Tidy Brown Wren, bringing order to your nest

Couldn't help but fall in love with this sunflower in my garden last month. The older grandfellas helped me harvest the last of the tomatoes and peppers before the first cold snap of autumn. Goodbye summer, thank you for your warm, sunny days.  

Good heavens, I haven't blogged in months!  But that doesn't mean I haven't been working on projects and blogging about them in my head!  This is going to be a major blog brain dump post - everything you didn't want to know about our family life and activities at Brown Wren Acres. Let's see. . . August: It was Charlotte's first birthday and I made her a Charlotte doll with hazel/brown eyes and pig tails just like the real Charlotte. Pure sweetness, I tell ya. Our veggie garden was pretty good this year.  I planted 4 different kinds of tomatoes (40 plants in all) and they all did very well.  Also planted were cucumbers, 3 kinds of peppers, 2 kinds of green beans, cantaloupe, and squash.  I grew everything from seed too!   I can't forget about the herbs that rounded out the menu.  Basil, parsley, mint, tarragon, thyme, rosemary, oregano, lemon balm, pineapple sage, and sage.   I was able to can tomat...

 Hubs and I have been talking a lot about a cute little red head that we saw on the side of the road.  Cute as a button, I tell ya.  We couldn't stop talking about her.  We pondered whether we should bring her home and make her part of our family.   We finally made the decision to adopt her.  It wasn't really in the budget, but we knew we had to move quickly.   I mean, how many times does something this adorable become available?   And, she came with a mower attachment too.   We love everything about her - even her rust and dirt.  If the battery doesn't decide to start her up, we just pull out the hand crank and give it a go!   She got even dirtier driving her back to her new home - the barn. We haven't decided what to name her yet.  We'll let her make friends with the extra wood and hay we have stored in the barn.  She's going to need some work and probably a visit fro...

We've been eating greens from our garden all winter long.     How have we managed that?     By gardening undercover.     We're growing spinach, lettuce, pok choy,  swiss chard, collards, and kale.  You can see that some of our lettuce has gone to seed because it has been such a warm winter for us here in southeast Virginia.   We simply planted the veggies in October and covered them with floating row covers that were stretched over hoops made with pvc pipes.      The edges of the covers are weighed down with bricks around the edges.   No watering, no weeding, no fertilizing. 

      Our veggie garden was TERRIBLE this year.  I'm not sure what happened, but we had pitiful harvests of tomatoes, beans, and peppers.  That was until now - at the end of the season.  Suddenly, veggies are starting to appear.      Last week, before Hurricane Sandy approached, I harvested a few potatoes, several green beans, some great looking peppers, and a lot of green tomatoes. Now I'm waiting for my fall/winter veggies to produce.  I've planted spinach, swiss chard, lettuce, pok choy, and collards.  I'll cover the beds with low hoops and row covers when the weather starts to turn colder. 

Got okra?  Well, our neighbor had tons of it and came to our backdoor with a 5 gallon bucket filled with the pods.  I washed a bunch of it by scrubbing each pod with a green scrubby pad to remove the hairy coating.   I cut off the top and bottom of each pod and sliced them up.  If any pods were tough, I tossed them in the compost bucket. I tossed them with olive oil and some Old Bay Seasoning. By the way, using parchment paper on your pan makes clean up much easier and keeps the okra from sticking to the pan.  I roasted the okra in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes.  Hubs likes these veggies a little on the crispy (slightly burnt) side so I may have roasted them a bit longer. We used the roasted okra with homemade salsa and some grated cheese to make nachos.  I roasted the rest of the okra and froze it to use later. 

The Wrens have been super busy here at Brown Wren Acres.  Every time I go to grab my gardening gloves outside of the back door, the mother Wren lets me know that I'm too close to her expanding family.  She's decided to take over the little gardening cubby where I keep my tools and gloves handy. Nestled down in the basket is her lovely little nest and several eggs.  I also found another nest in the tire swing hanging from the oak tree in the front yard.  I don't see any eggs in this nest.  I think mother might have had second thoughts after the last storm winds blew threw.  I'm sure it was a wild ride on this tire swing.

Our sunflowers were amazing this year.  They reseeded from last year's sunflowers - I didn't even plant them!  They grew well over 12 feet tall.  After the severe storms a week or so ago, many of the stalks were blown over - some even snapping in two.  We staked up the bent over stalks and trimmed back the rest.  We were able to enjoy some of the trimmings inside. To enjoy sunflowers inside, trim the stems underwater before inserting them into lukewarm water.  Treat the water with flower preservative or add 2 teaspoons each of sugar, bleach, and lemon juice for your own preservative.  Change the water every other day to prolong the blooms and keep the water from getting funky.

I've gotten a late start on getting some of my veggies into the garden.  I've already planted potatoes, lettuce, sugar snap peas, and pepper plants.  All that's left is green beans, cucumbers, squash, and cantaloupe.  I wanted to grow the green beans and cucumbers vertically, so that meant that Hubs and I needed to decide on how to do it - and do it on a budget.  Here's what we came up with: First, we bought welded wire (we bought vinyl coated so it will last longer). It was $48.00 for the whole roll and we have some left over for another project.   Then we bought 12 ten foot lengths of electrical conduit tubing ($2.00 a piece). Hubs, pounded them into the ground with a fence post pounder .  That was the most practical thing to use because he had to do it while standing on a ladder.  We set the ladder on pieces of 1x4 for stability and also to keep the garden soil from getting compacted.  Each pol...

I love to walk around my yard in the early summer and visit all of the blooming plants.  One of my favorites is the Clematis vine.  This particular variety blooms every few weeks all summer long.  I don't know what variety it is because I got it from the clearance bin at Walmart.  It was a sad little thing, but with a bit of TLC, it has recovered beautifully. Another one of my favorites is this peony.  Again, I don't know the variety because it was rescued from the clearance pile at Lowe's.  The blooms don't last very long if a good rain storm comes along, but they  are stunning while they last.  I can't help but be reminded that it's not how you start out, but how you finish.  Like these flowers, I want to finish well.  How about you?