So July was filled with many things - warm sunshine of course and work and lots of green things!
We baled the first cut of hay and picked a whole 107 bales with the stackliner before the chain on the table broke and we had to wait 5 days for parts....the rest of the bales were picked by hand! Thankfully we discovered that the old McKee stackmover is good for yet another thing (see one of my previous posts for how easy it made moving our shed!). When the bales properly stacked, even that old derelict thing with only half the chains on it can unload a perfectly nice stack! We didn't have any building tall enough to unload the picker inside of, so we had to hand stack the bales inside the shed anyways...now we have to hand pick them, but the unloading is done for us....very nice!
Julie was even nice enough to come help us one night - we got almost 600 square bales of hay from our 7 acres in the first cut.
My garden was growing beautifully - here you see my flower bed that Trevor and I constructed this spring. It is FULL! There are 5 strawberry plants, about 7 or 8 herbs, lettuce, kale, a cucumber plant, 5 tomatoes and a pepper plant, 3 rose bushes, 2 peonies, a ton of irises and some various smaller lilies, a Sedum, 2 day lilies and on the trellises there is a honeysuckle vine and Sadies Horse Beans.
Lorelei enjoyed playing in her wading pool, and chasing around the cats, this particular cat was a pregnant momma that we rescued from the pound. She and Lorelei love each other! She stayed in the house for a few weeks after we got her and she slept on Lolo's bed, and let her do anything with her! She ended up having 5 kittens....on Trevor's pile of socks in the bottom of our closet. I moved her and the kittens outside before their eyes opened, but she still likes to try and get back in the house. Poor Cootie (our original house cat) was her arch nemesis and hasn't been the same since! She still hardly comes out of the basement, because the bad momma kitty (Bagheera) has snuck in a few times and chased her! I haven't taken any pictures of the kittens yet, they're all mainly black - two have white on them and one is kind of dark grey tabby. Lorelei named them - Socks, Boots, Midnight, Charcoal, and Dually (she wanted to name it Julie after Aunty, but I didn't want her saying "Julie Died" if the cat got run over or something, so we compromised!). Bagheera is so aggressive with all the other cats and even the dogs, its crazy, yet she is perfectly nice and gentle to Lolo, even when being carried around by her neck! She might find a new home when the kitties are big enough, just to keep the peace with the other cats!
I finally set up my hammock...after it hung in the garage since we moved here almost 3 years ago! I got a couple tiki torches with citronella oil in hopes of keeping the mosquitoes at bay to some extent, but it wasn't terribly effective! I should be out there wrapped in a blanket right now, no bugs! Too bad my laptop battery is shot and I'm tied to the plug-in! Just looking at it is relaxing some days though, its always in the shade and even a minute or two just hanging there is a nice break the odd time that I do use it!
It was so wet this spring that even these ground cover plants on the North side of the house grew like crazy - I've never seen them so tall!
"DellOliver Bigger" Lorelei always declares if anyone asks her about her piggies. She's very glad to tell anyone she meets that she has piggies, and has been known to confuse a few people, they think she's talking about her pigtails or something, I have to back her up and say, "No, she really does have pigs". They're much bigger now, though they're still going to be pretty late to butcher, I'm looking forward to good pork!
Summertime Evening in the farmyard.
Both dogs got haircuts this summer, they were so happy and cool!
Lorelei LOVES to ride horseys...here she is on "Rattia" (Riata in Lolospeak).
This was my purchase from the consignment sale - for $50...good firebox and everything...I'm pretty excited about putting it in the yellow shed for a summer kitchen!
Little E had a nap in my hammock while I picked raspberries!
I found this in my raspberry patch...and they're obviously abandoned as I watched the area for a week...I found them in late July, so I brought the nest in now, and I'm hoping/planning to preserve it in a glass shadow box type thing for future educational use!
E LOVES potato chips!
We ate 5 lovely eggplants off my two plants this year...first time eating eggplant for me, I'll definitely try growing it again next year, its a beautiful plant too!
We also went to the Threshermen's reunion in Austin Lolo loved all the tractors!
