Garden 2006

It's been quite a long time (too long) since I've posted in this blog. So much has happened since my last post. Most of you reading this will know all about that already, so I'll just leave it at that...

This is about our garden. Yes, we did manage a garden this year and it's doing remarkably well.

Onions have not done so well this year. I think I got a bad batch. (they're in that bare patch in the middle). I've planted a new batch, so hopefully they'll do well in time for "salsa season."

We've only had 2 ripe tomatoes so far, but they're coming along nicely. This one is just beginning to turn. We have 3 varieties of tomatoes this year (10 plants).

It's going to be a real good year for peppers. We grew sweet bananas, red and green bells, and these little hot salsa peppers. Eric saved some seed from hot peppers he grew last year. They got started a little late but are hanging in there.

Sweet Banana

Bell Hot Salsa

We are also growing cantelope, which is taking over everything at that end of the garden.

Cantelope Bloom

The green beans are ready for picking this weekend.

Herbs: Greek Oregano, Cilantro, Purple Basil, Chives, Sweet Basil

Coming soon: Images from my Flower Gardens

Fall Road Trip #3 (in search of still waters)

I know this entry is quite late in coming. Other priorities kept pushing this project to the back burner. But I didn’t want to not document this final fall road trip because I learned something very interesting on this trip and also reconfirmed a lession I should have learned by now. I’ll explain that later. I didn’t take many pictures on this trip because we didn’t get out of the car much.

This trip was mainly to scout out some small lakes where we could take our Gumby (our canoe) and go fishing. We prefer small lakes as opposed to the larger reservoirs because it’s easier to row in calm waters and, well, it’s just plain nicer and quieter and a better nature experience than dealing with tons of people and large boats whizzing by creating waves and noise pollution.

Since we hadn’t really been anywhere east in a long time, I thought that would be the way to go. I did some research on the Internet on the DNR website and looked at maps trying to find small lakes in that direction. A lesson I should have learned by now is you can’t trust absolutely everything you read on the Internet!!

We headed east towards Rushville on a cold, windy, and rainy Sunday that eventually cleared up. We even had some nice stretches of sunshine throughout the day. Our first stop was a lake called Champion Acres Lake. Not too hard find, but what I didn’t know from what I saw onthe Internet is that this was once a private campground/lake getaway. What it is now is a medium-sized hole filled with water behind a house with a few rundown dilapidated trailers around it. Eek! I turned around quickly and got back on the road.

The second lake on the list (and I can’t remember the name now), we never did find. We ended up out in the boonies in a place we really didn’t want to be. (Eric called it Deliverance territory, if you get the drift.)

The last stop was a little north of Connersville; a place called Manlove Lake. (I know! Strange name.)

After we stopped for lunch in Connersville I came to the realization of something quite interesting and totally unintentional. During these three fall road trips we had managed, quite by accident, to visit all the birthplaces of our puppies. The first trip took us through Kirklin where Nikita was born. On the way back that day, we drove through Kokomo, Rosko’s birthplace. Sasha was born in Laurel, which we had just driven through. Finally, Smokey, was born in Connersville. Strange how things like that happen.

Anyway….we found Manlove Lake without any difficulty. What an interesting place. This is actually a DNR property, but it’s maintained by the county and used by a local conservation group and local residents for a camping getaway. Much like Sugar Creek in Greenfield. The campground sits to one side of a 15 acre lake. The place was filled with old and interesting looking trailers that were closed up for the season and wrapped in tarps in various and unique ways to keep out the winter weather. The lake is accessible for fishing through the winter, but only open to pedestrian traffic. We bundled up and set out to walk the nature trail around the lake. Below are the only pictures I took on this trip.

I don’t know if we’d actually come back here as it’s about an hour and a half drive. But it’s always an option if we’re looking for a quite place to fish.

That’s about it for this trip. On the way home I reflected back on the realization that we had visited all of our puppies’ birthplaces. Who knows why this happened. It certainly wasn’t a conscience decision. But who ever really knows why we do what we do. Though there must be a reason, it will forever remain a mystery to me.

~~Many of you have asked out the remodeling of our bathroom. So…I have created a Bathroom Blog. If you want to keep up with the progress of this “little” remodel job….in the words of John Mellencamp….check it ut!~~ www.ourbathroomblog.blogspot.com

Fall Road Trip #2 (Back Roads Water-Fall Tour)

Lower Cataract Falls

This past weekend, we did the Indiana Back Roads Water-Fall Tour” (I just made that up!) heading first west, then south, and finally east. We covered 5 waterfalls in one day!

It was a bright beautiful fall day in Indiana. Almost too bright for waterfall photography, but still a great day for a drive. We started out at Cataract Falls, arriving at 9:30, a little later than expected after taking a roundabout route to get there. This is a state recreation
area that has a covered bridge on the property and three waterfalls; upper, lower, and Little Sister Falls. I didn’t get any pictures of the covered bridge. The sun was rising right over it and it was just too bright.

Little Sister Falls

Upper Cataract Falls

While I was playing around Little Sister Falls, Eric went back to the car to unpack his fishing pole from the trunk. I found him a little later down below the lower falls battling a rock fish. Which, by the way, took off with part of his line and his brand new lure. He trudged back up the hill looking disgusted, with mud crusted boots, and covered with burrs.


After getting most of the burrs and mud off Eric, we took off to find 231 south to McCormick’s Creek State park. This was a pretty quick drive of about 20 minutes. We never realized it was so close. We arrived at the falls inside the park along with a bunch of other people. One big family was trying to get across the creek so they could get up to the water fall to have their (individual) pictures taken. (sigh!) I like my waterfall pictures with no humans, please . I managed to get a couple of nice shots while they picked their way across the rocks to the other side; then I relocated to another spot while they were taking pictures. I think they turned out very nice, sans humans.

McCormick's Creek Falls

Next stop….Yellowwood State Forest. Yellowwood doesn’t have any waterfalls that I know of, but it does have a nice scenic lake. On the way there we stopped at Chili’s in Bloomington and had a nice lunch. (Eric tried to convince me he saw John Mellencamp at a table by the bathroom…I didn’t buy it!)

The drive down Yellowwood Road, the road that takes you back to the State Forest from 46 is a nice, scenic drive. There’s a house on that road I would love to have! I had planned to just do some hiking here and thought Eric could do some fishing. The trees weren’t very colorful here for some reason, so I only took a couple of pictures. YellowWood State Forest

We ended up hiking for only about an hour because time was running short. We walked at a pretty fast pace so I figured we probably worked off that big lunch we ate. By the time we made it back to the car it was almost 4:00. We had to be back home before 6:00 and still had 1 more stop to make. It’s a good thing we didn’t stay longer because we ran into a BIG traffic jam around Nashville. Traffic started to back up almost as soon as we got back on the main road. I should have expected this. I guess I was hoping most of the leaf watchers were here last weekend.

The next leg of the tour took us along SR 46, past Brown County State Park, right through Nashville, and to a little town east of Columbus called Newbern. What’s in Newbern? A waterfall, of course! Well off the beaten path, on a narrow county road is Anderson Falls. I saw pictures of this on the Internet. This waterfall is not very tall, but is very wide. The pictures I saw of it were wonderful. However, on this day there was very little flowing water; only a slight trickle on the right side. But the trees around it and the leaves that had fallen still made for some pretty pictures. **Note to self….come back when we’ve had a lot of rain. It’s only 45 minutes from our house.**

Anderson Falls

We're going to try and do one more trip this coming weekend. Right now the forcast is calling for rain both days, so I don't know if we'll be able to. It's supposed to be warm this weekend, and the leaves are still very pretty right now, so I hope we get to go. Watch for updates.

Fall Road Trip #1

Last Saturday we took a little drive up north to check out the fall colors. I decided we should go north instead of south for a couple of reasons. The leaves in Indianapolis aren’t quite at their peak yet, so I thought that the farther north we went the more color there would be. I’m sure its beautiful down south, but I also thought there would be more people down there this weekend. There’s a big game at IU and the covered bridge festival is still going on in Parke County. So, north we went. The forecast called for some rain, but when we hit the road at 8:30, it was shaping up to be a nice day.

Lately, I’ve had this obsession with waterfalls, ever since our trip to North Carolina last year where we chased waterfalls all over western North Carolina. I knew there had to be waterfalls closer to home I could photograph, so I set out to find some. There are the ones every knows about; Clifty Falls, Cataract Falls, the falls at McCormick’s Creek, which are all south. But I also found one I didn't know about up north in Logansport (of all places) at a little county park called France Park. Eric and I have been to France Park and I didn’t remember a waterfall…in fact, neither of us really remember France Park at all. I do remember we went there because they have a nice mountain bike trail and it was when we first got our bikes. Even after we got there it really didn’t look familiar except for the beach area. It’s at a very scenic old rock quarry in the park.

There are a couple of small lakes/ponds in the park and Eric couldn’t resist getting his fishing pole wet.

While he was doing that I wandered around with my camera and shot some nice fall scenes. The colors weren’t quite what I expected, but it was pretty all the same.

After a short hike we were ready for lunch. We left the park and ate lunch in Logansport then drove over to Lake Mississinewa, which is a State Recreation Area. At least we tried to find it. We drove and drove and after several wrong turns and a detour, we finally did find the water at a couple of dead end streets. Strange, we never could find the main entrance to the park. Eric did a little fishing here too and caught a couple of small, small mouth bass. It was starting to get cloudy but the sun shining through the clouds was very pretty.

On the way home, down country roads, past farm after farm, the sun was streaming beautifully down through the clouds turning the landscape a glowing orange.

One last picture from the ride home.

All in all a very nice day!! Next weekend…we head south.

**to see more photos from this Road Trip, click http://photobucket.com/albums/v251/LupineDream/Autumn%20Color/

Harvest Time!

Actually harvest time is anytime in our garden; not just in the autumn. We generally have a good offering of our favorite veggies all summer long, though each summer is different depending, of course, on the weather. This year was very hot and dry, so overall the garden didn’t do as well as some other years, including tomatoes which are usually our biggest and best producing plants. We usually have 9-12 plants. I can tomato sauce every year, usually in August, to use over the winter for chili and spaghetti. This year because of circumstances beyond our control, we didn’t can until the middle of September and only put up 6 quarts. That makes me sad, but we’ll have to make it stretch somehow. Sometimes I can salsa, but this year I just made several batches of fresh salsa throughout the summer.

Onions did really well this year too; probably our best year yet.

Peppers did pretty good this year too, though not a bumper crop. We had some nice sweet red bells and red banana peppers, and (as you saw earlier) some huge jalapenos.

Cucumbers were a bomb; zucchini did well (they usually do), so we enjoyed many loaves of zucchini bread, courtesy of my Mom.

Herbs didn’t do that well. The oregano never came up; basil did okay, but the cilantro, as usual, was all out of sync with the tomatoes. (I grow cilantro to use in salsa). I planted a second batch that’s just now ready. Fortunately we still have some tomatoes so that means more fresh salsa this fall.

Potatoes didn't do all that well, but we'll have enough for the winter for us and my folks. Once we started digging the potatoe hills we realized that we had a few volunteer red potatoes. A nice surprise.

That's it for this year's garden. It's sad to see it go, but I know it has to be. We'll let the earth rest (and so will we) and we'll be ready to do it again in the spring.

Keep me posted!

If you are interested in receiving an email when I make revisions to my blog or photo websites, send me an email and I will add you to my mailing list.

Take care!

The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man. ~~Author Unknown

How does your garden grow?

Many of you have asked about our garden...well, actually only 1 person, but it sounded better the other way. So...by popular demand...I give you pictures of our garden.... Tomatoes on the left and in the foreground, onions right in from of them, beans on the right, peppers in the middle, potatoes in the back ...and Hootie standing guard. Hootie works very hard at keeping critters from slipping through the fence.

The zucchini's are coming along nicely too. Mom has already made 4 loaves of bread. ...and believe me they are yummmy!!!

The onions did very well this year....better than ever. We planted 3 varieties. Vadalia, Texas Sweet, and some other variety of sweet onion.

The tomatoes are doing well, but a little slower to ripen than in past years. Must have something to do with the dry weather. It's been very hot and humid this summer, but tomatoes love hot weather, so it must be that we just haven't watered them enough. Don't know if we'll have enough to can until early September, if at all.