he will recover.  THANK YOU ALL so much for the prayers and well wishes.  Peanut's not out of the woods, yet, but I feel better. 

I bought a LARGE rat trap and set it in the shed.  Night before last I caught a mouse in it (bigger than a mouse, smaller than a rat), and then LAST NITE, I caught the Big Daddy! Ugh-I hate emptying those things-and this trap has a super spring on it-dangerous! There's bound to be more-I'll set it again tonite. No more rat poison for me.  Doc said Peanut's tests didn't show signs of poisoning-but I'll not do that again-besides, then they'll die in a wall or attic and stink!

If Peanut is back to bouncing tomorrow, I will go to Lafayette to their Garden show.  It is late this year, and only one day, but it is usually a good one.  Everyone has cut back-and I do suppose our rough winter had something to do with that.  Then, our Sheriff's annual crawfish boil is tomorrow evening.  They usually do about 10,000 lbs. of crawfish and there is NEVER any left.  I just can't fathom that many crawfish at one time-But, I've SEEN IT!

Work to do-thanks for the well wishes and prayers-he's not home yet, but he's getting there!

My little dog is very sick.  It came on suddenly yesterday evening-He is in the vet hospital with an IV trying to flush his body.  His immune system is depleted, and they don't know why.  He was vomiting, very lethargic and could barely walk.  This morning, I actually thought he would die before I got to the vet's office.  I don't know if I can live through losing another pet. 

I have about 2 dozen little tomatoes, several zuchinni, hot peppers & tiny cukes.  Picked my first bell pepper yesterday and I have tiny beans.  Right now, I don't care about any of it.