Where The Green Grass Grows

I am blessed to have a morning commute of about 8 miles along a curvy country road into the town where I work the job that pays me money.  Sometimes I am frustrated by a car or truck pulling out right in front of me along the way, or often times one of them whizzing up from behind me and keeping close to my bumper, too much in a hurry.  Many times, however, I have driven the entire way without seeing another vehicle at all until I got to town.

Several mornings recently I've been awestruck by the mysterious beauty of low hanging bands of fog in the hills which hide the middle parts of the mountains.  These fog bands are seemingly held down by an invisible hand in order to allow the tops of the mountains to peak above the murky mists. 

Driving home I have been treated to the shows of the Dogwood and Redbud trees in bloom along with a variety of flowers of yellows and blues along the hills near the road.  I enjoy looking across the fields of the several hill farms I pass and seeing a man tending to his cows or horses, and I drive carefully by several homes where I have needed to brake in the past to allow for chickens crossing the road.

This morning it was not fog that had my attention, but the crystal clarity of the morning sun, shining on the mountains in the near distance.  It was unreal how it brought out such vivid shades of greens from the trees of the distant hills.  I thought to myself that the varied subtlety of the green colors seemed too perfect, like the artist had over exaggerated what the true colors of the trees were.  I realized that God was speaking to me, as He often does during my commutes.  He doesn't usually give me a specific message, He just taps me on the shoulder, reminds me that He is here and that He loves me.  I felt led to immediately thank Him this morning for the beauty of His creation and for blessing me with my wonderful family and home and providing for all our needs through the blessings of the employment God has allowed me to have.

My day at work today was unusually busy, but it was a good day.  As I got into my car to head back to the homestead, the radio started playing with the turning of the ignition key.  The last station that was playing this morning was the local country music station, becasue I was listening to the news at 8:00am.  I try hard not to make a habit of listening to the music on this station due to the offensive messages that so many of today's country songs offer.  However, there are still some songs that come out on the country music stations that are good!  I enjoyed the song that began playing this afternoon because it touched me so close to how I've been feeling lately.  Here's the chorus, which is pretty much the whole song.  You can sing along if you want...

I'm gonna live where the green grass grows

Watchin' my corn pop up in rows

Every night be tucked in close to you (Lisa)

Raise our kids where the good Lord's blessed

Point our rocking chairs towards the west

Plant our dreams where the peaceful river flows

Where the green grass grows

I am very thankful to live in this part of God's creation where there are grass and trees and hills and streams;  a place in the country where we can grow food, raise animals, and where our children can run and play and be loud if they want to.  I'm thankful that God has allowed us to plant our dreams where the peaceful river flows!  And where the green grass grows...

2011 Pure Water Hollow Garden Tour

Our gardens have occupied a good bit of our summer activities here at Pure Water Hollow, but I have not shared much about them.

We have two gardens once again this year, one up by the house and the other across the road down on the river bank. I call them our "main garden" and the "river garden". We had an incredible amount of rain in May, with about 15 inches, when our average is less than 5! Since things around here didn't dry out until the the first couple weeks of June, we got a late start on the gardens.

We did our main garden first. Lisa planted most of her tomato plants here, along with onions, garlic, potatoes, peppers, corn, zuchini, rhubarb, and squash. This is also where we planted our new strawberry plants and where the struggling blueberry plants are.

Here's the garden gate. You can see our seedless grape arbor to the right. They didn't do real great this year as they were hit with some type of fungus. You can make out the potatoes, beans and some of the tomatoes in this picture.

The potato plants looked really nice, but I didn't get any good pictures of the whole patch. In this garden we used heirloom varieties we bought from Pine Tree Seeds. We're growing Adirondack Red and Blue, Irish Cobbler, Shepody, and Kennebec. Here is a picture of when they were in bloom:



We also planted heirloom varieties of the green beans. We have Pencil Pod Yellow Bush and Giant Stringless Green Bush.





This shot takes in a lot of the tomato plants. This is the second year that we did not buy any plants at the store at all! I am very pleased that we were able to save seed from last year and grow plants from our own seed!



Along the fence Lisa planted the sauce tomatoes. We have about 20 of these plants that will hopefully give us much spagetti sauce, etc. You can see four rows of the other tomato plants. In the first row we have 8 Marglobe plants, the second row has 9 Mountain Pride plants. The third row is 10 Rutgers plants and the fourth row contains 10 Black Prince plants. There are also a variety of cherry, or small, tomato plants placed here and there. We have red cherry, snowberry, and yellow pear.

We'll have plenty of tomatoes soon!



The corn is still small, but it is cool that our saved seed from last year is growing! It is called "Country Gentleman" which is an heirloom variety that we liked very much last year. The first seeds I planted all came up but then the crows snipped each little plant off and ate the seed! It was disappointing to have to replant, but with the help of some fishing line above the plot, the crows left this group alone. Hopefully, they will have time to make us some juicy ears!



In between our corn, Lisa planted peppers and eggplants.




Here are the zuchinni plants that have already given us many zuchinnis! It's amazing how fast they grow!






Here are some bean plants that Debbie Sue had purchased and the potatoes.



Here we have the onions and maybe you can make out the garlic behind them.



In between the onions and garlic Lisa planted her lettuce and Dwarf Pak Choy for salads.



I don't have any good pictures of the sunflowers or cucumbers yet, so maybe I'll post about them later.

On our way out of the garden let's stop by the big grape arbor and check out the grapes.

This arbor has one Niagra (white) and 2 Concord (purple) vines growing on it, and they have produced an abundance of grapes! However, they have been hit pretty hard again by a fungus we think is called "black rot". It is the same thing that hit our seedless varieties by the main garden. I'd say we have probably lost 80-90% of our grape harvest! I have been picking the rotted ones off, but you can see some grapes that have recently fallen to it in these pictures. There is still a very nice ceiling of grapes throughout the arbor, and the grapes that survive will still be good for juice or jam making. But we won't have nearly as much jam compared to what could have been! I will try to post another time about how we can combat "black rot" in the future.





On our way down to the river garden, Christina took some beautiful pictures of things that are in bloom right now.











I thought this was a cool shot, even though you can't make out the bee and spider inside the flower real well:



This isn't a flower, but Christina got a neat picture of our latest baby chick:



On the river bank we have several good spice bushes before you get to the garden. These berries will turn red and when they are dried out they can be ground up and used as all spice!





At the river garden, we have some heirloom corn called "Rainbow Aztec" we bought from Baker Creek last year. We didn't have room for it last year, so I decided to try it this year even though it was so late. Less than half of the seed planted germinated and fewer are still living. I don't know if it will make anything or not this year.



I didn't have any room in the fenced part of the river garden for this corn, so I surrounded it with fishing line on the sides and above it. The idea is that the fishing line keeps the crows out from above because they are scared to get their wings trapped, and it keeps the deer and dogs out from the side because they feel the line when they walk against it. It has not been broken, so it has either worked or no animal has tried to go in it!

Here we are on the outside of the fence getting ready to enter the garden and pick some more beans. You can see our water bottles in the garden cart, which is important during these hot and humid "heat warning" days! You can also see the peach trees inside the fenced area that are part of this spot in the upper right in these pictures. (They did not have much success this year.)





This is a rather long garden consisting of various beans, potatoes, and peanuts.



The first patch of green beans are an heirloom variety called "Black Valentine" that we are trying for the first time. Next are the "Tender Green" beans, both the hybrid and heirloom varieties. The hybrid actually seemed to have more and bigger beans than the heirloom variety, but the heirloom "Tender Green" did great as well! And we will be able to save and re-plant the heirloom beans, which makes them more valuable in our eyes. The last group of beans we've been picking on are our heirloom "Contender" beans. All of these that I mentioned so far are bush bean types.








The pole beans do not yet have any beans on them as they take much longer. This is the first time we have grown pole beans and I think it is really neat how Lisa, Matthew and Simon tied up some bamboo canes to make bean teepees! They are an heirloom variety called Rattlesnake Pole. They seem to be doing very well!




We are also growing kidney beans and soup beans. Here is a shot of the King of the Early soup beans:



I planted our red Pontiac and white potatoes here in the river garden last week as well! I am excited that we were able to save so many of them from last fall. Some of the plants have already started to come up, but I didn't take any pictures of them. If they have time to turn out good potatoes, it will be the first time we have grown potatoes from our own crop of the previous year! Our goal is that we won't ever have to buy seed potatoes in the future because we will have our own that we keep over winter!

We are trying our hand at peanuts this year as well! We had grown them on a small scale years ago and really liked them, but we have never tried to grow enough to make our own peanut butter. It seems that this sandy river soil is perfect for peanuts! We have over 300 plants that look pretty good!




Here are some closeups of the peanut blooms:





We don't really know what we're doing concerning growing peanuts, so we are just keeping our fingers crossed. Lisa read somewhere that we were maybe supposed to thin the plants out, but we can't bring ourselves to do that!

Here is a picture taken from the far side of the garden at the telephone pole. You can see the peanut plants in the foreground and then you can make out all the bean plants going back to the gate. The gate is next to that white garbage bag tied to the fence. You can't see the corn in this picture, but you get a feel for how long this spot is!

As you can see, we have much to thank the Lord for! We have a good harvest, as well as some major work, to look forward to!