And then there were rabbits...

 I'm skipping a month or so ahead and the arrival of chickens but this fits better following the last post about the garden.

The garden did start growing well, the good soil rich in dark organic compounds gave them a good boost, but their good growth also brought about the introduction of a varmint... rabbits. Now, we had seen rabbits in the yard briefly, along with armadillos and heard raccoons in the woods, but this was the first time they'd interacted with anything we had done. So I went out to check the garden after a heavy rain and wind. The ditch all around the mound was filled with water and the thick clay soil led to more than one slip and at least one curse word as I nearly fell onto to rear. I notice that the sprout plant leaves had been the subject of distinct macerations. The evidence of what had caused this damage was sat blatantly on a log next to the garden. Rabbit poo. 

So it was time to build a fence. Now, at this time I did not have a job, any real tools or cash to buy any wire for the garden. So I had to improvise. 

So I went prehistoric in my skill set and made a wattle fence, I did not make the daub. I'm the burn, well, ex-burn pile there were a collection of reed like poles that had dried out. I pulled a mass of them out of the ground and snapped the muddy ends off over my knee. Making the ground wetter than usual I jabbed a collection in the mud, then began weaving the rest between the poles. It did not look pretty, but it was a fence, about a foot tall.

Looking at the fence, everyone laughed at it. 'The rabbits will just jump over it.' so I defended it, rabbits are lazy and if they can get food without jumping and hunting it they leave it alone. 

How long did it work. Well... Guess who was right...me or them... I'm hoping you've guessed right and said me. The rabbits did not return until one of my boys broke it and did not tell me, but it worked. So a few repairs here and there and it worked. Yay.

Now my onions were growing well they were getting tall and I got asked a simple question that led to a lot of confusion..."Have you fluffed your onions?"

Well, my knowledge of English meant that fluffing is a term from the adult entertainment industry, not that of gardeners. So, I had to ask, "how do you fluff your onions?"

It turns out fluffing your onions is breaking up the soil around the onions so they can grow larger...who knew? Well not me.

On that note, have you fluffed your onions recently?

Clearing up and growing

From the moment you stepped off the small deck at the front of the house we were greeted by an old burn pile. 

The burn pile was where the last people to live here has collected a big pile of crap they didn't want and thought that setting it on fire would get rid of it. Unlike at Vindolanda where the weather stopped the fire from doing it's job and created some great preservation, here stuff didn't burn because... well microwaves don't burn very well.

So I started to clear it out, now I originally started it to just get the eyesore out of the way and make it a bit safer for the kids. But coming back from the woods one day when it was actually cold and I wasn't being eaten alive by the insects, we come out to see the bee uncle with an old tractor tilling a strip on land over.

Now I was confused and went to the father in law to see what was happening. Turned out, in passing, the wife had mentioned my plan of turning the old burn pile area into our Vegetables garden. So they were here making the first garden strip. 

So once the ground was tilled, and broken up ready for planting I set to work digging with the shovel to make the raised rows, my wife was very surprised I knew how to do this. I'm not sure what shocked her though, I mean, I was trained as an archaeologist at University, I know my way around a shovel, I grew up on Norfolk, a farming county in the UK, put the two together and it's not a huge leap that I'd know how to make a row in a garden. But impressed she was.

So the first planting began, onion bulbs, cabbage, red cabbage and potatoes. Time to start growing.

winter walks

We're lucky in that where we live now is a few acres of woodland we can walk through to see nature and hopefully learn how to fish from the bayou. But deciding to go for a walk might not always be a good thing. Now I'm not talking about being worried about the black bear in the area, or a ravenous pack of coyotes, or alligator trudging along...but my personal nemeses.. mosquitos. You see there's a fine line it seems between them hiding and being asleep as it's too cool or warm and awake and very hangry for your blood. I say your blood but basically I think I'm mosquito crack. But I digress let me explain my proof to the my blood is mosquito crack.

As a family we were up and wanting to go for a walk, it was decided at about 8am, I'd gone out and it was nicely cool the sun hadn't warmed all the dew from the grass yet so it was a good sign of mosquitoes being asleep. But if anyone who's ever had small children and trying to read this, they'll understand that 'lets go now' means in small child language 'procrastinate, procrastinate now' so there's lost shoes, toilet breaks, various 'can I take' questions as apparently it's not a walk without a stuffed animal. So we end up leaving nearly an hour later. And it's a little warmer... So the walk begins, it's nice and cool under what's left of the canopy and the boys have sticks and the usual can't see any animals as they're loud and scare everything off, and I begin swatting the mosquitos away... Just me...so that was weird. But we continue the boys are having fun, we make to the back to the bayou and wait for a bit to see if there's any fish bobby to the surface to eat. I'm swatting more mosquitoes. On the way back the start to get bad as it's heating up after being out another thirty or so minutes so the boys begin to run back, and the wife and so do I. We escape out of the woods and it's like a horror movie, we break into the sunlight and the majority of those following stay in the shadows as if their an insectile vampires trying not to be burned by the sun. 

We get inside and that's when we do a bit count, each boy has a couple each, the wife has five or so, and me will I have twenty plus... There is something about my blood that they crave.

It's then that my eldest child pipes in and states 'its only the females that bite'. So great, I'm a ladies man, but to the completely wrong species, and I'm mildly allergic to them.