Our own yellow brick road

Okay, so it's not actually yellow. And it's not a road, per se. But it is so picture perfect, I do feel like skipping on it and maybe humming a little song. Maybe.

Anyway, we got quite a bit of our pathway done before our trip and we started back to work as soon as we got home.

Here it is coming from the front of the house around to the side. The gaps are for roots that came into the pathway. We did chop out roots in some areas, but these are for our quaking Aspens and we wouldn't cut even the smallest root from those trees if we could help it.



Pivoting on that spot, now you can see the backyard and the pathway progressing toward the chicken coop and garage. We're almost done! Finally! Then we'll really be skipping back and forth on the path and singing songs!

A whole new level of procrastination

I'm the type of person who likes to do practical things when I'm procrastinating. Usually cleaning, washing dishes, washing laundry. When it gets really bad I'll mop the floor or do filing. I guess it makes me feel better about procrastinating from something I should be doing by doing something that needs to get done anyway.

I think there are even times when I have avoided doing something and then that very task became a way of avoiding some other thing!


Anyway, I've got a lot to do these days - getting ready for and going on a trip, sewing like crazy, preparing for Christmas, making gifts, and all the normal everyday things (not to mention finishing that pathway...). But I had this idea and I just had to do it! Total procrastination.



A little bit of color for our kitchen. =)

The wall

We had to put some sort of retaining wall around the the chicken coop since we dug away so much dirt. And we had a ton of big rocks and stones all over the yard. We put the two together, and voila!



Next year when it gets warm again I hope to plant some trailing ground cover in the little patch of dirt there between the gravel surrounding the coop and the rock wall. Of course, in the end it will all look like dirt anyway since those chickens love scratching and kick dirt all over the place!

Southern exposure

Jeremy and I just returned from 10 days in the south, North and South Carolina to be exact. We visited as many friends and family as we could squeeze in and ate our way through each state. We had hush puppies, boiled peanuts, grits (lots of grits), tomato pudding, hash & rice, buttermilk pie, some barbeque with vinegar bbq "sauce" , some lovely seafood, and key lime pie (which apparently originated in the south). We didn't get around to having okra, really good barbeque, pecan pie (which also originated in the south), or bourbon. But I'm sure we'll be back again some day!

Some of the sites we saw:

wildlife and sculpture at Brookgreen Gardens





took us awhile to realize those alligators weren't living!


part of the irrigation works for the rice plantations that covered this area - banks were built up and then these wooden sluices could let water in or out. South Carolina had a lot of rice plantations in the 1700s and were growing and exporting tons of it.




These are "live oaks" - I'm not sure why they're named that. But they are absolutely enormous, gnarly old trees. The grey-green stuff dripping down from the branches is Spanish moss which is all over the trees in that area.






I had to play on the beach of course...






It seems a common buiding ingredient is shells, at least in sidewalks.


And a little humor...


I almost forgot! Jeremy's friend in Charleston has a great collection of strange instruments and he treated us to some hurdy-gurdy tunes. (And yes, there is a baby in the background trying to communicate with her mom. =)

Happy Halloween!

Maybe some day we'll carve a new pumpkin so y'all don't have to see the same pumpkin year after year! But we really did like this one. =)

It doesn't get any more fun than this...

When I left off the big dig post, three weeks ago, I was still digging the pathway up the hill. Since Jeremy finished the electrical and we've moved on to other yard projects (more to come on that), I kept on digging that pathway.






Yesterday Jeremy started helping because it was just taking too long and we wanted to get started on the next step


It was very nice of him to help because it rained all day. It felt like hours, squelching and squishing and slogging and slipping through the mud. I had so much mud stuck to my shoes I couldn't get any traction and the shovels made a very funny sound as we shoveled into the totally saturated ground. (A sound so weird, I can't even spell what it sounded like.) By the end, we were covered with mud from head to foot and soaked wet through all our layers. It was fun. =)


But we got it done!


Then at about 9 or 10 this morning we had a load of gravel dropped behind our fence.


We laid down some landscape cloth, our friend Rich came over, and we started dumping the gravel into the path.






All done!


Actually, not really. That was just the big gravel. After that we put on the pea gravel layer. And that went quick!


Jeremy and Rich shoveled gravel into the wheelbarrow and one or the other of them brought loads over and dumped them, then I raked them out. The whole thing took less than 4 hours. The weather was great too: mostly clear skies, mid-50s, just a little breeze. It was beautiful.

We came out after lunch to lay brick, but it had suddenly turned cold, cloudy, and rainy! We laid a few and then decided to get hot drinks and relax for the rest of the day.

Garlic

We got this garlic in the mail several weeks ago (or months?) from Seed Savers Exchange. It's organic Purple Chrysalis garlic. I don't know anything about the size or taste; Jeremy ordered it.



Nestled in their two-inch holes...



...and covered over with several inches of dirt, compost, leaves, and hay. I hope they come up next spring! I'm really looking forward to the "scapes" (the stems that come up). They are so tasty!



It sure was nice to plant something in our new garden beds!