Category Archives: gardening

Father’s Day present

Posted on by

Last weekend Michele and I went with the kids to some nearby garden centers to look for hanging baskets for the front porch. We found a place called Ritchie’s Greenhouse near Muncie that had fantastic plant stock, some of the nicest I have ever seen. And, just about everything was on sale. Needless to say, I got pretty excited. To my surprise, Michele also got excited and told me to just go ahead and purchase whatever I liked. I’m like a kid in the candy shop when it comes to garden plants! We settled on four beautiful hanging baskets filled with apple blossom begonias, each mixed with spike plant and cascading ivy for contrast. We also bought several large-sized perennials such as daylilies, delphiniums, russian sage (I’ve always wanted one of those!), and lupines. I love lupines because they remind me of the South Island of New Zealand where they grow in wild profusion in the foothills of the Southern Alps, near Mt. Cook. (Anyone who has seen the recent Lord of the Rings movies will remember the gorgeous mountain scenery in the movies. Those scenes and backdrops are mostly the Southern Alps of New Zealand.) We also bought some annuals like spider flower (cleome) and some lovely wave petunias.

On the way home, with a van full of plants, I was on a “high.” That’s when Michele told me, “Guess what, that’s your Father’s Day present!” What a great idea!

Oh to have a well kept garden…

Posted on by

As I sit here at the computer, next to me is the screen door to the back yard. I am listening to the comforting sounds of birds twittering their evening songs. I look outside and it is a beautiful sight with the sun’s glow illuminating a patch of purple/blue irises in full bloom. The weather is near perfect, no wind and about 70 degrees. Closer to the house, though, all I see is a mess. The front garden that I planted last year is a mess of weeds with some brave flowers struggling to bloom already. The back flower garden is the same, and everywhere in-between is chaos. I bought a tiller four weeks ago and have yet to unpack it, put it together, and till up the large vegetable garden near the back of our property. Oh to have a well kept garden…

Father’s Day

Posted on by
Reply

Lots of things have happened since my last entry. For one thing, this past weekend was fairly relaxing. Father’s Day was restful, and I enjoyed it. Michele and the kids took me out to Red Lobster for supper, and then Michele made a special Mexican dish tonight that I had requested. It was a new recipe from Rick Bayless’s cookbook and it was VERY good! Samantha, our adopted kitten, has grown quite a bit. The weather has been unusually cool but today it was hot and humid. We’re looking forward to upcoming trips. There are a lot of perennials that I have to plant that we’ve bought at garden centers at a discount. I finally finished installing the new perennial border in the front yard and it looks very nice. The vegetable garden has been a disappointment because the five rows of beans I planted never sprouted, plus rabbits ate the peppers and some of the cabbages, and the cucumbers got to dehydrated. The tomatoes look like they’ll survive, but not much else. We’re looking forward to hopefully getting our van back from collision repairs tomorrow.

Garage sale

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday was an incredibly busy day, as Michele helped to manage a garage sale at our house while I attended commencement as part of Taylor’s faculty in the a.m. and did some work in the garden in the p.m. The garage sale proceeds all go to MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers). Michele is on the leadership team for the local group. The sale netted about $365, which was really good. Fortunately Taylor’s commencement was held outside in the stadium, rather than in the unairconditioned gym. It was a beautiful, although windy, day. I got a good sunburn on my face, sitting there for hours. Taylor graduated more people (over 400) this year than any other year in its 157 year history. The keynote speaker was Ravi Zacharias, one of my favorite Christian apologists. His son, Nathan, was graduating this year from Taylor. I was really pleased to get many things planted in the vegetable garden, including bush beans, two different kinds of tomato (Goliath and Beefeater), red and yellow pepper plants, and jalapeno and habanero peppers. I have cucumber plants to put in today or tomorrow, plus I hope to put in some corn and some other things. I also planted some nice hollyhocks on the side of the garden shed that faces the house. They should be really pretty when in bloom later this summer. Unfortunately, Brinley got pretty sick last night after being outside all day yesterday. We think she may have the croup, although we hope it isn’t something worse. Michele hardly got any sleep last night because she was listening to Brinley’s breathing, which was labored at times. We heard yesterday that my sister-in-law, Linda, was able to go home from the hospital, which is good news. She is very weak and is still experiencing some bleeding but otherwise is better. One other piece of good news is that someone who stopped at our garage sale took one of the four remaining kittens.

Feral kittens

Posted on by
Reply

Well, our family has grown by four. I discovered that a feral cat had a litter of six kittens in our garden shed. As of this afternoon she was nowhere to be seen and two of the kittens had disappeared, so we made the difficult decision to take the remaining four inside and try to raise them. They are about three weeks old at most, and barely have their eyes open. One is all black, two are brown tabby in color, and one is black with white markings. Michele and I are both allergic to cats so are we insane, stupid…you name it? Go figure. Now we’ve got four kittens to feed every three to four hours. Gluttons for punishment, that’s what we are. We heard good news today about my sister-in-law, Linda. I spoke with her husband, my brother, Tim, this evening. He said she’s doing better. The baby is ok although located near the cervix rather than near the top of the womb as it should be. I saw a new bird at the bird feeders, a gray catbird. That was kind of exciting. I didn’t sleep much last night so am pretty tired and hoping tonight will be different.

Gardening projects

Posted on by
Reply

I was feeling better yesterday so decided to tackled some gardening projects. It was a bit of a mistake as I feel worse today, but oh well. I finally got the area around the bushes in the front of our house cleaned up and tilled. I also tilled the perennial bed that has been in the works for umpteen months, although the ground was really too wet still. We went to Menard’s and Meijer’s last night to get a load of mulch as well as flats of impatiens and lobelia to plant in the front around the bushes. It should look really nice when we’re done. I love gardening and am happy to have been able to get some of it done even in spite of the wet weather. I only hope there will be a dry spell soon so that I can till the large ground in the far back of our yard where we want to plant vegetables. It makes me envious that others of our neighbors have already planted and their vegetables are sprouting. One of the tensions to having little children is that there isn’t a lot of time to do some of these things without overburdening Michele with caring for them, which she does most of the time. She is an outstanding mother. This a.m. by some miracle, all of the children are still in bed and it’s after 9a!!!! Hallelujah, long may it last ;-) Wait a minute, I rejoice too soon…I hear Tristan’s voice on the stairs…Sigh. I don’t think we’ll be going to church for yet another week because Tristan has been sick and my cold has devolved into a bad cough. I don’t want to miss any more work. This afternoon we need to make room in the garage for garage sale items that others are bringing over for next weekend’s garage sale.

Kid news

Posted on by
Reply

Last night I was able to get the lawn mowed after several days’ delay, which was a good feeling. Keegan had his first try at driving the lawnmower and had fun with that. He did a good job of mowing a couple of rows! He discovered a couple of small bird’s eggs which I’m sure came from the mourning dove nest in one of our trees. Unfortunately I think the high winds and stormy weather destroyed the nest completely because there is no sign of it anywhere. I have this a.m. off from work because I am planning to work the reference desk at the library tonight. I had hoped to rent a garden tiller to till our garden but there simply hasn’t been time, plus I only have the minivan and most tillers are too big to fit into the back of it. Looks like more rain is on the way [sigh]. Keegan’s year-end band concert is tonight and Michele and I are not certain how she will be able to go with both kids. I can’t go because I have to work, which I really regret. We both really want to go to see Keegan perform and do not want to disappoint him. He has improved a lot this past year in his ability to play the saxophone. He is also a very good reader now — a huge improvement over a few years ago. He read the third Harry Potter book from cover to cover in just a few days. Tristan was playing outside while Michele and Keegan were weeding some of the front garden beds alongside the driveway, when he hurt himself by trying to ride Keegan’s skateboard. He scraped his upper lip and nose pretty badly after it banged into his face. Brinley is starting to make concerted efforts to “go places” under her own steam. She just started this within the past week and she’s already progressing a lot. I think she’ll be crawling soon, and then nothing will be safe anymore!

Quiet, Daddy

Posted on by
Reply

I was looking out the window toward our backyard one day recently, when I noticed movement near the door to our garden shed. I thought at first that it was just the groundhog again, the one that lives under the shed. But when I looked more closely, I could see some different colors and knew that it wasn’t the groundhog. I decided to walk out there and take a closer look. To my surprise, as I got near the shed, I could see that it was two little kittens, one gray and the other black and white, playing just outside the door. They were no more than a month old, I’d guess. When they finally saw me, they both scurried away into hiding. Now I know that we have a family of wild cats living in the shed, in addition to the groundhog! Keegan is now learning to play the alto saxophone, and seems to be enjoying it a lot. His first band concert will be in early December. Tristan continues to run around the house with tremendous energy. He doesn’t like it when he can’t keep me in sight, though. He gets very upset when I am not here. Brinley is putting on weight, and her skinny little legs are filling out! Michele says she takes after my side of the family because she makes lots of funny noises. A few days ago, I was joking around with Keegan and Tristan while they were having breakfast, singing silly songs. Tristan finally said to me in a shaking-his-head-at-my-stupidity tone of voice: “Quiet, Daddy!” Yesterday, I heard from our lawyer that the appropriate court papers had finally been filed in support of my adoption of Keegan. The next step will be a visit from the state department of child and family services. I am very glad that after several months of frustrating wait, things are finally moving along. Yesterday, we got a package from my sister, Becky, in New Zealand. It included a gift for Brinley and a letter with some photos of her family. It was great to hear from her! I often regret that we live so far away. Her children are nearly full grown now and it is sad that I have missed most of their growing up period.

A beautiful Fall day

Posted on by
Reply

It’s a beautiful, fall day here in Indiana. Michele and I agree that this area is very pretty in the fall, with the narrow country roads, abundant trees, and the corn and soybeans waiting to be harvested. There is a lot of undeveloped land here, and that means that there is wide variety of wildlife. As far as we know, the woodchuck is still burrowed beneath our garden shed, and lots of birds come to drink from our little goldfish pond each morning. I need to start filling up the birdfeeder again so that they will get used to feeding there. Last night Michele and I had a better night’s sleep, although Tristan did his usual routine of coming into bed with us in the middle of the night. Brinley slept pretty well. Mother is leaving today to go back home and get some much needed rest! Michele’s mom and her brother, Bryan, will be coming to stay for a while on Sunday, so we look forward to that.

Wild Kingdom at the Obergs

Posted on by
1

We’ve had some interesting wildlife sightings of late…A week or so ago, Michele and I were in the family room watching TV when we suddenly noticed that a raccoon had walked up to the screen door and was pressing its face against the screen, calmly staring at us for several seconds before disappearing. Then two nights ago as I was letting Sarah (the dog) out for her late night constitutional, my attention was drawn to a large shadow, just beyond the reach of the floodlight. I suddenly realized it was a large buck, frozen in stillness in the middle of our backyard. He hesitated for just a few more seconds before disappearing swiftly and in total silence into the darkness. Wow, that was a heart-pounding moment! I think he may have been on his way to sample our vegetable garden or something. Fortunately, Sarah never even knew he was there. Also, we have a large, fat groundhog living under our garden shed. He (or she) will appear occasionally, standing as tall as he can to see if there is any danger, before going back into his hole. One time I came within just a few feet of him before he realized my presence and scurried down his hole. Finally, about three weeks ago while working on the computer, my attention was drawn to a lot of birds flying around in the backyard in obvious agitation. When I looked out the window, to my astonishment, I noticed that a huge old crow with a white streak on its head had seized a fledgling robin, almost full grown, and was busy killing and eating the poor thing. Despite being mobbed by tons of other birds (not just robins), he calmly stood there on the ground, eating his fill until he was done. He then flew away. It’s Wild Kingdom at the Obergs!