Random Stuff

 Is this a happy things on Friday post?  Is it a May recap post?  Who knows?  I'm not sure.  Let's find out together!

My irises are beginning to bloom.  I added quite a few new-to-me varieties last year, through trading rhizomes with a friend and through buying some from local and online nurseries.

Many Mahalos

variety unknown, probably very old

ditto

Easter Candy

Locally, schools are wrapping up for the summer.  The district that all my school-aged grandkids attend, and where DD1 teaches at, finished this week. Faline graduated from Kindergarten, and insisted on choosing her own outfit to wear to the celebration in the elementary school gym.  

I've been working a lot on getting the garden planted, including transplanting the plants I started in the house.  While the basil I sewed from (old) seeds didn't grow well, apparently their cup made a handy spot for a grey treefrog to take up residence while the rest of the plants were hardening off pre-transplanting.

strangest looking basil plant I've ever seen

using my 2+ decades old Farm Bureau yardstick to space the tomato plants

DH and I found two spots around the property where there are golden oyster mushrooms growing on old stumps.  They are quite yummy and I've been incorporating them into our dinner menu.

lovely clump of mushrooms

underside

All spring, DH and I have been wanting to have a fire in order to burn some brush and accumulated paper garbage (in the winter we put the 'burn garbage' into the wood boiler, but that has been shut down for a few weeks now that warm weather is here.)  Either it's been too rainy, or too windy, or we've been too busy on the good weather evenings to light the brush pile.  Finally, on Sunday after dinner the wind was calm enough to safely get things lit and burned off.  I took advantage of the 'down time' while watching the fire to do a little knitting on the second sock of the pair I am making for my Dad.

Tis the season for raccoons to become a pest issue.  One morning this week I went out to feed horses and found that my feed room had been pillaged.  Luckily they hadn't gotten into the containers I keep the grain in (due to the nature and placement of the containers), but they did manage to get into one of Crockett and Tubbs' supplement buckets and spill some onto the floor as well as make a mess in their endeavors to get to the food stuffs.  So, out came the live trap.  I baited it with dry cat food (a favorite 'treat' of raccoons) in the hopes of catching the perpetrator that night.

Imagine my surprise the next morning to find I'd gotten a two-fer!  This sometimes happens with a mama coon followed by her young into the trap, but it's the first time we've ever had two full grown raccoons squeeze into the trap close enough together that the door snapped closed on both of them.

Partners in crime?

The trap has been rebaited and set every night, and we have caught five adult coons near the barn, plus one more in the (smaller) live trap I set near the front porch after finding coon manure right in front of my front door.  Rude little buggers!

On the way to Faline's graduation the other afternoon, I had to drive a different way than I usually take due to a road construction detour.  I spied this happy stump on the edge of a field and just had to pull over for a quick photo.