Well here it is, my new blog. I think I'm going to make mine more like a journal or diary.

I woke up today on my day off and right off the bat it's rainy and stormy. I had to go move the plants on the deck rail down to the floor of the deck so they wouldn't get knocked off by the wind and get ruined. Don't get me wrong, my garden needs the rain, but why does it have to rain on my day off? I need to mow the lawn today, not do indoor things. Oh well. I guess I have enough cleaning to do around here that it will keep me busy. What really stinks though, is that if I don't mow the lawn today, then I'll have to do it Saturday, when Christy and I are planning to go fishing. Well that's about it for now. I have to go clean the chicken pen now. Their litter is starting to get old. I attached a pic here of one of my favorite chicks... this one's a golden laced wyanndotte. The chicks are 15 days old today.

Update - Well the weather turned out good after all. I mowed the whole lawn, added some mulch to the side garden, and cleaned the deck. Then I cleaned the carpet throughout the house, and changed the rear brake-pads on the car. I found two sugar-snap peas developing, the pods are about 1 inch long right now. It should give me some peas in about a week or two. I'm so happy about that.

PS - if you're reading this to get an idea of what you can do, notice the emoticon at the topic page, I (and you) can change that every time I update my blog by editing the first post.

Ah yes, another day at work, another day lost that I'll never get back again. Don't get me wrong, I love the company that I work for. It's just that I really want a different position... service manager would be right up my alley. It's just too bad that it's so very unlikely that a position will come open anytime in the near future, and even more unlikely that I won't have to move out of state to take one that does open up.

Oh well, tomorrow I have off, and I'm taking christy fishing... but that's not what's exciting me tonight. Tomorrow I go shopping for my birthday!! Well my birthday isn't until June 4th, but the things I want, I need a trailor to haul, so my buddy is going to do the hauling for me tomorrow. I'll be hitting home depot first thing in the morning, getting an extension ladder, 2 pieces of 4x8 plywood, and 2 pegboards. I know people think I'm crazy for wanting those kinds of things, but that's just me. I've been wanting to finish my workbench in the garage for at least 6 months, and I can't wait to be able to clean the gutters whenever I need to, and I've been needing to for 6 months or more.

Update on the garden: If each flower on the plant turns into a pumpkin, then I'll have more pumpkins than I know what to do with. My hanging basket of tomato's wilted last night for lack of water... I watered them and they've come back just as strong as ever today. The lettuce is starting to come to a head, and the carrots are going to be edible within a month.

I was too tired yesterday to add an update, so I'm adding it today while I'm at work. It should be a slower day at work since it's memorial day weekend. I'm sure a lot of people will think we are closed.

Well yesterday I got my ladder and wood and stuff to finish all my projects around the house, which is good since I have the next three days off to finish those projects. But tomorrow I'm throwing a bar-b-que in the afternoon. Any members here are welcome to come as well if you're in the E. Tennessee, USA area. Just PM me for directions if you are planning to attend.

Christy and I went fishing yesterday, too. Didn't do too well but we had fun doing it anyway. I discovered that it's a lot easier to leave the tackle box and coolers behind than it is to carry them all that way. See we have to hike about a mile or so from where we park to where we like to fish.

Afterward I worked on my workbench and cleaned the gutters. I still need to flush out the gutters, but I can do that tonight. I should have the table-top put on the workbench tonight if all goes well. I'm excited to have it nearly finished. I'll finally be able to clean up the garage, which has been SUCH a mess... and I'll finally be able to find every one of my tools, easily, since I've got those two sheets of pegboard to hang them on. I've already got a set of tool hangers for the pegboard.

I gave my chickens some apple-juice to drink last night, and I've never seen them drink so enthusiastically. It was hillarious. They were climbing over each other to get to it. I think I'm going to try and introduce some new foods now... like leftovers from dinner, etc. They are getting their feathers in now, and looking rather scruffy. They have learned to fly up to the top of this new box though, so I'll be putting a wire lid on it tonight.

I found out yesterday that my pleco in my crayfish tank has aquired a taste for crayfish. It will actually hunt them and kill them and then eat their insides out. It's so wierd because pleco's are supposed to be herbivores. I need to move it to another tank. I'll do that tomorrow. That explains why my crayfish have been disappearing at an alarming rate.

Ok, it's memorial day here, so we grilled out, but only a few people showed up. I kinda lost track of time while cleaning the garage so I was all hot and sweaty when everyone got there... oops. Anyway it went well I think. Turns out I will be working tomorrow... one of my other co-worker's father-in-law had a heart attack yesterday, so he's taking care of things there and with his wife and kid until he comes back home from the hospital. Anyway, it's cool with me because I was short a day last week since I took Saturday off. This way I'll just write down 40hrs for both weeks.

I gave Zac the 4 polish chicks and 2 wyandottes. As well as my crayfish eating pleco and my african cichlid, and the sw cardinalfish. Now with any luck I'll be able to breed the surviving crayfish. I also put in a second filter, this one's a HOB filter... so it will provide some better circulation.

Afterward I finished cleaning the garage. I'm so tired now... I still need to sort through and clean up my workbench, but the worst of the work is over with.

Well I didn't do much of anything today... I organized my workbench and started building the chicken coop. The chicks are 3 weeks old today, and they are really getting their feathers now... they look like mini chickens now, instead of baby chicks. Anyway, I'll have a better update later.

It's unbelievable to me, but the chicks are 4 weeks old now. Some of the neighbor kids noticed them for the first time and wanted to hold them, so I let them for a while. But I made them wash their hands afterwards, even though I rarely do. I just don't want any angry parents worried about bird flu or something crazy like that. Anyway, the chicks are getting the last of their adult feathers now.

I worked some more on their new pen. I think it's going to be more work than I originally thought. But the good news is, I don't have to rush it. I just have to cut the final side to length, and I can just hang it in place for now, and later I can add the other posts and doorway to expand the pen. Anyway, they won't be laying or anything for another 16 weeks, so that should give me plenty of time to build what I need to build.

I built another little garden today... this one's just a couple feet by a couple feet... it's hidden behind the air compressor though, so it doesn't get much sun. I put most of the squash plants there. I just didn't have anywhere else to put them, and anyway, the pumpkins that came up are doing great in the shady side garden just next to this one. So they might survive... if not I'll just try something else there. I also pulled up the last of the first lettuce crop and planted the second lettuce crop in it's place. I laid down some tetracide pesticide because the bugs are just getting attrocious... so for the first time anyway, I could see the eggplant leaves without them being covered in bugs... I mixed the pesticide with fertilizer to get a better spread of it, and also most of it was going on the lawn anyway, which needed to be fertilized... though the fertilizer I used was 10-10-10, rather than 30-4-0 like I used in the spring... anyway, the grass needs to put down better roots now anyway, since the hot season is comming soon and a lot of the grass will die. Hopefully that pesticide will work wonders on grubs. The only thing I'm worried about is the worms. I hope it doesn't kill all the worms. I have a heck of a lot of worms in my gardens eating up the compost I put in there and making good soil for the plants to use. As usual I put my fish guts from when I went fishing last weekend ( I try to eat what I catch, if it's edible ) in the bottom of the hole I dug then covered that with another 2 feet of compost sprinkled with regular dirt to provide some minerals, then finished off with a couple of inches of normal soil which will get turned in with the compost this fall. It's raised up about an inch higher than it should be right now, but it will probably sink about 2-3 inches deeper as the soil settles and the unfinished compost breaks down. But I will add some pine-shavings from the chicken box as a mulch to bring it back up to the right level.

I'm excited because most things are starting to produce something... I can see several summer squash starting for form, and a pumpkin, and several cherry tomatoes, as well as 2 beefheart tomatoes, there's even a watermelon forming. I havn't seen any corn tassels yet, but I'm sure I will within a couple of weeks. The sugar-snap peas I'm already eating, as well as the lettuce, and the carrots, though it's a bit early for them. I've gotten to eat just a couple of strawberries because they are being eaten... I don't know by what though. I havn't seen any bugs on them, so it might be birds. If it is, then oh well, next year I'll get some strawberries to eat by protecting them with hardware cloth or something.

I planted a bunch of cherry pits today, as well as some more bell pepper seeds, and some cantalope seeds, and I split up a garlic into it's cloves and planted them. We'll see what comes from it. I don't expect much will. but I did get a couple of apple trees to sprout from some apple seeds I planted, so I figured I'd give cherries a try also. I really just want to replace the trees out front with some apple trees, and then something else on the side, maybe peach or plum or cherry. We'll see what I can get.

Well here it is again, I'm sure you're all thrilled to hear my update.

I started cutting in my newest garden yesterday... It's going to be raised with cinder blocks. I'll plant the jack-o-lantern pumpkins there and a whole lot of sugar-snap peas. This fall, hopefully, but we'll see.

Anyway, the crayfish still havn't spawned. I think they might this fall though. I only wish I had a much larger tank for them... something around 1000 gallons or so. Anyway I'll save the fish-talk for another thread.

That's it for now. I'm stoked because I'll be getting a 4 day weekend this week, it's about to start on Thursday.

I think it's high time for an update, don't you? Since last we spoke, the chickens have doubled in size. The neighbors are all amazed that they stay in the garage even though there's nothing keeping them there when I let them free-range the garage to eat all the bugs.

We added a new addition to the family, Jake (picture below). We just brought him home on sunday, and spent the night picking ticks off of him and shaving him. Gotta run for work, but I'll write more tonight.

Well it's been a long while since I've added to this. Where should I start? I guess back at the beginning, since the last post. My brother in law was murdered. He was a great guy who looked out for me while I was over there. He got into an arguement with a guy one day, and the next day that guy clubbed him to death with the butt end of a shotgun as he got out of a taxi. He left behind his wife and 5 kids, with no life insurance for her to manage with. Needless to say I've been busy taking care of things there. Somehow we're going to have to send the oldest one to college in just 3 years.

Then my father was diagnosed with diabetes, as well. My wife already has it, and although it's a minor case of type 2, it's still not good. We also found out on the same day that my brother got divorced. It was odd because we had no idea there were even problems there.

That's a lot of bad news to start with but that's how things went. On to the good news, my wife got really sick late one night about a month ago and I took her to the hospital. The doctor was prepping her for surgury on her appendix due to the extreme pain in her abdomin with pressure, when they took blood for lab work before the surgury. Turns out, we're having a baby. We still don't know what made her so sick that night, but everything is ok with the pregnancy. Her due date is March 11th, give or take 4 days, according to the ultrasound we had today.

That's the news for now.