as expected.............

.......vacations never start off easy!

This past Wednesday we had our cat, Chip fixed and de-clawed. We brought him home on Friday and all was well. Was.

This morning he was spooked by one of our kids and jumped off of the couch. 9:30 That would be fine normally, except for the fact that his paw began to bleed. He ran over to me and jumped on my lap. He then jumped down and ran upstairs. As he was running away, he left a nice trail of blood behind. At this point I shouted "stop the cat, he's bleeding!!!" Now my wife was on his tail (so to speak) He stopped at his crate so C could check him out. Now for the bloody trail to clean up.

11:00 Chip was going to stay home for the week, with a friend of mine checking up on and feeding him. Change of plans. I had to rush 25 minutes away to Arens house. Chip is now staying their for a few days of observation.

11:45 My mother in law is coming to Myrtle Beach with us again. She lands at 12:30. The airport is 55 minutes away. Aren and his wife just had a baby girl 15 days ago. I haven't met her yet. Can't leave before I do. Chips crate has some blood spatter on the inside. Gotta clean that before I go.

Call C. "Sorry, just leaving for home now, I guess you have to pick up your mom with the kids"

12:00 I get home and start organizing all things packed. Re-arrange some bags and get things ready to go in the van. No van. C has it to pick up her mom. She was supposed to take the put-put so I could load up the van.

1:45 Grammas here!!!! The kids are pumped, I'm ready, Grammas setting things aside for the beach, and C is double checking stuff. I think we can leave by 3:00.......... maybe.

new new-range pictures

As promised, I have updated our greenhouse construction project. Unfortunately at time of posting, these pictures are outdated. This weekend I plan on getting some more snapshots. In my spare time......






looking south in the new header house













looking south-west in the new range









looking west in house 7&8











looking north-east at house 10 sidewall and gable











looking north east from the letter blocks

house 7-10

These houses (#7-10) are where we do our winter grafting work. I feel the new range will be a real advantage for the new grafts. Especially with uniform temperatures, we can really dictate the final outcome!!

And yes, I had the joy of partaking in the tear-down of the old hoop-houses! House 7 was the most interesting to work on. Check out the "framework" in the 3rd picture!




looking south east

the tall gutter-house (house 7) is being saved

house 8,9,10 in the background







looking north east

from house 10 to house 7








inside house 7 looking west











inside the header-house looking south

( note house 2,3,4,5,6 are staying)









looking north from where house 10 was,
towards house 7










looking north in the header-house













I will definitely add new pictures real soon, seeing as the main construction of the new range is nearly done! All that's left as of today is basically the interior.

Grass Leaves?.......

I think not! There's a reason they're called BLADES!!!

Our big push at work right now is shipping a nice assortment of ornamental grasses. As much as I enjoy the looks of these different beasts, handling them is a different story all together! The serration on the outside of the leaves is so fine, the blades will always win. Instead of just nicks on my hands and arms, it's cuts IN scrapes IN nicks.

On another note, we have started to get some of our crops into assigned houses for winter. The more we can have finished ahead of time the better, seeing as there is still lots to go. There's not much going on in prop right now, so I've been keeping busy with the rest of it all!!

'till next time, ('cause you'll never know when that will be)

Pete!

flowers of ours

21 buds on this asiatic lily stem.













the mass of orange









astilbe, lamium, scabiosa, erysimum

hemerocallis

gypsophylia

the orange salute for Canada Day!

the lettuce

INTRODUCING.......................

C H I P ! !

still shipping.....

..... to the main farm, that is! We have finished shipping out all of our grafts and whips for tree standards. Now it's time for our liners. Hundreds of 'em. Thousands of 'em! Most trays are 50 packs, with a few 36's for certain plants. These liners are for one gallon production. Boxwood, cedar, spruce, euonymus, spirea, potentilla, hydrangea, and so on. So far I believe we have shipped 7 tractor trailers over. We should be all done by Wednesday. We hope! 'Cause when it's all over there, WE don't have to worry about it!!!!