God's garden . . . and ours

The spring flowers around here continue to amaze us. We have multiple bushes like this around the house and 5th wheel.

And a few like this.

This is fairy duster, one of my favorite desert plants, and they are starting to bloom.

And we've spotted a few of these purple beauties, small but so pretty.

These are growing along the road half a mile from here.

Our resident Scaled Quail are enjoying the greenery. See them on the ground in the middle? Almost every day, we can hear their calls from the desert and grasses. They don't usually venture this close, but these were in Mom's front yard at breakfast time a couple days ago.

And two yucca in the yard are shooting up their flower stalks. In some varieties, this means the end of the plant, but others will bloom every year so. We're waiting to see which these are!

Our garden is doing good, though not as well as God's! Bok choy and turnips are looking great.

The purple top turnips actually look like small turnips! If you're wondering what we do with them, we love to shred them and use as a healthier alternative to potatoes. They're sweeter!

And that bok choy has roots clear down through the bottom of the bucket already!

On the other hand, okra and lettuce aren't looking so hot. One of Sam's gardening gurus said the ground temperature isn't high enough yet.

To give the plants all the help we can, Sam had me load up part of our first compost pile (we started a second one a few weeks ago) and put a layer of the rich dirt in each bucket, around the plants.

Then I soaked it in with water and a little Miracle-Gro.

We're learning as we go. I think it's a good start for our first year. And it's fun to see how it changes day to day. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Grading, grating, great!

If you saw my last post, you know Sam has been grading our driveways and road. He has a new power grader and it's working really well, although it's still a lot of work.

He even let me drive for awhile!

If you look closely over my left shoulder, you'll see Ma on a walk in the distance. She's actually on the driveway near the road.

We're learning there's several steps to making a smooth driveway. Once Sam drags the grader multiple times, we then have to rake the rocks out of the drive, preserving the dirt on the road surface.

Fortunately, we always enjoy the views and wildlife as we work. A pair of vultures were checking out the neighborhood, though I think this video only captured one. We kept moving!

After all his hard work, Sam fired up the barbecue, plugged in the rotisserie and tried out some ribs on his new grill rack. As we watched the Kentucky Derby, we made mint julep ribs with Kentucky bourbon BBQ sauce and they sure were yummy! Gotta love $5 grill accessories from our favorite thrift store!

Enjoy your week, everyone. Thanks for checking in.

PPR Tour, part 2

As we continue our tour of the ranch, let's follow Sam and Dingus up the hill to the well house. Sam's using his "new" power grader for the first time. And (on a different day), Dingus is exploring as I reintroduce the cats to walking on a leash, wearing their harnesses. We're probably taking them on vacation with us next month, because our teenage cat sitters moved away and boarding is expensive!

The well house area holds many treasures, including this iron piece that sort of looks like it could be used to tether a horse. It must belong on a ranch!

The well house was the first permanent building on the ranch. Sam built it by hand in 2007 and 2008, with help from friends now and then. Over 10 years later, it's still solid and strong, even the roof tiles! It holds a 1,600 gallon water tank (and other stuff), and you can see the well itself on the front left corner.

Around behind the well house is the electric transformer for the property. Sam and I dug and leveled three pads by hand in 2007. It was harder than you might imagine!

East of the well house are more treasures . . . lumber, pavers, pipe, fencing, swamp coolers. Someday we'll clean it up, but much of it has come in handy over the years.

Also near the well house is our storage trailer, an old military trailer that's insulated and pretty indestructible. It was given to us for "free" -- we only spent $1,000 on tires and transport! It holds building materials, furniture, household goods, and many, many more of Sam's treasures. Priceless, indeed.

Now that you've seen all the buildings, I'm going to take you back down to the main road.

At the northeast corner of the ranch is a much neglected drive that leads up the east side, giving access to two unoccupied properties behind us.

We have a few ocotillos and this one has leaves and is about to bloom at the tips.

At the southeast corner is a gate into the neighbors' property. From here you can see our little spread, and the homes west of us.

Back on our main driveway, if we take the right fork, we're on the old ranch road.

It's not maintained either, but as you saw earlier, Sam and his tractor are working on that!

This western side of the ranch has a nice grove of mesquites and beautiful grassland. The distant fence post you see in the middle is part of our neighbors' fence and is our western boundary.

Hey, here's a sweet flower we've never seen!

And this is the view from the southwest corner back towards the road and buildings. We're over a little rise, so we can't see either!

Right beside the old ranch road is our original pile of colorful rocks, which we started collecting when we bought the property in 2005 and there was nothing else out here! It reminds me of how far we've come, even though it's taken 14 years.

From here, we can take the old road back towards the well house and home.

And check in on Sam's garden, which is shaping up quite nicely.

He even installed an automatic watering system last weekend. Yay!

Have a great weekend, everyone!