Jihad on Groundhogs

The other day I went out into the garden around 11am to check on some seeds and as I was walking up I saw a fat groundhog strolling through the watermelon patch! About a month ago I noticed that a few of the watermelon vines were chewed off and I thought it was a rabbit....but we haven't seen any rabbits around because there are so many foxes. NOW I know...it was a groundhog! I yelled and started running towards him picking up a shovel along the way, he freaked and tried to run as fast as his tiny legs and huge body could. We've blocked most of the garden with rocks at the base of the fence so he had to run a while before finding an opening. I got about 4 feet away before he squeezed out, ran a few feet, looked back and then gave me the finger. I swear.

While in the garden he chewed on 8 tomatoes, squash leaves and bean plants. The most irritating part is that he didn't even eat anything, he just chewed on it or sunk his teeth in and left tomatoes all over the ground. What a dick! At least the deer eat stuff! Groundhogs are just vandals. Keying cars and ruining tomatoes for the hell of it.

Then today I was in the kitchen when I looked up and saw his chubby self chilling under the apple tree. I busted outside and the wind was blowing so hard he didn't even notice I was blazing toward him (again, no plan, just running to scare him and honestly just to see if I could catch up) but when he did notice he booked it down the driveway with me behind him. I definitely run faster which is good to know. Faster than a groundhog, slower than a cheetah. He took cover in the brush across the street and looked back when he realized I wasn't chasing him anymore. Then he gave me the finger, I swear.

May the blood of the groundhog infidels run through the streets! Just kidding, I'm going to trap it and release it somewhere else. They only come out during the day so it's not as bad as worrying about deer. I came home after dark the other day to discover a motley crew of them peeping into the garden. They shrugged me off when I flashed my brights so I decided that speeding through the yard after them while honking my horn was necessary. I can't speak for them but I had a great time.

We put cages up around all of the tomatoes, it didn't stop the groundhog from having his way but hopefully the plants will grow taller than his height inside them.

He knocked off a bunch of cherry tomatoes and didn't even touch them! Ugh, such a waste!

Louis finished his screen door project and it has made a world of difference on the porch! No more wasps, flies and butterflies buzzing around in there. 

The door is really pretty, I'm glad we refinished an old one instead of buying new. 

Some neighbors stopped by on Sunday to introduce themselves and bring us canned gifts from their garden! I can't WAIT to try them! They've lived in the house next to us for almost 30 years and have an amazing garden.

A few of our other neighbors who ride horses every evening asked to ride around on our property. I said yes so now I get to look out of the kitchen window and see this when I'm making dinner-

The floor people came and applied the last coat of laquer and added the final trim around the edges.

It looks pretty in the kitchen-

I'm going to paint it to match the white trim around the house. 

In painting news, I picked a color and hated it on the walls. It looked greyer and darker on the swatch but screamed "baby boy blue" on the walls. 

No thanks. I'm going back to HD later for a re-do. 

In garden news, things are growing very well now that we've started to get rain. The corn hits me at chest height now and the sad half row of soy beans is almost all the way back. 

We're seeing how big this zucchini can get before we pick it. I'm aiming for toddler size just to see if it can be done. 

The lima beans I planted last week are sprouting. They look like aliens.

The yellow squash is just now starting to come around.

I kept noticing this HUGE flying bug in the garden that seemed to be landing and crawling into the ground. It's really loud and looks like a giant, elephantitis wasp. I researched it and discovered that it's a "Cicada Killer". They're about 3 inches long, they live in burrows in the ground and they paralyze cicadas and feast on them down there! 

They scare the crap out of me, I could barely look at that picture long enough to upload it.  One has burrowed under a watermelon plant. I tapped at the weird mound of dirt with a rake and it came crawling out all pissed. I ran closer to cheetah speed back to the porch. 

Despite crazy bugs, groundhogs and deer peeping Toms, the watermelons are growing bigger everyday. 

The cantaloupe is also coming in and the sunflowers are shin high. Not bad for being planted last month. 

I've gotta run and finish painting, hopefully I'll find the right shade of blue this time!

4th of July- Fireworks, Funnel Cake and Fixin' Stuff!

This year for 4th of July I'm hoping for fireworks of a different kind...I'm hoping to singe some deer hairs on my new solar powered electric fence. Farmer John got busy bailing hay and couldn't come out to hook up the system the day after we discovered the deer had jumped the 7foot fence and ate:

-half a row of soy beans

-4 corn stalks

-10 almost ripe roma tomatoes and stems

-4 early girl ripe tomatoes 

-stalks of 3 cherry tomato plants

SO- I stayed up late and ran out into the darkness a few times and no deer came back that night. HOWEVER, the following night we got hit hard. I woke up to discover that the rest of the row of soy beans was demolished, 4 more corn stalks were gone and multiple branches of tomatoes were eaten. That's when it happened. That's when I stopped liking deer. 

I realize I don't really "own" this land and if anyone does, they have more of a right to it than I do. I realize they are just being deer and following their instincts and it's me, the person growing food in a field, that doesn't fit in this picture BUT it's my edamame or them and I choose my edamame over tick infested, disease carrying, insatiable creatures with no natural predator. That deer who keeps coming back to the pear tree stays there for long periods of time, takes poops under the tree and makes herself at home. 

The comedian Louis CK has a really funny view on deer, like us, he used to think they were amazing when he lived in the city and rarely saw them but now that he lives in the country and has to deal with them he's changed his tune. *WARNING MOM: there's profanity, un-pc messaging and sexual gestures in this video (which is why I laughed so hard watching it).*

Here's the link in case the video doesn't play-  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-iqVd2llrc

Farmer John added another row of fencing above what we already had and electrified the top portion. I haven't seen any tracks or had any missing crops since. We also bought an amazingly powerful spotlight at HD and have big plans to keep the yard deer free with it.

So far today we've been celebrating our independence from England by doing manual labor. Hooray! We replaced the disgusting, dilapidated, rusty, wobbly, yucky mailbox and splinter ridden post with brand new ones. I painted the mailbox a robin's egg blue. It was a dull grey and who needs dull grey in their life? I'm hoping the country teens high on meth or grandma's prescriptions decide to spare it should they get the late night bashing itch.

Next on the list- fix up that old screen door I found for $35 at the antique place. Louis removed the old screen, sanded it and cut an inch off the bottom with his new circular saw. Then I painted it and it's looking pretty good!

I kind of liked the old chipping look but bright white matches the rest of the porch. 

BY THE WAY- our horrid plumbing situation is all fixed. A plumber came out and snaked the line with bigger and better equipment than the contractors used and told us it was just gunk buildup from construction and time. All bathrooms are in working order and the laundry room floor smells like bleach.

Early this morning I went out into the garden and dug up all the beans that hadn't germinated in over two weeks. I finally realized that because it hasn't rained in a month, the beans were too dry, despite my nightly watering. The soil was kinda dry when I planted them so I should have done two things differently- 1. Pre-soak the beans overnight and 2. soak the hell out of the dirt before planting.

I'm doing a massive bean planting and re-planting this weekend so I'm soaking all kinds of beans. We'll see if my results this time are any better.

The great thing about no rain is no humidity which means no mosquitos! It's felt a lot like a California summer so far and I'm fine with that. Now that we have the well water hooked up for the garden I don't mind how much watering it needs. 

The corn is thigh high this 4th of July, booyah! 

I didn't plant them until the last week in May so I wasn't sure how long it'd take them to grow but the little rows are coming along nicely!

I've still got squash blossoms everywhere and as you can see, zucchini is doing very well! 

That little watermelon is growing more everyday and it has a bunch of friends now. We're putting straw under them so they don't get too wet or attacked by slugs. 

Our fantastic neighbors took us out to dinner last weekend and when they heard that we didn't have a table to use they insisted on loaning us one along with a few collapsable chairs. They changed our lives. We use that table daily. This is the home office for the moment!

Our little town is having a fireworks display tonight along with a big outdoor barbeque and Louis' favorite, funnel cake. We're going to go check it out since neither of us wanted to risk burning the field and potentially the house by lighting fireworks on our crispy yellow grass. Hopefully the parking will be nothing like going to an event in DC!

Happy 4th! 

Painting Pressure and Plumbing Problems

We've had a pretty interesting few days- toilet waste has exploded out of the laundry room floor three times. Three. Times. When I scrapped the previous floorplan and made a new one adding a half bath upstairs, that half bath plumbing got tied into the existing line running from the kitchen sink down to the laundry room sink and washer & dryer. This shouldn't have been a problem. One day a worker was cleaning his tools in the laundry room sink and water shot out of the drain in the middle of the floor. It was just water so no one was worried. Must be a simple block on that line, nonchalant shrugs and everyone continued with their day. Once the half bath was in operation was when the shit literally hit the laundry room.

I'd mentioned to Louis not to use the laundry room sink (he doesn't recall this) so one weekend morning while I was still sleeping peacefully, Louis started yelling. I was awakened from my dreams of huggable goats and massive tomatoes to expletives about toilet paper and poop shooting out of the floor. Awesome.

Louis cleaned it up and disinfected the floor and we thought, "OK seriously, NO MORE using the sink in here, it's gotta be a sink-pipe issue that causes this"...then when the contractors showed up on Monday morning and used the half bath, it happened again, only worse. At least we figured out that it wasn't just a sink issue! They spent a whole day snaking the system and checking it to make sure that it would drain properly, then they gave us the green light that we were good to go, yay! SO- tonight I used the kitchen sink to wash a few dishes, we used the half bath (since the master is still being worked on and the one we normally use downstairs is gross in a hostel kinda way) and THEN we went downstairs to see that more sewage water had filled the laundry room. NOW, I'm concerned. "Wow, you guys your house looks so nice! Too bad it smells like shit and you can't use the kitchen sink."

They're tackling the issue again tomorrow. This time I'm going to make them test it before leaving! 

Other than poop spewing out of the laundry room we're pretty much done with the contractors. They need to touch up a few things here and there but the majority of the work is done. Painting is the stress of the moment. We need to prime and paint every ceiling and wall in the house- not an easy feat. The work itself is easier than making the color choices in my opinion. I'm wallpapering the half bath and looking at wallpaper makes me want more of it! 

This is what I'm going with for the half bath- 

I saw that swatch in Southern Living, it was love at first sight. I'm also thinking of wallpapering the wall of the dining area to make it stand out. I saw this swatch today at a little wallpaper and paint shop in town-

It has a shine to it that's just beautiful. I'm going to apply some kind of painting technique to the main room that encompasses the hallway and the colors of this wallpaper would go very nicely. 

Painting is going well so far. Louis is just about done priming the master, I've already done the bathrooms and I'm currently working on the pantry. It's got a beadboard back so it's taking a lot longer than I'd anticipated. BUT, it's going to look great. I found a box of pantry items and am adding them as the paint dries. I'm desperate for some semblance of normalcy! 

 

My favorite thing about this pantry is that the upper shelves are all only 6 inches deep which means there can only be one row of anything, turning me into the deranged OCD husband in Sleeping with the Enemy. I love it.

The pantry is pretty big but throw a step stool, a fan and me bending over to grab a brush and you get-

SOUL PATROL! I have what I like to think is a sophisticated white streak of hair at the moment. Shoot me if I start playing the harmonica and taking myself seriously.

How about a watermelon babies update?! Here we go!

They're almost doubling in size! The one above is the biggest.

I planted all different kinds and didn't have the materials to label them before I forgot what went where so it'll be a surprise when they're ripe!

I almost forgot to share some startling news....I honestly didn't think this would ever happen BUT, today in the garden I discovered that 9 of my soybean plants were eaten down to the ground and there were fresh deer tracks all around. A DEER JUMPED THE 8 FOOT FENCE! And apparently it just wanted a little edamame snack and jumped back out. Nothing else was touched.

There are two electric wires running along the top (you can see them on the upper right of the picture above) that we just hadn't turned on yet but guess what we're hooking up tomorrow? Last night I watched a deer hop on its hind legs for 20minutes to eat pears from the tree in our front yard so I guess they do whatever they have to.  I'm really hoping that there aren't any deer sneaking around the garden as I'm in here typing this. I already ran out twice trying to catch and scare one but I'm pretty much just scaring myself in the process. Have you run out into the pitch black in the country lately? It's hardcore.

It's butterfly time apparently because they are everywhere right now and unfortunately they're getting trapped in the porch daily. We don't have the door hooked up yet so they get blown in and can't find their way out. They fight me when I coax them so the only solution is to catch them and throw them back out. Here are a few-

There's hundreds of these smaller brown and yellow ones so a lot have died in the porch. They may be moths, no idea. I'm looking for a shadow box to put some in. 

I saw the scariest, weirdest looking bug EVER today and made the mistake of showing Louis who got scared and wanted to kill it, shocker. I have no idea what it is but I hope it does something useful because I saved its life.

On a brighter note, I'm buying a lot of cherries right now because its fun to spit seeds of things when you can walk around and spit them anywhere you want. I found a happy cherry in the mix! 

I'll end this blog with a picture of the prettiest sunset clouds I've seen in a while.