Tall Prickly Meadow

 Today Inge and I took the new trail Stephen and I cleaned up last week and when we stepped through the newly opened wood copse into this meadow we had to stop and gaze in awe at the splash of flowers here. Last week I told Stephen that I've named this meadow, The Big Prickly Meadow. Maybe after this week I should rename it to "Bloomin' Big Prickly Meadow".

Here's a close-up of big prickly in a bed of flowers.

Inge posing by Big Prickly in the meadow.

 I started the blog with the meadow because that was the "catch of the day". We headed out to Die Gruene Weide for a short visit before leaving for NEW YORK CITY! to attend our daughter's Columbia University Commencement and a real live Broadway show.  We didn't bring water for the orchard and garden because it had rained during the week. At home we got more than 5 inches of rain over a week. During every rain event I watched the radar over the land but the only rain I saw on the radar occurred Thursday evening. The rain gauge showed 6/10ths. Thorndale,  only 10 minutes south of Die Weide got 2 inches so we didn't get the best of the rain. We took a walk to load a memory stick in critter cam and find a new home for it. The last batch of critter cam pictures had only Herbert the donkey pictures so I needed to move critter cam to a less traveled path.

Here's the weekly garden progress picture from the usual watermelon corner. The watermelons and cantaloupe are blooming.








Different vantage point showing the sunlight through the corn leaves and the blooming yellow squash. The yellow squash is looking extremely healthy.







Here's my first yellow squash fruit. I don't have a clue how to tell when it's time to harvest squash so I'll have to do some research later. I do know it's too small right now.








What I find amazing is that the raspberries and blackberries are producing fruit this year - we only planted them a few weeks ago! These were totally yummy! All I know is that my berry production is going up by a LOT of plants because these are fantastic!





And for reference here's the compost heap I built from free pallets I scrounged. Looks like doo-doo, but it will serve its purpose anyway.

Friendly Camping

Friday my brother and I headed out to Gruene Weide to camp out and await my guest, Stephen. He's a former coworker and friend and we've talked about him camping out on Die Weide and bringing his telescope for star gazing for quite some time. So we scheduled this weekend for a campout and star gaze fun.

Since Stephen wasn't due to arrive until the evening, Kenny and I spent the afternoon building a compost bin from free pallets I've scrounged over a few weeks. I'll need to scrounge some more to expand the bin to double or more in size. We divided a huge pile of leaves into dry leaves and donkey manure for the compost bin and we spread partially composted leaves as mulch around the whole garden. The temperature reached 92 muggy degrees and it was pretty hot work

After the leaves were mulched, Kenny and I fired up the pit and started the beans and ribs, anticipating that they would be done by the time Stephen arrived. We relaxed, sipped a brew, and enjoyed the scent of ribs a smoking over mesquite and pecan.

Here I've just added the foil package with squash, onions and butter with seasonings. and I'm stirring the beans. Kenny and I went perhaps a bit overboard adding jalapenos and one serrano pepper. Kind of a Tim Allen (grunt) thing in food. It was a bit too spicy for my taste in the end. Good beans that I'd cook again but go easier on the peppers.

 This is the weekly garden picture. The fire pit cooked quietly in the background and Kenny and I decided to water the garden. I took this picture as the sun sank low in the Western sky lending a nice back light to the leaves. The garden grows nicely and I hope the mulching improves the garden production.

Sunset over the firepit. Notice the roofing material propped up as a windbreak. When we started the fire the breeze was a bit stiff so this setup has been my solution for grilling in a breeze. By this time Stephen had arrived and since the food was ready, we pretty promptly sat down to eat. Photos didn't cross my mind as the smell of the ribs, beans, and veggies left little room to think of anything but food.


We took a dusk hike with Stephen through the property, back down the south side fence, right at the west side fence and about 1/2 way down, cut across (east) to the pond. It was a nice hike ending back up at the camp.  The sky darkened rapidly after this and Stephen and I put together the tent he brought. I don't own a tent yet as I have always "tarp tent" camped out there - stringing a tarp up from the Pecan tree. I have to say the tent is very comfortable and I'll be getting one in the near future. Kenny slept in the shed as the tent was only big enough for two cots.

After the tent was set up, Stephen put up the telescope facing mostly east. Unfortunately for star gazing, the skies weren't cooperative. There was a haze from the Mexico farmer's annual crop burning, and the haze was lit up by a very bright full moon. So we looked at one planet, which mysteriously exhibited a crescent shape. (more research to come) and we looked at the moon. I was really impressed with Stephen's telescope. With a moon filter and the strongest magnification we could focus in on and see individual craters with astonishing clarity. I found it really neat to look around the rim of the moon and see the deep shadows in those craters. I used my cell phone camera to grab the moon shot here.
  

We woke up before 7 a.m. this (Saturday) morning and I cooked up some sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast tacos to get the day off to a good start. Everyone who comes to Die Weide may choose to help with work. Here Stephen shovels donkey manure shortly after sunrise. Seriously, though after this bit of levity Stephen and I took the garden shears and loppers back into the woods and chopped back some brambles and cleared a trail I've wanted to expand while Kenny caulked the shed.

Shortly before noon Stephen took his leave as Kenny and I watered the orchard. We headed home after that chore and on the way home stopped at the Granger Lake Dam where we snapped this lovely scene of Texas wildflowers covering the hill. And thus ended another weekend on Die Manchmal Gruene Weide!

Where are the Turtles?

Today while walking the trails we've blazed on Die Weide, we came across an empty turtle shell. I decided to write about this as we have seen around a dozen empty turtle shells, two of which I've photographed below.

 This one was located in the northwest corner of the property.

This one was found in a hole in the north-central area.

Almost all of the turtle shells we've found are of this large, mature turtle size. Have the turtles turned our property into turtle graveyards like elephants? Inge and I are wondering why we have never seen a live turtle on the property in all our explorations. It'd seem there ought to be plenty of turtles given all the turtle shells we've found!

Most of the day was spent watering the orchard, the blackberries and raspberries, the grape vines and of course, the garden. Here's this week's garden shot. I hope to take a picture a week to track the growth of the garden.

Cactus Blooms, Bees, and Boon Companions

Inge's donkey, Herbert, is a constant companion on Die Weide. As you can see, when we take a hike, he hikes along too. But before Herbert, there was Penny, and as you see below, she too tags along on our hikes in the woods. However, she has learned to keep a close eye on Herbert as Herbert doesn't allow dogs in close proximity. He is quite quick to charge, nip, kick, or otherwise attack Penny or any of our neighbors dogs. Interestingly, the neighbors dogs haven't come around since Herbert took up residence on Die Weide.

 Last weekend and this weekend, the Prickly Pear Cactus has been blooming with its yellow flowers that start out red and change to yellow as they bloom. Very beautiful blooms! Bees and bugs abound around the blooms.

 Inge took this picture of her Herbie. It has a very nice perspective but there are a couple of asses in the picutre.

 Today's the day we found a home for the beehive. This is the mostly finished top bar hive and I carved a place out of the woods for it in hopes the donkey doesn't knock the hive over. I plan to pound some rebar into the ground next to the legs and bolt the legs to the rebar to keep it from tipping over.

And, just for reference, this is the state of the garden on Die Weide, Apr 22. Last year we planted earlier than this year, but by this time last year the drought had already taken full effect and it wilted away the rest of the year. This year, it looks very healthy, if a bit bug eaten. Due to having to hand water until we get the well drilled, we chose to only plant about half the area we planted last year. The front (bottom left) corner of the picture is the north-east corner of the garden and has watermelon mounds. Next are cantaloupe, then several rows of black-eyed peas, then several rows of corn, which are surrounded by mounds of yellow squash and zucchini.  We're growing tomatoes, peppers, carrots, green beans, cucumbers, leeks, and broccoli in our home raised bed gardens.

Getting ready for new critters

A few months ago Inge and I came across something about bees and decided to research starting a beehive for Die Weide. We bought a book, "Keeping Bees and Making Honey" and found that we really enjoyed the idea of keeping bees to improve the productivity of our orchard and garden and to harvest enough honey for our use and to share with family and neighbors.

Upon further research we decided our first hive would be a Top Bar hive (TBH). Although it requires closer observation and maintenance than Langstrom hives, it allows one to observe the bees more closely and the construction of the hive is simpler and less expensive. So this weekend I bought a bunch of pine planks and built our Top Bar Hive.

As you can see I built the TBH with an observation port which will be covered except when we want to watch the bees in action. Speaking of observation, I have to say observing youtube videos is a wonderful way to learn about virtually any topic. Inge and I watched a lot of beekeeping videos during our research and have to say that one person in particular has some outstanding beekeeping videos. His user name is OutOfaBlueSky and his videos educate on topics as varied as trapping wild bees, to comb management, to hive construction, and of course beekeeping in general. And to top it off, he's from Austin, Texas which is where we live. I sent him email with an offer to buy him a cup of coffee - I hope he takes it up. If you have any interest or curiosity about beekeeping, here's his youtube main page:

learning beekeeping youtube link

It happened that I visited his page before final assembly and learned that in Central Texas the heat can cause comb failure in the standard TBH tall-narrow wedge design and he recommended making a shallower, wider TBH design. Fortunately I was at the assembly stage where I could incorporate those changes in my design.

Next week I need to finish the lid and the view-port cover and paint the exterior. Then we need to order the beekeeping equipment and see about getting some bees to install in the hive. Then we want to see a honeycomb covered in bees like this:

(Picture obtained from learningbeekeeping.com which is the web site for OutOfaBlueSky mentioned above.)

Late Garden Planting - and a new critter picture

This weekend comprises an inventory of our usual weekends of activity laden joy. I complete a weekend like this with the joy of saying, "Life is Good!"

Saturday we spent more than six hours working on Die Weide. It started with my installing the small gate, which wasn't installed last week due to some missing hardware. Then Inge and I fork turned the portion of the garden and prepped the soil for planting. This year we're only using half the space we used last year because we got off to a late gardening start out here. We planted four rows of corn, six rows of black-eyed peas, three watermelon mounds, two cantaloupe mounds, and eight squash and zucchini mounds. Next week I'll add some leek left over from the house garden and a few tomato plants. That will be all we plant in the Weide garden this year. (Our back yard garden's four raised beds are chock full of goodies already.)

After the planting I installed a board with hooks to hang the garden tools while Inge took a walk down to the pond. There she spotted a dark snake laying across the dam. She told me about it and later we took a walk to the pond together and it was then I spotted the snake in the run-off pool below the dam. Inge had her camera and I took this zoomed in picture of the snake, which we have tentatively identified as a young western cottonmouth.

In over two years of wandering through Die Weide, this is only the second snake we've seen, and neither was a rattlesnake. (The first may have been a corn snake.) But it is fascinating to see any critter on Die Weide!

Today we stayed home and worked the home chores. Mowing and hedge trimming topped my early chore list, knocked out quickly because I chose today to begin a new Weide project in my workshop - a Top Bar Beehive! I found several plans online and as usual, picked and chose the bits and pieces I liked from their plans to create my own bee hive. Today was spent sizing and gluing the main components and next week I'll complete the build with some pictures for your pleasure. I hope that within two weeks we can install the beehive, with bees, out on Die Weide. Gotta get some pictures of that!

Long Time no Wreit-e Weide - catch-up-post

Wow!I have neglected writing here for a long, long time. That's not to say we haven't been enjoying Die Weide, because we have been out there way more weekends than not. The drought persisted until January and Die Weide baked to a crisp as the rest of Texas did in the heat. It makes me wonder if this is not something that will become a frequent occurrence with global warming.

Anyway, it has been incredibly busy out there. My brother, and sometimes Inge, and I drilled the well down about 15' deep before we hit a bunch of rocks that broke up into chunks too big for the vacuum to suck up. So Kenny and I built a bigger vacuum, but he went to work in Houston, and Inge worked most weekends since then leaving me without a drilling crew to make further progress. We will make it though. The compressor drill works great except it is pretty slow chewing through limestone and chunks of flint chert.

Two weeks ago Kenny and I enclosed the shed behind the water tank. I was tired of having to lug gardening tools back and forth and it also can serve as an impromptu tent in a pinch. Now we've got shovels, post-hole diggers, rakes, and other gardening tools right there to work with. Next weekend I'll spend some time arranging the storage space in the shed for efficiency.

I went to Die Weide twice last week. The previous Tuesday I went out to meet a field engineer for Bartlett Electric to find out what it would take to drop power service on the property. As I drove out there I was following a widespread rainstorm that we've frequently been blessed with since January. I decieded to see what the natural pond looked like shortly after a heavy rain and picture above is from the natural pond in the woods and it's the first time I've seen the pond full to the point of overflowing the entire width of the dam. It was beautiful to see and hear and I took a video of it too. As soon as I figure posting on youtube out I'll post it for family to enjoy. The field service engineer, Shawn, and I had a great conversation when we both discovered we're Army Vets. He too is looking to pick up property via the Texas Veterans Land Board. My 12 years of cold war service paled compared to his as he is both an Iraq and Afghanistan war vet with some pretty harrowing tales. Anyway, it turns out that it's not too hard or expensive to drop a line on the property, but they only go straight from their pole to just inside my propery line and I have to run line from the service pole (which I have to install) to the cabin site and the shed. Last weekend Kenny and I built a fence around the garden to keep the critters out. I didn't take pictures of that because we were working our butts off.