Day: 06/16/2012

Squirrels and the Old Oak Tree

Soo disappointed that I did not have my video cam ready for some squirrels outside that were playing hide and go seek.  The one would crawl stealthily on his little belly low to the ground to try and peer over the edge of the plants, see one of the other squirrels and bolt!  As much as these things annoy me when they dig all through my garden looking for who knows what, they are funny to watch once in a while.  I have two little baby ones that come down to eat things in the yard now and they are very skittish.

squirrelgif

 

Late Spring Organic Gardening Update

These are the things that I have found on my latest yard inspection:

  1. Too many weeds! (My fault)

  2. Quite a bit of leaf damage that I blame on ants.

  3. Minimal varmint damage such as chewed leaves and vandalism.

  4. Birds are getting most of my berries this year so the chirp must have gotten around that I have both red and black raspberries.

  5. My beans, both pole variety and bush, are not germinating very well or something is getting the seeds before this happens.  Most of the green bean leaves have a lot of holes and insect damage.  I was not vigilant early enough, but am now regularly spraying with my detergent, Fels Naptha bar soap and water and garlic powder.  Doesn’t smell or taste too good to most of the bugs.  Make sure to re-spray after watering or a rainfall, if you are lucky enough to get one this year.

  6. All my plants maturity is behind schedule.  It is warm enough so I blame the fact that I did not compost my soil this year or add extra nutrients.  I have watered minimally and I live in quite a polluted area and saw the difference between gardening in this city compared to the areas that I used to live in that were considered the suburbs, but were almost country like in setting instead of factories all over.

  7. There is a continuous group of all kinds of animals.  My birdbath and fountain attracts all kinds of birds.  I also keep a shallow pan of water for little animals to go to for drinking or bathing.  Sometimes the birds are hogging all the water at the same time.  They are cleanest birds because I see more of them taking baths than drinking!

  8. The plants doing the best are the ones I placed in the flowerboxes this year instead of the usual annuals.  You’ll see Spearmint, Dill, Yellow Banana Peppers and tomatoes along with a few Geranium.

 

 

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Love Those Lattes!

Enjoying the latte art I am seeing posted online.  Thought I would try it myself sans the Cappucinni maker.  I got one of my son’s a machine years ago, but since I was never a coffee drinker, did not partake.

  I made espresso and frothed my 2% milk with a wand.  I attempted to pour it in at the one side as suggested.  Not thick enough.  I then attempted this again with foamier milk and got some type of shape, your guess is as good as mine what it might be.

 

 I tried to outline a heart shape with chocolate syrup in the first failed cup.  Ended up looking more like South America.

                                                    They tasted great and that’s the most important thing coffee needs to do.  That and the caffeine kick!