Category Archives: gardening

2025, Family, gardening, home, Uncategorized

Swing Time

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There has always been a vision in my mind for the backyard.  Over the years we’ve added a patio, then a little bigger patio.  A table and chairs for the patio.  An umbrella for the table.  A friend of mine gave YA a fire pit years ago.  Another friend gave me a swing when they moved to an apartment.  Of course, there are all the flowers and the bales.  About 15 years ago I had enough credits at work to purchase a hammock, which I installed toward the back of the yard.  Over the years I’ve had to replace the fabric several times as well as having to MacGyver the suspension a couple of times when the fabric wasn’t exactly the right size.

YA has always detested the hammock.  First is that it is a collection spot for leaves and twigs that come off the trees.  Then there is the issue of having to mow around it, requiring moving it about.  YA thinks it makes the backyard look “cluttered”.  When I suggested we get right of her Adirondack chairs and little table, she didn’t respond well.  She has a point.  We use the Adirondacks quite a bit and truth be told, I probably only lay in the hammock once or twice a summer.  It’s not actually all that comfortable and I get impatient really fast.

As I’m pursuing my pre-downsizing project, I decided that I really needed to pay attention to the reality of the hammock instead of my emotional attachment to the idea of a hammock.  To that end, YA and I carried it down to the boulevard.  When we got down to the boulevard with it, YA had to shore up my determination.  The miracle of my street worked as usual – within an hour someone was taking it apart to shove in their truck. 

I thought I might be unhappy in the first few days after the hammock was gone but that hasn’t happened.  That says to me that I made the right decision.

Tell me about something you have an emotional attachment to. 

2025, Farming Update, gardening, Medicine, Nature, Science, Theatre, Weather

NAILING THE WEEDS

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Nailing the Weeds

The weekend Farm report from Ben

I finished mowing weeds this week. Last year the mower was being repaired so I wasn’t able to mow much at all. $2600 later it’s back and better than ever. I mow the edges of the road next to the fields to keep the weeds down, (and the crops always look better when the weeds are cut). Lots of wild parsnip, and thistles. Sometimes when it’s just grass I’ll leave it standing and I think to myself ‘What is the point of mowing all this?’  What is the point of mowing if it’s not noxious weeds? The waterways that go through the oat fields, I mow them off because it’s easier to harvest the oats and bale the straw without the weeds and grass in there. But it really does look nice when it is mowed down. I don’t worry too much about cover for wildlife, there’s plenty of cover yet.

I practice my side hill acrobatics too. It helps to remind myself how low the actual center of balance is on the tractor. 

All the weight is under my feet. There is a bit of a ‘pucker factor’ but I’ve done this before so I know it’s OK. I worried more about these hillsides when I was a kid. Dad always told me it was OK. And I only ever tipped over one wagon and that was due to a badger hole.

Down in the pasture there is a lot of parsnip. Back when we had cattle, they kept the weeds and buckthorn down. Or maybe buckthorn hadn’t taken over 30 years ago. 

While down in the pasture I found some wild flowers growing. At risk of stirring up the flower debate again, I present them here. I used the ‘Plant Net’ app to identify them.  Wild bergamot, Giant St. John’s wort, American blue vervain (which we had bought some seedlings from a friend selling native plants, and I didn’t realize we have this), mullein, and lots of Goldenrod coming. I try to save most of that. Again, majority rules, so I’ll mow some off to get the parsnip. 

Vervain
Wild bergamot
St John’s wort

And Kelly took this picture of milkweed in the yard.

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Milkweed blossom photo by Kelly

We learned about ‘Beggars Lice’ too. For years, the dogs would get these little stickers in their fur and I didn’t know what they were or where they came from. Ah. It’s this plant.

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Beggar‘s Lice

Work at the theater went well. I won the ‘Power Actuated Nail Gun’ on the auction, and made good use of that. It was fun to use. I nailed 2×4’s and foam to the north wall for some insulation. We are attaching plywood to the 2×4’s. Nailing 2×4’s to concrete with a .22 blank! Awesome!  

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Crops are still looking good. Corn has nearly doubled in height since July 4th. 

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Beans are filling in and getting blossoms on them. The oats should be ready for harvest in another week or so. 

I put a new fanbelt on the 630 tractor and I replaced the throttle plate so the throttle lever will hold its position. One of the padawans and I changed the oil in Kelly’s C tractor. 

A little bit of everything this past week. 

Next week I’m working on ‘Shrek’, the musical, down in Chatfield.

FAVORITE SOUR FOOD THAT MAKES YOU PUCKER?

OR QUESTIONS OF YOUR CHOICE BECAUSE I GOT NOTHING!

2025, gardening, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Surprise!

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Not long after we moved to our current house 37 years ago, Husband and I planted some roses. At that time, hybrid tea roses were advertised as only hardy as far north as Zone 4. We knew we were pushing it a little given how close we were to Zone 3, but we put in about four hybrid tea roses on the south side of the house.

We did all the things that you are supposed to do regarding tea roses, putting cones on them in the fall to protect them from the cold, pruning appropriately, etc. They flourished. One in particular was our favorite, named Taboo.

We loved its intense color. About 20 years ago we even stopped putting cones on in the fall, and yet those roses on the south side of the house returned year after year. Within the last 5 years, though, most of them seemed to age out and die, but Taboo kept going until last summer, when all there were in its spot were dead branches.

Imagine my delight this weekend when I encountered some new rose shoots just a few inches away from the dead Taboo stems while I was weeding the south flowerbed. They look healthy. I hope we can have one last Taboo blossom before we move. Hybrid tea roses are now advertised as only hardy through Zone 5, and I don’t know how we did it, but what a lovely surprise!

Any pleasant surprises for you this last month, gardening or otherwise? What have you succeeded doing even when the odds were againt you?

2025, Family, gardening, home, Nature, Uncategorized, work

Pavers & Bricks

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Yesterday YA had the day off so we decided to tackle a couple of outdoor projects first thing in the morning before the heat took over the day. 

I started with putting some paving stones on the south side of the house under the water spigot.  The pavers were left over from when we expanded the little patio two summers ago so I thought I’d put them to better use than just being stacked up in the garage.  Unfortunately the ants didn’t think this was a grand project and it took a bit for them to give it up and I did get a couple of good bites out of it before they moved their party elsewhere.

By the time I was done, YA had made a good start on edging our northern “garden” with bricks that we inherited from our neighbor who just moved.  She asked which of the jobs I wanted – digging or placing the bricks.  While placing the bricks seemed like the easier of the two jobs, I know my daughter well.  If I placed the bricks, she would eventually come behind me and “fix” what I had done.  I admit freely that she is more patient with a lot of home projects and therefore does an overall better job.  This made it an easy choice – I dug and let her place the bricks.  It was a great decision.  As I dug I watched her running her hands along the bricks to make sure they were even and using her finger as a measurement tool to make sure they were all the same depth.  I would not have thought to do either of these steps. 

We didn’t finish yesterday.  It got a bit too steamy so we knocked off about half way through and vowed to finish in a couple days when it’s a bit cooler.  Looks good so far.

Any projects for you over the holiday weekend?

2025, gardening, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Rewarded!

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We rolled the stump down to the boulevard.  I didn’t think that anybody driving along would see it and think “hey, we could use a big stump for something, couldn’t we?” and take it.  I was hoping however that it was small enough that the yard waste folks would take it.  Nope.  Turns out that they’re fairly strict about that kind of thing and my Plan B of rolling it into my trash can was quashed when I saw in the garbage/recycling website that it is actually illegal to put “substantial” yardwaste into your garbage can.

YA was not tricked into thinking that chopping up the stump was a fun way to spend her time so I finally decided to tackle it myself.  If I chopped it into small chunks, I could put them in my yard wastebags with my run-of-the-mill weeds.  In order to make myself do this, I had to say “just 20 minutes”.  It helps that our little chainsaw has a fairly short battery life so 20 minutes is about all I can do at one shot.  At the rate it was taking, I figured this would be a 10 or 12 day project.

While I was working on this, I noticed a woman working on the yard kitty corner to me.  She didn’t look familiar and there was a name emblazoned on her pick-up that indicated she had been hired, as opposed to living there.  As I continued on other yard projects, I noticed she was coming across the street.  Turns out she is the mother of the gal who apparently has just bought the place.  She asked about what kind of bags the city requires and I pointed out my paper bags.   I asked her if she needed a couple and I gave her two and when she asked, I gave her directions to Menards which is about as cheap as you can find the bags these days.  We talked about what you could and couldn’t put out; I told her about leaving bigger branches/small logs out for people to take.  I then mentioned that the city wouldn’t take my stump which was why she had seen me cutting bits off.  To my surprise she immediately said she could take the stump in her truck; her home is on 30 acres in Wisconsin and she has a perfect place to dump it.  I was stunned.  And grateful.  I almost offered her more bags.

So within 5 minutes, we had rolled the stump into her wheelbarrow, pushed the wheelbarrow across the street and gotten the little monster into the back of her pickup.   After three weeks of it sitting on the boulevard, miraculously and suddenly it’s gone!

I don’t think I’ve ever had a good deed of mine reward me so quickly and so wonderfully. 

Can you think of a time a good deed has paid dividends?

2025, animals, books, Family, gardening, home, Uncategorized

Too Much Of A Good Thing

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About three years ago, Husband and I planted a climbing rose along the railing of the stoep. The rose did very well. It is a winter hardy Morden Rose from Manitoba. Two years ago we planted two more of the same variety along side it. I had no idea they would take off the way they did. You can see them in the header photo and below. There are hundreds of blooms and buds on them. The only problem is that the railing isn’t high enough to support them, so I have to tie them to the railing with twine. I have tried to wind the stems and branches in the railing, as well. We often underestimate how well our plants and shrubs are going to do. It really is too much rose for the area, but I love them.

Our raspberry patch has exploded with new growth this spring, and I anticipate having one of our largest crops ever.

Our neighbor trimmed a tree that had been shading them, and we got lots of rain. I am sure we will be giving lots away, since there is no point in freezing them since we are moving.

We also have far too many books. The shelves in the next photo were full of books until yesterday, when Husband culled some and packed the remainder into 15 banker boxes, the boxes all labeled as to genre and topic. The books will stay in the boxes until after we move to Luverne.

We had to do this so that the painter can paint the wall behind the shelves. The culled books are in the back of his pickup and are going to the landfill on Tuesday. Our next chore is to move the remaining bookcases away from the wall so that she can paint behind them.

We will just empty the bookcases and put the books and record albums somewhere temporarily until the paint is dry, then put them back in the bookcases. We won’t box them up until we actually move. Many of them are our cookbooks, so we will need access to them.

It is hard to decide if I would rather have too many roses, too many raspberries, or too many books. I suppose there are worse things to have in excess, like a friend of ours who has 17 house cats.

What do you have too much of? What are your favorite roses? Any favorite raspberry recipes?

2025, Family, gardening, home, Nature, work

I Think I Can, I Think I Can

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If you noticed that I didn’t have a presence on the Trail on Saturday, it’s because it was stump removal day.  The tree itself had all been cut down by Friday evening so Saturday was all about the stump.

We had a couple of offers to help us yank the stump out with a truck (thank you, tim and my neighbor Don) but with my front yard garden flourishing this year and some of the perennials starting to bloom, YA and I didn’t want to risk trashing those; hence the decision to utilize the “dig to China” method of stump removal.

You ever have one of those times when you’ve taken something on and as you’re working on it you start to question your sanity?  The first couple of hours went fine – the beginning of the work and you’re still full of optimism and energy.  By lunchtime, we were lagging a bit so we took a break and ate sandwiches on the front steps.  I will admit that I did google “stump removal” before we got back to business.

By 2 p.m., I was seriously thinking about having myself committed.  We’d been digging down around the stump for hours, cutting roots whenever we came upon them and even with both of us with our backs to the house and pushing vigorously, the stump wasn’t moving at all.  At this point, my mantra was “We can do this because we’ve done it before” – a little like Harry Potter in Prisoner of Azkaban – since I had been part of the stump removal team when my wasband and I took down a tree when we first bought the house. See:

The Chainsaw Massacre | Trail Baboon

So YA and I just kept digging; by this point we were more excavating than digging as we were trying to get under as much of the root system as possible.  I really did say to myself “we’ve done this before” repeatedly. 

Suddenly at 3:15, when we shoved it, it moved.  So we shoved a little harder, then there was a good sized “cracking” sound.  At this point I shoved and YA got underneath with the chainsaw and finished off the last root holding it and voila!  At 3:20 the stump was out.  It was a little stunning since it seemed like we’d be digging forever and then suddenly we were done.   We rolled the stump down to the boulevard and since we are both good at cleaning as we go, we only had to put all the various tools back on the porch.  You can’t really tell from the photo but I was just about the dirtiest I’ve ever been from a yardwork project – maybe even dirtier than when tim and I sandblasted to porch.  I had to take a scrub brush and the hose to myself in the backyard before I could even go in the house.  Then it was a shower with another scrub brush and a LOT of body wash. 

We finished up the work on Sunday – digging up the area and leveling it out.  We did find the black edging that I put down decades ago as well as the various layers of black tarp that truly did not do anything about weeds.   Now we have two pretty little Dwarf Globe Blue Spruce planted that will not grow above the window level and should fill the space nicely.  To make it look a little prettier for now, we also put in a few hostas as a minimal border.  I told YA as we were inspecting our handiwork yesterday that I was never, ever going to do that job again. 

Ever.

Do you have any mantras that have been useful in your life?

2025, Family, Food, gardening, Uncategorized

Brassica Blues

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I was at home yesterday morning making a peach crumble preparatory to going into work, when Husband phoned from the office asking if I wanted to go to Taylor, a little town about 15 miles east of us to get four cabbage plants. I said I would. They had set the plants aside for us.

I started some Alcosa savoy cabbage from seed several weeks ago. We have grown them in the past and they are a lovely cabbage. We usually start seeds under our grow lights in the basement. For a variety of reasons we had the pots in a sunny window upstairs instead. The seeds germinated beautifully, but didn’t get all the light they needed and got too leggy. Many of them got bent or broken off. I planned to grow six cabbages. I ended up with three barely viable tiny plants and planted them on Tuesday. I think they will make it. They look much better now that they are deeply planted. We even have some nifty chicken wire cloches to protect them from bunnies. We had some lovely rain in the afternoon that really helped.

Husband has been worried and fussing over the possibility that we might not have our own garden savoy cabbage. None of the grocery stores here sell it, and none of the greenhouses sell the plants. He says we have a minestrone garden, as opposed to a salsa garden, and need savoy cabbage. I told him I found a place that will send us savoy cabbages in the fall, but he continued with the anxiety about the cabbage plants. When he phoned to say that Taylor Nursery had set aside a red cabbage and three regular green cabbage plants he would be content with, I agreed to go to ease his cabbage anxiety. He is excited to make coleslaw and borscht from these very vigorous plants. I just want the fussing to stop. I just hope he doesn’t get all fussed up about the collard green seeds he plans to plant. I am so happy he isn’t planting kohlrabi.

What is your favorite veggie in the cabbage family? Would you rather have a minestrone garden, a borscht garden, or a salsa garden?

2025, Baboon Achievers, gardening, home, Kids, Uncategorized, work

Young Entrepreneurs

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Husband had just finished mowing the lawn on Monday when two boys, looking to be about 11 or 12, came by offering to mow for us. They had their own mower. Husband explained he had just finished mowing, but they would certainly be welcome in the future to do it for us. Their asking price was reasonable.

I never had a “business” as a kid, unless you count babysitting. Girls in Luverne didn’t hire out to do lawn work back then. The boys who came by on Monday looked energetic and excited. There aren’t as many older people in the neighborhood as there used to be, so I hope they don’t get discouraged if they don’t get as much business as they hoped.

Husband has arthritis in his hands. I am having increased mobility issues with chronic sciatica, probably caused by lumbar scoliosis. I can see us hiring more yard work done in the future.

Did you have a business as a kid? What tasks do you see yourself hiring others to do in the future? If you were 12 right now, what business would you start?

2025, gardening, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Take My Stuff…. Please

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The house next door has sold and my neighbors are moving out this weekend.  Just by chance, I was out front gardening on both the days that there was an open house, so I actually got to talk to quite a few folks who had walked through.  The question that almost everyone asked was how it was to live on my street, which is a busy thoroughfare – in fact, it’s a county road as opposed to a city street.

Everybody got the same answer.  I love living on my busy street – it’s easy to get to, easy to get out and around.  During the winter, my street is always clear; the plows start early and are consistent.  Even when side streets are still snowed in, we can always get out. 

The other great thing is that you can get rid of anything by just putting it down on the boulevard.  You don’t even have to put a “free” sign on it – if it’s on the boulevard, it’s fair game.  Two summers ago, the house across the street was almost gutted and their boulevard was like a second-hand store for three or four weeks.  I thought maybe there might be a traffic accident one day because so many people were pulling over to look and grab.  Over the years I’ve put out a lot of items and the only thing that never got taken was a mattress (which makes sense) – but the city took it on trash day anyway.

The surprise this week is that someone stopped during the day yesterday and took all the little logs and all but two of the bundles of sticks that YA and I had put on the boulevard after the first day of our “tree adventure”.   We didn’t put them out because we thought anybody would want them, but because that’s where they need to be for the city pick-up.  But, what the heck – if these little logs and bundles will make somebody’s life better – whoopee. 

Of course, I wonder why they didn’t take ALL the bundles.  Maybe they didn’t have room in the car?  Maybe they have just so much room back home to store the bundles?  Maybe there were two of them and they weren’t aligned on whether to take any of them?  Hopefully it didn’t start a fight.  I also wonder if they’ll come back at some point for the last two.  Or will somebody else take them?  Maybe I should just put out a table instead of schlepping things to Value Village and GoodWill?  I could call it Boulevard Freecycle?

Do you live on a busy or quiet street? Have you ever had a great garage sale?