Monthly Archives: April 2025

Spring Bouquet

Cherry Tree, Daffodils, Dandelions, Flowers, Forsythia, Killdeer, Parkinson's Disease, Peach Tree, Pollinators, Prayer Garrden, Reflections, The Farm, Tulips, , , ,

I think it was our first fall at the farm when I planted a bunch of tulip bulbs in the area that has since become our prayer garden. I remember arriving at the farm one morning the following spring and being delighted that several of the tulips were blossoming. They were so pretty. Later that day when we returned for our afternoon walk all of the pretty blossoms were missing and all that remained were the stems and the leaves. I wanted to cry. Thus began our love-hate relationship with deer.

Our First Tulips

After fencing the farm two years ago and then fencing in the prayer garden last year, we thought it might just be safe to plant tulips. We planted 4.

The first one to open was red. I thought this fitting since the red tulip is a symbol for Parkinsons Disease awareness and April is Parkinsons Awareness month.

The yellow one opened one day later.

And a second red one opened today. I expect the last one will open tomorrow. It looks like it will be another red one.

White hyacinth with mini daffodils.

Peach Tree

We planted a peach tree last year and it was doing well this spring

Peach Tree

so, we decided to plant a second one. Both are blossoming. It would be nice to pick a few peaches in August.

Forsythia

Lots of Daffodils
Sweet Cherry Tree

We planted three sweet cherry trees last year.

Sweet Cherry Tree

The above two have nice blossoms. I would be thrilled to pick a handful of sweet cherries this year.

A honeybee enjoying the dandelions. We lost our bees over the winter and decided not to start a new hive this year so it’s nice to know there are still bees in the area.

A wildflower that popped up and I am still trying to identify. If you know what it is, please tell me in the comments section.

My husband found the killdeer sitting on her nest. There are four eggs in the nest. She is very camouflaged. Can you see her? (Look in the foreground.) He marked the area with the yellow flag so we remember to stay away from it.

Thanks for visiting! What’s blossoming in your area?

Planting Potatoes and Happy Chickens

Chickens, Eggs, Planting, potatoes, Reflections,

We planted potatoes on Tuesday. It was a beautiful spring day.

The chickens love the freshly worked soil. Lots of bugs, grubs and worms. Yum!

My husband tilled the area then measured, marked and dug the furrows. Then I placed the potatoes in the rows. He came back later and covered the potatoes with soil. Before leaving we fenced in the area so the chickens couldn’t scratch up the seedlings. There are plenty of other things around to keep the chickens happy. We planted about 160 row feet of potatoes.

Chickens don’t spend all of their time scratching and pecking. They also like to dust bathe as these girls were doing. Dust baths are actually how chickens clean themselves. It sounds counterproductive but it works for them.

Rex is our only rooster – I think that makes him happy.

Chickens, chickens everywhere!

Made From Scratch 🙂

Happy chickens give the best eggs. We are getting about 15 -17 eggs a day right now – that makes me happy.

Thanks for visiting.

Keeping Busy

Aloe Soap, Chickens, crochet, Daffodils, Forsythia, Killdeer, Making Soap, Reflections, Starwberry Jam, , , , , ,

Hello and welcome! Spring has been very gradual in getting here this year. It seems like we go two steps forward then one step back. No quick warm up this year. I suppose the slow warm up is good in some ways – it means that trees and plants are slow to bud thus reducing the chances of fruit trees being hit by late season frost/freeze. We have had some rain as well but so far nothing extreme. There have been a few outdoors chores that I have been able to get done, but while I’m waiting for gardening and grass cutting season to arrive, I have had spring cleaning (indoors) and some other projects to keep me busy.

Making Soap

A few weeks ago, my sister told me that her husband wanted to go back to using natural soap. She asked if I would make them a batch. Of course I was happy to do it. When I asked what kind of soap she wanted, she asked for “the shaving soap” or aloe soap which makes a really nice soap for shaving. So, on April 1st I made a double batch of aloe soap. I want some to keep for us.

The above picture is the soap in the molds after several hours. The outer edges are hardening but the center is still a thick liquid. It was in the mold for about 30 hours before it was hard enough to remove. It will be a couple more weeks before this soap is ready to use but I am looking forward to it. I haven’t made this soap in a few years.

Below is my recipe for any soap makers who might be reading.

Aloe Soap Recipe

This recipe is a large batch – 32 bars of soap. It could be halved or quartered to make smaller a batch.

40 oz. Coconut Oil

70 oz. Sunflower Oil

8 oz. Olive Oil

16.95 oz. Lye (NaOH)

45 oz. Water

about 1/4 cup – Aloe Juice (Scrape out inside of aloe leaves and blend in small blender) added at trace.

For soap making instructions see my Soap Making Page.

Making Jam

When I realized we only had one jar of strawberry jar left in the pantry I decided it was time make some more since strawberry is both my favorite and my husband’s favorite. Fortunately, I still had three packages of strawberries in the freezer.

We should now have more than enough jam to last until this year’s strawberries are ready. My husband has worked hard on the strawberry patch, so we are hoping and praying for a great crop this year.

Crocheting

In a previous post I mentioned that I was making an afghan to donate to the humane society for a raffle.

I completed that project. It’s difficult to see in the photo but the puppy paws print run through the burgundy stripes as well.

I then began a new project.

This is a cat pattern that I have not made before. Can you see the cats? I began making this using some partial skeins of yarn that I have. I really just wanted to learn the pattern. I’m not sure yet if it will be a small blanket or a pillow.

A Few Spring Pics

At last, the daffodils are blooming.

Forsythia just beginning to bloom.

I finally got a picture of a killdeer. Rarely have I seen one stand still long enough to get a photo. This one was unusual because it was all alone. Usually there are a pair in the area. I did a little research and learned that migratory killdeer will generally mate for a season and males usually return to the same area each year. They may mate with the same female as the previous year. Non-migratory killdeer may mate for life. So, I wonder, since I didn’t see it’s mate in the area, if it is yet to find a mate for this season.

Our hens like to roost in the lower branches of the spruce trees. I thought it was a picture worth sharing. 🙂

Looking Ahead

The weather is supposed to be warmer this week, and my husband plans to get potatoes planted. As for me I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself cutting grass for the first time this year.

Thanks for visiting. I hope you have a wonderful week.

Adopting a Shelter Pet -When They Pick You

Dogs, Reflections, , , , ,

Quickly approaching, April 30th is National Adopt a Shelter Pet Day. If you have some extra love in your heart and room in your home and are considering adding a new pet, I encourage you to consider adopting from a shelter.

This post is a long time coming but it is the second in a series of posts that I am writing about our experiences adopting shelter dogs. The first post can be found here.

We have adopted 4 dogs from animal shelters and all of them have been wonderful pets. There are two things we do when going to get a new pet that I believe have contributed to us finding the right dog for us each time. First, we pray about it. Our prayer, “God please help us find the right dog.” Second, I have come to realize that we have let all of our dogs pick us. In very different ways each of our dogs has let us know that they wanted to be part of our family. Below is the story of Trooper.

Trooper was the second dog we adopted from the shelter. It was 2009 and Scout had been with us for 2 years. My husband’s work took him away from home for up to two months at a time and the girls (three of who still lived at home at the time) were at school or work all day during the week. Our routine during the week was that Scout and I would drop the girls off at school in the morning and when we returned home, we would go for a 30 – 60-minute walk depending on the weather. We would then come back home, and Scout would usually go lay on one of the girls’ beds while I did whatever chores I needed to get done that day. Around 2:00 p.m. Scout and I would get back in the van and go pick up the girls from school. When we returned home, we would go for an afternoon walk, usually one or more of the girls would come along. The evenings were usually busy with both Scout and I spending time with the girls.

The problem was that I felt that during those daytime hours when it was just Scout and me at home, we both were a bit bored. I thought we both needed something more – a puppy. I began praying about it and I asked my husband what he thought. He said that another shelter dog would be ok, so I began looking at the animal shelter website.

When I saw his picture on their website I knew I wanted to meet the dog they called Jack.

Trooper about one year old

It was a Friday afternoon. My husband was not scheduled to come home for vacation for a couple of weeks. Our oldest daughter was working and the younger two would be away for the weekend. I went to the shelter, by myself. to meet Jack. According to their website he had come in as a stray, was about 6 months old and was a shepherd mix. We later learned that he was a Leonberger.

At the shelter I told the attendant that I was interested in meeting Jack. Since there was no one else there they brought him out to the lobby to meet me. The first thing Jack did was put his front paws on my chest, but when I pushed his paws down and knelt down in front of him, he sat down and held up his paw for me. As I took his paw in my hand, he looked deep into my eyes, so much so that I felt like he was looking into my soul.

That was when I knew that Jack, who later became Trooper, was coming home with me. He picked me.

We couldn’t have asked for a better dog (family member). He was a quick learner, especially with his mentor and best buddy Scout teaching what was acceptable behavior. He was fun and funny, a gentle giant and a loving and loyal friend. He was with us until January of 2022. He outlived the average life expectancy of his breed by several years, but it still broke our hearts to say goodbye and he will forever be missed.

Thanks for reading.

Monthly Inspiration -Celebrating 10 Years

Inspiration, Reflections

Hello and welcome!

Sometime in April WordPress will send me a notice congratulating me on 10 years of blogging. It’s hard to believe that I (actually my daughter who helped me set up my blog) signed up with WordPress 10 years ago this month. After setting up the account my daughter designed the header on my page, that’s why you won’t see my orange, white and green header on another blog. Then I began playing around, setting up pages and widgets and such. It wasn’t until June that I actually got brave enough to publish my first post, which really didn’t say much.

Recently I’ve been looking back at some of my early posts, many of which have to do with soapmaking, the original intention of this blog. I did come across a post that I published in September 2015 that, according to my stats, has only been viewed 9 times and didn’t have any likes or comments. I thought it was a good post – maybe one of my favorites – so I decided to repost it here today as our monthly inspiration.

It Could Have Been A Bad day

September 8, 2015

When I got up Monday morning, and went to make a pot of coffee, I discovered that for some reason the coffee pot was not working. I tried jiggling the cord, flipping the switch a couple of times and even though the green light was on, indicting that it was getting power, nothing happened.  I unplugged it and plugged it back in. I left it on and walked away from it for a few minutes, as if I was going to somehow will it to work. It didn’t, and oh how disappointed I was that I wouldn’t have a cup of coffee to start the day. Can you imagine anything worse than having to start the day without that cup of coffee, that little, or big, (depending on how strong you like your coffee) boost of caffeine, to get you going. Does it get any worse?

Well, the truth is that, while my coffee pot did not work and I did try several things to get it to start and yes, I was pretty disappointed that I wasn’t going to have that first cup of coffee to start my day, this was nowhere near the worst thing that could have happened to me today.

You see, I had already woke up of my own free will, with no alarms to startled me awake, no emergency phone calls, and not even the dogs barking to wake me. When I woke I opened my eyes to see that it was nearly 8:00 a.m., so I knew that I could see. I could hear the blower from the air conditioner running, so I still had my hearing, the power was not off, and it was a comfortable temperature in the house. Before I got out of bed I kissed my husband and he kissed me and said “I love you,”. He too was alive. I stood up and all of my body parts seemed to be functioning fine.

As I walked out of the bedroom Scout wagged his tail at me and Trooper followed me to the living room and then waited for me to let him outside. The dogs were ok this morning.  When I went outside the sun was shining, it was a beautiful morning, and I thought about how much fun we had yesterday with so many family members and friends spending time with us at our farm. It was a really good time.

I decided to let my husband sleep while I went to the farm to let the chickens out for the day. Since I didn’t have my morning coffee, I grabbed a bottle of iced tea and took it with me. The van started and ran well, and I drove to the farm without incident. I was greeted at the farm by my second youngest daughter who had camped at the farm with a friend. She and Trooper went for a walk, while I tended the chickens. When I opened the coop, the chickens began piling out. I didn’t have to battle the rooster this morning, even though I didn’t stick around long for him to see that it was me there.

After chatting with my daughter for a few minutes I decided to go into town for coffee, so I asked if she wanted to go. We picked up coffee and breakfast for my husband and youngest daughter as well. Upon returning home, I was joined by my two youngest daughters on the deck for breakfast and coffee and a nice visit. These times with the girls don’t happen much anymore as they are busy with college and working and leading their own lives. Their older sisters are married with jobs and homes and responsibilities of their own. So I do value our times together.

The day went on with clean up at the farm, a siesta, a swim in the pond, a fun afternoon with my husband, and trip to Kmart to buy a new coffee pot.

I was blessed in so many ways, and I certainly can imagine many, many things worse than my coffee pot not making me my early morning cup of coffee. But our society is so dramatic and programmed to think negatively, that we let the little things that we take for granted become the big things that cause us stress. So many times I hear, or read, about things being “the worst thing that could happen” and I think “no, I can think of far worse things.” Often times, we or someone I know will have an issue, like a flat tire for example that is stressing them out, and my thought is “if this is the worst of my (or their) problems then I (they) should be on my (their) knees, thanking God.” I remember several years ago reading a blog that was written by a mother who was homeschooling her children. She was about to start teaching them algebra, and said she couldn’t imagine anything worse. My reply was, ” be thankful that you are not sitting in a hospital by their bedside, praying for them to wake up from a coma.”

I’ve said this prayer many times in my life, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Well, the wisdom came when I realized that, for the most part, I can’t control people, the way they think, talk, or act. I also can’t control many situations; things like the coffee pot not working or a flat tire. What I can control is the way that I react. If I choose to react negatively then I will only cause myself stress. I will not have the serenity that I pray for. It may sound cliché “seeing the cup as half full instead of half empty”, “don’t cry over spilled milk”, or “count your blessings”, but I find that having a true realization of all the blessing that I have been given can minimalize my stress and help me deal with the “crises” of everyday life. Yes, I believe that attitude is everything.  I could have chosen to let my situation, and my disappointment, control my life, but instead I chose to make it a good day.

Thanks for visiting.