Charlyn’s Web

Have a safe, fun, great Independence Day!

I am certainly thankful to live in a country with so many freedoms!

Also, let’s not forget the men and women who are fighting to keep our country free.

God Bless America!

It started out innocently enough- a few post titles in a row that started with the letter “C” and then the wayward thought of “I wonder how many I can come up with?” Watch out for wayward thoughts, they can be dangerous.

Then, after awhile, I wondered if anyone was noticing. No one commented, which is the only way that I know that you know, etc. This blog thing can be a communication tool, ya know, but in order for that to happen you have to leave a comment all you lurkers! I know you are out there.

The Col. finally noticed and then fed me a few “C” titles because I was getting stuck. I thought I’d end it at the end of June because of that. But with a few more ideas- plus some titles without post ideas to work with, on I went.

After a total of 23 posts with titles starting with “C” (this is #24) the charming, smart, funny (single) brother of mine called me out with this comment:

c, you’re cilling me with all those titles that start with C. Cwit already!

Whew! Now I can stop! Anyway, Eric gets a prize for being the first to comment about it. Although I have no prize to actually give. Maybe I’ll let him have my three kids for a weekend. Ha! No, that would be a prize for ME! I’ll have to think of something.

See? It pays to comment- then you too might win a non-existent prize!

The Boy brought in our copious cherry crop of three sour cherries the other day and loudly proclaimed that I needed to make a pie with them. Pretty meager pie, if you ask me. Pixie tried one and proclaimed that yes, it was a sour cherry!

The Sour Cherry tree is the only cherry tree with actual cherries on it. It’s so exciting! Not that there are really that many or that they are very large. But they are there!

Gives one hope for the future.

Note: I’ve now used the word “copious” in two posts! Aren’t you proud of me?

Now that I have talked about how difficult it is to grow trees and other things here, I thought I would highlight something that seems to be thriving. These pictures were taken just a few hours before the storm came through.

Our Canadian Hardy Climber that we got from Heirloom Roses, who specialize in roses grown on their own root stock, is doing wonderfully. .

It’s past its prime here but you can see how tall it is! Unfortunately it lost most of these remaining petals in the wind.

It’s over the roof!

I found pictures from last year so you could see the beautiful flowers.

It blooms copiously in the spring.

The other roses aren’t doing too bad, either. It seemed an extra hard winter on them but they seem to have shrugged it off. Although, the storm broke some branches, they should be fine. Here’s two:

The Graham Thomas:

The Chicago Peace:

They are pretty much safe from swathers so close to the house but the deer still like to eat on them, and obviously the wind can cause damage. We are extra careful with trimmers and mowers. The Murdered by Mower Rhubarb story is a post for another time.

When one makes light of what a catastrophe is, then one leaves oneself open to reality.

Reality hit in a lightning, thunder and wind storm yesterday afternoon.

This tree is off the side of the house and provides a great amount of afternoon shade as well as being the “best” climbing tree. This is the tree that nurtured the baby robins earlier this spring.

It missed the house, dog house and the swing set; it covers the sand box. One branch broke lose and then the other came down.

Rose bush branches were bent over and broken. The poor purple-robed locust got it too.

If it’s not poor soil, deer, gophers, pheasants, hot, cold, menacing mowers, and scathing swathers- it’s the wind out to get us. No wonder there aren’t that many trees around here.

It breaks our hearts.

The discussion came up here recently about trees- see the comments on this post. Since these things all tend to run together in my mind- wait, what mind? It got me thinking about the trees we do have on the place- lovingly planted by The Col. and cared for by all of us.

Then I got to thinking about the troubles we’ve had getting them to actually, you know, grow. I hear that is what they are supposed to do.

He planted some poplars around the property line a while back, weeds were growing up around them some but we were watering them and they were growing. Until one was mowed down by the neighbor cutting weeds. Others were chewed off by gophers.  Only one of that bunch survived due to various reasons.

The Col. put wire fencing around the baby trees when he planted more last year because of the deer issue. We watered all last summer and things looked pretty good.

Then the wind storm hit last.. when was it? winter, I think. The fencing came loose around some of the trees and banged the poor things all up. Some blew away which left the trees unprotected. This is what happened.

The deer (or something) ate the miniature peach tree down to almost nothing.

This one is a pine (I can’t remember which kind but The Col. knows.) It doesn’t look so good. You can see the wire fencing around it. It’s only about 15″ tall.

We do have quite a few trees that so far seem to be making it. Quite a few poplars because they grow fast and seem to do well here. The taller trees around the house are willows and were planted by the previous owner. We are thankful for their shade! Plus a red leafed maple, three crabapples, three cherry trees, a Mountain Ash, a locust, a weeping willow, several pines and I’m sure I’m missing some.

Catastrophe struck again this last week.

The swather got it- cage and all. Poor baby!

Sunshine decided on this day that she wasn’t going to ride the Dirt King Trike, her faithful friend that rides the ditches with her. She was going to walk. I guess she decided that it was really going to be a trek because she just had to carry her chair with her.

The chair is a real cute one that was given to her by her Grandmother. It has straps so she can carry it on her back and a pocket to carry things.

She carried it the whole way, which wasn’t really that far, and we didn’t even stop to use it. Tsk, tsk.

The baler came Friday. Such excitement!

We rushed right out to take some photos as the bales are picked up right away.

Nine bales total. We’ve had better, we’ve had worse.

We’ll have to wait for the puny second cutting to get our fix again. Until then, The Boy has his toy farm equipment out and is swathing, raking and baling all the rugs. Sure is hard work! Whew! But this year his Baby Sister is helping which helps ease the burden.

Let’s all sing here-“One of these things doesn’t belong here, one of these things just doesn’t belong.” One of these children is not dressed appropriately; she made her own choices on what to wear.

Hint: it was 80 degrees.

This winter when there was snow on the ground Little Miss Pixie decided to wear skirts… everyday. When she went outside she would bundle up in her jacket, scarf, hat and gloves and then fight me tooth and nail to put on thin leggings or tights.

Now, when it’s warm, she is wearing jeans and long sleeve shirts. She has other choices in her closet. I bought some cute skort (skirt with shorts sewn in) outfits when she was along with me. She helped me pick them out- now they are not pink but she said she’d wear them. There was not any tan to be seen. One set has not adorned her body and the other was worn once. We picked out some cute sandals for her, she tried them on, she said they were fine and now it’s a fight to get her to wear them. She would rather wear too small, dirty old ones. The sandals are even white and PINK for goodness sakes!

Do you sense a bit of frustration in my typing? Ah well, I’ve told her I am not buying anything more for her because she tells me she will wear it and then doesn’t. That will last until this winter when she’ll need jeans that aren’t expecting a flood.

And to think- she’s only 5. What will the teenage years be like?

Lord help us.

I had been noticing that a few of my computer programs were crashing rather frequently and then some programs wouldn’t come up at all. So I shut the machine down and on start up got a blue screen with white writing on it. That’s not a good thing. It said, though, that if this was the first time I was seeing this screen to shut down and start up again. So I did. It wanted to send a report to the Great Computer Company that Creates Programs that Hog Resources. Since it seemed serious enough, I said go ahead. It came back that I had something called “malware” on my computer. Oh dear. Well, this was beyond me so I phoned my handsome and clever Tech Support Guy.

He asked me to hold while he transfered me to India.

Har. Har.

I was instructed by Mr. Funny Tech Support Guy to shut my computer down and he’d work on it when he got home.

Geez! I had posts to post, websites to visit- truly important things to do! Luckily, I was distracted with VBS all evening.

So far Col. Panic, who didn’t panic, hasn’t found anything suspicious on here. Just lots of tracking cookies for a certain person who “browses” a lot. Who could he mean?

So now we are back to our regular scheduled blogging.