The Early Bird Gets the Worm, But Might Get Killed in a Late Season Frost...

The planting catalogues are here! Yea!!! Time to think about gardening again!!! I say that as another blizzard approaches...


I never thought I would be one of those people who 1) looks forward with great anticipation to the upcoming spring plantings in October; and 2) peruses seed and bulb catalogues with deep and meaningful purpose. Oh yeah, and I want a goat. Nobody saw that one coming.

Honestly, who could resist that cute face? I will have my pygmy goat one day, oh yes I will. But for now, I have The Bug.

So yes, I am very excited about Spring and have been thinking about upcoming projects. First off, the rock wall garden is complete. The only thing left to do is let it do it's thing. Oh sure, I am going to take the iris, ornamental grass* and some of the sedum out**, maybe move some stuff and add some goodies in the corner near the tree, but other than that (!), really all that needs to be done is to let the ground cover by the road cover the ground.

*OK, so here's the story with that. The iris was planted willy-nilly at the end of '08 because I received it as a late season gift and needed to get it in the ground. Now I have a better place for it, so it gets moved this year. And the ornamental grass, well I put it in the place it now resides simply to prevent erosion. Now that the ground cover has kicked in, the grass can move elsewhere as it looks a bit out of place.

**And the sedum. Sigh. My poor sedum. Oh it's OK, but it really could use some more sun. Some are doing well, like the angelique and blue spruce. But the others, the stonecrops, are just too leggy for my liking. Even though I love sedum, leggy sedum is just plain ugly. So leggy sedum in the front yard are heading to the back where they can bask in the sunlight, at least somewhere in the NE corner.

That leaves a little patch of ground by the front door in need of tendin' to! Wahoo! Another garden spot! Not sure what yet, probably has to be something that doesn't need much light. Maybe rocks. And another tiny tiny gnome.

In the backyard (yes I know we agreed that's Hubby Nugget's domain, but I ran out of places to plant, and I wore him down), I will continue the plantings around the Juniper, another azalea bush to be sure. And vinca. It seemed pretty happy there last year. Of course the beloved Garden of Sedummy Goodness. This will include rocks, and definitely lavender (mmmm). Oh yes, I'm excited. Again, not sure where it's going to go, but I need to be able to see it from inside the house.

On the west side, I'm going to plant the orphan Norton grape from the vineyard. This is mostly so I can practice pruning it. Probably would be a good idea to learn how to prune if one is going to be a grower of grapes and maker of fine wines.

And finally, as if there aren't enough projects already, I will embellish the newly finished rock wall that surrounds the fire pit/patio area with plants from Larry's House of Cheap Sedum (a local nursery that I was told about and am salivating at the thought of visiting this spring...big surprise there).

Come on spring!

All for now,

Nugget

Baby Grapes and Some Artsy-Fartsy Nature Pics

Part two of the Thanksgiving festivities involved a walk down the hill to check out how the baby grapes were doing. They were happily snuggling with their cordons. Hubby Nugget joked that it looked like a stick farm. If you click on the pic below, you can almost see the supermodel-thin grapevines. :-)

Oh but they will take off next year, for sure!!! Now that they're woody, the deer won't have much interest in them...Oh wait, is that a deer trail right by our grapevines?! Indeed it is, and there are more where that came from. Hubby Nugget inspects the Bambi freeway to the grapevine buffet:

Faced with such encouraging news, I headed into the surrounding brush to play with our camera's macro setting and captured some awesome sights of the vineyard in winter (almost winter).

I don't know what this is, but it's sure pretty.

Did I mention how much I enjoy a good moss? Only a few times I imagine. Alas, I won't be trying to plant more moss in my garden this spring. I give up! Do you hear me, squirrels?! You won!!! But don't think I won't still throw rocks at you. Oh I will. Right upside the head. You won the battle, but the war is still on. Bring it.

I reached far back into my dressed-in-black, art-school past to achieve this artsy-fartsy pic of whatever that is. No, really I just put the camera down by my leg and shot up. Caught a lucky break and got a good pic! They call that a "happy accident" in art school, btw.

Another one in the same vein. Love the gnarly vines! Who knows what they are: grapes, poison ivy, trumpet vine...they all grow wild here.

Pretty berries...

Back at the top of the vineyard, got shocked back into reality by this little sight: hard to see, but it's a mole hole and trail. Bonus!

Green Acres is the place to beee...stick farming is the life for meee...

All for now,

Nugget

It's Photo-rific!!!

It's pho-tastic! I have a backlog of pics that I've been meaning to share, so here goes!

This is a snappy of Little Nugget watching her FAVorite show, the Price is Right. She love, love, LOVES Drew Carey. I can always count on a little quiet time when PiR is on. Well, except for the screaming and running around waving her arms when people 1)come on down, 2) win their showcase, 3) spin the wheel, or when 4) there is a close up of Drew Carey. The girl loves her show. (Note: Monkey does not indulge in a steady diet of crap TV, being the geeks that we are, she mostly gets the Science Channel, NatGeo, or cable news. And she's not a big fan of Sesame Street for some reason, but LOVES Elmo, of course. I'd be worried if she didn't like Elmo--isn't there some kind of tot law that she has to be into Elmo?)

Somewhere down the line Little Nugget developed a taste for dill pickles, much to our surprise. But she has pretty discerning tastes anyway. Her favorite snack is broccoli--she didn't get that from me, fo-sho. At a recent family get-together, she chose cantaloupe over home-made ice cream (as did Hubby Nugget). Freaks.

This is a gratuitous sheep shot. One of the few photos I got from Staycation Day #1. It was pretty cute though, so I threw it in the mix for shits and grins.

I LOVE this shot of my Sister and Father-in-Law doing karaoke at my niece's birthday party earlier this summer. They were singing "Summer Nights" from Grease. AWESOME!

This is the Sweet Babygirl on Staycation Day #2, a corporate outing at the local farm team baseball game. We didn't watch much of the game (we're football folks, really) but they had this huge playground area for the kids, where we spent most of our time. Little Nugget had a blast, and didn't seem to mind when she got beaned by older (heathen) children (I wanted to take them out, but thought better of it). I was quite amused that there was a HUGE bar cart right next to the playground, bigger than any other beer/tasty beverage station in the stadium. Get your mojito's here!!! Hubby Nugget said it was the Parental Coping Station--he-he!!!

More pretty wildflowers from the vineyard, ahhhhh.

A peek at one of the baby grapes safely ensconced in its grow tube, away from the prying eyes of deer, rabbits, raccoons, possums, and all other woodland creatures that love to dine on baby grapevines.

Tiny Monkey frolicking in the 60' wildflower patch in our backyard--that's good stuff.

Little Nugget goofin' in our "green" grocery bag.

Weening her off the pacifier is not going to be easy.

Little Nugget sporting Daddy's glasses. I'm sure that she will need some of her own one day soon. Unfortunately Team Nugget has bad eyesight.

Staycation Day #3, Multi-State Viticulture Field Day! Total Geek-fest, and we loved it! This was taken in the vineyard of Baltimore Bend Winery in Waverly, MO. The whole day was awesome, and we learned quite a bit, enough to know that we'd like to continue in the grape adventure.

A glamour shot of the Norton/Cynthiana grapes at Baltimore Bend--I love the gnarliness of grapevines! They don't have their color yet, but they will grow up to fulfill their destiny as red wine. We have Nortons! Yea!

A final shot of obnoxious cuteness, the Little Nugget experimenting with dressing herself. I guess it's time for a Dressy Bessy! Man, she's a clothes horse too. I got this stuff on clearance for next season, and she's played with them all weekend! In her words, they're "pity!" (translates as "pretty"!) Oh what a sweet Babygirl!

All for now,

Nugget

Geeks on Parade

So Staycation Day #3 is coming up on Monday, an all-day workshop for grape varieties and trellising. Hence the title of this post. But being the uberdorks that we are, we are quite excited! Baby-sitting arrangements have been arranged (thanks grammy & dapaw!), and we're taking the geek-show on the road!

You see, we are growing grapes. Lots of them. Well, lots of them when you're doing everything without mechanization. 90 grapevines in a spot high on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River. It's sweet. This is a project that was begun prior to the coalescence of Team Nugget. Hubby Nugget was an avid winemaker when we met, and I was an avid wine drinker. It was a match made in heaven! No really, in his eHarmony profile, he said that one of his hobbies was winemaking, and I was smitten! What an unusual hobby, I thought! I must get to know this man! The rest is histoire.

So when we first started dating, he was clearing a 1/4 acre to start a trial plot. Many wonderful dates were spent up on that hill, clearing brush! The story of Team Nugget is intimately tied to that vineyard.

Work sessions were punctuated with wine or champagne breaks, a sure way to rest our tired backs and indulge in the very products that we hoped to someday produce.

Future Hubby Nugget skillfully wielded the chainsaw while I demonstrated my OCD tendencies in stacking the fallen brush.




Grapevines were planted, several varieties that we hoped could tolerate the cold Midwestern winters and dry, humid summers: Frontenac, Vignoles, Norton, Chardonelle, Chamborcin, Foche. We even created a mnemonic to remember: (F)abulous (V)ines, (N)ot (C)rappy (C)oncord (F)uckers (no offense to you Concord growers out there, really, we're not haters).

A couple of summers have gone by since then, and grapevines have been pruned, trained, nurtured and even eaten by local wildlife. We've experienced poison ivy outbreaks, chigger attacks, territorial wasps, and best of all, breathtaking nature:

This summer, we've placed grow tubes on the grapevines to protect the new growth from grazing deer looking for a tasty treat:

The tubes are supposed to encourage growth so that they can reach the trellising.

But I'm not so sure that we haven't just created a massive deer buffet.


Time will tell, I guess.



All for now,
Nugget