Getting bigger!!

So, I was sitting with the ducks again today, I seem do that frequently. I've noticed that they seem to be just growing so quickly! Babies of all species tend to do that tho, grow quickly. It just seems like you don't notice until you look back at old pictures. So, here's some new pictures of the ducklings.

This one was taken on 04April

And today 09April! 

Far cry from the wee little things they were on the 31March, eh?? I just can't believe how QUICKLY they are growing! We're going to have to start building their enclosure as soon as we get our check! A friend of ours from our church gardening group has a fantastic set up that I think we're going to copy. They took 2x4s in 8' and 12' sections and built 2 8x12' enclosures. They separate their ducks and chickens, but I think we're just going to do one large 8x24' enclosure and put a short stock tank in for the ducks with a "deck" for them. This would mean that I wouldn't have to water as much, and that I can use the water from the stock tank in the garden instead of just dumping it in the yard like I would with a kiddie pool. This of course means that we're going to have to find one that is big enough for the ducks, but not too deep in case the chickens decide they want to try and have a swim. I found a couple of more shallow stock tanks online at Tractor Supply, lets hope that they have them here at the store or can order them for me!

On another note! We had a frost Friday night. Bug was spending the night with a friend, or so I thought. I got a weather advisory alert on my phone and was busy, so didn't see what it was. About 10, I got a call that Bug wanted to come home. I went to pick her up, she said that she didn't feel well and wanted to come home. I bring her home, put some medicine in her, came out to check on a few things in the dining room, back to check on her, and she was fast asleep in my bed! I then laid down to see what the weather alert was. I laid there for a second trying to remember where all the extra sheets were so I could at least cover my tomatoes that I had just planted a few days before that. I got up, got the sheets, covered my tomatoes, and brought in my peppers and eggplants that I hadn't gotten a chance to plant yet, and went to bed. Or so I thought!! I wake up in the morning, the dogs are bouncing all over the place as if they are saying "MOM!! It's breakfast time! MOM!! Lets go mom!!" I stretch, put on my slippers because it's chilly, and walk out to let the dogs out to potty and feed them. As soon as I walk into the dining room I notice that there are no sheets outside. Then it dawned on me... I had fallen asleep and DREAMED I covered all my plants!! *heavy sigh*

I lost all of the volunteer white heirloom cucumbers, all my eggplant, save 1, my 2 peppers, and 3 of my tomatoes. It's okay tho, I had 3 of the volunteers from last year, but I'm pretty disappointed that I lost all my white cucumbers, even tho I hadn't planned on having them. I restarted the eggplant and peppers, and I hope that they pop up soon. I'm just glad that we have a fairly long growing season. It's been a CRAZY spring I say!

I also planted pumpkins, watermelon, more cucumbers, yellow and green bush beans, radish, and even tho I know it's WAY too late, garlic. I mostly put the garlic in to try and keep the squash vine borers at bay. They completely decimated our pumpkins last year. Monkey was crushed! He was really hoping that he would get  to eat some home grown pumpkins in his pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. Hopefully this year that won't be a problem. I checked all the plants again today and gave them a nice drink, and I noticed that the radishes are already starting to pop up! Hooray! I'm so excited! I LOVE radish, and I think that once my husband has a home grown radish, he will love them too.

I hope that you all had a great Easter! We had a great day at church, and then basically had a lazy day at home.

Linking up to Homestead Barn Hop!

Spring Has Sprung!!

We've been pretty busy here at Ivy Hill trying to get things done! I planted those daffodils a few weeks ago, not expecting them to bloom this year, but apparently they decided that they wanted to make an appearance! We have plans to put a brick border around the beds around the porch. We also put more flowers around our crepe myrtle tree, and cleaned out around the mailbox and planted flowers there too. The mailman got a surprise when one of those flowers sprouted a little yellow daffodil as well! :-)

This picture of our pear tree was taken a couple of days ago. There are several more blooms on it now! Last year in April we had tornadoes and every single bloom, save 1, was blown off the tree! It was doing really well until the hurricane came and then we had to pull the 1 immature pear so it didn't fly off and go thru a window or anything. We're hoping that this year we have some pears to harvest! It's still a pretty young tree, so I'm pretty surprised that we are getting anything.

I did finally get the strawberry bed cleaned out! This was taken the other day as well, before I had gotten it completely cleaned out. This year, I'm not going to let them go hog wild like I did last year! Sheesh! What a mess that bed was! There are quite a few more flowers now and some of them already have the beginnings of strawberries on them!

Last year DH thought it would be a good idea to put our grapes on the fence because one of our other neighbors had done it that way. I TRIED to get him to just put up some lines for a small vineyard, but, he wouldn't cough up the dough for it. I guess it's just practice for our farm anyways, but now that I think about it... it's going to be difficult to keep the dogs off of the immature grapes! I noticed that this winter they chewed some of the vines that were on the inside of the fence. This same vine now has a few very small leaves. It's quite exciting!

We had gone to Tractor Supply and there were these ADORABLE little grey Easter Eggers! If DH would have had his way, we would have brought some home. I told him that we didn't have the set up for it right now and that if he would just be patient, then we could get a coop and get some chickens. We've decided that we're going to get some for DDs birthday. Since they will be her pets, they will all have names, and we will only use them for eggs. DH does want to get some rabbits for meat. I guess we will have to see how that goes. I'm not real keen on the idea because, while I love the taste of rabbit, they are just SO adorable!

This is DS holding one of our friends Easter Egger chicks. That little chick just attached itself to him and when anybody tried to pick it up it would cheep up a storm and as soon as you put it down, it would snuggle back into his lap and quiet right back down.

Elsewhere, we are watching our new tomatoes grow by the day! Most of them have their first set of true leaves now. Almost all of the other seeds didn't make it. We've got more that we planted. I'm seriously going to invest in the light for next year!! This is ridiculous! We put almost 2 months into those seedlings and they were just so leggy!!

Anyways, until the next time! I hope that everyone is able to get their hands in the dirt soon!