Weekend at the Farm May 24 - 25, 2014

•  It is my sister Terry's birthday today.  Gone too soon.  It's also the birthday of my first husband and my daughter-in-law.  It's a happy day. 
• Woke up early Saturday morning and picked squash blossoms, stuffed them.  Picked green beans.   Vacuumed the house.  Mopped the living room and put down floor shine.  Cleaned the guest bathroom, kitchen sink, and Master bath toilet.   Cut back the unruly shoots on the blackberry patch.  The new shoots come out right when the berries start turning black.  They will totally block the paths if I don't cut them back.  My folks arrived a little before eleven o'clock.  
• My parents came for lunch on Saturday.  I served Pasta Fagiola  soup, marinated green beans tossed with arugula from the garden, and the squash blossoms.  
• Drove my mom down to the Orchard to look at the Larkspurs.  They remind her of her mom, and they remind me of my mom.
• Watered with my watering can most of the plants on my list.
• Carol Montgomery stopped by to say hello while my parents were still here.  I told her to come by and pick blackberries since we won't be here next weekend.
• Ray stopped by for about an hour on Saturday .  
• Austin, the 17 year old that lives up the raod came by.  He and his friends like to ride around on our trails.
• Lucinda came by and invited us to their place.  We went over about 9:00 on saturday evening and sat by the fire for a couple hours.  
• Mulched in the Star Garden with my leaf mulch.
• Picked blackberries on Sunday evening so I can make a cobbler for Max before he leaves for Spain.
• Getting pretty hot.  I don't work much.  Just try to keep the weeds down, that's all there is to do.  Weeding and watering for the rest of the summer. Once the Larkspur and the other spring wildflowers go to seed I will turn over the beds in the Orchard and sow Zinnias.  But that is about all the heavy lifting I will likely do over the next several months.  The lake is the place to be in the dead of summer.  
• Mulched the front bed where I have the Rudbeckia Maxima transplants.  
• The Hyacinth bean seeds I planted in the gravel by the front arbor have sprouted.  Yes!  Hopefully that will be pretty.  I've been watering all the seedlings that have sprouted over the past several weeks.  I really want a good show from my arbor vines.  
• Several of the Castor Beans I sowed in the Vegetable garden last weekend have sprouted.  That should be fun to watch.  They are very fast growing plants.  All parts of the castor bean plant are poisonous.  But it is what the old cure-all castor oil was made from.  Funny how something so dangerous can be a medicine.  That is the same as Foxglove.  Very poisonous, but also the ingredient in Digitalis.