Rain......yes RAIN

I wanted to publicly thank the Lord for the rain He sent to us yesterday. We had a cool comfortable, cloudy and rainy day. What a wonderful relief. Today is still cool, but the sun is shining, things are drying out again. This is my kind of weather.........though I have no plans on painting my house.......

BTW, hummies do not mind the rain at all, they (now 4) had a grand time around the feeder.

Until later.

About Pete (peat moss that is)

JUST A NOTE:

The addition of peat moss to the planters seems to have made a difference. The sickly looking potato plants are greening up. Lettuce plants seem to be in better condition as well, they are standing much prouder. So perhaps it is counter acting the alkaline water which I think has been a problem despite there being planting mix in the containers.

Today additions of Gardens Alive natural fertilizer has been made to all planters and the potato bales. I used the Vegetables Alive for the veggies, and Root Crops Alive for the potato and onion crops. Time will tell.

Ran my plan for a raised bed past DH last night, so we will see if he remembers when I bring it up again. LOL. I am on the look out for fruit trees and roses for zone 3...I know I am zone 4 but my thinking is if I go a zone colder they will have a better chance of living if we get a extra deep cold snap, besides I want to put my roses in wine barrels and I think they are less likely to freeze to death if they are more cold hardy.

Weather has cooled today, we got rain last evening which is so nice too. Ok that is it, without pictures it is not as much fun, is it?

Until later.

The DIRT on my dirt!

What a pretty view we have, the sun was shinning just on the hill with the white.

So why am I writing about my dirt? Looking at the view of the valley you may have over looked the dirt in the foreground....does it look normal? If you look closer you will see it is black. This soil (if you can call it that) is so strange, I have never seen anything like it before. It does grow things, as you can see. Now lets look at it a bit closer.
















Here is a cross section of the "dirt" on our hill....look at those layers and they are very fragile, what about those colors (remember to click on the picture for a closer look).















This is a big piece of petrified log, we have found alot of these about 2 to 3 feet under the surface.
















Another piece of wood. Now to say that this "dirt" is questionable as far as growing plants is an understatement. I did a soil test on the stuff and it does not register any PH, we all know everything has a PH of some sort......so why is it not registering? Why is the test tube clear? After talking to a master gardener in town he said because it is so alkaline that it can not register. Hummmmm that makes scents and of course the water is alkaline, too.

















Here you can see what it does when it is all dried out. We had rain a week 4 days ago but you'd never know it. When it is wet it is so sticky...being clay and sticky you can imagine what happens to anything that touches it. Lets put it this way, I gain about 5 inches in height with the stuff on my shoes and it takes a strong object to get the stuff off. When dry it is cracked and dusty.















So how is a person suppose to garden in this stuff? Look at those chunks of "dirt". I am now starting to do a study of how to fix my "extreme alkaline" dirt. I hate to call it soil, soil is nice stuff, this isn't.

Just one more picture, I hate to bore you to much with this stuff. This morning I when around and added peat moss to my planters in hopes to counter act the water. There is some of this stuff in my wine barrels along with the potting mix. The squash is growing ok, but I think they could be doing alot better so am on a de-alkalinsation mission. Thanks for looking and if you have any ideas or have dealt with this stuff before let me hear from you. This last one is a close up so you can really see the structure of this stuff. Until later.

Geenhouse Update

Yes! All the windows are now in. We were able make a trip to Billings for supplies, yippee. Now to figure out what we will do for the exterior. We are thinking rock. Below is a picture of the new benches on the inside. Still need to get power and water inside, it will come in time.






























At least we still have a bit of time before fall and starting fall crops, it has been over 100 for sometime now, we feel like staying inside with the cooler going. Ahhhhhhhhhh summer.

White gooy stuff

Gosh it is hard to believe it will be 2 years since we moved up here as of Oct 1. Of course that summer we made 6 trips back and forth for our treasures, totaling over 6,000 miles. Once we got here we had to build a house, so we hussled and by Thanksgiving we moved in, there was not a kitchen but we had everything else we needed. Some of the details such as chinking the wood did not get done, we are finally getting to it. What a difference it is making. You can see by the picture how much nicer it looks, not to mention no more places for spiders and dust and such. About half of the bedroom is done now, not counting the ceiling, all the furniture has to be moved so a little spring cleaning is happening, too. Sure would have been easier to have done it while building, but that is how she goes....not a cheap venture either, it will be worth it though.















Until later, from where it is very dry and 103

Wyoming Weather

If you don't like the weather in Wyoming just wait 15 minutes.......it was a warm day, clouds a brewin..........a sound in the distance the wind began stirrin.....grab any loose things from the porch and head inside, bring in the dogs and cat, close the shop door....just in time for the wind to start swirlin. The weather vain is spinnin as the wind comes from the north, then the east, then the west and the the south, whippin up dirt in all directions. Here is what I saw out of my living room window, from the upper pad of our place, any wonder things are always dusty.















And down the valley, more a comin. Dirt kickin up all over the place. 15 minutes later, all is clear and calm.

Garden Update

Well it has been about a month since I first shared my gardening efforts. This is hopefully a temporary garden, someday I will garden on the hill in the background. The other issue for this garden is water, since we have to haul it I can't get to big...though I do keep adding to my plantings. LOL.

This is the garden the first of June

Below was taken today July 2, showing the growth.
The weather is now HOT so the warm weather
veggies are happy.

You can see the difference in the tomato here,
there have been some changes thanks to rabbits feasting
on some of my plants. The green pepper plants are just
now beginning to grow. Under the little shade cloth in
the lower picture are some newly planted daylilies, just
shading them for a few days till they can get settled.





This patty pan squash is really growing and blooming,
except it has only male blooms right now, I keep expecting
to see some female blooms any day. I move the square
planter to the porch and put some hosta in it.




So until next month, I am hoping to have alot of squash vines to show you.