Happy Mothers day to all the mom's

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms.

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Dawn

Thank you and to you as well! We are off to the nursery to buy some flowers. Enjoy the sunshine!

DH took me flower shopping for Mother's Day, and when I got back the teenagers had actualy cleaned the house!! They even re-discovered the vacuum cleaner! The little man helped me plant and water (his favorite part) all of the bulbs and Nemesia while DH made dinner. What a wonderful day to be outside!

Dawn - I found the Nemesia!!! At ACE Hardware of all places! They also have glad blubs 5/$1 and Cannas for 39 cents... so I loaded up on those too... I think I'll be going back tommorow to get some more glads - I love cutting glads and having them around the house!

Happy Mother's Day to everyone else!!! Hope you all enjoyed the true "fruits of labor" today.

Courtney,

It sounds like you had a great Mother's Day. I'm glad you found the nemesia. Ace Hardware? Who would have thought it?

We had lovely weather and I did a little planting. Last night I mentioned to DH that the ground was finally beginning to dry out.....within an hour we had a 'surprise' thunderstorm run across the border from Texas! So, we're back to being a bit wet again. Well, I know in July I'll be asking for rain.

Have fun today. I think a return trip to Ace Hardware is a good idea....bargains like the glads and cannas will get snapped up fast! Have fun!

Dawn

Courtney - if you ever want yellow and/or red glads, let me know. They are invasive in my garden, popping up everywhere.

I got my canna tuber of Phaison planted yesterday. I'm a bit slow right now cause I have so many things to plant.

I also have baby sphinx caterpillars I'm raising (4 and they're greedy little pigs, a hackberry emperor butterfly caterpillars, and 3 Variegated Fritillary butterflies that showed up suddenly on my Viola sororia that I just got about 2 or 3 weeks ago from a friend in Pennsylvania. It's native here, too, and appears to be favored host plant over the common white violets I have growing in the yard. The flowers on V. sororia are a bright purplish blue.

I released another Snowberry Clearwing yesterday, too, and only have one left to yet emerge.

Susan

Dawn - it's funny as much as we all complained about the rain, I was hoping for a little this weekend! Don't get me wrong, I'm ready for the summer heat... LOVE the summer heat, but I really liked all of the free water we were getting! Besides being free, it didn't require me to drag 150 feet of hose all over the yard to make sure that everyone was getting a drink! (Can you tell we are trying to get 30,000 sq ft of sod established?)

I have a pretty large bed (my Charity Garden) and in addition to some of the plants that I got at the plant swap, I threw down some more seeds and bulbs. All of the kids helped me, which was really nice. Problem is that I didn't have any mulch to throw down after we finished planting, so the ground is drying out soooooo fast. I think most of the seedling have sprouted up enough now that I can get the mulch down without killing them. I've really had to pay close attention to the plants in that bed to make sure that stayed happy!

Susan - I'll take you up on the glads offer. Do you need some more weeds? LOL!! I also have some Purple Peony Poppy seeds that I was going to plant, but after the thread on Opium Poppies I thought I'd wait until late fall/Winter to plant them. The pkg says it's an annual, so I'm not sure if it'l self sow, but if they do they should really go into a garden where someone is going to get to enjoy them year after year.

Courtney

Yes, poppies do self sow - or supposedly. The red one that bloomed for me last year did not self sow. Don't know why, but it was a free pack I got in the mail, so no damage done.

Susan

Courtney,

My ground is finally beginning to dry out, so I could live without rain for a few more days. We had a little thunderstorm around sunset last night and received about a quarter-inch of rain. I have been dragging the hose from container to container to water--it is funny how quickly they dry out.

I've been seeing LOTS of snakes up and about since they don't care for the very wet soil.

Good luck getting that sod established. What kind of grass did you plant?

Susan,

My poppies self-sow everywhere most years, but every once in a while they don't sprout as well--usually in very wet winters.

Dawn

Susan - I have a few other pkts of seeds that I have decided not to plant this year. We'll have to get together sometime for lunch so that you can check them out. I think DH would be happy to see a few of them disappear. I went crazy getting seeds and stuff this winter, and then we got the word that the Navy was going to force a transfer in Sept 09. I've kinda backed off on some of the gardening plans that I had. It doesn't make sense to spend the money and time on something that may turn off potential buyers. I just thought I'd keep it simple while we're here. I am going to take the bulbs and some cuttings with me though :)))

Dawn - Our builder started with a Bermuda Hybrid called Tiff 419 in September. We added another 22,000 sqft in February. Some of the stuff that we got in Feb is struggling, so we are mowing it short every couple days, watering and fertilizing, hoping that it'll spread into the bare spots. It's starting to fill in, slowly. Since it's a warm season grass, I have a feeling that it'll have a little growth explosion after the weather gets hot and stays hot.

My son has been so helpful at keeping the plants watered. I doubt he's concerned about them drying out, he just likes to play in the water. In his mind EVERYTHING needs water in order to grow; grass, plants, sidewalks, patio furniture, little boys...

Courtney,

Little boys and water are made for each other. So are big boys and water. Whenever anyone around here is washing a car or truck in the driveway, some innocent family member who is just walking by is likely to get squirted.

Whenever the volunteer fire dept. is doing any kind of training that involves hoses and water (or fire-suppresssing foam), it seems to me that all the firefighters get really, really wet. The hotter it is, the wetter they get. I'm not exactly saying they are playing around in the water, but they don't get that wet at real fires!

I think your bermuda will take off when it heats up here near the end of May. I think bermuda is the toughest grass around. Here we have bermuda, but we had St. Augustine in Fort Worth and I loved, loved, loved it.

Dawn

My cousin is a 5th generation Firefighter in Omaha, my uncle just retired after 40 years. I think my little man my have a bit of it in his genes. Every now and then, he pretends that one of the plants is a fire and tries to put it out! Literally, delves the hose right in the center of it and tries to wash out the roots.

The builder of our California house put fescue down on the front yard. Worst stuff ever! We lived in the desert and they gave us a cool season grass!!! Every May/JUne the home owners assnn would send out notices that the lawns were looking stressed and would impose a $100 fine if it wasn't corrected within 72 hours. I think it was a way of bilking a lot of money out of the homeowners. Seveal people complained, and got the HOA to back off a little. It was kinda funny though, you could tell when everyone got their notices, that weekend everyone on teh block was pushing a spreader. LOL!! Back there our entire lot was 5003 sqft, with the house and driveway taking up about 3000 sqft of that. We had 17'1" front our back door to the fence, and it was 54' wide... Here we are 3000 sqft shy of an acre.... I LOVE IT HERE!!!

Courtney,

When my son was your son's age, there was nothing he loved more than playing with the water hose, except maybe playing with the water hose, a pile of dirt, and the white dog, which ended up with the child and dog both dark brown and covered in mud!

Fescue grass in a desert region? Well, I bet that was quite a challenge for everyone, wasn't it? When I lived in Texas, a lot of people tried to have fescue. It was nice-looking at certain times of the year, but July and August just ate its' lunch and it browned out.

I don't know about you, but I will never buy land in an area that has a HOA. The gardener in me just couldn't tolerate being told that I couldn't have this plant or that plant or whatever.

A few years ago in Texas there was a HUGE battle in one housing development over sunflowers. Sunflowers! The decision was made that sunflowers were 'unsightly' and you couldn't grow any sunflower in your back yard that got any taller than your 6' tall wooden privacy fence. If, by chance, your sunflowers got tall enough that they showed over the top of the fence, you had to remove them. I followed the battle in the newspapers for several weeks and couldn't believe it.

We were sitting in a hospital emergency room with some friends of ours for hours and hours on Monday, so we discussed a little of everything during that time and HOAs was one topic of discussion. One friend was looking at new homes, and backed out of buying one when she saw all the HOA rules. Said she didn't want to have someone telling her you can do this and can't do that. I know HOAs help protect and maintain property values by keeping things from looking 'junky', but think they have gone overboard with a lot of their rules. Another of the people there with us is very involved with a large church in her community. Back when they built the church they were in the country, but are now surrounded by new housing developments with HOAs and have a hard time with EVERYTHING. They can't even put up a banner that says VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL. It is very frustrating for them.

Isn't it amazing how much fun you can have on a decent-sized piece of land? After living on acreage in the country for so long now, I have forgotton what it is like to have a miniscule yard. I know that I am spoiled because I have endless amounts of room to grow things. When we lived in town, we were in a neighborhood that was about 40 or 45 years old, so everyone had HUGE trees and very shady yards. Shade is wonderful, of course, unless you would like to grow plants that like sunshine! Here we have enough space that I can grow shade-loving plants and sun-loving ones and everything in between.

The only time I wish I had a smaller piece of land is when it is 105 degrees outside and I am out there mowing and sweating in the heat. Generally, though, I don't mind it.

A small farm near us was sold a couple of years ago and the 120 acres were subdivided into 8 or 10 lots. Several new homes now occupy that acreage and another new one is going up right now. I don't mind having closer neighbors, but it does seem strange to have several families on land that used to just have one. We joke that it is 'getting crowded'. When we moved onto this piece of land, they were 10 or 12 homes on our road and on the intersecting road near us. Now there are 19. OK, it is not exactly a building boom, but we are losing a little of our rural flavor and isolation. Still, because of the way the homes are situated, we can only see one house from our property and it is directly across the road and about 300 yards from our house. We have WONDERFUL neighbors and I love them all, but we definitely have more of them than we used to!

I love it here too. I never want to live any place else.

Dawn

I could go on and on about the HOA's. Our neighbohood here has one, but it's what we'd call common sense rules. Like no parking a mobile home on your property, and outbuilding have to be made out of the same material as the house, and no above ground pools, stuff like that. Back in Cali, if your grass was too long they'd fine you. We got a notice once because we bought our daughter one of those portable bastketball hoops, and since there wasn't enough room in the backyard, we set it in the driveway... guess that was against the rules. When we did our backyard landscaping, we had to submit the plans to the HOA for approval, and then have them come back to inspect it after we were done. It was ridiculous!!

I really like have a nice piece of dirt to call home. The little guy and I spend the whole day outside "piddling".
Although we had nice weather year round in Cali, there's only so much you can do on a 17'X54' piece of dirt. Once we added the patio and foundation plants, there wasn't much room for anything else. DH only had to make 2 passes with the lawn mower and the yard was done! I know I'll miss that yard come mid July and August. DHgot his first riding mower a couple months ago, he push mowed the yard once and decided that it was just too much work. LOL!! I had mowed it twice and actually enjoyed it. I think he's mowed the back twice now, once the day that he got his new mower, and once when I wasn't feeling good. That riding mower sure it a lot more fun!!

It's funny how quickly the area around us is growing. Of course we aren't as rural as you are. I think it's only 3 miles down the road for us to get "into town". We we the 2nd family to move into our house last Sept, and now there are 12 family in the hood, and several more houses under construction. DH and I like to drive out of the hood and around the country roads and just smell the fresh air!! The smells are completely different when you drive that 3 miles to town - YUCK!

I am embarassed to tell you how many pieces of equipment it takes to maintain acreage. Let's just say that we have more than I ever imagined we'd need: three lawn mowers (one is a riding mower, the other two are self-propelled push mowers), two tillers (one a large rear-tined tiller that is too powerful for me to use, the other is a small cultivator type that I adore), four or five weedeaters, including one that is on wheels, a chipper-shredder, a leaf blower-vac, and tons and tons of other tools.

DH would really love to have a big tractor and one of these days he probably will. Our neighbor just got a tractor and brush hog this year, and he's lived here forever. Our garage is a 30' by 40' barn-syle building that we had built in 2004 and it is already so full that we'll have to build the tractor its own little barn when DH eventually buys one.

One way to enjoy the yard in the hot months is to put up a simple misting system on your patio, or buy a portable mister. I am always outside in the summer time, but limit my July and August work to the very early morning hours--from sunup to about 9 or 10 a.m. and the very late evening hours--after 7 p.m.

We are out in the sticks but are really only about 5 miles from Thackerville or 7 or 8 miles from Marietta. Both of these are very small towns though. To get to a town of any size at all, we have to go about 30 miles north to Ardmore or about the same distance south to Gainesville, TX. Ardmore has a Lowe's and Gainesville has a Home Depot. When we first moved here in 1999, the closest Lowe's was in Sherman, TX or Denton, TX, each of which was about 60 miles, so it has gotten a little better. I still do most of my mall-type shopping in the Dallas-Fort Worth area which is 80 miles away.

I do love the fresh air in the country and all the lovely sounds at night like the frogs croaking and the coyotes howling and such. And I love the huge abundance of wildflowers.

Dawn