Fall? Is That You?

I may have caught a glimpse of Fall yesterday morning when I took the pups for their morning walk around the pond. There was a light breeze and practically no humidity, and the sky had that Fall look about it. You know, when the angle of the sun has changed just a smidgen and the light looks different somehow than it does in the Summer sky.

It's hard to judge here on the Island about Fall. We have mostly water oaks and pine trees and it stays pretty green here year round, which means no Fall colors, which kinda sucks. I miss Fall colors.

Anyway, today that has all changed. It's 90 degrees and Mr. Humidity has taken up residence again. It's overcast and looks like we may get some rain. That's a good thing because it means we won't have to dip water from the pond for the garden. So, I guess Summer is not ready to give up quite yet. But if I were her I would keep an eye on my rear-view mirror, because I'm pretty sure Fall is sneaking in behind her.

How Does My Garden Grow?

For the past two weeks I've been after my husband to till up an area for a fall garden. Now, my poor husband has about a bazillion things on his to-do list, but this past Saturday, when I came home from my Day Job, he had tilled me up a nice big area for a garden.  I could hardly wait for Monday so Teen Daughter and I could hit the garden center for just a few plants to get us started. Only something happened when we got to the garden center. I didn't just buy a few. When I saw all those beautiful flats of vegetable plants, I may have gotten just a wee bit carried away. Let's just say that I was relieved that we could fit them all into the wayback of the Jeep. We had to fold down the back seats to do it, but they fit. To make matters worse, on our way home I realized that we had forgotten to buy kale (btw: kale is NOT a Yankee green!), so we stopped at Ace and I bought some of that too. 

Monday evening after supper, my husband and our daughter and I went out to our new garden and planted: 78 collard plants, 64 cabbages, 48 cauliflower plants, 48 broccoli, and 24 kale. THATS 262 PLANTS PEOPLE!

Yep, I would say that I got just a wee bit carried away.

Of Ponds and Turtles

When my husband and I first bought our 4 and 1/4 acres, before our house was set, we spent every spare moment we could on our land. Cutting grass, fishing in one of our 3 ponds, or just sitting in the shade and looking at OUR LAND, we enjoyed every moment we could here.

In that first month it became evident that our front pond had turtles. One turtle, in particular was humongous! Now in turtle, humongous = ancient and this guy had to be closing in on the 100 year mark. We promptly named him Abraham.

A month later, Hubby started the task of cleaning out the pond with a mini excavator. While the looks of the pond greatly improved, we were sad to note that Abraham seemed to have "flew the coop", so to speak. We figured that the noise had been too much and he had crawled on over to one of the other ponds or ditches in the area.

After what has seemed like an eternity, we have gotten settled into our house and are enjoying our little "farm-ette" to be. I have started buying cat food from our Dollar General (also known as the Down-East Walmart) to feed our large population of water turtles. The little shits have gotten pretty used to being fed and actually come when we call them. One that we named ET swims over to us and crawls up on the bank when he hears us. He loves tomatoes. The other day while Teen Daughter and I were feeding them she said, "Mom! What is that"? I looked over to where she was pointing and saw the LARGEST turtle head ever in the middle of the pond. As we watched he surfaced briefly and we caught a glimpse of his huge shell. "Well", I said. "It's either the Loch Ness Monster or Abraham is back".

Welcome back, Abraham. Welcome back.