Work work work. After that there's more work to do. This is good for us, right? Friday afternoon arriving home from work I fed the orphan goat as usual. Checked on the other animals. Everything seemed okay. I decided to use the remaining sunlight to mow the "lawn".
Our lawn has little or no grass in it at least as far as I can see, but I've only lived here for 6 months. We have a large area roughly 3/4 of an acre with green thriving broadleaf weeds. It's not only broadleaf weeds, but that's what most of it is. There are also very healthy sticker burr plants and other weeds. From even a short distance it looks nice and green year round. Those in Central Texas that have fancy thick, weed free lawns that cost and arm and a thigh to maintain don't ususally get green year round. In the summer grasses fry under way too much sun and in the winter the frost kills frail plants. One day we'll do something about this, but not this year.
Mowing the lawn means running my 25 horsepower Scott's Garden Tractor over the green areas. The mower is very powerful. It can mulch tree branches. It can cleave rocks. with a 54 inch cutting swath the mower would make short work of any reasonable lawn. 25 horsepower at full scream sounds like a lot of power and it is. That is until I get to the thickest weeds.
After cutting the front yard, being careful not to mow down Kristi's recently planted blackberry bushes, I dodged all the fruit trees, pine trees and oaks out front. Then I went to the field that will be our vegetable garden this year. It's about a half acre directly in front of our front yard. It's where the livestock-shed-converted-into-a-greenhouse sits. I cut around our little test winter garden that we planted to see if our soil would grow anything (it did) and improved the walking path. Then I tackled the back yard. More blackberry bushes. I think I missed them this time.
At our previous house in the far back of the property Kristi had laboriously dug holes in the solid limestone that was our dirt. She planted Texas native Mountain Laurels as a hedge against the new neighbors with the unruly children who built behind us. The plants never grew more than a couple of inches in 3 and a half years. They ARE slow growing plants, but that's pathetic. Anyway she had put in about 4 and I'm pretty sure one succumbed to my mighty lawnmower. It was hard to tell the plants from the weeds.
The back yard has more obsticles. Bird feeders hanging at forehead height - I made our bird feeders out of terra cotta planter bottoms and barbed wire so you can scar yourself if you aren't paying attention. Dodging around the many trees, patio, wheelbarrow full of rocks, garden tools, stepping stones, the pond and various animals makes for a frequently interrupted mow.
It was done. I hosed off the mower and let it dry.
Saturday the weather forcasters were promising rain. Lots of rain. So we had to get an early start to make any progress against our list of chores. Kristi began working on our kitchen herb garden. This will be about a 12 x 12 area at the south west corner of the house. There are 4 steps down into the space from the deck and the guestroom window overlooks it. There's a small gate to the main yard and a water faucet. What more could one ask? She built a raised bed about 1.5 feet high for the rosemary and filled in around it with dirt and rocks. Then she planted a couple of small oregono plants. These will fill in around the rosemary to look and smell nice. She make a short footpath from the concrete slab to the faucet by culling different sized rocks from the barnyard. These she layed flat and smoothed out. It looks great. Next to the little path is another small raised bed for mints. Mint is invasive. it will spread everywhere if not contained. So the raised bed will hopefully keep it in check.
I was cleaning up the area behind the shed. We had been throwing fallen branches and twigs and other tree debris back there to cut up for firewood or to turn into mulch with the chipper shredder. There was a lot of it. As I was cutting it all up for firewood I realized I was going to need somewhere to put it. I whacked together a box about 6 ft x 2ft x 2ft out of some old cedar fence boards than an employee had thrown out. I use these for all kinds of projects and they have a great number of good uses. Now there's enough room for all the kindling I can cut up. I also pruned a big yaupon holly that was in the same area. It was in the way and was always in my face when I was getting hardware cloth or lumber. Now it's out of the way and it looks better too.
Kristi made a very handy contraption on Saturday too. It's a bottle holder for the orphan. Four times a day every day the little one has to be bottle fed. I usually do it but lately I've been working late and Kristi has been getting stuck with the task. She got fed up with it on Saturday and made a handy little holder out of some lumber and velcro. She fastened this to a post in the barn at about goat-udder height. Now all we do to feed the little darling is to strap a fresh bottle of milk onto the holder and the little goat can suck to it's hearts content. In the mean time we can go about feeding all the other creatures without the little one being underfoot all the time. This is the kind of thing that can revolutionize your life. Of course no revolution happens without some milk being spilled and so it was in this case. Any new item introduced to the barn becomes the play thing of all the various creatures that live there. In this case the young goats would jump up on the bottle holder and butt it until it fell off the post. Kristi nailed it back on pretty firmly and now it is holding.