Making It - Seeing It - Sharing It: July 2012

Reece's Birth Announcement

Back in 2009 my sister and her husband had a baby boy.

I made birth announcement for Garrett and have shown it here several times now.

Then in 2011 they had another boy!

So I made a birth announcement for Reece.

Luckily, my mom still had some of the denim she used to sew the cover for the first one. She happened to also have some fabric that matched the colors perfectly so that made a nice border. She had used the fabric to make a blanket for Reece too. I just noticed the same colors are in Garrett's album.

So everything matches. I like that.

I don't know if she has anymore fabric.

I also don't know if they are done with having kids.

I do know I can make another one.

Just in case.

That was why I started the first one.

Maybe I should start a girly version.

2012 Garden

Last year I had some really big sunflowers in the garden.

I left most of them with the seed heads for the birds.

The stalks survived the winter and even a couple of the volunteer seeds grew up.

I would have gotten rid of them, but I had an idea.

I have lots of ideas.

What if I planted pole beans under the stalks?

Would they vine up? Some of them are figuring out the system.

Some of the bean vines are going a little wild.

I have since tied them with some twine to see if they figure it out.

The rest of my garden is pretty much behind the curve.

I got things planted late.

These are red potatoes. The guys planted white potatoes up on the hill.

I wanted some variety.

These are banana peppers.

Kinda funky looking. I keep trying with them.

In the front bed I have some yellow squash and zucchini. They are small, but growing.

In the back are my tomatoes. The boards are what is left of my old ladder cages. Since we are using the raised beds now, the cages didn't really work. So I took them apart and have been meaning to rebuild them so that they work better with the raised beds. There is my first one in the back. That is a single tomato, the other two piles are two plants each. I really need to get them fixed up. The hole in between them is where the wind ripped two more out of the ground on the 29th.

Maybe before winter I will get some vegetables out of there.

I have fun goofing with the garden. So that works.

Fencing and Dogs

The guys have been working on repairing and upgrading the fence around all of the property to be woven wire with three strands of barb wire. This is the interior and exterior lines, including ours, the BIL's, and the neighbor's since he lets our cows graze that property. That is a lot of fence line and has been a two year project so far. I know if I can't find FabHub he is working on fence somewhere.
Because of the goats all of the fence around our property has also been upgraded to include electric since we want to keep them from sticking their heads through the woven wire and getting stuck. We also want to deter the neighbor dogs from coming under, which has entirely annoyed our dogs too.
They have managed to find away or two of getting out of our house yard to get into the pasture, which isn't really a problem since the goats haven't figured it out yet. I do expect the day to come when I arrive home to find some plants missing and a goat looking at me from the front porch.
All that being said - when Mom's dog comes to visit, because she is a very curious runner who might get lost, we have always had to keep her tied up or in a yard pen. Now that we have all this fence we only need to put a temp gate across the main driveway and she can run all over the place. She loves it.

The problem begins when there is a hole under the fence...