Happy Thanksgiving weekend

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! We drove to the Phoenix area to have Thanksgiving with our friend Karen and her two toddlers, Seth and Ethan.

Karen and Sam were in the Air Force together and we shared the turkey and dinner preparations. Things took a little longer than planned, but ... Yum!

Ethan is a cutie, and in the two-year-old stage. Seth is more like Dennis the Menace, and harder to pin down for a photo!

Karen's Mom passed away earlier in the year, and we are glad we were able to spend time with her last fall. We were able to use the fine china in her honor.

Every time we visit, Sam takes on a few home repairs and improvements. He's a good guy (and he loves hearing me say that)!

Sam had to work yesterday, but this morning we disassembled and hauled home a small deck for the travel trailer we hope to find soon. Thank you, Marla, and sister Donna! Sorry we didn't get a chance to visit with you, Ray!

I hope you all have a great holiday weekend.

A potluck & a tractor

We had a really fun barbeque and potluck last night with a group of folks from church. It was a beautiful evening, we had a great time visiting, and also got to tour the historic home of our hosts, Brian and Toni. Evidently, Brian's grandfather first bought the property in the 1930's.

Earlier yesterday, Sam got a lot more done toward leveling the RV site. As you can see, winter has set in hard! It's getting up to 65 or 70 degrees this weekend. Last week we did have lows in the 20's, and with a strong breeze all day, wind chills hovered around freezing. I didn't get outside much!

After awhile, Sam realized that the hydraulics lifting the blade weren't working right. Turns out the hydraulic oil needed changing.

This isn't quite the color that clean oil should be.

Neither is this. Sam says it has a lot of water and air in it, which definitely isn't good for the hydraulic system.

After draining as much oil as he could, he studied the manual, called around for oil prices, and even called his cousin Chad in Georgia, who restores old tractors like ours (a 1967 Massey Ferguson). These things take 8 gallons of oil, which comes in 5 gallon buckets at $50 a bucket! But farm equipment like this sure comes in handy.

I'm the gasket maker. Sam keeps gasket material on hand, and it's fairly easy to trace around the old one and cut or punch the necessary edges and holes.

Now we're in Benson picking up more parts. We'll be back in business soon, but it's always nice to spend a pretty day on the ranch together.

I hope you all have a good week and a great Thanksgiving.

Christmas crafts

A few days ago, my friend Gaye invited a few women over for a holiday craft day (but I was the only one who could come . . . have I mentioned I'm retired now?). We missed you, Anita!

She even provided the fabric! It was fun choosing which colors and patterns would look good together. Gaye found directions for several crafty no-sew items from Shabby Fabrics on YouTube: No-Sew Picture Frame Ornament. I chose this small wreath that can be used for either a picture frame or candle holder.

First I cut the fabric into 56 small squares. . . . Well, actually, we spent the first hour talking and looking at her house! Gaye has all the right stuff to make it easier -- cutting mat, rotary cutter, protective glove.

We spent a lot of time ironing the squares into tiny triangles.

Then we started pinning. Remember, it said "No Sew." Easy!

Gaye was making a Christmas tree, but she says she intends to make all the cute crafts. Her mom and sister showed up later to visit, but they decided it looked like too much work.

Gaye's husband Paul was hanging rope lights on the back porch, but he also checked on our projects periodically and took most of these photos. Thanks, Paul! Sorry, I'm not going to post your photo-bomb!

And here's the completed project. Isn't it pretty?

A few days later, I took my mom to visit our old friend, Jackie Wilson. Stu, her husband of 67 years, died in September, so we all had that in common. Jackie made us lunch and we had a really good visit. But I forgot to take photos! Maybe another day.

Speaking of my mom, Sam and I are starting to clear an RV site to place a 5th wheel to live in, so Ma can live in her little house again.

It needs to be leveled and our dirt is pretty hard to work, but it's coming along. Uncle Henry's tractor helps so much!

I hope you all enjoy a great weekend!

A Garden

I'll start with a pretty photo of our zinnias, which are still going crazy! I haven't watered them in weeks. When writing this blog, I have to put my interesting photo first, so it will be featured. Does anyone know how to choose another photo to feature in a Blogspot blog? I should figure that out someday.

But the big news around the Pumpkin Patch Ranch is, we got our garden in! Sam started with 4 inch PVC pipe that's been laying around since we put in the electric and telephone wires over 10 years ago. We want to use and reuse what we have!

We're doing a modified version of a rain gutter garden, where water runs through the pipe and wicks up into the buckets. (If anyone is interested, we could send you the link; it's on YouTube.) We also drilled holes in the sides of the buckets, for aeration, and periodically tested the fit.

Next, we prepared the soil. I did most of the mixing, since Sam had to be at work, but Sam's our researcher and planner.

We're using our native PPR soil, and adding this really good potting soil and a couple of soil additives, including a local brand called Tank's.

We met a guy, Matt, with a lot of growing knowledge at Ace Hardware in Benson. He recommended a pH test, which meant I had to do some studying. I was never that great at science experiments in school!

The pH test showed that even with the additives, our soil is pretty alkaline, at 7.0 or 7.2 pH. We'll have to continue feeding it the good organic mulch-type stuff.

We lined the buckets with weed fabric and put the weed fabric around these little baskets that poke down through a hole in the bottom.

Then filled the bottom with a really wet mixture of the soil, to jump-start how the water wicks up into the bucket.

As I filled the buckets, I wet down each layer, and when they were full, I set the buckets into the PVC pipe, which is set into the ground on the sunny, south side of the house.

The next morning, we transplanted our baby seedlings that have been growing in our greenhouse! So far, the winter garden is collards and arugula. If these do well, more to come!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Memories . . .

Last week, I did a job in Safford, a nice little town about 100 miles northeast of the ranch. For nostalgia, I stopped for lunch at a little store on the road up to Mt. Graham. Fifteen years ago last month, Sam and I sat on this very bench, shared a can of soda and talked for an hour.

It was one of our first dates and our first long motorcycle ride. We started in Tucson, where Sam bought Subway sandwiches and put them in a cooler, with a freezer pack on top. In Willcox, we stopped and visited a couple motorcycle and truck guys Sam knew. After stopping at the store (above), we dillied and dallied all the way to the top of Mt. Graham (over 10,000 ft., the highest in southern Arizona) on miles of paved and dirt roads. Aspen trees glowed yellow, so we took many photos. By the time we got to the top, it was 4 p.m. and that freezer pack had compacted the sandwiches to less than an inch thick! We were starving, so they still tasted good. This was my introduction to "Sam time," which included a walk around the lake and a couple stops to see the sunset on the way down. Our day ended back in Tucson after midnight. A great memory!

Back at the PPR, we met a few new friends about a mile away. They weren't sure what to make of these humans who talked to them from a metal box on wheels.

Sam found another friend who was willing to sing for us from the grasses. He wasn't around during the summer, so must be a cool weather bug. It's almost an electronic buzz...or actually, the electronics mimic him!

I love the golden light of late evening.

It makes our little yard just glow.

And long after the sun sets, a string of pretty lights in the tree.

Today we're working on projects like airing up the tractor tires and preparing our garden containers.

Updates will come later!