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It has been a while since I posted anything to the blog.  Today is a hodge podge day….little bit of everything.

This being a rainy day I have cleaned on the house a little, did some laundry and cooked a couple of casseroles and thawed some meat for some beef barbecue and downloaded 47 photos I have taken with my phone over the last few weeks…

Have not had Condi out for a ride in five or six weeks now….the Poor people group had a ride scheduled for today but cancelled due to the rain….so much for my five miles a week goal.

Rain has messed up all kinds of plans.  I was going to plant 200 plugs of native warm season grass on Friday….was eating breakfast and the weather man on teevee was talking about what a great day it was going to be with no rain in the forecast……. and as he said those words, it was pouring rain outside here….So I went to Ashland to grocery shop and run a few errands and get feed for the horses…Finally about three pm it was dry enough to try to begin cutting grass….the grass was nearly ten inches tall and poor Dee Dee couldn’t squat to pee.  Finally was able to finish cutting grass on Saturday but it took forever because the grass was so heavy and still wet…

A lot of the photos were of Tim’s cows who had calved when I was checking them on the weekends.  I would snap a photo and send it to him.  We had a run of bad luck and lost several calves at birth a few weeks ago and still have not figured out why….lost two sets of twins and that is not so unusual….twins are almost always a pain in the butt…My Faxton heifer had a nice bull calf and I found him dead at about a week of age….not sure what happened to him but I think it was either the heat at the time or a snake bite or both….Joe reported that he had been limping on Friday afternoon and I found him dead on Saturday Morning.  If you are going to raise animals you have to be able to deal with losing one now and then….and it is normally among the best ones…My Xena cow has a pretty Claymont of Wye heifer at her side who will most likely be a keeper.  For those who do not know….Xena is a BIG cow.  The photo of Diva is not very good…she is really a pretty little thing and got the name because of the way she acts….loads of personality and she thinks she is special.

Raising two bulls this year as well….one is my Alap of Wye son out of my CC&7 daughter.  The other is a Red bull belonging to Tim.  These are the first bulls I have raised in several years.  I am really happy with this bull and will use him as a cleanup bull on my cows and the heifers this winter.  Yevette will go to him directly as I have never settled her to an AI service.   Tim’s bull may be for sale in the spring…For my bull it depends on how the baby calves look in the spring and whether there is a replacement bull potential in the calves.

Quite a few photos of my native perennials that I have been planting the last year or two….the coneflowers and blanket flowers have bloomed all summer as well as one of the Shasta daisies,

The beauty berries are really starting to look good…this has been a great year for plant growth….I planted several beauty berries last year and this spring I thought the hard winter had killed several of them last winter, so I bought a couple to replace them…when I went to plant them the older ones had put out new shoots from the roots.  One of the new ones I got from Colesville nursery I really like…It is blooming prolifically in its first year…

Later in the Summer the boss gave me one from her garden and I planted it in the border by the stable.  It has taken hold nicely and has berries developing on it.

I used to plant marigolds and other annuals in this border but have this year pretty much converted it to native perennials.  I am not so good with the names of some of this stuff yet because everybody keeps giving me Latin names and they go in one ear and out my nose apparently….I label them but then the labels fade or get lost…I have this one plant that just started blooming this week and it is covered with tiny white flowers…really pretty.   Have to get Pattie to ID it again for me….cannot find the tag

This is the best of my eastern red columbines…I planted several but this one has the best growth and it is the only one that has bloomed.

Can smell my casseroles all the way upstairs…better go check….they look as good as they smell….cut em off to cool.  One is for supper and the other is going to a pot luck next weekend.  Gonna freeze it until Friday night

Had one of these for supper….and it was good….I have the rest of it for my lunch on Monday…

To cut grass I had to move my 27 plant buckets to cut grass where they are.  I pulled some of the native perennials I had stated from seed and transplanted them to my native gardens.  The Switchgrass I planted last winter from seed is looking pretty good.  It is over five feet tall and is seeding….there is some cool season grass in the buckets as well but I have left it because I do not want to damage the roots of the switchgrass,  I had pulled some switchgrass out while pulling out orchardgrass in the spring, and I think the switchgrass will crowd it out….I have a bucket of eastern Gamma Grass as well but one of the heifer stuck her head thru the fence and grazed it off to about 6 or 8 inches.  I think it will come back okay.

While moving stuff and cleaning up I planted one each in buckets for demonstration portability of Indiangrass, little Bluestem, Big Bluestem and switchgrass.

I also had four buckets that I cleaned up and put some of the soil primer seed mix I got from Green Cover in just to see what I get.

And these are the 196 native warm season grass plugs that will not go in the ground now until next week end.   I have a few spots where I am going to put them that need another dose of herbicide to knock back the weeds before I can plant them but I cannot do that today because it is still raining…