Garden days

These have been calm days.  The 'meat chickens' were processed and now in the freezers.  We get to deliver and visit this week for part of each day. It is refreshing to see a job get finished.  Well this is a farm and there are more jobs in the wings ---- The gardens are getting covered with baled grass.  The drought is bad.  We had a rain last week but the ground is back to dust.  Last night the rain missed us again. I am doing a watering as I weed. I keep a radio and coffee by the chair and move it around to where I am working. Then I get little breaks where ever I am.  It is beautiful outside. The third crop of lettuce is peeking through the hay. The onions are getting big. The cucumbers and squash are fruiting. So it is coming as long as I water.  Maybe I should make trenches and call it irrigating. 

The baby chicks have grown wing feathers and need to leave the nursery crate.  This afternoon I will finish cleaning the coop and they can go to the little room there.  They need the heat lamp but they want to run and flap  too. They grow so fast. 

This isnt a job ---the raspberries on the hill are calling. So I am out picking this week!

After the rain

I can't believe that I haven't written for 3 weeks. There were good days and 'gritty' ones too.  Lots of family days and getting to know my grandkids.  Definitely 'good days.'  Then coming to terms with the weeds in the gardens, just going out and pulling them every day, making one plot after another look good, watering them and covering them with mulch.  It is really getting dry here. I am planting for fall beans and salad greens.  They are tiny but with watering they are growing. Lots of work that is  wonderful but I get too tired.  I get behind on my list of jobs to be done. 

My over/the/fence neighbor lived here for years. She lived her own style. We were getting to be garden friends. She was sick and died sometime last week.  She was alone.   I feel sad when I think about her.  I look at the sunrises longer, I stare at the long grasses bending in the wind, today the raspberries were so good, only half got in the bucket.  How do you celebrate life?  I look at her house.  She was an original Master gardner,  all combinations of plants were in her beds. You never knew what would be blooming there.   I think there are gardens in heaven too.  Now the clouds keep going over me.  The grass is growing and I should mow. I want to spray oil on the trees in the orchard. I have to feed the chickens.