My friend’s daughter is getting married this weekend, and it’s such a special affair. I’m honored to be a small part of it.
However, not even this can keep me away from my mission to kill Japanese beetles.
Update: Today’s kill was 15. I’m winning…but I noticed a new bug on the green beans, so I may win the battle but lose the war.
I am continuing waging a war on Japanese beetles. I spotted them on Saturday night, and thought I would just pick them off and drown them. It’s Tuesday evening, and I’ve drowned about 160 beetles. On Sunday, I found about 40 on my green beans. Here’s some damaged leaves.
I’ve been observing them and they like to be together, and that makes it easier for me to shake them off in my bucket. I have Dawn and warm water. Mike said to me “you know what is NOT very attractive? Someone who won’t walk through the yard without a bucket of water with dead beetles.” Sorry. I’m obsessed. We had company Sunday and he made me move my bucket. I keep it handy so I can just zip out, shake and drown.
I’ve also learned that they prefer zinnias over my Mountaineer Half Runner green beans. Normally I have large rows of zinnias out beside the garden, but this year, they are very late (because I put them out late). BIG MISTAKE as I could have been killing them before they got on the beans. Here’s a few that are up and the beetles are trying to eat them as fast as I try to pick them off and kill them. Just a few beetles and so much damage.
I’m hoping that my soil and plants are strong enough to withstand the damage–especially when it comes to my green beans. I spoke with my neighbor and they have not arrived at her house which is one mile up the river. Maybe I’m killing them all before they get there?
I go out 2-3 times per day to check the vines. It only takes a few minutes, and today there was a noticeable drop in the number of Japanese beetles. My friend, Linda Nunley, shared her recipe for discouraging them, and I may try it, but I so enjoy killing them that I’m waiting a few days.
For some reason, I thought they stayed only a couple of weeks but I read tonight that their life cycle is 60 days. This means I’ve got to be checking for beetles for several weeks. These guys are depending on me to take care of the beetles but to do so responsibly. In a bee-friendly way.
I’ve never understood hunting until now. Since this started, I totally get it. Listen up, beetles, there’s a new sheriff in town.
On another subject, Mike kept reminding me that summer had started. Apparently, it was driving him crazy that I had not changed out my chalkboard window. It still looked like this…
A quick change to satisfy him!
We haven’t had internet for several days….something to do with a fuse and Appalachian Power.
While completely locked away from the world, I made a wreath for the door to the guesthouse. It’ll be “Wedding Bells” headquarters in a few days as a bride gets ready for her big day.
This wreath was so simple to make as it involved three things:
1) Bow
2) Chalkboard message
3) Burlap Rosettes
I had burlap on hand where I had a disasterous attempt at making burlap curtains. Nope…that did not work for me. Read about it here. Something that works everywhere else doesn’t always work for me. On the upside, it left me with large quantities of burlap which I used for Vacation Bible School banners, loaned to a friend, etc. I also used the lefover burlap for the rosettes in this wreath.
I cut three inch strips that were about 42 inches long.
Here’s a yardstick posed with the burlap to demonstrate the length of the burlap. If you want smaller rosettes, use less width and length.
There’s You Tube videos and other instructions on how to twist, wrap and glue the burlap to form a rosette. My advice is just to cut your burlap, grab your glue gun and do it. I just twisted and glued occasionally, and the rosette magically appeared. Believe me, if this was hard, I would not have been able to do it.
I made six of them for this project. I like the organic look.
Once you’re satisfied with your rosettes, simply hot glue them to the wreath and add your other embellishments.
I’ve got this on the door of our guesthouse where my friend’s daughter, our bride, will prepare for her wedding. Once the wedding is over, this wreath will reinvent itself again. Here’s some of it’s past lives.
And…
And…
And..
Use what you have! Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage.
Today started like an ordinary Saturday. I had cleaning to do, but prior to starting cleaning the kitchen, I caught up on making sugar water for my young hives. It’s always a bit messy to do a 1:1 sugar water for 16 quarts, so I do it before cleaning. If someone looked at my stash, they would think I was making moonshine. Moonshine in Mendota! I’m sure it’s been done.
I don’t mind cleaning. I was listening to music and singing. I cleaned the potrack and I took a picture of it. I can find things in pictures that I can’t see in the room. Potracks are no longer in style, but as my dear mother would say “who the hell cares.”
My potrack adds a certain charm to the kitchen. My look at how orange my natural cherry cabinets look? Must learn how to do better with lighting when taking indoor photographs ! Always so etching to learn.
Oh I do love a clean kitchen even if it appears orange in the pictures!
I get lots of questions about these red and yellow curtains. I’ve got just a little fabric left and when someone asks me about them, I mail them a swatch.
My day was going so well. I was channeling Donna Reed without the high heels, necklace, or hairdo. I decided to go out and pick some basil and do a little flower arrangement. I have lots of basil so I use it as flower filler as well as a herb. This is when it happened. I saw the Japanese Beetles on my basil and my green beans. Look at the damage in the picture below. This was not present yesterday.
I hate them. More damage. Grrrr…
It is no wonder I have so many skunks. The skunks like grubs and before these Japanese beetles were flying, they were slugs in the ground It’s war. Murderous thoughts started in my head. I had motive. I had the bucket, the soapy water, and I had the desire for Beetle Blood. I picked or shook them off into my bucket of sudsy water and watched them drown. Did not even feel a tiny bit bad.
It’s dark at 2:40 am when I am writing this, but if I could see, I’d be out there checking to see if there’s any more. I will drown everyone one.
Chickens love these things. I’ve decided I’m going to get some chickens.
There has been lots of lightening flashes and big booms tonight in Poor Valley. I felt like getting under the bed, but someone was already there.
However, we are grateful for the rain. While Mendota is not as dependent on farming as we once were, we have a large dairy farm, a large cattle farm, a few farmers still growing our Burley tobacco, lots of small family farms, and most everyone has a garden. Many of us are on well water, and we just hate drought! Whew! Simply put, as my friend, Joey Salyer, says during Sunday’s prayer “thank you, Lord, for the rain.”
The rain makes a garden spring to life. This picture was taken on June 10. (This is the great thing about this blog…I can track these things.) Compare the picture below to the next picture.
The picture below was taken a few minutes ago…just ten days after that earlier picture…those Mountaineer Halfrunner Green Beans are on the loose!! Soon I’ll be picking green beans.
I may have planted those green beans too close, but it just doesn’t seem right to put about 16 beans in a raised bed and expect them to fill it up. However, that is the reality.
Yikes…my potatoes got some high wind and rain. They are laying down on the job.
And remember the side garden….it was like this not long ago.
It’s exploded…gone whacko. There’s no rhyme or reason to what’s in there. The only common thread is that I didn’t pay full price for the plants. Some crazy lady stuck them in the dirt and forgot about them planted them. Oh wait..that’s me. And of course, there is my husband’s favorite flower still growing there. The dish. Ugh.
Last night, I fell asleep about 2:00 am. Sometime shortly thereafter, Luckie barked at me. The poor baby was sick. She had terrible diahhrea. I got up and took her outside to see if there was anything left (there was), and then came back in and began cleaning. I had to rely on my nose more than my eyes because I didn’t have my contacts in. It was bad. She and I are exhausted this morning.
She even declined our early morning walk to check on what grows overnight. This is our special time. The birds are so noisy in the early hours. She misses them since she can no longer hear, but I tell her about them with my hands, my mind, my eyes and my heart. She connects.
I’ve grown a lot of succulents this year as they are going to see some wedding action in about a week. The floral designer, Ms. Heidi, knows she can take them all if she needs them.
There was an old weed
That lived in a shoe
That had so many chicks>
She didn’t know what to do.
Those boots belonged to Randy Powers. Randy is my friend, my cousin, a retired Navy man, a musician, a restaurant operator, a father, husband and grandfather, and he’s a pastor. I love him and his boots! What a sweet gift this old pair of boots have been. They’ve been around here for years now. Last year, they got a little fancier. If Heidi uses the succulents in the boots, then I’ll add some flowers again.
This is my “Hello Stranger” tomato. It was given to us by a stranger. We don’t know what it is, but it’s doing well in the five-gallon bucket.
The kindess of a stranger. I hope you receive some kindness from someone today, and better yet, perhaps give some. It’s important.
Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage.
I have a lot of quilts, and I make sure they are all used. When I considered the color for the bedroom redo (Bedroom posted here), I wanted to make sure I could use all my quilts. In the summer, a quilt and a sheet is what I like on my bed.
Here’s an old blue and yellow quilt that I put on the bed today. The duvet cover was just to hot for this time of year. The quilt will be much cooler.
Although…I do like the look of the duvet better. It has a puffy softness that beckons me to climb in. Unfortunately, once I got in there this past week, I started to sweat.
This will work much better for a while.
This quilt just came in from the clothesline. I like the faded fabric. It’s hard to find quilts large enough to fit this bed as it’s a California King. Quilts from Pottery Barn always work.
And…the underside of the quilt has a print which makes it nice. Oh whoops…can you see that the old duvet is lying in the floor?
As I’ve been refreshing the Master Bedroom, I’ve been showing off this side…that side…of my redo. I kept one side back because I imagined a white slipcovered chair and ottoman with this pretty throw casually thrown across the chair. I realized today that Luckie has some say so on this.
Luckie: “Mama..that’s not going to happen.” She likes her denim bed…she adores the box fan blowing on her (even though there is both a ceiling fan and air conditioning running most of the time). The chair would get in her pathway. She only tolerates the ottoman which I guess I’ll drag back upstairs.
That’s okay…the room is not perfect but I like it. It’s so much better than it was.
Here’s what it looks like coming into the bedroom, and I promise there are never clothes on the floor. The bed is always made up. The room is always clean. Seriously. I can’t believe how clean it looks.
Here’s another…
I redid the end table…
I had paint left over and Mike fixed me a little thing to hang necklaces off of in the bathroom…this is just an old picture frame.
Up close…
The bedroom will change when Luckie is no longer with us and that won’t be that far off, but for now, it is done. She’s just too precious to upset.
Yesterday, I worked all day and I’ll go back in for a few hours on Friday, but for the remainder of this week — Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday– I’m not leaving Mendota. It’s not as easy as if I’d said “I’m not leaving Bristol.” It means my meals are planned and my activities or what I want to accomplish this week is considered because there is no store here. I have what is in my house or what my neighbors will loan if I run short. Here’s what my typical stay-at-home day looks like…it starts early….usually at around 6:00 am.
I water in the mornings, and there is the constant dead heading of flowers. I know…it’s hard.
About 10 am, as I hung out laundry. I could hear kids playing in the river. They are skipping rocks, splashing and fishing. Sounds nice.
Do you agree….
Back at the garden…I check on the half runner green beans. These beans have been fighting insects from the day they sprouted, but they are holding their own…with no outside help except water and healthy soil. Mike placed tobacco sticks in an “X” pattern on the top of each bed. We’ll tie those down, and they will be what the beans climb around.
Remember my strawberry-lavender jam? I told you I used culinary or food grade lavender? Did I tell the truth or did it come from my garden? Hmmm…
When the beekeepers gathered to share sugar for our bees, one man brought his extra tomato plants. The kindness of a stranger…and it’s doing well.
Speaking of bees, the swarm I caught is doing well. It’s been a concern because of the lack of activity going in and out of the hive, but a peek inside a few weeks ago showed plenty of brood, so the queen has been working. Finally, the bees have hatched out and I’m seeing them although not in this picture. They are all out gathering. Whew. I love my bees.
Some things just grow better from seed, and cucumbers are one of those some things. Mine are growing in a bucket. I need to keep them on the move away from cucumber beetles, so I thought I’d give this a try. I’ll keep you posted on how this is workng.
Basil is another thing that grows easily from seed.
If you live in town, you can grow a garden of your own with a raised bed, a few buckets and some want to. It is not even hard work.
However, for me..living in the country is No. 1!!
We finished painting the bedroom last week. It took forever, and Mike still is not happy with the way the paint rolled on the walls, but I’m so over that. Who cares if it is not perfect? Last week, I could not wait to have something “put together” in this room, and I showed you one completed side of the room in an earlier post. It’s here if you haven’t seen it. I’ve now got the other side of the room put together.
I wanted a restful retreat. My high school friend, Linda Godfrey, has a “Restful Retreat” board on her Pinterest page. I think that is a perfect description of what a bedroom should look like. Some of the pictures she pinned to her board were my inspiration…especially when I decided on blue for the walls. Here’s the bed….with its duvet cover and pillows.
Remember the end table that showed up in the picture below?
I am still using the end table, but I didn’t want to keep the color. It’s got a new chalk-style paint finish and a new lamp. Do you like the little turtle? I thought it was appropriate since I’ve been so slow putting this room back together.
Here’s a close up of the little turtle. Mike’s son made it in elementary school. I’ve meant to give it to him, but I haven’t done so yet. I will. One day.
I stepped back a bit to take this picture. I had to be careful or you’d see the last side of the room that is still not put together. Do you recognize the quilt in the picture? If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you know it’s the 2013 Mendota Cemetery Quilt. How I love that quilt and the sweet man (and his wife) who gave it to me. Receiving such a gift is one of the wonders in my world.
I’ve got one more side of this room to finish and then I’ll have the whole room done!