Pepper Progress

This is the Bag Lady's container garden! Mostly pepper plants and tomatoes, with a few flowers thrown in for good measureThese are called super chilies....




This is a banana pepper (see how much it's grown in just a week or so?)

Oh, and can't let you get away without looking at a delphinium or two (this one has white centres)


And this one is black in the centre:



Have a great day!!

Garden Report

Here is a photo of the Bag Lady's Hansa rose bush in full bloom in spite of (or perhaps because of!) the hot, dry weather.

The delphiniums are starting to bloom now:

And here is a photo of the spinach and peas in her veggie garden. She is a little disappointed in the germination of the spinach. She will plant some more seeds (for the third time) to see if she can get a little more to grow. The second set of seeds that she planted didn't germinate. She blames the hot, dry weather.


(note the dryer sheet strips tied to the chicken wire over the peas. So far, that seems to have kept the deer at bay.... or they have found greener pastures - perhaps one of the neighbours has a better pea-patch!! Ha ha)

Hope your weekend is going well.

Friday Round-up

It's been a warm week here on the ranch. Of course, the heat always brings on a thunderstorm or two, and we've had a couple lately that have sent the poor Princess dog scurrying under the coffee table! She either hides under the table or huddles next to the Bag Lady's leg, which makes doing anything a little difficult. There were a couple of cracks of thunder during one storm that made the Bag Lady want to scurry under the table along with the dog!

She cobbled together a few video clips to share the big thunderstorm with you, but this is her first attempt at movie editing, so it's not very good. Of course, when the storm really got going, the chicken-hearted Bag Lady quit and went indoors! (to hide with the dog...)






The first storm dumped about half an inch of much-needed rain on the ranch, so the pasture is no longer crunching underfoot.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, and Happy Fourth of July to our friends south of the border!

Surprise!!

Some of you may remember back in March when the Bag Lady asked you to choose which cow was going to calve first - the White Bitch or Spooky. And you may remember that the White Bitch was first.

Well, have you been wondering what happened with Spooky? The Bag Lady watched her with some concern, because she had been showing signs of imminent birth, but then they stopped. The Bag Lady thought that perhaps Spooky had miscarried, and she just didn't find the stillborn calf.

Well, apparently the Bag Lady was wrong. Spooky must have just been empathizing with the White Bitch. And she did not lose her calf. In fact, she had it on Monday!

Presenting Frank!

Named for Gena's grandfather. Gena has a couple of entertaining blogs, Gena Cooks,
and Still in the Works.



Isn't he a cutie?!
There is still one more cow who hasn't calved, but we aren't sure she's going to. She's even older than Spooky, and may not have gotten romantically involved with the bull.....

So this may be the last calf of the season. Or not.
(Makes the Bag Lady look like a really competent rancher, doesn't it?)

Wednesday Weirdness - Just had to share this!

You Are 70% Weird

You're so weird, you think you're *totally* normal. Right? But you wig out even the biggest of circus freaks!

How Weird Are You?

It's Hot - Must be Haying Time!

The Bag Lady had to set her little thermometer out in the sun in order to photograph it - the one that hangs in the shade wouldn't show up properly. But it was reading the same temperature.




One good thing about the heat is that it is making the peppers grow!





The Bag Lady's garden is suffering a little, though. She has had to resort to watering it with well water, which isn't the best thing for it. The well water has a lot of soda in it, which is hard on the plants. And the water is really, really cold, which is also hard on the plants. But the Bag Lady decided that soda water is better than no water. And her plants seem to agree.

Today is supposed to be the warmest day yet. The Bag Lady thinks she might have to find errands to run in town so she can bask in some air-conditioning for awhile! Her house actually stays quite cool for most of the day. She opens all the windows when it cools down at night, then closes them again during the heat of the day. She also turns the furnace fan on to circulate the air. It would be ridiculous to invest in air-conditioning that would only be used for a few weeks out of the year!

She knows that you folks who live in the warmer places are laughing at her, but she just isn't accustomed to this heat. She is not complaining, because she knows damned well that it won't last much longer, and before too long it will be winter again. At least, time seems to go that quickly.

It appears to be haying season. There are people cutting hay everywhere you look. The Cowboy decided to go cut a few rounds, even though he's been saying for months now that he wasn't going to! (It's in his blood, but a total transfusion probably wouldn't be much help...) He didn't get a lot cut, though, before the chain on his hay-bine broke, so the Bag Lady has to go to town and get a replacement chain. She is the official go-fer. She goes to town fer parts, and she takes lunches and twine and anything else the Cowboy needs out to the field for him. Sometimes she wonders what on earth they did before cell phones were invented! She even had to run to town once to buy a new cell phone because the Cowboy called her, set the phone on the tractor tire and forgot about it. When he got going again, he ran over the phone! (That particular trip took the Bag Lady quite a long time...it was so peaceful without the cell phone...)

Treasure, Methinks

When we left the Bag Lady yesterday, she was almost finished her "project". She took the doors to town and had the glass shop cut some glass for them. They were really busy, so she brought the glass home and installed it herself. (She didn't want anything to interfere with her post today, and they weren't sure they would get to it in a timely fashion!)

She mentioned that the back and the bottom shelf were a little warped, so she replaced them. Here is the new back:

And here is the new bottom shelf:

She stripped the whole unit down to bare wood, and decided she liked the colour of the wood so well that she didn't want to put any stain on it, so she just varnished it. She put on three coats of a satin finish polyurethane (for those of you who care about such things).

Are you ready to see how it looks?

TA DA!!!

(Sorry the picture is a little dark - this was taken with the china cabinet in place in her kitchen)


Here is the Bag Lady's paltry collection of silver:

Here is a side-by-side comparison:

So, what do you think?

Remember yesterday when the Bag Lady mentioned that the dump is now called a "transfer station"? Well, she "transferred" this china cabinet from the dump to her house, and she is ever so glad she did!!

HAPPY CANADA DAY!