Author: Julia

I am a retired software solutions architect. I have been married to my husband, Bruce, for over forty years. We have a 12-pound dog, Nox, who we love dearly. She has been with us since 2009. We went full-time RVing for 3.5 years and saw much of the United States. We bought a ranch house on a hill in the middle of five acres. We are working on creating our homestead. I love cooking and enjoy sharing recipes. I am also an artist and I’ll share my current projects. Reading is my favorite hobby.

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2025 I wish everyone a Happy New Year! Wow! It is hard to believe that 2024 is done! I’ll have to get used to writing and typing 2025. This always takes me a while. Last week, Bruce complained the tall garden beds hid the short garden beds. He also mentioned that if we […]

Loose Piece of Tin on Shed Roof

December 28, 2024 With all the rain, some wind blew past as well. Thursday night, Nox was making a racket, whining and crying, so Bruce got up to see if she needed to go out. Lucky me, I slept through the racket. Bruce took Nox outside and she did need to go out. Bruce said […]

Rain and More Rain

December 28, 2024 The weather has turned rainy. Earlier in the week, Thursday was predicted to partly cloudy with Friday being rainy. By Christmas (Wednesday), rain was in the forecast for Thursday as well. On Thursday, it rained on and off. Since it was raining on Thursday, we decided to do some shopping at Rural […]

Putting Together a Large (12 Piece) Tall (29 Inches) Raised Metal Garden

December 25, 2024 Yesterday, we finished putting together the large (12 piece) short (15 inches) garden beds from Epic Gardening’s Amazon shop. Our configuration is 4 feet by 8 feet. These garden beds are from Australia and the company is Birdies Garden Products. For their USA customers, they sell their garden beds through Epic Gardening. […]

Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2024 Besides a new roof for Christmas, we also bought twelve metal garden beds. The first six arrived last week and the rest arrived yesterday, just in time for Christmas. We finished putting together the short beds (17’) beds yesterday. Thanks to a reminder from Leslie from https://www.lbowmanstudios.com/ and https://theadventuresofbiteydog.com/ about her experience […]

Pictures of the Yard

December 21, 2024 Here are some random pictures of the yard. The half plastic barrels are great for holding large yard bags open so we can safely put poison ivy in the bags.

Putting Together the Birdies Metal Garden Beds

December 21, 2024 With the disappointing results from the soil tests, we decided to use raised garden beds with premium topsoil and compost. We are going to purchase topsoil and compost to fill the beds. Yesterday, the boxes for the short beds arrived from Amazon. We bought Birdies metal garden beds from Epic Gardening’s store […]

Using New Yard Tools

December 20, 2024 Today was cold; it only got up to 45 degrees F. It was windy, eight miles an hour with gusts up to 20 miles an hour. The wind and humidity made if feel a lot colder. The high of the day was early, around 9:00 AM. The wind blew in colder weather. […]

An Unusual Christmas Tree (More of a Bush, Really)

December 19, 2024 I was feeling a bit festive, having gotten the gift I really wanted for Christmas, which was a new roof. I found some of the yaupan holly Bruce had cut out of the fence row. It is very Christmasy looking with its red berries. I brought some in, trimmed the ends, and […]

The Roof Is Complete!

December 19, 2024 As 4 o’clock rolled around, we noticed the roofers were starting to put away their tools. Please excuse the blurriness of the picture below. The picture window had some light reflection from somewhere. We no longer heard hammering or other work on the roof. Several men focused on getting their tools loaded […]