Shitakes

Wayne and I decided to try our hand at raising some shitake mushrooms. Our friends Reggie and Sheila raise them and they are DELICIOUS! The taste between home-grown and store bought shitakes is pretty amazing. Reggie and Sheila had a party over at their house a few weeks ago and several of us brought logs to inoculate with mushroom spores. This was a serious undertaking and it took us all day to do these darn things!

Here's our logs loaded up on the truck ready to head out.



Here they are all inoculated and piled up down by our creek. We won't start getting mushrooms until next year but I sure hope this works! I had no idea that the difference between a store bought and home grown shitake mushroom was so big. We'll see what happens. Keep your fingers crossed!

Dirt Bath

I tell ya. These chickens sure do love a good dirt bath. Look how happy they look!



The other ones were out wandering around in the yard close by awaiting their turn for the fun.




 
I love watching the chickens take pleasure in the simple things in life! It really does not take much to make them happy.

Finally!

Poor Wayne built this cute little island for our pond so that the frogs and birds would have a safe place to hang out. We haven't seen anyone use it except for one bullfrog last year. Finally, we saw one of the geese on it the other morning! I wish we had a better place out there for them to nest so we would have some baby geese soon!

Here he is out there looking for his buddy.

Windy

We had some severe wind here a few weeks ago. We are in this little valley between mountains and the wind really whips through here. It was especially bad one night and we were under tornado warnings. It was a little scary.

This flower pot full of lavender got blown over. I know this does not seem like a big deal but this thing is heavy. I tried to move it a few days before the storm and I couldn't because the roots had grown so far into the ground through the hole in the bottom of the planter. No problem. I can move it where ever I want to now.



This is an arbor we have at the bottom of our yard stairs. This thing has spikes on the bottom of it that go into the ground about a foot.



And, down by our creek we had a tree casualty, unfortunately. It took out one of our railings but it should be easily fixed (especially since Wayne will be the one fixing it and not me!). I see some chainsawing in his future!

This is why

We have a lot of people ask us WHY we live in Blue Ridge. It does seem to be sort of a pain with me working in Atlanta. However, I'm only working one day a week and we have an apartment there so it really isn't a big deal. We enjoy the chance to get back to the city to see friends and family on a regular basis.

I took some pictures of our place the other day. It was about 75 degrees and beautiful outside. THIS is why we love this place!

This is our house from "across the pond".



This is our creek with our wind damaged tree that you will learn more about tomorrow.





This is our waterfall.



Another view of our pond and house.



Honestly, if it wasn't for this property, we probably wouldn't be so tied to being here. But we really LOVE this property!!! This is totally worth the drive back and forth to Atlanta!

Spring!

YAY! It's so exciting to finally have some nice warm temperatures out there! A few weeks ago we had a warm snap and the toads got right to work. Now, since we have no fish left in our little pond because the snakes ate them all, we have a bumpercrop of toadpoles! There are like a zillion of them......see?



We have a few flowers coming up.



And the fish in our big pond are asking for handouts again!

Wild Adventures

Miss Nessie has been an indoor cat since day 1. However, our other two cats go in and out as they please and we bring them in at night to save them from being eaten by coyotes. Keeping one cat in while the other two go in and out has been a major pain. Plus, Nessie is fast. She can scoot around you faster than you can say "lightning". So, we are worried that she is going to scoot out the door around us one day and freak out and run away into the wild blue yonder.

We haven't let her outside for a few reasons.

1 - She is nuts. I mean this cat is certifiable. She would jump off of a 3 story building to chase after a fly without giving it a second thought. She isn't scared of anything and she has no idea what it means to be street wise and avoid cars.
2 - She has long hair and she loves to get dirty. This means that she will come back with all kinds of mats, tangles, burrs, muddy feet, etc.
3 - She hates to get a bath or be brushed (see #2).
4 - See #1

BUT - on the other hand, we don't want her to get out and then freak out because she has no idea where she is or what it means to be outside. And with 2 other cats that go in and out and her moving at lightning speed - this just seems inevitable. Plus, we feel sorry for her. When the entire rest of the family is outside enjoying the beautiful weather, poor Miss Nessie is stuck inside by herself. We want her to have some fun too!

We finally figured that it was better to work with her and let her get used to being outside so she knows where she is than to have to panic when she gets out. Thus begins Nessie's outdoor adventures. Here's some pictures of Nessie's first day out!









She was overwhelmed but she did pretty well! I think the other cats and Petey helped to keep her grounded. She didn't run off never to return, so that was good. She wandered a bit and played in the woods but she never went too far from us. Additionally, she thinks that the chickens look like they would taste pretty good.