Spring came and so did the peonies. Or at least the peonies that came with the house. The transplants from my godmother's house fire debacle survived being transplanted and their first winter (or second? 2021 and 2020 just feel like one long year) but did not bloom in any way whatsoever. I'm feeling slightly pessimistic about their doing any better this coming spring, but I'm happy to be surprised/proved wrong.
Okay, so now we're in early September when my friends came from Asheville and Toronto respectively for what I now think of as being a very restorative and fun visit. This is the Asheville friend's son and Hippo. Little people are such wonderful creatures most of the time.
I've taken to rounding up my meals maybe once or twice a month and just posting them to Instagram or FB. I've always been a fairly ambitious home cook, and the pandemic certainly has pushed me to figure out how to make a number of things...and perhaps even without the pandemic, my rural location/total lack of delivery or very interesting restaurants nearby would have pushed me in this direction. Here's a grilled steak with asparagus and green salad/beets/feta probably. I also have tried my hand at a few Chinese dishes, mainly a few key dim sum treats and some form of a sesame/ish Tofu.
This would obviously be funnier/make more sense if it was grouped with the other selfies with text, but as I said at the start, I'm not messing around with re-ordering things. Note that the hair is purple whenever this was. Summer? Spring maybe.
I planted some extra daffodil and tulip bulbs that made the spring of 2021 even more delightful. Their's is a short but prolific season.
One goal I had for 2021 was to put in a proper floor in the shed. I was introduced to a man named F. by my neighbor, who was more than happy to help me in this endeavor. I had not anticipated that he'd cut such massive holes in the shed to allow for the concrete to be poured, but thankfully he put things back well enough. Fun facts about F. He is 72 and was born and raised in Florida. How exactly he came to Grayson is not clear, but he lived here full-time for a while before going back to Florida and marrying his second (maybe third) wife. They are 7th Day Adventists. He, back in the day, participated in guerilla warfare somewhere in South or Central America...but not for any government or shadow government. We share a love of British mysteries. For a six-month period when he was living in the gulf coast area of Florida, he smoked weed...but not any more. He was afraid he might get addicted. It was very cool to see the concrete being poured, and I helped with prep and spread.
This is not necessarily the best photo of a tomato horn worm in the world, but this specific finding/sighting was memorable because I literally didn't see the motherfucker for MINUTES and when I did, I yelled holy shit so loud my nearest neighbors (strangely enough, also 7th Day Adventists) most certainly could have heard me and tsk tsked.
Just beautiful Birdie taking a wee lil nap.
Fresher purple hair.
My house is unfortunately a little small for multiple guests. Thankfully the Canadian contingent are hard core campers and flew in with their own roof and bedding (which I supplemented as it gets a lil chilly in early fall in the mountains). The Asheville fam got my bedroom and bed, and I was on the sofa bed in the living room. Didn't work out badly at all, especially since we were all hanging out almost exclusively outside until bed time. This was as K. broke down the tent at the end of their visit and lil man C. seemed to be doing some kind of magic.
In July I headed to TN to see my father and to see OH relatives. The OH crew was numerous and had rented a lake house about 30/40 ish minutes from where dad lives. One afternoon everyone came to dad's for a BBQ hang out.
A jar of pickled hot peppers and jalapenos from my garden. Refrigerator pickled, that is. I must have already erased the photos I had of the tomato jam I also made and refrigerated, or the 7 (count 'em SEVEN lol) pints of tomatoes I properly canned. It was my first real canning experience, and I do plan on being far more efficient and productive this coming season (will be buying jars and lids in the next couple of weeks so I don't have to deal with the supply shortages that inevitably take place in this area).
Purple 2.
Neighbor up the road has lots of horses and has been very kind and friendly to me. I stopped by at some point last spring to see this maybe 4-day old foal? I love the idea of having horses, but not the $$ etc. of them, so I make do with the occasional walk on his property (with his permission) to say hello to one of his 20+ horses.
Just hanging out on the kitchen floor, as you do.
We've had two fairly proper snows this winter. This was from just a few weeks back. My Honda Fit still isn't free of the snow/the driveway hasn't fully melted. I am very glad I had the common sense to move the Suburban up the hill, as its 4WD came in handy when getting in an out of the very icy/slippery driveway. It's mostly all mud up there now.
I got about three really properly big watermelons this year. This was the one we cut open whilst the friends were in town.
There's a beaver dam not too far from my house. Like, really close. During the warmer months it was quite an attraction, lots of folks driving very slowly along the road just by the dam to see if they could see them. Best time is dusk/twilight.
In addition to seeing the Asheville folks in the fall, they joined me for part of my week at Edisto Beach.
I think Hippo has a Winston Churchill vibe in this photo.
My first garden year, I didn't mess with planting beans. Which was a total rookie mistake that was remedied in 2021. Here I am with my bean crown.
This Sussex hen took to trying to kick me out of my morning coffee spot for a couple of days because she had decided it was where she liked to lay eggs. Guess who won that territorial fight...it was me.
Aforementioned watermelon was chosen and picked by lil guy C.
I rarely eat at the squirrel table in my kitchen that originally was in my childhood home. The first pandemic summer, I took to making creatures from my daily garden harvests and continued that tradition in 2021. For a while in the first winter, I did a lot of puzzles on it. Now I've found a new evening hobby that totally supplanted my love of puzzles.
I hadn't been back to Ohio since my departure in 2019, and when I heard that my cousin's husband A. was turning 50 and they were having a party, I decided it was time to go on up and be at that party, which I did in November. This photo looks like there wasn't a party, but there was a party with multiple people and pizza and lots of pitchers of beer. I think it's the most normal pre-Covid thing I've done.
Just a chicken on a fence.
Concrete floor all spread out. F. grumbled he didn't make it smooth enough...but considering how dirt/uneven the whole thing was prior, I'm still chuffed about it. The flooring motivated me to get some of the junk I inherited with the property totally OUT, and allowed for me to finally get a freezer, which is now chock full of all kinds of treats. Mostly meat. But also summer gazpacho and corn and garlic scape pesto.
More of my tomatoes suffered from aphids or squash beetles or my own ineptitude this year, but with 30+ plants planted, I still got good hauls. I don't know what on earth I was thinking when I planted 7 hot banana pepper plants (other than the starter packs came in 6 so I planted them all). I did not need that many hot banana peppers. Meanwhile I only planted 3 okra plants, and so never got a critical mass harvested at one time. Shishito peppers and poblano peppers are my favorite.
A misty morning.
The original rooster that came as a 'freebie' with my chick order turned out to be a Polish breed...which unfortunately meant that within a year the hens murdered him. Well, pecked him to death because he was different looking. My aforementioned neighbor eventually convinced me to take one of his extra roosters, but I think this was taken when it was an all-girl flock.
Lil harvest basket.
Spoiler alert. Kind of? I don't know. Just about two weeks ago I forgot to lock the chickens up for the night. Honestly, I'd forgotten a number of times in the past with no bad outcome...and yet I also knew that was just luck/I was playing with preda-fire. So it was a bummer to go out one morning and find that some murderous event had taken place in the night. One headless chicken's body was out in the open while two others were missing. Eventually, after walking around the area a bit more thoroughly I found one hen's head and the bodies of the other two. When the last of the snow melts I'll look for the other heads/body. Best guesses are fox, raccoon or mink....but root cause was my negligence. So now it's a flock of 7 hens and two roosters. At one point I was getting about 9 eggs a day, which was nuts...so maybe now that the number is lower and they're older, I won't be as awash in eggs.
Spring.
Took everyone on a walk of the woods. In this photo we were where I'd like to build a tiny house to potentially rent out or have as an overflow for guests. My hand is standing in for the roof of such a house.
At the beach.
Bean mustache.
Every once and a while I'll buy a cantaloupe or other fruit from the grocery store just to give the chickens a little treat. They are very into it.
We had a fire one night. The first outdoor fire for the boy. He got to stay up past his bed time, have smores and was transfixed by the flames. Unfortunately his parents had told him a lot about all the stars they'd see at my place, but on this particular night it was overcast so that wasn't quite accomplished.
I've gotten really into flowers that I grow myself. I went hard for zinnias in the garden and was frequently rewarded.
Two hens went broody in the spring to middling results. One gave up without having hatched any. The other managed to hatch two...neither one genetically hers I don't think - they had the coloring of their dad/a Wyandotte. Both survived until the recent killings. Unfortunately the new girl, who had just started laying, was one of the fallen while the rooster remains. I feel bad about the whole thing, but I'm especially saddened/regretful because I had planned on killing the rooster for soup but had held off so he would be a friend to the hen, as the two of them were certainly the lowest ranked in the pecking order. He still is, but now I'm down an egg layer. I'm not sure if my logic or thinking on this is clear. Oh well.
I added more dahlias to my dahlia patch with a pretty good result. Also, unpictured, gladiolas. They are so pretty!
Things that weren't accomplished include getting the pasture fenced. This was mainly not my fault. The previous year's fencing people and I had discussed them returning and I called to confirm...but they only got back to me weeks later saying they were booked for the year. Finding anyone to do anything around here is always a challenge. So I'm hoping they'll be able to help me this spring with the pasture/maybe pig woods project.
View of my neighbors' wood pile/burn.
Geraniums in the morning. With chickens.
Other than a second infestation of termites in the spring (totally different location), the biggest ongoing house stress was a leak in the roof. It started in the bedroom and was terrifying so I called a roofer who came out and put some sealant on a few places and left. When I skeptically asked what I should do if that didn't work, he told me to get more sealant and do it myself. Which is....uh...not really ideal and also, what I did. So the leak moved from the bedroom to the bathroom and formed this nightmare water pimple.
Again, these selfies might have been more entertaining in the proper order but meh.
I took the OH crew to a waterfall while we were all in TN. Lady R. (on the left) and her pal generally enjoyed it though getting to it involved some steep bit and some super slippery bits that made everyone slightly stressed.
Hippo loves this neighbor dog. He doesn't come by unless with his owner, but the two of them are very good playmates.
I made the shed porch a much better 'hang spot' this summer.
I spent numerous spring and summer late afternoons and evenings listening to music and reading every single one of Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache novels. Sometimes the chickens would join me.
Another very recent snow dog pic.
Ha ha...and sometimes I give the chickens raspberries in the husks of their prior cantaloupe treats.
Flower power.
Beach bird.
They look so sad/alarmed. But they are generally happy dogs and act as an often unnecessary alarm system. Don't worry! If a neighbor slams their car door within half a mile of our house, I'll know!
Phew. Well. That's it. That's 2021.
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