Them neighbor girls helped me clean the lily pool Saturday. Last weekend I offered to dig a flower bed adjacent to the lily pool and get some flowers for them to plant in it for their mom in honor of Mother’s Day. Kari had mentioned to me how she likes looking out Rebecca’s bedroom window and seeing the two goldfish swimming around. Dad built the lily pool for Mom for Mother’s Day when I was about Li’l r’s size. I’ve been working on cleaning it up since the weather warmed and it was beginning to look better. Since A&R were amendable to my scheme, I worked on making a small bed in a low area where there used to be a Russian olive tree back in the day. There was still a little of the rotted stump I had to get rid of. Somewhere along the line my mother put some rocks in that area and I left those. It was a modest bed, less than 3’X4′, but I worked it up pretty good so that by the time Saturday rolled around it was ready for the three plants I bought: a chocolate flower, a butterfly flower and a salvia. All three are low-water types. We each planted one. I went first to show them how it should be done, then they each took their turn. We added a nice piece of flint about the size and shape of a volleyball we filched from a bed next to the house where it couldn’t be seen. Continue reading “Close call”
Category: SA Times
Periodic review of life on Six Acres
Goodbye April

April blew its way out Tuesday and Wednesday. Can’t say as I’m sorry to see the month go, considering the sorry state of its weather. It took me nearly an hour to sweep Kansas off our front porch Friday. All over town there are speckled cars, the result of dust and a sprinkling of rain. The car washes are doing a land office business, which makes sense since land is what everybody is washing off. I don’t remember the wind blowing so persistently out of the north; from Monday through Saturday morning, the north wind blew, harder at times than others but it never relented completely until Saturday afternoon when it switched to the south. Joyce was hampered in her planting but she kept after it. Not much else one can do. Continue reading “Goodbye April”
Mottephobia

Joyce pried me from my easy chair one evening recently to come see what looked like hummingbirds feasting on the apple blossoms. They were sphinx moths, lots of them, the adult version of the tomato horn worm. For some reason Chris’s bees haven’t been visiting the apple tree much. It has come back from the freeze with lots of blossoms, which aren’t going to waste apparently in spite of the lack of bee trade. Continue reading “Mottephobia”
Tomato business

The last couple of weeks Joyce and I have been working hard to get tomatoes planted. The master gardeners said plant them the first of April to give them as much growing time as possible before it gets hot. They don’t like the heat. We reworked beds and constructed tomato cages and were ready to start planting tomatoes by the first. We finally finished the main body of the tomato orchard this week but as of Saturday Joyce was still planting a few more in the main garden area. It is, after all, April and she feels the inner tug of the inveterate gardener and hears the siren song of April. Who knows, maybe July will be kinder this year. Continue reading “Tomato business”
Last tournament

We spent Saturday in Lubbock watching Abigail’s last tournament of the season. We’d had a longish break since the last one, what with spring break and all. The Abster and her compadres acquitted themselves well though they didn’t come out on top in the end. All season Kari has soldiered on attending games and tournaments, delivering Abigail to practice and so on. She allowed as how she was tired of volleyball and not sorry to see the season end. Since we hit the road about 5 .m., we felt entitled to a nice dinner at Jazz, the cajun-food joint across from the Tech campus before driving home. Continue reading “Last tournament”