Tuesday, June 26, 2012

A Little Summer Project

OK, so I'm not sure how I got into this one, but some how these things just happen! It only took one weekend to pull this apart....now lets see how long it takes to go back together!


Sunday, June 17, 2012

The weed dragon kills weeds and drove out something???

Hello and happy Fathers Day, so my family got me a weed dragon type of device for Fathers Day, which is great. If your not familiar with the weed dragon, it is basically a long blow torch that attaches to a propane tank and you can use it to roast weeds, which will hopefully kill them off and avoid all of the hand pulling. Well, I got one today and immediately grabbed the propane tank from my BBQ and went to work roasting all of the weeds along my walkway. You definitely need to be careful while using it as it throws off a lot of heat and the flame can get large, but it was very fun to use and really did cook my weeds. Now I'm just hoping they don't come back. I will hoverer still need to pull by hand in the mulched beds because I didn't want to take a chance in catching my house on fire!

After I finished my walkways I decided to take it out to my garden, I roasted everything in the patio area and then walked up and down the pathways roasting the weeds growing on the sides of my raised beds being careful not to get to close to my plants or the soaker hose. Everything I wanted to get rid of cooked up nicely and my wife and I were soon enjoying a cold drink and toasting our success. Then something funny happened, we noticed swarms of fat worms coming out of the sides of the beds, they kind of looked like grubs, except no little feet or mouths, they were closer in appearance to short fat worms....I'm guessing the heat must of drove them out of the soil, but now I'm not sure if these little guys are good or bad....Part of me wants to run to the store and just find something lethal to get rid of them, but another part of me wants to keep things natural and let the beneficial bugs get rid of them, and oh yeah, their is a third part of me still trying to figure out if these things are good for my garden or bad! For now, I had the entire family (wife and kids), picking these guys up with their trowels (we had hundred of them). I collected them all into a bucket and my three chickens had the best buffet of their lives....now I just need to figure out the next steps....any advise is appreciated

Thanks!!!

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

What's in bloom

Couple of shots from around the yard...




This little clump of Zebra grass was almost completely gone a few weeks ago, then I dug it up and moved it to a sunny spot..so far so good



Monday, June 11, 2012

Those really inexpensive boxes of wildflower seeds do work...well kind of

A couple of years ago I bought a box of wildflower seeds for a couple of bucks, literally, $2 and sprinkled it on my back hill. Then I proceeded to completely forget about it and neglect it. This year I noticed some blooms, which really surprised me. I recognize the lupines, but I'm not sure what anything else is









Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Our Neighbors to the North / Niagara Falls

Well, its been a little while since I have updated my blog, partly because I have been doing some traveling and partly because life has just been a bit hectic lately. Here are a few picks from a recent trip to Niagara Falls and Toronto..I'm hoping to get back into the backyard soon and post a couple of updates








Just in case you were thinking about it




Careful crossing the street