Garden – doreenslife.com

My Papa’s Acres

My grandfather we called Papa and I loved him very much. He passed away in his early 50’s when his coal truck went over the side of a mountain because the road fell away. I was eleven years old. The funny thing is that his training told the drivers to ride the truck out. That their chances were better then jumping out. He panicked and jumped out, rolled and hit his head on a rock. They drove the truck out of the ravine. It never even turned over.

I am told that I am a lot like he was. I have wished through the years that he was beside me giving me his gardening and beekeeping wisdom.

Some of my happiest memories are of being on his three acres. He had five gardens of vegetables, about 15 apple trees, pear trees, three different colors of cherry trees, plum trees, lots of different nut trees, three colors of raspberry bushes, and three colors of grapes on a big wooden structure, and gooseberries. When the apples started growing and were big enough to eat, I would climb a tree with the salt shaker and eat green apples with salt. What a treat! The whole place was like a wonderland to me.

He started his own seeds in a coal heated workshop. That workshop was amazing, and still, if I can smell the right oily smell, it takes me right back to that place. There were, what seemed like, hundreds of cubby holes with all sorts of different shapes and objects. Jars with screws and metal coffee cans. It was a delight to look through.

He was always trying something different and one year, he planted peanuts…in Ohio. He preserved cabbages, by pulling them out of the ground with the whole root, turning them upside down and burying them in dirt. Mid-winter, with lots of snow on the ground, he would go push the snow off and pull that cabbage up, good as new.

He had ducks and chickens. He would kill a couple chickens on Saturday, hang them in the cherry tree and have for Sunday dinner with homemade noodles. My mother says there was no better meal on the planet then those Sunday dinners.

He was a beekeeper and would get calls to go get bees that were in walls, hanging on trees, etc. I got into beekeeping and asked my Nana about his old equipment. She had sold it just six months before I had asked. She had them for about 20 years after his death and decided to sell them. Sigh…

This has been a rough year for our family and I don’t know if I’m nostalgic or just thinking of simpler times, but Papa’s acres are a place that my mind likes to rest and stay awhile.

My Bird Friend

When I moved to this property, seven years ago, I had room to put a nice big garden in. There were lots of deer and critters around here that like to eat gardens, so I put a fence up to deter them.

While I was planting my first garden here, I heard birds singing. I have always mimicked and whistled back what I hear to keep the birds “talking” to me. One bird would even come and light on a far post of the garden and “talk” to me. It made all kinds of different sounds and when it flew, it had a white circle under each wing and its tail. I had never noticed a bird like it before.

My mom is a bird watcher and has always named birds when we saw them together. So I asked her what this bird was and she didn’t know. I had looked in a bird book she had and the only bird that looked similar was a mockingbird, but the book didn’t say anything about white spots underneath. So I was still unsure of what it was until a friend was over and identified it for sure, as a mockingbird. That explained why it made so many different sounding songs and tweets.

That summer was fun because whenever I was outside in the garden, that bird always seemed to come around to “talk”. After the third year of this going on, as soon as I would step out from under the porch to work outside, that bird found me quickly. I even knew which couple of trees it was usually in and started looking for it, but it would start chattering excitedly as soon as it saw me.

The last two years, that bird would even find me when I would be in the big garage with the door open, working out there. It would come out and sit on the wood pile by that door and “talk”. Which was very brave because of the cats we have had. The very last time I saw it, was on that wood pile and I was in that big garage painting something with my husband.

The next day, it wasn’t anywhere and I never saw it again. I have seen several mockingbirds since, but none are “my” bird. It was a six year relationship with a creature that weighs only a few ounces, but when it disappeared, it left a tiny hole in my happiness. I never knew what happened, whether it had lived its full life, or a predator got it, but that little piece of nature left a warm and fuzzy place on my heart.

In the Patch

Aww, they’re back! Those luscious, lip-smacking, little jewels of sweetness! Also, known as black raspberries. My friend Stephanie and I rode the 4-wheelers out back and searched the parameters of the tree lines. Quick stops when we see a patch of red and black.

We found a big pile of poo in the patch. I always ask my husband if it is bear poo, because they have been seen in our county. He always says no, it’s raccoon poo. I think he tells me that so I will keep going out in the woods.

I left my key in the on position on my 4-wheeler and when I got back, the battery was dead. Or so I thought. So, we rode together on one machine the last hour of our picking. When Tom went out with me to get it, he said you probably forgot to get it out of gear before shutting it off. And sure enough, I had. Ooops! At least we didn’t have to tow it back to the house.

I should have enough raspberries after another picking to make a batch of jam. I can hardly wait. Maybe I’ll add some jalapenos…

The Good Sore

Thornless blackberries my brother, Rusty, gave me 2 summers ago.

Banana Split – can you believe the size of this? I ate his cherries because he doesn’t like them. 🙂

Ok, how does this last picture fit in with the rest? Reward baby!

I’ve been concentrating on getting the garden going and looked over at the fruit garden and herb bed and went WOW! How did those weeds get that tall? It seems that weeds grow about 50 times faster then any other living thing.

So, the weed patches were 2 feet tall in among my fruit bushes and vines. I bought this Earth Mat because it looks like it may work. It’s not plastic, kind of more canvas and thicker. I tried a kind of landscape cloth about 15 years ago and it looked like I planted a blanket of grass there. Didn’t stop any weeds. I think it had a bunch in it. I’ve used plastic with newspapers on top with mulch and it lasts about 3 or 4 years then needs replaced, so I don’t use mulch anymore. For me, it has seemed to encourage the growth of weeds after the first year as the mowing throws a myriad of seeds into the mulch. So, I’ll give this a try and see how it works for me. My friend Pam stopped mulching her flower beds a few years ago and just takes a hoe to the weeds. Sounded like a good idea to me too, so I tried it last year when the last of my mulch had turned into fine dirt. Works pretty good.

The highbush cranberries are something that my grandparents in Maine always had when I went to visit them. They made the most amazing cranberry jelly that you can imagine. It’s for toast, not the kind you have at Thanksgiving. I’ve tried making it out of the cranberries from the store, and it is pretty good, but not as good as these.

I worked about 6 hours on this bed, pulling weeds, jumping when the cat grabs me from under the bushes, crawling under plants, wrestling with the poison ivy plants (thank goodness for lye soap), fighting giant wolf spiders (ugh), rolling around with 50 foot long pieces of matting, lugging rocks to hold down the matting, picking sticks out of my hair and hoping to goodness to not find a tick on me later. The next day, I had a hard time getting up and around because of using so many muscles that I normally don’t. If I would follow my 18 month old granddaughter around and do everything she does, I would be in great shape. My husband says that round is a shape (I hope he’s talking about himself).

The good sore is when I can look and see all the good that I’ve done for the day. I can see progress and some control in that wild kingdom out there. Yes, I may moan and groan for a day or two, and maybe even get a “good job, honey”.

And that’s where the giant banana split comes in. Rewarding myself for all the hard work. The great thing is, I’m only two-thirds of the way done with that bed. Then I turned around and looked over my shoulder at the flower beds. Yikes! More weeds…

An add on, January 2019 – The Earth Mat that I put on has not allowed ANY weeds to grow up through it. I am amazed and buy now for flower beds too. You can order from Berlin Seeds in Millersburg, Ohio. It is Amish owned, so you can call and get a catalog to order. 330.893.2091, or Bing it for the address.