The Old Folks Home

I love it, @CSolis. When that little guy finally figures out that he is a bird and some cute little girl Jay winks at him, you are going to miss him terribly....unless he's like a wayward son who brings the family and moves back in.

I love birds. I've always wanted an aviary with finches. I call them little 'beepers'. I'm afraid with 5 cats and 6 dogs around they wouldn't live long and prosper.

Every spring we have a couple of blue birds that made their way down our chimney even with a cap on it and into our fireplace. Getting them out usually happens when we catch one of the cats sitting in front of the fireplace watching 'tv'. We learned the hard way to pin up the cats before ridding the fireplace of blue birds when one of the blue birds got out and one of the cats, hiding behind a piece of furniture, jumped straight up and grabbed the bird out of the air.

So I enjoy birds outside and safe from our cats.
 
I love it, @CSolis. When that little guy finally figures out that he is a bird and some cute little girl Jay winks at him, you are going to miss him terribly....unless he's like a wayward son who brings the family and moves back in.

I love birds. I've always wanted an aviary with finches. I call them little 'beepers'. I'm afraid with 5 cats and 6 dogs around they wouldn't live long and prosper.

Every spring we have a couple of blue birds that made their way down our chimney even with a cap on it and into our fireplace. Getting them out usually happens when we catch one of the cats sitting in front of the fireplace watching 'tv'. We learned the hard way to pin up the cats before ridding the fireplace of blue birds when one of the blue birds got out and one of the cats, hiding behind a piece of furniture, jumped straight up and grabbed the bird out of the air.

So I enjoy birds outside and safe from our cats.
I'm like you, I love birds. I've always wanted a Sulfur Crested Cockatoo but never got one. Baby Jay has been so much comic relief after the stroke, I can't help but laugh. I'm so lucky to have Gator too. He's so patient with mamma's birds when they are in the house.
I find it really fascinating to listen to BJ when he's having a conversation with Gator. He's got a tremendous vocabulary of different sounds and the chatting he does with Gator doesn't resemble any thing he's telling me. You would think he's a parrot at times with the range of noises he makes. I suppose it's because Gator doesn't talk back that it's different. He's trying to find a way to communicate with Gator is my guess.
When he was 'grounded' because of the droopy wing, he would hop around the floor and follow Gator where ever he went. As things progressed he would make the short wing assisted hop to Gator's back and ride around. The only time Gator minds is when BJ hops on his head. But he only looks up until BJ slides off or down to his back.
I did manage to get a short clip of Gator laying on the bed with me while I was watching TV and BJ doing his 'normal' stuff. Trying to hide a sunflower seed under Gator's leg.
 
Hi all! Been off-line for many weeks dealing with various aspects of Life.

The garden in full swing with a great fruit crop and ample chard, peppers, a tomato hedge, eggplant. Then we had the monsoon and our little section of Eden had a red cell parked over it that dumped 2.5" of water and dime-sized hail in 45 minutes. My chard bed turned rather lacy, the peppers had big holes punched into them, the tomato hedge was reduced from 4-foot tall to 2-foot tall with the tomatoes so cobbled by hail they looked like golf balls. Anyway, everything in the veggie compound got shredded to tatters, so there's been a major cleanup in pulling the plug therein. Then we noticed that the fruit crop suffered, too. Big black holes in the pears, pitted peaches. Sigh.... Well, doors close and windows open. We're going to bag the veggie compound and put the beds to bed and focus on getting the art studio up and running.

DH has recently retired, so may let him do the gardening as a hobby for him. At his physical his doctor commented on how much his health had improved over last year and the only thing DH could attribute it to was helping me out in the yard. Doc said "Keep at it!" and DH now into overdrive....which is great as my enthusiams definitely waned with the last go-round with Mother Nature. Spent A LOT of effort varmint-proofing my crops only to have the weather take them out. Sigh...

But all is not dreary. We have a new dog! We decided to foster and listed ourselves as "Foster with intent to fail" (and we did.) I pulled a few strings to pick out the greyhound we wanted (well, actually, he was our second pick as the first one had "issues" and wasn't ready to leave the kennel) and -- OMG -- what an absolute gem he is. DH went to Dallas to pick him up, bonded over the ride back and before he even got home proclaimed "This dog isn't going anywhere and we're keeping him."

And thusly begins an adventure with a know-nothing dog (luckily, you can teach an old dog new tricks and house-training took about two days) who has decided he REALLY likes it here and the people therein.

Meet our Guinness...
View attachment 2781771
Squeeeeee! I am so happy for you! And for Guinness. What a cool name and he's so handsome.

I'm so sorry to hear about your failed fruit crop and garden.

We lost our peach crop to a raccoon that also decided to break down about half of the tree. We don't know if it will survive the attack. The raccoon didn't.

Then we had our own monsoons. My onion crop is pathetic as was our first planting of beans. Potatoes and tomatoes are doing well and I'm guardedly optomistic about the second planting of green beans. Squash are starting to die back so we shall see if they are all plant and no squash but I'm just done with standard gardening. I built two raised planters that I love and I think that next spring I will build two more and whatever I can plant in that will be my garden.

For what I spent on onion sets I could have bought a years worth of onions and had money left over. I know it's better to have veggies that you grow yourself but at some point ya gotta yell uncle.

It really makes me respect farmers. I love the definition of a farmer that I saw on pinterest.
1627840876532.png
 
Squeeeeee! I am so happy for you! And for Guinness. What a cool name and he's so handsome.

I'm so sorry to hear about your failed fruit crop and garden.

We lost our peach crop to a raccoon that also decided to break down about half of the tree. We don't know if it will survive the attack. The raccoon didn't.

Then we had our own monsoons. My onion crop is pathetic as was our first planting of beans. Potatoes and tomatoes are doing well and I'm guardedly optomistic about the second planting of green beans. Squash are starting to die back so we shall see if they are all plant and no squash but I'm just done with standard gardening. I built two raised planters that I love and I think that next spring I will build two more and whatever I can plant in that will be my garden.

For what I spent on onion sets I could have bought a years worth of onions and had money left over. I know it's better to have veggies that you grow yourself but at some point ya gotta yell uncle.

It really makes me respect farmers. I love the definition of a farmer that I saw on pinterest.
View attachment 2781870
And that was Paul Harvey... He had a whole program about that if I recall correctly.
 
Squeeeeee! I am so happy for you! And for Guinness. What a cool name and he's so handsome.

I'm so sorry to hear about your failed fruit crop and garden.

We lost our peach crop to a raccoon that also decided to break down about half of the tree. We don't know if it will survive the attack. The raccoon didn't.

Then we had our own monsoons. My onion crop is pathetic as was our first planting of beans. Potatoes and tomatoes are doing well and I'm guardedly optomistic about the second planting of green beans. Squash are starting to die back so we shall see if they are all plant and no squash but I'm just done with standard gardening. I built two raised planters that I love and I think that next spring I will build two more and whatever I can plant in that will be my garden.

For what I spent on onion sets I could have bought a years worth of onions and had money left over. I know it's better to have veggies that you grow yourself but at some point ya gotta yell uncle.

It really makes me respect farmers. I love the definition of a farmer that I saw on pinterest.
View attachment 2781870
Paul Harvey did a good monologue on God made a farmer.
 
My garden is a mess this year. There is chicken wire around most everything this year.

- Something has ripped the sweet pepper plants to shreds.They were fine 3 days ago. I've NEVER had a problem with pepper plants and never had them fenced before.
- 4 surviving artichoke plants, don't seem to be doing anything. I've NEVER had a problem with artichoke plants
- 4 broccoli plants, don't see anything resembling a flower head.
- 4 cabbage plants, already full heads
- 4 brussel sprout plants, puny little sprouts - not big enough to bother with yet.
- Replanted peas, maybe nothing will eat these?
- 1 purple bean plant survived, none of the Fortex did. And this is the second planting since the first ones were chomped before I put up the fencing.
- The cucumbers are doing OK. Making "Claussen knock off" pickles today with the 8 I found yesterday. Didn't know there were any on the plant! And these were bigger than I think I would choose to pick if I had known. Cut them in half lengthwise and put them in a big Costco nuts jar, too long for the Claussen's jars I've saved.
- Harvested too big yellow squash and a too big zucchini yesterday. Hoping to pawn them off on my egg customers Thursday.
- Sungold cherry tomatoes now getting ripe, nothing of interest on the full size tomato plant.
 
Well, I had another year of 'what kind of garden is this?' going. Lima beans made pods then dried with no beans in them. Only the crooked neck squash made anything of substance this year. Watermelons and Pumpkins flowered to no end but no fruit, and only a few maters from the beefsteak.. The homestead made tons of tomatoes that all ended up with blossom rot. Dill started growing and just stopped and died. German sage was fine one day and dead as a door nail 3 days later. Basil is nearly a bush now. I dunno. All the flowers and bulbs around here did exceptionally well.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom