I had someone bring me a tree sample for identification. The piece had tiny white pea-like flowers in drooping clusters with the most delightful scent. The small round leaves made me think locust- as well as the flowers and when looking it up I found I was right - it was a Black Locust, considered by the author of the reference I consulted to be a “weedy tree” but I really liked it. The young guy who brought the piece in said the tree stood in an empty field and was quite huge. He wanted to get a young plant or seeds from it. I want one now too. Someone should make a perfume from that scent. On the way home from work I actually noticed two of the trees in yards, because of the white flowers. You would think a native tree that grows in poor soil as this one is supposed to do would be found in more places. It gets to 60 foot high and has rough interesting bark .
Our Bristly Locust is blooming right now, it’s flowers are larger but pea-like also and a pretty shade of pink. It has bristles up and down the stem and weedy does describe it. It makes small trees but spreads through runners and soon takes over a spot. We allow it to grow along the east side of our property by the road. It doesn’t have that nice smell but it is pretty this time of year.
We have had quite cool weather but I have taken the chance and planted out my tomatoes. I did something different this year and real redneck re-cycling- orientated. We had the box springs from a double bed in the spare bedroom we were going to throw out. It had a nice wood frame so I pulled it outside, took off the cloth on top and the layer of batting and excelsior under it and laid the frame over one of my raised beds, propped up by black plastic pots on each corner so it stands about 18 inches off the ground. I took the matt of batting and excelsior and laid it on the soil under the frame and cut holes through it to plant the tomatoes. I want the tomatoes to grow up through the frame of wood and wire springs and spread out over the top, off the ground. We will see what happens. It will be easy to throw a cloth over if frost threatens too, although it’s June and we shouldn’t be having frost! I am going to get a picture of it and post it here soon.
I saw the wild little kittens last night. There are at least 5 of them. We have 5 female cats on the farm and normally by this time we would have tons of kittens but this is the only litter we have had. Not that I’m complaining, its just strange. These will be real wild, I did pick one up because its little eyes were glued shut and it didn’t see me coming. It hissed like crazy but didn’t fight too hard. They are about 5 weeks old I think. It was nice and plump and besides its little eyes looked healthy. I pulled the eyelids open and put it in the feed dish where it started eating. The others snuck out after I went up to the barn and sat down. There are a lot of mostly white ones, our cats tend to be mostly white or black although we do have two striped ones now.
They say that the color of the feral cats in your area can give you clues as to where the original settlers of the area came from, as the color of the feral cats reverts back to the original stock after a while and different ethnic groups preferred different colored cats. I think the black and white / gray and white ones like ours were supposed to be Dutch, which could be, German- Dutch people did settle this area early on and the Amish are German derived. There are a lot of cats marked like ours in town too.
Today Charlie will get his first hoof trimming. This should be fun. Hopefully neither I nor the gal coming to do it will get hurt nor will he. This girl is a friend of a neighbor and hopefully she knows what she is doing. I could not find anyone who wanted to come out here just to do two mini- horses without charging an arm and a leg. I tied Charlie up to a post the other night to try and get a piece of wire out of his tail and he managed to break the post and take off dragging it which scared me to death. He stopped though when he got to where Lily was and I was able to walk up and unsnap the lead. It was hitting his legs and belly and I was afraid he would kill himself. The post was rotten- that should teach me a lesson.- Maybe him too, hope he doesn’t freak out being tied today.
Our Bristly Locust is blooming right now, it’s flowers are larger but pea-like also and a pretty shade of pink. It has bristles up and down the stem and weedy does describe it. It makes small trees but spreads through runners and soon takes over a spot. We allow it to grow along the east side of our property by the road. It doesn’t have that nice smell but it is pretty this time of year.
We have had quite cool weather but I have taken the chance and planted out my tomatoes. I did something different this year and real redneck re-cycling- orientated. We had the box springs from a double bed in the spare bedroom we were going to throw out. It had a nice wood frame so I pulled it outside, took off the cloth on top and the layer of batting and excelsior under it and laid the frame over one of my raised beds, propped up by black plastic pots on each corner so it stands about 18 inches off the ground. I took the matt of batting and excelsior and laid it on the soil under the frame and cut holes through it to plant the tomatoes. I want the tomatoes to grow up through the frame of wood and wire springs and spread out over the top, off the ground. We will see what happens. It will be easy to throw a cloth over if frost threatens too, although it’s June and we shouldn’t be having frost! I am going to get a picture of it and post it here soon.
I saw the wild little kittens last night. There are at least 5 of them. We have 5 female cats on the farm and normally by this time we would have tons of kittens but this is the only litter we have had. Not that I’m complaining, its just strange. These will be real wild, I did pick one up because its little eyes were glued shut and it didn’t see me coming. It hissed like crazy but didn’t fight too hard. They are about 5 weeks old I think. It was nice and plump and besides its little eyes looked healthy. I pulled the eyelids open and put it in the feed dish where it started eating. The others snuck out after I went up to the barn and sat down. There are a lot of mostly white ones, our cats tend to be mostly white or black although we do have two striped ones now.
They say that the color of the feral cats in your area can give you clues as to where the original settlers of the area came from, as the color of the feral cats reverts back to the original stock after a while and different ethnic groups preferred different colored cats. I think the black and white / gray and white ones like ours were supposed to be Dutch, which could be, German- Dutch people did settle this area early on and the Amish are German derived. There are a lot of cats marked like ours in town too.
Today Charlie will get his first hoof trimming. This should be fun. Hopefully neither I nor the gal coming to do it will get hurt nor will he. This girl is a friend of a neighbor and hopefully she knows what she is doing. I could not find anyone who wanted to come out here just to do two mini- horses without charging an arm and a leg. I tied Charlie up to a post the other night to try and get a piece of wire out of his tail and he managed to break the post and take off dragging it which scared me to death. He stopped though when he got to where Lily was and I was able to walk up and unsnap the lead. It was hitting his legs and belly and I was afraid he would kill himself. The post was rotten- that should teach me a lesson.- Maybe him too, hope he doesn’t freak out being tied today.
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