Tag: bulbs

Okra & “Fire Lilies”

May 28, 2020

Okra & “Fire Lilies”

Today we planted okra. Three long rows of okra plants just far enough apart to walk through the rows with the mower for easy weeding, pruning, and harvesting.

Yesterday and Tuesday were the 6 by 4 corn patch. The 5 by 4 corn patch already has rows of little green stalks pushing up and it was planted Saturday! We also did a patch of mustard greens and our trio experiment over the weekend. The “trio experiment” is onion seed, three inches, beet seed, three inches, carrot seed in a patch 3 by 3.

Oh, all numbers are in feet… so far.

And my favorite of my blooms at this house (since my gardenia has been reluctant to bloom) is this –

– it’s a bulb with a single straight stalk that ends in this fiery flower! We call them fire-lilies but I know that can’t be their official name. It’s a takeaway from Grandma Jeanette… a little piece of history carried along and the blooms make me think of her every time I see a new one exploding with color.

(oh, and if you know what it is, please comment! We’d love to know what it really is!)

Lucas and Thea ate all six ripe tomatoes themselves before they got inside. I managed to sneak one away for the egg scramble I made for brunch. (I eat shakeology breakfast at 5:45 so at 11am I was practically starving and had to grab something filling and nutritious!)

We have little pets who poop breakfast… and Becky made more of these:

Yummy deviled eggs; Becky is a pro at this now!

YES!

Worked at gym yesterday… REC CLASSES OPEN MONDAY!! Camp fills up quickly & starts June 1st (I can’t wait to see my gymnasts!) and we get to have gym party (Parent’s Night Out) this month!! (Third Saturday of each month: our coaches entertain and feed a boocoodle of kiddos so their parents can have a night kidfree… here)

I’m excited about coaching again! I’m thrilled about our garden! I even got to play Age of Empires with Jillian and Lucas today while big sisters went shopping!

We had a lovely day!

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tart

Spring Blessings

March 24, 2019

Spring Blessings

March 20th was the official first day of spring.

I live in Florida, so “Spring” as we see it means beach weather – at least for those of us who don’t consider 70 degrees too cold for sand, surf, and sun.

The flower bulbs are coming back.  The songbirds are singing and making nests.  The woodpeckers in the Maple tree are arguing about who gets the best insect hole.  My baby Thea is a month old (on the first day of spring & two of her aunts’ birthdays).  I’m shifting from part time to full time at my office job.

This job is a God-sent blessing anyway (read that story here); increase of hours = increase of income and that is super sweet!

Anyone seen White Christmas?  Bing Crosby sings “Counting My Blessings” and that became a theme song in my head.  Songs will pop into my head when I think certain things… I’m just musically wired… auto-correct tried to put in “weird;” maybe weird is the right word!

So, I’m “counting my blessings” this spring:

Job with a growing company where I get to take my Baby Thea to work with me! (Thank you, Jesus!)

Dream job where I get to teach and encourage young athletes while working out and having fun.  (Thank you, Jesus!)

Health, (finally!) as I’ve found a technique that works to keep my black mold allergy from turning to throat-constricting asthma. (I can keep it at just a post-nasal drip, which is irritating, but not debilitating.)

Family.  I live for family.  (Why I haven’t been writing for a bit… busy with jobs, helping sisters, and spending time investing in family.)

Finding a church we hope to be able to call “home” as our church closed.  (Louis’ cousin and several friends attend there.)  We’ve been three times and most of the kids like it so far.

Spiritual growth in my girls.  Watching that bloom is the best!

Provision.  We have a house to rent, food to eat, and gas to get us to and from work.  Paying back debt and then shifting focus to our long-term goal of saving for our own house.

Thank you, Jesus, for the blessings in my life!  Thank you for healing, love, family, and life!

I’m enjoying a jolt of energy from counting my blessings, what about you?

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Upcoming Show!

Come join us for some craft show fun! Sunday, October 14, 2018 between 1pm & 4pm

September 30, 2018

Upcoming Show!

The girls are ecstatic about October 14th.

It isn’t someone’s birthday (although it’s two days after Becky turns thirteen!).

It isn’t an anniversary.

It’s the day of the Shores Fall Craft Fair at the Shores Clubhouse in Saint Augustine!  For the girls, this is a chance to meet people, show off their wares (they like to make various crafts), talk about illustrating Mommy’s books, and enjoy looking at all the amazing crafts for sale.  (Usually, they pick up Christmas gifts here, too.)  One of Rebeccah’s favorite crafts (she gave a bunch out as Christmas gifts one year) is her glittery ornaments.

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Just after church, we’ll drive to the clubhouse to set up, and enjoy the day!  The show starts at 1pm and runs until 4pm.  (My mom will be there too, as she’ll be there presenting some of the most amazing photo artwork I’ve ever seen – she takes photos and my Daddy paints on them to turn them into realistic, fantastic creations.)

Of course, my only real craft is writing.  I am very proud of my artsy offspring but it’s hard to duplicate what they do!  I will have my printed books for sale.

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And the Audio CDs and the girls’ favorite DVDBook, “Long Tail and Red Hawk,” which although it was the second in the “Long Tail” books, it is the first one my Dad created an educational DVD for!  (The girls love it because their Grandmother is narrating it and the comic-book-style artwork is theirs!)

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But most of the table will be covered in beaded jewelry like these because even Jillian has crafted some of those pieces.

Or, to see a giant room full of beautiful and unique crafts, join us from 1pm to 4pm on Sunday, October 14th at the Riverview Club in Saint Augustine Shores – we’ll be at one of the round tables!

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Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Elephant Ears

May 24, 2018

Elephant Ears

One of my favorite garden bulbs is what we call “Elephant  Ears.”

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These are from three bulbs that we dug up in some weeds when we first moved in.  They were tiny, neglected, and crowded.  With good fertilizer and plenty of water, (we didn’t have to water them, God did it with the rain!) those three multiplied into fifteen by January when we replanted them in this nice half-shady strip between the carport and the side of the house.

We also leave the wild flowers that don’t crowd out our bulbs.  Tiny white flowers that spread like ground cover are some of Jillian’s favorite because they look like “stars on green sky.”  (Those are under the star lily in the above picture, but their blooms look like dots in the picture.)

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These are the smallest ones.  The elephant ears are now growing alongside a few lilies, six pineapples, tomatoes, and squash.  (The clump of bushy leaves on the right corner are tomatoes.) The plants are called elephant ears because their leaves get to be the size of African Elephant’s ears.  I’ve grown some before, which by their third year, had leaves that were five feet wide!  (Since you have to clip the ears off at the stalk when the ears fall to help encourage new growth, the girls would save the clipped stalks for umbrellas!)

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These are some of the “wild” tomatoes.  This means we didn’t sow them there, they just came from our fertilizer/compost and we tended the plants as they sprouted.  Jillian has the worm-picking job because we don’t use pesticides.

I love Florida bulbs, they are easy to grow and propagate quickly.  I can give the many extras away and cover my yard in little groves of them within just a couple of years.  Now if I can just get fruit trees like fig, citrus, kumquat, pineapple, and bananas to grow as well!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

Spring Seeds

March 3, 2018

Spring Seeds

Florida likes to tease our tropical plants a bit with a fake spring.  It’s really the start of spring weather but we will have at least one more cold snap to remind us that we do participate briefly in the season the rest of the country calls winter.

My favorite plant (outside of anything edible and my personal favorite trio of roses, gardenia, and Camilla) type is bulb.  In Florida, many bulbs thrive with minimum care.  Our yard had a few worn beds of overgrown bulbs when we arrived.  Year one was break them up and replant.

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Year two is sprouting.  (See how I love bulbs!  Fast growing, hardy and results in a year!)

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Elephant ears are one of my favorites, but this yard has two types of elephant ears, bananas, gorgeous lilies, fire-flowers, a yellow-red lily with a huge 6” bloom (just a green few in the picture here as tall, cup-like leaves with “spokes”), and the normal replanted ones like celery, onion, and garlic.  Celery bottoms replant and grow until they are tired of being stepped on.  We have one two-year pineapple and two newbies.  Two garlic cloves are growing. Dozens of onions dot the design.

And we have what we call “bonus plants” these come from our fertilizer.20180302_173445.jpg

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We fertilize with an organic mix of hay, biodegraded plant material, and chicken droppings.  Since our philosophy is to waste nothing, our chickens end up eating a lot of kitchen scraps that include seeds.  This often leads us to wonderful “bonus plants.”

These gems are usually milo, wheat, millet, collard, eggplant, citrus, pepper, or tomato!  We’ve noted cucumber, sunflower, and pumpkin as well.  When we find a tomato, we baby it.  Usually, though, the next day the lizard hunter has trampled it even though the gardens are strictly off limits.  Any lizard who makes it to the house or the garden is safe!

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But this spring we were babying one tiny tomato in the front porch garden when today, voila! ~ ~ We discovered this literal bed of tomatoes hiding under an elephant ear!  We’re so excited we haven’t figured out if we want to attempt to dig them up and separate them while they are small or just leave them in this area they appear to like.  (I’m beginning to believe a single chicken must have eaten an entire bag of tomatoes last season!)

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All of our young pullets are finally hens, laying and regularly producing so we have an average excess of 10 dozen eggs a week!  Now our chickens pay for themselves and the dogs!  (The money we get from the market for our eggs pays for chicken feed and dog feed.)  I love the seeds of spring!

20180302_173503.jpg(So does Lucas, who had to have his picture taken without his dirty shirt.)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

 

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