After the Storm

What a crazy week and weekend. I managed to finish planting and seeding my garden, balancing between the sunshine and the rain. Thursday I seeded my lettuce and carrots while it rained and I'm glad I did, because that was the last comparatively dry day. It looked like rain in the morning but I was determined to finish my garden. I usually pick up a yard of topsoil to fill up flowerbeds and also for my seeding, because when the soil gets clumpy it is difficult to seed. I prepare the beds and then I spread a thin layer of topsoil. That way seeding is fast and the seeds get tamped down nicely. I don't have to worry about air pockets. I'm a firm believer in raised beds and this year it paid off again. We had a terrible downpour and thunderstorm Saturday. The walkways in my garden were filled with water but the beds don't get drowned out.
My tomatoes and peppers survived the downpour (we even had a bit of hail) and the rest we'll have to wait. Hopefully the seeds didn't get washed away.
The tomatoes I raised in the basement are doing fine and are holding their own among the plants I bought. Next year I will seed more varieties and maybe I won't have to buy any plants. I'll save the seeds from the ones I have. It's not that difficult to do that. I found the information on the internet and it worked for my Sugar Snack. Last year I found only one plant by accident. Guess what: This year I saw them again at Home Depot. The plants didn't look much different from mine. Even though they were a bit leggy. Leggy tomato plants are no problem. I just strip the bottom leaves and bury most of the stem under the soil. It will grow roots and make the plant stronger.
That was quite some storm we had. Many streets in Winnipeg were under water and many basements were flooded. Living in the Rural areas is not so bad. Our ditches were full and we had quite a lake in the back yard, but as long as we don't get a power outage we're okay. We need the power for our sump pump. If the power goes then we may be in trouble.
The grass is growing like crazy, especially since I put on the fertilizer a couple of weeks ago. I cut it last week Wednesday because it was too windy to work in the garden and I'm happy I did. When the grass is too long I have to bag it and take it to the dump, but after spreading fertilizer ($150.00 worth) it is a good idea to leave the clippings which contain fertilizer. As soon as it dries up I'll be sitting on my lawn tractor. It's one of those things: If you want it nice you have to work for it. If I want a nice yard I have to put fertilizer on the grass, which means cutting it more often, which means more work, which means less time to write.
I'm working on Book Four of 'The Xandra' but it is slow going. I have to re-read what I wrote last year to get back into the story, but somehow I can't seem to get into it yet and the writing is slow. I'm not at home yet on the fifth planet of that star system and the characters aren't living yet in my head but slowly I'm getting the feel for the story and as soon as it comes alive I will be spending more time with it. Maybe it's just the chapter I'm working on right now, because I have plenty of ideas and something of an outline already written. It's just a matter of time. Too many other things going on right now which are more important.
Maybe my brain needs a bit of a break. I wrote so much last year, and sometimes it is hard to leave the world that occupied you for so long and move to the next one.
One more note: My weather vane became a victim of the high winds. It bent and is just hanging there. Well...back to the drawing board. I hope the wire doesn't break when I straighten it out. I'll have to make it stronger.

The Martin House

Finally...the Martin Birdhouse is up. My new birdhouse is better than the old one and it has a new feature: a weathervane. I didn’t want to spend the 50 bucks it cost to buy one so I built my own out of plywood. I used part of a flower fence for the base and parts from an old light fixture to make it rotate. I cut the letters N S W E out of plywood and then I painted everything black. And the best part...the thing actually works. Now I know where the wind is blowing from.
There are no hinges for the doors on this one. The doors lift in and rest inside a slot at the bottom. I’m quite proud of my new design. It will be easy to clean out the house in the fall.
Getting the house on to the pole was not an easy task. Like everything I built it turned out large and heavy, but with my wife’s help, a rope, and a lot of moaning and groaning we managed to straighten out the pole with the birdhouse on top without it falling onto our heads.
A pair of swallows already checked it out but they left again. Perhaps it is too new for them. But I don’t have to worry about tenants. I didn’t even have the doors in place yet when a nosy sparrow made its first inspection. Now it sits on one of the perches and is calling for its friends to come and move into the new apartments. There are twelve apartments and they are nice and roomy.
I also put up the finch feeder and the humming bird feeders. Yesterday we saw the first North American Finch. The weather is getting warmer and the birds are coming back.
I tilled my garden and I’m ready for the planting and seeding, but that won’t happen until the end of May. The size of my garden is about 850 sqft. Seems large but sometimes it is almost too small for the vegetables I want to grow.
My wife always tells me I’m planting too much, but we manage to eat it all. What we don’t eat we give away. There is nothing better than fresh picked beans and homegrown tomatoes. And we love the peppers. I usually plant about 50 pepper plants. In the fall we make sauce and salsa and freeze it.
I tilled in 33 pounds of Clay buster and 50 kg of dehydrated Alfalfa Pellets, which are actually rabbit food. They are a wonderful organic fertilizer. I’ve been using Alfalfa pellets for years in my garden. In addition I tilled in 8 bags of leaves. Last year, in the fall, I tilled in the same amount of leaves and they have decomposed over the winter. I should have good soil this year.
My tomato plants are coming along nicely in the basement and should have developed plenty of roots when it’s time to set them into the garden.
Here is a picture of my new Martin House:

Time flies

Where has the time gone? It is already May. The weather has been lousy for the last week, but it is supposed to be better. I used the time to build a new Martin’s House. I took the old one down to give it a new paint job, but then I discovered it was rotting away. A new paint job wasn’t going to do the trick. So I decided to build a new one. We haven’t had any Martins breeding in it for years, only Sparrows, but they are more loyal than other birds. They hang around all winter and provide us with much entertainment. I feed them and they eat a lot. They are also quite messy, but what do you expect? They are birds. We have a Canary and are used to it.
The Juncos are gone now for some time. The Pelicans are back. They fly over our house in their daily circle and the other day I heard Cranes calling as they flew overhead.
I’m almost finished with the birdhouse. It took me a week to build it. I used the old birdhouse as a pattern, but when I put it all together the pieces didn’t quite fit so I had to do quite a bit of re-measuring. I stained and painted every piece before I assembled them to make sure the wood doesn’t rot as fast as the old house. I also made it a bit fancier. It weighs a ton and I hope my wife and I can put it back onto the pole.
As soon as it is totally finished I will take a picture and put it on my blog.
We’ve been busy also in the yard. Cleaned all the fallen branches and I managed to burn them yesterday. It was a perfect day for it after the rain we’ve had. So now I can till my garden, put in some fertilizer then wait until the end of May or beginning of June to seed and plant, depending on the weather.
I started some tomato seeds in my basement. They’ve sprouted and are growing nicely. I’ve never done it before, because I usually buy all my plants, but last year I couldn’t find the cherry tomatoes I’ve been planting for years ‘Sugar Snack’. I managed to find one plant in a nursery where I was told they’ve never heard of it (It is one of the strange mysteries I experience once in a while. I am keeping a log of them and maybe I’ll put some on my blog one day). I saved the seeds, hoping I could grow my own plants. I hope they’ll have enough roots so I can transplant them into the garden.
My trilogy ‘Web of Conspiracy’ has been accepted by MSFiction and will by published sometime next year.
I also finished my other novel ‘Epsilon’ and I sent it in under the title ‘Lizard World’. The total word count is close to 180,000 words, too much for one book, so I made it into 3 books.
Book One: Epsilon. Book Two: Epsilon City. Book Three: Lizard’s Tooth.
The trilogy is part of a planned series ‘The Spider Wars’. The Forerunner of Lizard World is ‘Outpost Epsilon’, which described events 15 years earlier.
I also designed covers for Book One and Book Two. I don’t know if they will appear on the published book but I enjoyed making them.
The Lizard in Book Two is actually from a picture of an Iguana I took in Mexico. The rest I did in the Paint program with endless patience.