If you are looking for a beautiful, early summer, late spring, fragrant flowering shrub, the Mock Orange is hard to beat. It is one of my favorite flowering shrubs. The fragrance is fairly strong, similar to the strength of lilacs. The smell is pungent and sort of sweet. We have the mock orange planted in a partial shade area. After trimming it up this past winter, it really showed it’s flowers this summer. The mock orange is about 25 feet from our bedroom window. Some evenings when the sun shines on it for a while and the wind is just right, we’ll get a nice filling aroma bringing a wonderful relaxing sensation into our small home.

There are a variety of Mock Orange that will grow in our area, so I am not sure of this exact type. It is either a:

• Philadelphus Coronarius (Sweet Mock Orange)
• Philadelphus Glacier
• Philadelphus Lewisii (Wild Mock Orange)
• Philadelphus Minnesota Snowflake
• Philadelphus Natchez
• Philadelphus Virginal

…so that really doesn’t narrow it down. According to the Sunset Western Gardener’s descriptions, I would say it’s a Philadelphus Coronarius, or the Sweet Mock Orange, due to it’s “cluster’s of flowers” and height of about 10 feet max. We have a couple others around the yard that are very small right now, but as we continue to build soil, water, and fertilize with organic options, they will begin to really grow.

Tags: coronarius, fragrant, mock, orange, Philadelphus

First we get the Lilacs in white and purple. The fragrance is amazing! You get nice wiffs of it through the house on the warmer days. After the Lilac flowers are beginning to die back the Plum Tree’s white blossoms show. They don’t last too long. After the Plum blossoms, this yellow rose booms out of the yard and down the rock wall. The flowers don’t have a real fragrance to them, but they are just beautiful in the early morning and especially in the evening. The kind of glow out of the green back drop. About 2 months after these roses pass, we’ll be sharing our plums with everyone. What a great cycle!

P.S. This yellow climbing rose is either a Garden Sun, Golden Showers, or a Royal Gold according to Sunset’s Western Gardener.

Tags: buds, climbing, rose, yellow

I was sent a nice read from the New York Times Freakonomics section by a friend of mine. So I thought I would share it. Made my brain twist a little bit more about law in our country.

Unintended Consequences
By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT

“One year from today, a new president moves into the White House. This president will be eager to carry out any number of plans — including, surely, plans to help the segments of society that most need help. Extending a helping hand, after all, is one of the great privileges and responsibilities of the presidency.

But before charging ahead with such plans, the new president might do well to first ask him- or herself the following question: What do a deaf woman in Los Angeles, a first-century Jewish sandal maker and a red-cockaded woodpecker have in common?”

Read the Whole Article

Tags: bad, government, laws, people

After a few weeks of working on the “secure” area for the chickens, it’s finally done. It is about 30×15 feet in size, so the chickens get a bigger area than our bedroom. They seem to like it well enough.

I built it out of 50% reused materials from around the yard. It took a while to decide where in the yard to put them. I generally like to have the animals closer to the house, that way I can hear if anything is going on. We decided to put the chicken run and house about 250 feet from the back deck. Not as close as I’d ideally like it, but it’s a level spot with a good sun shade ratio.

I started off by pulling 6, 8 foot railroad ties out of the old fence and digging holes a couple feet deep to drop them into. They stand out of the ground about 6′. After packing the decomposed granite (DG) around them really well, they are firmly rooted in the ground. Then I put some 2×4’s around the top of the railroad ties, and one through the center. I treated these with Lifetime Wood Treatment. The 2×4’s really firmed up the whole enclosure. We then pulled the chicken wire tight around the outside and stapled it into place for the time being. I then dug a 1′ deep trench around the entire outside of the enclosure. This trench has the chicken wire down in it with a pipe attached to the bottom and rubble like bricks, cement and rocks piled on top.

After I got the wire and pipe down in the trench and back-filled it with the rubble, I shoveled all the dirt back on top and stamped it down really well. It turned out really well, and doesn’t look bad at all.

Under the gate I put a large 4×12 with chicken wire wrapped around it. It is securely screwed into both posts the gate hooks on. Once the wire was pulled tight and buried, it was time to put the top on. A friend of ours gave us a large quantity of chicken wire that we unwound and strung over the top. Once again, we stapled one side and pulled it over to the other as tight as we could. I have since put 1×4’s that we have been given on all the stapled areas. This will keep any of the wire from slipping. Hopefully, even with the weight of some snow on it.

The gate took a little longer than the rest of the coop. Most of the railroad ties angles are not square and the old Cedar post I found to use for the other side of the gate, well, it wasn’t square either. In any case the gate turned out great. I even put in a mini door for the chickens to use. This keeps the deer out of their scratch and water.

The gate is made out of 2×4’s that I purchased. I used some old larger hinges I found around the yard. I bought some large wood screws with a hex head and drilled them through the hinges into the railroad tie. It’s bomber. The mini door is super great too. It’s like the little door on Willy Wonka. I used the same screws to hold it down, it’d take a large animal to break in. So I hope. For latches I used a self catching latch for the bottom and a slide bolt type latch for the top. I put a string from the bottom gate latch to the top latch that can be easily pulled to unlatch the bottom latch. How about that latching?

Overall the gate swings easily, latches well, the chickens use the mini door, and they are fully secured within. We can now take a couple extra days on our camping trips. I feel fine leaving the chickens within this enclosure. Before, they would fly over the fence and we’d find them in trees at night. Below is a picture of the finished product. If you have any questions or would like to know any details, feel free to contact us.

Tags: chicken, coop, enclosure, fenced, secure

This is a picture of our pet and egg provider Hen-a-C, the Australorp Chicken. We have 2 Australorp hens. They are Great Chickens! Read more about Australorps.

Tags: australorp, chicken, egg, kind, lol, loving

Click on image for a very large image.

Tags: blue, columbine, flower, pastel

We have a lot of Iris’ around our place. This past fall we disturbed the majority of them in order to get some flowers to show. The majority of Iris’ we have are the perennial Bearded Iris (Iris Germanica). Iris are a rhizome, so cutting the roots is OK, and actually enchorage to a certain extent. The best time to divide them is in August or so around Northern California. Iris’ prefer a slightly acidic soil with a pH around 7. If you have heavy rainfall in your area, make sure your bed drains well, as Iris do prefer a more well draining soil. If you don’t have very good soil, get some good organic potting soil or amendment, double dig an area and lay the rhizome on top. They don’t need to be covered much, if at all. Actually, they won’t grow any flowers, only green leaves, if they are too deep in the ground.

In an old house we lived in a few years back, there were some old Iris’ that never bloomed while we were there, the year before we left I took a shovel and dug all around them, then gave them some BioSol. Bam! We had flowers in June. Below are a couple pictures from our Iris’ that are blooming now.

Tags: acidic, bearded, germanica, iris, well drained

We Weed the Other Half. We did this little experiment to see if the chickens take care of weeds better than we can. All last winter we left the chickens in half the garden. We did this for two reasons, one to keep them fenced in a safe spot when we left for a couple days, and two in order to see if they would fertilize and weed the garden well. From what my wife has said, the weeds on the chickens half of the garden are harder to pull out. I’d have to agree. The root is just really set on the grass and other unwanted greens.

As for the fertilizer, I think spreading the chicken manure out as we clean the coop is just as effective. On a positive note, I haven’t seen many bugs at all in the garden. No cutworms or the like. They do the work in that aspect. Next fall we’ll let them fatten back up in the annual section again as everything begins to die back and go farrow.

Tags: Chickens, Garden, weed