Well HOWDY!

Sent from my iPhoneI've been growing glass here for 10 years. This is the first time I managed to get a purple flower! Color me happy!!!

Moving forward

Remember the post about plans for retirement and what order i'm doing things in? You know the one in 2013 where I was working on extra income in retirement, or this one in January that said we would wait to build until after we saved enough to do it out of pocket? Well- you can throw all that out the window.

We had been worried about the possibility that somehow someway that property would not be available to us when we wanted it. So, we looked around at a few other properties and even put an offer on one that connected with the current property. That didn't pan out, but something else did. A decision was made, an agreement was drawn, we started making payments and  and now...GULP. Now we are in contract to build our retirement home...

WHA???  Yup. It seems kinda crazy to me after all the careful planning, but here's the deal. This secures the property for us. This means that we are paying $500 a month now to have it built and until we take over the property, but then again every time we pay now it's less that we will have to pay later. Home building costs are going up and not down- no matter how you look at it. Building supplies themselves are going up even though property values had lost so much value.

Does the $500 a month hurt - well DUH. Of course it does. Especially since we now have a driving teenager that is going to need a car next summer to get to his COLLEGE classes. Um - yeah this is tough. We are swallowing a lot of hard pills, but looking toward the future with this project  is just as awesome as looking at the past and seeing what a wonderful man my child is now becoming.

The hope here is that we will have the property already paid down by half or more before our (hopeful) retirement date looms close. Then, once we sell our home we'll use the proceeds from that to pay it off entirely and we should have enough to traverse the hunger gap between our retirement date and the time that we start taking payouts from Social Security. (God willing it's still around then.)

WOWSERS. How exciting this is. We've already sold the trailer, and in 2 weeks we will be moving out. Scary. I'll keep you posted on the progress. The crew is supposed to be out July 15th to start the basement! Basement and back porch are not shown on the drawing - sorry! You'll just have to imagine it there. ;-)

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 6.8.15

A week into June and the main harvest has been AVOCADOS! Yippee! We got a few last year, but this year I have lots and lots. There has been avocado slices on salads, and mashed avocados in sandwiches, some guacamole and now I'm at the point where I can't quite keep up eating them all as they come in. So- Now I will start trying to figure out how to preserve the stuff. I've heard of people freezing it but I just don't know how well it works. Anyone have experience? I know I can at least vacuum seal and freeze the guacamole, but I'm not sure about any other uses for it besides that. Shame, too because what I see on the trees should be the perfect amount for 9-12 months...but no way to keep the fruit from falling and becoming useless.

Such is the gardeners life. Oh! I almost forgot the other big harvests have been tomatoes (2 bushes are diseased already but the fruit is mostly edible)lemons, limes and jalapenos. I mean - seriously? Could the irony here escape anyone at the moment? It's the perfect guacamole ingredients. I'm adding some garlic to it, but other than that it's all homegrown. :-) LOVE IT!

Pomegranates have been coming in, too. Unfortunately they are not ripe, they are bursting from the rain we've had. :-( Booo!!!!! Normally our springs are really rather dry and that just hasn't been the case here. Our daily rain pattern doesn't usually pick up until late June but this year it started in March. So the not-quite-ripe burst fruit is going to the chickens who just don't seem to care that the fruit is more tart than sweet. LOL. They are also eating my aphid ridden kale and unfortunately the butterflies that seem to be showing up en mass this month.
Hope all is well where you are. Don't forget to stop by Daphne's to see what gardeners are harvesting all over the world!

See you soon!

Barbie~

Painting

The house painting is finally done. I was going to show you progress pictures but just going through them was exhausting to me. I'd rather not relive that week of my life at the moment. Instead I will show you what my home looks like now. I'd like to get a better picture of it, but if I keep waiting it will never get posted - so here ya go!

See you soon!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 6.1.2015

I just can't seem to wrap my head around the fact that this is JUNE. What? The year is half way over? No way!

I don't have any pictures to share of our harvests this week - But it's been a pretty steady picking of peppers. a few jalapenos and a couple bells as well. The avocados are coming along nicely and a few of those have come in to the table as well. Otherwise it's just eggs and a handful of green beans.

Nothing too exciting, but a whole lotta work has been done around the house. The garden may be suffering for my neglect, but as I mentioned a few weeks ago I'm starting the retaining wall for the raised beds and as it progresses the garden will be put under the new installment of medium. The blocks are going 1 row under the grass and another 3 rows on top of that, making the interior of the bed 12" high.

I can't wait to finish this project. IT promises to make gardening easier, and the back yard easier on my eyes as well. LOL.

That's it for this week. The house painting is finally done, and things are getting back to normal here so I'll share that soon.

See you soon!

Barbie~