Life On The Hill

[Lollykoko]

Speaking of butterflies ... Do you need some milkweed to attract Monarchs, Guy? I have a good crop of them this year and could bring some pods to PA next weekend.

[pa_friendly_guy]

Sure, Bring them along. They won't take up too much space as you pack, I can always use diversity on the hill.

[pa_friendly_guy]

My friend said I could have all of the decorative grass that I needed just stop by and dig it out. He helped me dig out a clump 3 foot across the other day. That stuff is like digging up concrete, we had to chop the roots with an ax to get it out. It made a few more than 20 small clumps that I planted 3 feet apart. Some of them were very small, I had trimmed the grass with his gas powered trimmer befor we dug it out, that made things alot easier. I watered them in after planting, the next day we got over an inch of rain on the hill so they should have a good start. The stuff is supposed to be very hard to kill. In a year or 2 I think it should fill in nicely. A back drop of butterfly bushes still sounds nice to me. I have been looking into Filbert nuts/Hazelnuts as well. Looked into several varietys that they list as " Almost Immune " to the Eastern Filbert Blight. They do not grow very high, maybe 15 ft max so I do not think they will effect the wires much. Found some small, 1 to 2 ft trees for sale for under $5. That sounded pretty cheap to me. Seems like I would want large nuts with thin shells, but they all need a cross pollinator so you kind of need different type for a good crop of nuts. I will have to read some more about them, but they are looking better and better to me the more I learn about them. Even the small nut varietys are great for deer and wild turkey, so that isn't a bad thing either.

[pa_friendly_guy]

I had some special guests on the Hill this Sunday. Lolly and her family friend drove to Western Pa for the Mother Earth News Fair. I talked with them at the Fair, their Motel was only about 8 miles from my place. Sunday morning they drove over befor they headed for home. It was great to see her again. They drove pretty much straight to my place, I must give pretty good directions, We sat and chatted for a bit and then I gave them the 50 cent tour. I gave Lolly some Babys Breath and let her see just how many rock I have up here on the hill. She gave me a big bag of milk weed pods, butterflys love them and I think they use them to lay their eggs. Then we went to the garden and they could see how soft the dirt was where I had double dug it and sifted out the rocks. She picked a few type of Heirloom tomatoes to save the seeds. We toured the orchard, blue berry patch , the upper field, the slope mine area, her friend stopped there, but Lolly got her moneys worth. She walked the path down to the pond, saw the spring in the middle of the path that I have been working on and took a look at one of my views. I get a nice view of the Chestnut Ridge from my place. Showed her the Farmall and the Alis-Chalmers, then we went back to their truck. It was nice to show her my place after talking about it here so much. She liked the stone wall and the butterfly garden. Here is a picture of the 2 of us sitting in the Butterfly Garden.



We talk to each other here on line, but it is nice to actually put a face with the person we all know so well from her posts. Stop back any time Lolly.

PS Her new shirt that she bought at the Fair says, Stop Bitching, Start a Revolution. Her friend Chuck bought one that said, 40 years of oil left, 5,000,000,000 years of sunlight left, Choose Wisely. I liked them both,

[matt walker]

That's great! Love the photo, Lolly your shirt is awesome. It's a beautiful setting as well Guy, nice work.

[Lollykoko]

Doug, it was great seeing you again and I really enjoyed the tour.

Folks, his hill is pretty steep, and way longer than mine. If it hadn't been for the more level switchback paths he has in place, I might still be trying to get back to the top! And the view is fantastic; well worth the hike! I wish I'd taken a couple of pictures of it as well as the pond and spring. Now I have an idea of what 30+ years of attention to the homestead might get me. Not the view, of course.

A we started the tour, my friend Charlotte asked about tree roots bursting up through the grass. The baby's breath had been dug up already by then, so we sort of knew that the rocks were only covered by two inches of soil. (The difference between a PA hilltop and one in northern IN is about 10 feet of dirt) The contrast between the garden spot and the rest of the hilltop is startling and says a lot about the hard work that has gone into the space. She dug into the potato patch and shoveled down about 15 inches into the soft loamy soil Guy has created there. Whatever he's been doing, the results are great. The watermelons growing at the base of the berry canes were sounding pretty ripe so there might be a couple of them that make it to the table.

I'm finally recovered from the trip and have the job all caught up as well. The baby's breath is packed in shredded paper and the roots are wet, waiting for a trip to the farm tomorrow. If it will grow in that stony stuff Guy calls soil, I should get a nice bush from the canes we brought back. The tomatoes (three varieties) and pepper have been gutted, with the seeds spread out on coffee filters to dry. I'll package them in paper envelopes to keep them through the winter. This is my first attempt at seed saving and I'm running on instinct. Any hints?

[boo]

Will this help for "seed saving" tips?
http://www.seedambassadors.org/docs/see ... andout.pdf
http://www.howtosaveseeds.com/

[pa_friendly_guy]

Thanks for sharing that info Boo, it is a great resoures for us all. I save tomato seeds and some flower seeds, that is about all for me, I do not try to save the more difficult types.

[pa_friendly_guy]

I planted 3 Gooseberry plants this spring. I really don't know what a fresh gooseberry tastes like, but I have wanted to try and grow them for some years now. The plants have done ok this summer, I mulched them heavy with wood chips to hold the mosture. To my surprise a bunch of vines grew up out of the mulch, I thought they were pumpkins so I let them grow. It wasn't pumpkins but water melon that grew up. I just left it go, I felt it might shade the ground around the goose berrys. Our growing season really isn't long enough to grow good water melons. I tried to keep it in the 4 ft wide patch I had for the berrys but it kept wanting to escape, so I got to the point I just mowed off anything that was outside of that 4 ft strip. The vines just were not allowed out of that space. To my surprise we had several fairly large water melons form plus a bunch of small melons. When Lolly was here she said she thought they sounded ripe to her. The vines are dying back now so I picked one of the larger melons. Cut it up today and it was ripe inside. Not the best water melon I have ever eaten, but it wasn't the worst either, We had some for lunch, and it was pretty good. I think it maybe the best melon I have ever grown on the hill. Of couse this is only the 2nd time I have tried water melons, the 1st time wasn't all that great so I did not try and mess with them again. Maybe now I should try and actually plant some and see how they do,

[Lollykoko]

Thanks for the info, Boo. I will make use of it!

Guy, I'm glad you got a melon out of that volunteer patch. I've found that the plants aren't too tough to start from seeds, so next year you might want to get a head start on your growing season by nursing a few seedlings in the house for a month or two before finding them a bed. I've seen a couple of photos where folks had put a chicken wire construct over the vines (they might have been squash instead of watermelon) about a foot or so off the ground. The vines grew up to the chicken wire where the fruit grew without ever lying on the ground. Less loss to rot that way, I suppose.