Of bonfires and butterflies

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Cindy

I’ve been working at getting myself out of my summertime funk and with the weather change things are looking up. My fall garden planting is well underway – turnips, radishes, spinach, lettuce, and onions, so far. I heard that one of the nearby hardware stores has gotten in some broccoli plants and I’m going today to see if I can get a few. I was disappointed to discover that it is difficult to find fall vegetable plants, and it is too late for me to start broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts from seed, which I so wanted to try my hand at this year. Lesson learned. Next year, I’ll start my own from seed in early August for transplant in mid-September.

Bonfire wood We’re getting ready for bonfire season. Oyster roasts and bonfires. Woohoo! Brian worked the chainsaw and I worked on the woodpile on Sunday. We worked until it got too hot to do more and I am achy from our efforts. Since we usually start our bonfires in the late afternoon and keep them going late into the night, we probably have enough wood right now for about five or six good fires.

I’ve also begun to prepare the house for the day I have to bring all of my houseplants indoors for the winter. This takes massive preparation on my part, as I have so many plants that must come into a very small house that is not only home to Brian and me, but also home to three cats and Sam Dog. Basically, I pack up stuff to store for the winter to make room for the plants and Brian builds all the makeshift shelving. He hates loves this project!

Butterfly2 I’ve been taking pictures of butterflies. I’m not doing a great job at this as these beautiful insects don’t want to pose for pictures! But, they do seem to be much more abundant this year. This is good sign as butterflies are very sensitive to the environment and thus, good indicators in assessing how healthy or unhealthy our living conditions are. And, of course, they are just absolutely delightful to watch.

Butterfly If you live in the south, please don’t forget to keep you hummingbird feeders filled! Most of these tiny beauties have left their northern homes and are on their way to Mexico for the winter. They need lots of fuel for their grueling trip across the Gulf. Depending on our weather, we may need to continue feeding into early October.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to recently. What have you been doing?

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Ha! There really is light at the end of this tunnel

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Cindy

Most of you know that I have been somewhat in a funk for a few weeks. By the time I get to late August, I am sick of the heat and I don’t feel like doing much of anything, even though, my list of to-dos continues to grow.

So, I fall behind and everyday living gets messy and things get disorganized and I stress.

So, I do what any smart girl does at times like these; I go fishing.

Aaah, nothing lifts my spirits more.

We took the boat to the tidal creeks near Folly Beach to do a little salt water fishing. You know, I am always completely awestruck at the beauty of this place and I never tire of going there. The sights, smells and sounds do magic on my soul.

We caught a few croakers, sea bass and perch, the largest fish being a nice spottail, but none of them were large enough to keep. I took my collapsible crab net, but didn’t get any crabs. I’ve determined that I need a couple of crab pots and have asked Brian to get me two for my birthday. After I get them and use them and bring home bushels of crab, I’ll write a story about it! Anyway, even though we came home fishless, it was a good day.

It wasn't quite this messy when we first started, but almost!

Speaking of fishing, on Saturday, we started cleaning the workshop. Honestly, I don’t know how it got to be such a wreck, but as you can see from the picture, it was a disaster. This was originally going to be a Brian project, but I got involved because I wanted to straighten my shelf of canning supplies to add more! My friend, Maddie, had cleaned out her shed and offered me several boxes of canning jars and a canner and I needed a path cleared to get to my shelf so I could put my new stuff away.

Brian is using a very old drill press (from his Uncle Leo) to drill holes.

So, back to the fishing part of this story. Brian was straightening up our camping gear, boating stuff and fishing equipment. We have a number of different kinds of fishing rods, for almost every kind of fishing imaginable. Storage of so many rods is difficult and Brian has been wanting to make a rod holder to keep them better organized. Well, I’m all for organized, so we took a break from the cleaning and built a rod holder from some scrap lumber Brian had laying around. It was a fun project and we learned from our design errors, so the next one will be better.

Eighteen of our favorite rods have their own spot in their new rod holder!

And, with the weather changing, I am slowly climbing out of this funk. Now, if I can just get the fall garden planted and my office at work cleaned…

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How to plant your fall garden

Posted on August 12, 2009 by Cindy

Hi everyone! You haven’t seen a post from me lately because I’ve been away on the yearly sister vacation! I had a wonderful time and there is much to write about and many pictures to share.

BUT, I’m overwhelmed with just living right now – busy at work and busy at home that I haven’t even begun to write about the sisters’ adventures.

One very pressing project right now is planning and planting the fall garden. Yep, it’s that time of the year for me and I am behind schedule!

Brian and I had planted a fall garden our first year here and although it wasn’t super productive we learned a lot and are optimistic this year will be better.

There’s a wide variety of crops that do well in our mild lowcountry fall and winter climate. Here’s a sampling of some of the crops we can plant: pole beans, half runner beans, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbages, cauliflower, carrots, radishes, lettuce, onions, red beets, turnips, rutabagas, southern peas (crowder peas/black-eye peas), collards, spinach, cucumbers, winter squash.

We won’t plant all of these things and will actually decide what to plant based on what we find at the garden center Hopefully, there will be a bigger selection available for the fall garden since more people are trying their hands at home gardens.

I had included a statistic in “Life’s Vignettes” a few months ago that said that $70 spent in a well tended garden yields over $500 in produce. Remember that? Well, I’ve estimated that our $70 spent on the spring garden yielded us about $350 in fresh vegetables and canned tomatoes. Not bad.

I hope the fall garden does at least as well.

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