Seriously, I laughed til I Cried

We have been working the old farm house project for a little over a year now.  The farm house rehabilitations are slowly, but surely, moving forward. Still, here we are, facing Spring, and wanting to begin our various crop trials.  We have lots of "issues" with the land, of course, but are looking for creative ways to make them work in our favor.

Lots of Water

Our hunt for different things to try led us to BAMBOO.  Bamboo? Sure, why not?  It can work as an effective privacy screen and such.  As is our norm, we began our search for bamboo on eBay.  Everyone seems to be selling the "lucky bamboo" which isn't really bamboo at all, but for which there are something like 600 listings.  Then there are the folks selling glorious bamboo plants in pots and which are EXPENSIVE when one considers this is an EXPERIMENT.  Eventually, we happened on a seller whose offerings were for  the rhizomes from their mature crop.  This seemed like the best method for our experimentation.  We considered bidding on the 5 rhizomes auctions, but decided we wanted to get on with the experimentation, so bit the bullet and bought the 50 rhizome BUY-IT-NOW lot.

We bought and paid for them yesterday afternoon and later last night I receive a thank you for the purchase from the seller, in which she informed me they would dig the rhizomes on Monday and ship them out.  She included planting directions and warned us not to open the box inside, unless we wanted dirt to poof up all over the house.

I noticed she had a link to a blogspot blog at the end of her email, and simply could not resist taking a peek.  I was not sorry I did.  This little lady is hilarious.  She does not post daily or anything, but everything I read had me chuckling... some actually had me laughing until I cried.  I could picture the scenes as she described them and the pictures were just funny!

I'm adding her blog to my "like to read" list on the right shoulder here, so you can enjoy them too (if you need a quick laugh).  A couple that I really enjoyed are here. (To read these stories from here, just hover your mouse cursor over the titles and then click on the link). Ex-Husbands , The Garden Hose , ZUMBA, and of course, Pet-Smart, but really, every one of them that I read had me chuckling.  Don't let me decide for you, check them out for yourself!  All of you eBayers (like us) will particularly enjoy this one, which includes her eBay solution to her dilemma... Beverly Hillbillies Does Bahamas.  OK, OK, you get it, I think this woman is a funny story teller and look forward to reading the rest of her stories.  To link directly to her blog, you can click here, on the lifewithlittlejo  link. I've read maybe half of them so far.

And back here on the old farm, we (I love using that word when the truth is that Joe has been doing all of the hard work while I have been doing my day job) have managed to get the berry patch started.  When we stand on the deck of the garage apartment, we look over what, with a little imagination and luck, will one day soon be a blossoming, leafy, fruit producing patch.  The plum tree and peach trees are already blooming. The fig tree was all geared up to bud out when it got hit with a freeze and looks as if it is having trouble recovering. The "sticks" we purchased from another eBay seller, and from some on-line plant companies are carefully planted and will, hopefully soon reward us with blueberries (four varieties), black currents, raspberries (golden and red), cherries (grown on bushes), apricots and grapes. We still have some strawberry plants we plan to transplant from another spot to test them in this location.  Should be an exciting Spring!

You Can See them Blooming Right?

The Planting Process

The Planter