April Fool's Seeds Garden

 Back in April, well exactly April 1st, I opened an email from Adaptive Seed Company. They were offering a one day only deal. Floor Sweepings Seeds were available for $4.01 and not only would the purchasers get a seed packet of "floor sweeping" one would also receive a coupon for $4.01 off the next purchase. Well...I was all over that. Was it real, was this April Fools Fun, real seeds swept up fro the floor after a busy day packing seeds, or was it truly a joke and one would only get the coupon. I guessed there would be real seeds involved and I was right. I love a good mystery and experimental gardening so I ordered my floor sweepings right away. The seeds, and coupon, soon arrived and there was a wonderful mix of seeds. Some I could easily identify and others not so much, especially all the teeny, tiny seeds!

I planted a large selection of the seeds in seed starting pots and put them under our grow lights where we had already started many seeds such as tomatoes, peppers, flowers, etc.. Soon all Sorts of little seedlings emerged. 

 Mostly the seedlings were kept in the house but on warm enough days I moved them all to the little greenhouse to acclimate to the outdoors.

In late May I planted them all in the ground in specific places so I could monitor the plants and see just what we got from the floor sweepings mix.

In early June we were already eating from the April Fool's seeds, all sots of lettuce, spinach, chard and amaranth greens. By late June we see full grown Marigolds, Sunflowers about to bloom- giant and smaller, zinnias coming along and probably more flowers. As for veggies we have the already mentioned greens plus celery, a tomato plant, peppers, corn, a couple beets, runner beans (one plant!), possible Brussels sprout plant (I think), fennel, onion or bunching onion, a cucumber or squash plant, so many kinds of greens and a few things I still haven't identified. There's a lot of amaranth and I'm using some greens now but will also use the grain seeds when they are ready.

All this and there is still round two to come. I still had LOTS of the assorted, tiny seeds that didn't get started indoors. I started them in a couple more places a week or two ago. I'll separate and transplant as needed as they grow.  

I really hope the seed company offers something like this again next year!

A Year of Dog Walks! April 17, 2023-April 17, 2024

 Last year, about this time, I challenged myself to walk a dog every single day for a whole year. With 3 dogs I take a lot of dog walks but not every, single day! I really don't like winter so I knew that would be HARD. 

I did it.

April 17, 2023-April 17, 2024. 

My count started before April 17 but I didn't chronicle it until then and wasn't 100% sure I didn't skip a day so I had to go with April 17th as the start date. I was pretty upset about early April when I could have been done but wasn't because we had two big winter storms. 

And it's leap year so that added a day. 

 And I'm kinda sick, so many germs going through the school.

And I'm tired but next week is April break  so a week off from school (work).

I gave up on blogging it every day but took at least one picture every day. More than 50% of the dog walks were 2 miles or over. A few were less than a mile but not by much. Sometimes all three dogs went, more than half of the walks were just 1 dog and I rotated by day. Sometimes I did three consecutive walks of 1 dog each on the same day. Sometimes family members joined. I don't think anyone joined me for most of winter! 

No big, fantastic year in a post just today and it happened to be Dartha's turn.

Mission Accomplished.

Goal met.

I can do hard things.

Done :). 

Canines and Other Critters

Lots of walks in August, not lots of blog posts.

 

A Week or so of Wagging Walks and a Visiting Seagull

 

I Spy a Little Bit of Beach- dog walk

 The flooding took the beach away for a couple weeks but finally some beach is coming back as the water recedes. Lots of folks were out and about on the lake walk and wanted to chat. I think everyone is happy the flooding problems are over.

The Lake is Back- but First a Scary Adenture! Dog Walks

 The lake is back, the flooding is over, the sun has been out, the bacteria from the flooding is gone. Of course we didn't know this until noontime so for an early morning walk I took Dartha and Willow just to the beach and back then took Comet on a long walk. 

Willow and Dartha short walks, beautiful sunny morning.

Comet likes a long walk, I decided to take him up to the far northern end of the lake, maybe a mile and a half walk. I thought he wanted a drink at a wet spot off the side of the road, this was past where we usually walk. It looked like this picture below, very innocent.

It WASN'T innocent it was unexpected. (The pictures above were taken later in the moment it was kinda awful).

Comet went for it, he didn't go to take a drink he dove in....and disappeared! It all happened so fast, his head came up but then went down. What on earth was this? I grabbed his harness and yanked as hard as I could and pulled him out of this  black hole or whatever it was. It was so scary. You couldn't tell it was so deep just right there not far from the road. Comet is at least 90 pounds, I'm not huge, in the moment I panicked but pulled and got him out. Anyway looking at the spot on the way back it was a culvert where water goes under the road. It was so full of lake weeds the depth was not obvious and it was just a sharp drop. There was nothing for Comet to grab on to when he went in, trying to garb pulled him into the culvert, tunnel thing. I don't know I'm still in shock and this was over 12 hours ago. He is fine, we walked to the original destination, I let him jump in near the bridge because he was already soaked anyway and I would bath him when we got home. 

Comet swimming in a safer spot.

We went home I washed him off, he was fine, I was still a bit shocked. We ot the good news that the beach near us was cleared for swimming and through the afternoon we took full advantage of it. I went for a quick swim to celebrate and calm down. At the end of the day we took the dogs for a good old fashioned lake walk and swim. It really threw us off having the lake be a no swim zone for a week and a bit.