annesfunnyfarm.blogspot.com

Joanna, the author, has developed a wonderful, active website chock-full of useful instruction and ideas including: Have a question about planning a perennial garden? Get some inspiration from her gorgeous pictures where she shows you how to use these pieces in a beautiful and inviting way in your garden. Some of the gardening things I read make me feel like I'm way out of my depth, but Joanna makes it all seem so very DO-able. Gingham Gardens just recently published the post How to Plan Next Year's Garden in the Middle of Summer.

We're just one big happy family that managed to go from three kids to four through international adoption of a special-needs child, then from four kids to six with the addition of two older internationally adopted kids with mental health issues including RAD, PTSD and more! None I fixed up and moved into my new house with Patrick, Julie, Bella, (plus a friend of theirs that moved in with us), and Rosie when she was home from school. And as you may know, I've gone through a bunch of health issues this year (which resulted in four hospital admissions and countless tests and procedures), including surgery to remove a weirdly positioned stone up in my liver, pancreatitis, and open heart surgery. I'm in my new house with Patrick (commuting to college and working part time), Rosie (who with any luck will be doing a semester as a student teacher this fall to finish up her college education), and Bella (who is working at Goodwill).

They are the perfect way to get your chickens from point A to point B without either making a huge coop or letting your chickens free-range, which means they will never even make it to point B. I decided the raised bed that came with my house was too small to use for my garden, but was a good size for a compost area, and situated close-but-not-too-close to the house, so it would be ideal. Sort of hard to explain, but I attached chicken wire to the existing fence with zip ties, then attached the new tunnel panels to the fence with zip ties, then wrapped the chicken wire over the tunnel, attaching here and there with - you guessed it - zip ties. Where the tunnel met the ground, I ran the wire out about 12", and secured the chicken wire to the ground with garden staples, the kind you tack landscaping cloth down with.

But when things went from chaotic/messy/stressful/fun to just plain old stressful, the blogging dropped by the wayside as I processed all my life changes. Katharine Evans Kimball Birdsong went by many names, but the one name that best captures her spirit is… She was a gentle soul with a poet’s heart, and on June 2nd, 2016, Katharine Birdsong took her last breath at the age of 72. It’s hard to explain our unconventional household, but if you’ve ever come home from school and found a wounded (but very much alive) goose staring back at you from the only bathtub in the house, or a large (but very much dead) deer in the back seat of your mom’s broken down Oldsmobile, you'll have an idea of the colorful childhood our mom painted on a Jersey Shore canvas. But when she could, you felt flooded by the light of the angels, and buoyed by the voice of a poet: To all who’ve touched my life, my soul, Who’ve broken me or made me whole, Or who’ve revealed a glimpse of you, Stripped by all except what