Garden Upcycle: Building A Stone Path

I must have thrown a thousand pounds of rocks out of the tilled garden... terrible but true I kinda like watching someone else till a rocky area so I can giggle a little everytime it lurches forward on some big stones. If I had been the one steering the beast, I probably would have vomited from motion sickness and exhaust poisoning.
I am not a straight forward farmer, I have elaborate artistic ideas of turning every space into some magical fantasy garden... this one starts with upcycling those rocks back into the space by making a primitive looking pathway, a little cobblestone-esque place to walk through.

It looks like it might be easy in the pictures, but I swear to gawd this is some manual labor that takes tons of time and strength - carrying individual rocks, buckets of rocks, lifting, hauling, placing each one like some manufactured puzzle piece meant to fit together. And they do fit together somehow, like the whole mess was waiting for you to put it back together.It took me a few days to complete the stone path and I am pretty sure I now have super strength rivaling a comic book heroine. Don't mess with me. ;)
I would love to border the entire path with flowers and herbs, and maybe some kind of ground creeper - does anyone have any suggestions?

Check out the finished project... oh yeah! --->

xoxoooo

Swallowtail Butterfly

Of all the butterflies around here this one is the most difficult to catch on camera, I pretty much had to find one that was slightly distressed to get near it. Normally they are flitting high in the air, like little striped birds... swooping over the roof, over the bamboo, around the silo and far away from me. Have you ever seen the movie The Last Unicorn?? These tiger patterned swallowtails are like the poetic butterfly who briefly speaks to the unicorn, jabbering only in riddles, prose, and scrambled stories- (EX. "have you seen the muffin man the muffin man the muffin man").

xoxo

Brown Box Turtle

Turtles have some hardcore armor. I was hoeing the ground in a thick patch of weeds and didn't see this turtle at all, until my ho slammed down hard on his back and clang off it like I'd hit a hollow rock. His head was still out and he looked at surprised as I was. A brown box turtle, just like I had in New Orleans when I was 11 years old (Tippy was it's name and it ran away during one of the many summer floods.)

In this very bottom picture you can see where I accidentally chinked it's armor, on the lower left hand side of the shell. Tough turtle... it waited for me to walk away before casually creeping off to a safer place.

xoxo

Baby Chickens are Teenagers now...

There's about 8 baby chickens next door from the incubator hatching. They have cute little colorful wings now, but still have that fuzzy baby look on the rest of their body. The big black hen is the broody mom who's adopted them all as her very own. My neighbors are going to give me a rooster with a funny crow (he's not quite mature) and a hen who lays eggs but has a persistent cough... to make my down trodden bird family complete I am hoping to steal away the one baby chick who has the deformed foot too. ;)

xoxo

Da' Tiniest Toad Eva' !!!

Oh My Gawd! I have never in my life seen a froggy this small... ever! It's so micro sized that it makes my eyes water to even look at how flippin' cute it is. At first sight I thought I was looking at a baby cricket jumping under the rocks I was lifting, then I realized it was a jet black baby toad (or frog... or whatever amphibian it may be?) Possibly a decedent to the huge plump toad I found in that area a few days ago.

Just as a note to it's size- my hand it also super small, probably 1/3 to 1/2 the length of whatevs' your hand is. This little hopper was smaller then my pinky fingernail!xoxo

Trash To Treasure: Pitchfork

Ya'll, I love trash to treasure junk! Inevitably when you till dirt on an old farm you will unearth various rusted metal pieces... like this bad ass little pitchfork we found. Even as a kid growing up in New Orleans there was buried treasure in the shape of crusty shoe horses, signs of a pre-suburban time that really wasn't that long ago.The rusted little pitchfork had no handle anymore, so Bort attached a piece of bamboo to it. You can use glue, pine pitch, or just ram it in there at the right tightness and you have yourself a new tool again. He used a large drill bit to make the hole in the bamboo just the right size. Farming tools with wooden handles break way too often, especially these days where everything is made cheaply (AKA with pine). It's good to be able to repair tools instead of just falling into the trap of chucking it and buying another one just to get a new wooden handle. Check your tools out when you purchase them to make sure they can be fixed later on (some companies indent the metal so you can not pull out the old wooden handle, which is exceptionally lame and un-eco).xoxo

Farming & Flip Flops Don't Mix

I have been running around in tilled dirt like it's beach sand in Destin, Florida. Instead of acquiring a sock line tan I have gotten this flashy V line on the top of my foot, some serious mud under my toe nails, water loggin' wrinkles, and a magic outline in black for emphasis. :) Seeing flip flops worn during farming is like being made to watch a bad couple bicker, they really should break up but play out their painful coupling anyway... somebody has to stop me & my flip flops!
The real reason not to wear flip flops though is to not lose a toe or few.
PS- Does anyone remember when flip flops were also called "thongs" or did I dream that ???

XoXo

Butterflies!

Ooooh pretty... The white butterfly up top was on a turnip flower (go little pollinator GO!)
This orange speckled dream machine below is on a purple clover flower (aren't they edible, have any of you ever eaten one... the flower not the butterfly!?)

And this slow moving battered swallowtail was resting on a burdock leaf in the sun.

xoxo

Wasp Wrestling

I have already been stung twice this spring by the aggressive wasps around the house. It's almost a relief to see them fighting with each other instead of flying up my skirt (which has happened three times in my life so far).

xoxoooo

Jus' Tillin'

Here's my gardening theory about tilling versus hoeing: I think if ya have a huge space go ahead and till it the very first time, and then maintain with a ho from then on. If ya' pay the ho enough, she'll probably even use your gardening tool and keep the weeds down for ya. ;)
Just teasing. I am pretty sure that my theory is backed up by those studying organic agriculture- who also suggest various cover crops to keep the soil healthy. My style of gardening is usually companion planting in order to keep the soil from being drained of nutrients while stuff is growing - just like in nature certain plants work together really well.
The rain has been boggling us here in Western North Carolina and tilling was put off the very day it could be put off no longer, the one magical sunny weekend! We tilled into the black of night, which is kind of a hysterical thing to do. Bort wore a head lamp like a miner and I ran around in the dark grabbing big rocks and throwing them out of the way, screaming into the loud noise of the tiller "watch out for those spiders, they aren't running fast enough!"... the tiller is not only loud but it also stinks like a freakin' go-cart track at a shitty school fair. By the time it was all over I felt like I had just given a pint of blood and was happy to think about all the beans, squash and potatoes I am gonna grow.

xoxo