Good afternoon, my friends.
What a wet, dreary day it is in the upstate of SC! We are so grateful for the rain, though. We have a good chance of a little bit of snow tomorrow. That will be fun. Because we are in the middle of a big stewardship campaign, I'm hoping it doesn't begin snowing until after church. LOL!!
I have had the most fun so far today. I started off the day having breakfast at the Golden Corral with my husband, who could have slept in this morning, but took me to breakfast instead (his idea). Then he came back home and I headed to Clemson University and the Strom Thurmond Institute for two gardening seminars that were very interesting. The first one was on mushrooms (will elaborate more on it when I get my thoughts together) and the second was on permacultures. I learned a lot of interesting things that I did not know and of course my wheels are turning and I see all kinds of projects in our future. LOL! Poor Scott. One of the neatest things I am going to investigate is growing vegetables in bales of wheat straw, along with mushrooms. The guys who lead the discussion said that he and his wife were very successful growing tomatoes and peppers in bales last year during our awful drought. He said they only had to water 3-4 times/month. I really want to try it this summer. I need all the help I can get. And for you chicken people, I thought it was neat that the guys who spoke on permacultures lives on a 1/2 acre lot in a suburban area. He has chickens and has the coop on wheels. When the chickens come "in" for the night, he has it wheeled over the edge of his pond so that their roost is over the water and the manure falls into the pond and fertilizes it. He said his pond is 40 x 35, so quite large. His coop was made of all recycled materials, including the wheels which he salvaged off of bicycles he found at the city dump. It was really cool. I'll make a seperate post and provide you some links. I wished for all of you. It was really interesting. As I was walking back to the car in the rain, I noticed these huge earthworms all over the sidewalk, so I got a stick and saved all that I could find and put them back in the grass. Silly things were going to die on the pavement. Hey, another little fun idea I got was about what to do with sweet gum balls that are such a nuisance around here. Use them around Hosta and other plants that the slugs and snails like to munch on because they will not crawl over the sticky, prickly balls to get to the plant. One lady said she was going to surround her lettuce and spinach with them this spring. I have a bumper crop of sweet gum balls so now I have something to do with them once they are raked up.
I shall spend the afternoon watching Clemson play basketball and getting our tax information together. I also have some more seed starting to do. Stopped at KMart on my way home and picked up two more seed starting trays. Might end up with a nap, too!
Susy, sorry about the migraine and backache. Sometimes I think my aching back causes me other symptoms.
Logan