Today my duties include...

Good Morning! I woke up this morning feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day. Our little stove was out of propane, so I just stuck with a piece of bread and yogurt for breakfast. (and of course some very strong coffee). During the morning, its our responsibility to work on our own projects and finish things that were not completed the day before. I took Buster (the dog) for a long walk and enjoyed the morning. I think I'm going to start doing that every morning. I just feel better starting my day in a peaceful place. Its a good time to spend with the Lord and to think of all the reasons I am here. I went to Sherry's again today and worked on harvesting her tomatoes and pulling out the bushes that were clearly finished producing.We have such a great time at Sherry's talking about food and plants and life. She's got her degree in horticulture and is really a wealth of information. I'm excited about getting to spend more time with her as time goes on. We finished our time working in her garden and she made us open faced tomato sandwiches on homemade cibatta bread, tomato from her garden, and basil from her garden! Yummy!!

  I came back and worked in the garden for a bit, pulling weeds and checking on my assigned plants. I'm in charge of Kale and Swiss Chard. The Kale has seen better days and we're trying to nurse it back to health. It however, has been overtaken by the harlequin bug. When we see this beautiful bug, we have to smash it with our fingers and end its little life. I've gotten quite good at it.

Unfortunantly our Kale doesn't look like this because of the harlequin :(

This beautiful bug is eating my Kale!!

As I write this, I'm realizing that i'm combining the past two days into one. I think I started this blog a couple of days ago and tried to finish but didn't. So actually, this is a mix of my Thursday and Friday, but I think that's ok. To back up a bit, on Thursday my project was the fruit trees. They've been a bit neglected lately, so I pulled all the weeds around the base of the tree and re-mulched the drip line area of the tree. One of our peach trees developed some disease, so I removed all the toxic peaches and put them in the burn pile. They looked so much better after receiving fresh mulch. The mulch serves a couple of purposes for the tree. The mulch helps keep out weeds and other unwanted plants that would try and steal needed nutrients from the soil. The mulch also helps hold in the moisture of the area around the tree where the roots are wanting to collect the water. I'm learning so much everyday and I'm trying to store it away and simply not just use it for the moment I need it. I'm working on the library in my head...slowly but surely. I had a great time working on the trees! I weedeated a bit around the base of the trees and really was meticulous about the weeds. Unfortunately, I wasn't being very smart when I weedeated, because I was wearing shorts (and no shoes!) and I now have poison ivy and chiggers. Ugh! I showered right after weedeating, but I still have a few chigger bites and poison ivy under my chin, stomach and back. Not much fun. While mulching in trees I found one of the coolest bugs which we have in Texas. The patent leather beetle! They are such a beautiful bug. When I saw it, I took the opportunity to give a little lesson to Katie (she's another WWOOFer with me) on how it fits into our eco system and how it has small organism living off of it. Pretty cool.

Check it out!!

I guess Thursday was the day of bugs, because later in the day, we found a velvet ant, which apparently is actually in the wasp family, and has a sting that is so strong, cows can feel affected by them! Well of course, we had to trap it. I did not pick this one up so fearlessly though. She stayed in the bucket.

So jumping back to Friday, we had a team meeting to discuss how our plants were doing and different projects we needed to address. I am now officially in charge of the the greens (swish chard, collards, and kale) and the peppers. I've also been given the responsibility of drying our herbs. Yesterday I finished up drying the small cherry tomatoes (which by the way, if you've never eaten dried tomatoes, get on it! They are delicious!) After they were finished, I worked on the dill. First I removed all the dill seeds from the tops and put them in a jar. They are really yummy to eat and add great flavor. Then I went to town pulling off the wispy leaves and placing them on trays to dry. Because they are so fragile, the drying process took only two hours. Today when I dry basil, it will take up to 23 hours! Quite a difference.