Crazy Month

 What a crazy month I've had! I recently found two new relatives through Ancestry DNA. That's been a lot of fun, researching and confirming data. One is in Rocky Mount and the other in Oklahoma City. Wow! Who knew?!

We finally got all our garden boxes planted. It's our first time trying Super Bush tomatoes and they are doing even better than the Celebrity tomatoes. I put orange and red marigolds between the plants to keep the bugs down. When we planted we turned the traditional ice-cream cone shaped cages upside down. That was mainly to keep our new cat Pepper from thinking she had giant litter boxes. It worked. An added plus is that the legs that usually go in the ground are sticking up and the dragonflies love perching on them. We have a lot of dragonflies around now to keep the mosquito and fly populations down.

All of our okra plants are doing well, now. It seemed touch-and-go for a while. You-know-who decided they might not make it so he bought six more plants even knowing the crisis was averted. I told Danny this morning that I have spied a 1-inch baby okra coming along already! The peppers and Swiss Chard is doing well as are the tons of basil we have all over the place. I seriously doubt we'll be doing seeds again.

My miniature rose was starting to look a bit bedraggled in the pot so I separated the four plants and put them in a pot outside. Lo, and behold they are all getting ready to bloom again, even the two that I thought for sure were goners!

This past week we tried our hand at making just one square tomato cage. The wire is thin and has 2x3 inch holes, which I figure we can cut some to make bigger. The jury is still out on this experiment. I feel kind of bad since we had to buy a 50-foot roll of wire. But that was all they had. Oh well. I'll use some to corral my gladiolas!

Pepper the cat is still in residence. We had friends reach out to see if we could find her a home but came up empty. Both the dogs are ok with her now so I guess she's a keeper.

Danny's latest project is transforming a big old desk we thrifted into our new upcoming kitchen island. He's finished chopping it up. Last week we bought a dark brown butcher block top for it and selected a sage green to go with our main kitchen counters and tile backsplash.

And our biggest crazy surprise this past month was seeing this fellow in our back yard one morning.

We kept the dogs on leashes for a while and took all the bird feeders down, but things have pretty much gone back to normal now. I mean, it's only been once in over 30 years. Years ago Daddy had one go in his shop and snag all the cookies and snacks he had on his golf cart. Occasionally we see the bear out in the fields. I've always looked for him in the yard but never thought I'd really see him here. Boy, was I wrong! We still keep an eye out for him though. Guess that'll never go away now ;)