Season 1 Episode 2

Why do we garden and grow our own food? Two Montana women discussing what keeps us outside and why growing your own food is a good idea, along with a few rabbit hole discussions about birds, bees, sauerkraut, and chicken tractors. 

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GOML - Season 1 Episode 2

[00:00:00] 

Hi everyone. My name is Shelly and welcome to our podcast. And I'm Anne. It's August now. But it's not quite as hot. That's right. It's still dry. Still dry. But it's not quite as hot. We've had a little bit of rain. In fact, it's raining right now.

It's. Pretty neat, isn't it? Yeah. It's like, that's great. So we're not on our lawns today. No . Nope. . We're not being crabby old ladies today. No. We're just kind of enjoying a nice little glass rose. Mm-Hmm. . This is, uh, rose from California. Lodi. Lodi. Lodi. Lodi. Lodi. I dunno. I dunno. California. Anyway, cheers.

Cheers. And, so here we are. Yeah. How's your garden doing? [00:01:00] Um, you know, the garden is in progress. Um, I planted a lot. I think some of it I planted too early. I think it's part of it. But I planted a lot of seeds. Some are coming up. The deer are of course eating everything. The clover's doing great.

Which was really the priority this year. Was get the clover in. Cause our. Yards on a Hillside and do some erosion control. That's doing great So feeling pretty good about that, but I'm kind of sad. I don't have a lot of flowers So I went out and actually bought some flowers that were a plant and I put them in the ground just so I would have some And so far actually the deer have not eaten the cone flowers And I have some bee balm and butterfly weed, I think, that I put out there and they haven't eaten those, which is surprising to me because they seem to eat everything else.

I think if [00:02:00] they do eat everything else, they might nibble on it, but I don't think it's their favorite. Yeah, I think they like the clover. Yes, and then they like the little tiny buds when they first come out of certain flowers. So yeah, I have a bunch of poppies that are are blooming. They're beautiful, all different colors.

Oh really? What colors? I've got some pink ones, an orange, um, and there's like a really kind of, red, pretty deep red. I think so there's some California poppies, some, common poppies. I'm not sure what the other ones are. Cool, that's exciting. Yeah, it's fun. How about you? What's going on in your garden?

 Well, everything. I have a jungle at this point. Our sweet clover has gotten way out of control. I've been trying to pull it out, but You want some of my deer? I have enough. They taste really good. I have enough. I have an eight point buck that loves to stand right outside my office window. and eat sweet clover while he looks in at me.[00:03:00] 

And that, oh, I had two little spotted fawns on the lawn, playing, you know, tearing around and chasing each other. Oh, that's sweet. We have, we have a, a doe and fawns that come by every day. I say they're coming for their dinner buffet. So they, they come to the yard every day, and it's, it's been really kind of fun seeing them.

Watching them nurse and all of that. That's cool. Although, you know, I might be cursing them in a few years after I realize I'm never gonna have flowers if I let them continue to feast on my yard That's where you have to throw down fencing. Yes Working on that. Yes So, in addition to the sweet clover, which is still in full bloom our rocky mountain bee plant is starting to bloom, so that's exciting.

 It's a big purple, uh, blossoms. Bees love it. And, let's see what else. Oh, well the vegetable gardens are starting to produce now. I've gotten a couple [00:04:00] of, harvests of peppers. We have these Mexican chili peppers that are about eight inches long. So I'm drying those so we can make enchilada sauce at a later date.

 I've got all these racks laying out. I thought of stringing them up, but, eh, that's too much work. Yeah, that's the thing I'm really looking forward to once we get really established in our garden. We're putting up some deer fencing for the vegetable garden. Just growing your own food. Yeah, it's great.

I love it. Yeah, and so you get that because you've had your garden for a while. What else you got going on besides, the peppers? Well, I got five, no, yes, five raised beds for potatoes, dedicated to potatoes, because we love potatoes. We're from the upper Midwest, at least I am, so I can exist on potatoes.

 And I also got carrots. Okay, so one bed of carrots, one bed of beets, one of [00:05:00] turnips, radishes, which went, they went to seed right away, they didn't produce a radish, it just, it bolted right away, so I don't know what that was all about. Corn, cabbage, and beans, which are finally starting to bloom. They've been sitting out there since the beginning of June, like.

six inches tall, these stupid plants. Now they're finally getting going. It's like, way to be late to the party, Scooter. Yeah. So,, what's your favorite potato recipe? Oh. Favorite way to eat one of your potatoes? Oh, that's easy. Um, so, like, I'll take a baked potato and put some butter, cheese, and bacon bits, some broccoli sometimes, if I have broccoli on hand, and just eat that.

Baked potato. Yep. Nothing like it. That's awesome. Yeah, so that's just really exciting , I did plant, I did just on a [00:06:00] whim. I had a butternut squash, last winter. I saved the seeds. I started the plants indoors. I started the seeds indoors and it grew like three or four plants and I, planted those and they were doing really great.

Had big beautiful leaves, some blossoms going on. The deer seem to be leaving them alone. So I didn't do anything to deter them. That was my first mistake. And then one morning I woke up, everything was gone. They were all kind of like basically two to three inches off the ground. So that was sad because it was my one vegetable that I really had that was still alive.

 But I had some blossoms come up. So now I put some chicken wire around it. There you go. I don't know if they're going to turn into the fruit or anything like that, but. Maybe who knows but my herb garden is doing really well. Mm hmm. That is doing really well And it's it's a little bit of hide and seek as well because I have to try to find the the herbs amongst the flowers and the clover, [00:07:00] but that's doing really great, so Yeah, I can I can add herbs to any food that I make so I can add something from my garden every day Every meal.

Yes Yeah, our chives got out of control. I have chives all over. We have this big area to the east of the house that we finally got fenced. And so now I can start working in there because before it was just like a deer smorgasbord. You know, they'd come in and just eat everything. But now that we got that fenced, I can really get going on, like my berry bushes.

And my raspberries. I gotta wrangle those, those things also. Everything on my place is just out of control at this point. It's, it's crazy. So, what do you do with all that food though? Because you got, you have a lot. Yeah. I mean, what you just described is what, about how many square [00:08:00] footage, uh, how much square foot footage would you say?

Well, I, added 10 more raised beds this year, so that brings me up to 20. Each one is 32 square feet. So, 64, 640? Yeah. That's a lot. It's a lot. So, that's a lot of food. What are you going to do with it? Um, well, obviously eat as much fresh food as we can. That's the best thing about it is eating the fresh food.

Yeah, I had a whole bed of peas. That just went like crazy. So we were gorging on peas. Peas don't like the heat though. So when July came around, they pretty much decided they were done. So then we replaced them with cucumbers. And then the stuff that we can't eat, I like to dry like my peppers.

Or we have the food saver where you can. Seal it up, seal it [00:09:00] up, and then put it in the freezer. So I do that with beans 

mm-Hmm. . But, and then, I have to figure out what to do with beats. I'll probably end up, you could pick a 'em. True. I actually have never pickled a beet. I've never pickled anything. Yeah. I mean, I like fresh, like, like just cooked. Yeah. Like fresh beets chopped up. Roasting them. You know, I love the beet greens, all of that stuff.

 I remember my mom liked pickled beets. Of course she bought them from, like, in a can at the store, which probably isn't good. But I bet you could, like, just do some kind of a briner. Yeah. Something, some vinegar or something to pickle them? Yeah, I have the jars, 

 The last time I was visiting my mom in Minnesota, she gave me her great aunt's cabbage shredder. So what [00:10:00] it is, it's a box and it's on these rails that go over a blade. Oh, so you just like swipe it back and forth? Yeah, kind of like a, those Japanese mandolins. Cool. So, if I can get that blade sharpened, I'm gonna make cabbage again, I've got like 12 head of cabbage that I need to make sauerkraut with.

So that's fun. Oh yeah, sauerkraut. Yeah. That would be kind of fun to have. And just imagine if you had chickens to go with that. Mmm. Chicken and sauerkraut. It's on a list of things maybe I'll do in the future. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll be a future podcast. I'm excited about chickens. I was convinced today by my husband this morning that that probably should be something that we think about a couple years down the road.

I was trying to figure out how I could do that. Incorporate a chicken coop into my, deer fenced area that I'm going to, if I could create a little chicken run that ran around the perimeter of the garden, would that be kind of fun? Yeah. For the chickens? [00:11:00] I don't know. But, yeah. Go ahead. I was going to say, I want to, um, get a chicken tractor.

Oh! Chicken tractor! Yeah, are we, well, let's go, let's do it. Okay. Let's go down this path. Let's do it. I was fascinated by a chicken tractor. Tell us what a chicken tractor is. A chicken tractor is pretty much a chicken coop on wheels. So, you have your chicken coop with the chickens in, but because it's on wheels you can move it to various areas and the chickens aren't always on the same patch of dirt.

And I suppose you could hook up a robot or something to it and just like have remote control so you could just move them around? Oh, it Because if you want to have a big coop, you're gonna need, like, probably a pickup or a tractor to move it. I've seen some massive ones, but those are coops that hold, like, 50 chickens, and I'm not gonna have that many.

But it's still cool that you can move your chicken coop [00:12:00] around, and um, I plan to, so we're gonna start fencing the orchard next month, and maybe next year, maybe. Don't hold me to this now. I'm going to get chickens, and so they can run around in the orchard and eat grasshoppers and hopefully go after the voles and the mice and, um, Do they do that?

Chickens are, yeah. Well, I knew they were carnivores as far as, like, eating big bugs and stuff. I didn't know they'd actually go after rodents. I've seen videos on YouTube of chickens eating mice, so. Wow. Wow. Wow. Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. Have a look. That's a great idea, to have them run around the orchard, though.

That's really a clever idea. Yeah. Yeah, so maybe my idea, my dream of having chickens running around in my little garden area is not completely far fetched. No, it's, I think it's a good idea. Yeah. And then, um, depending on what kind of chickens, if I want to overwinter them or if I don't. So [00:13:00] if I do want to, I would get, like, the kind that lay eggs.

Right. But if I wanted to just have meat in the freezer, broilers, should I butcher them in the fall? Yeah. Well, I mean, they'll stop laying eggs after a while, too, is what I understand. Yeah. So, um, you know, that's kind of the, the, the sad part, like if you become attached to your chickens at all. I know. Would you ever become attached?

I might. I might like my chickens enough that it'd be sad to, to butcher them, but, you know, They, the thing I heard is what you don't want is a rooster. Yeah. So no rooster. Mm hmm. Just, just hens and then they'll lay for quite a while and then after a while then they either become pets or they become dinner.

Yeah. I don't know if I would have the issue. I think it would be my husband Aaron who might get attached to some chickens. Yeah, I asked Mike if he would be willing to kill the chicken if we needed to. [00:14:00] I'm not sure if I want to kill the chicken. Anyway, we could keep them. They could have a nice long healthy life and then just die as natural causes.

Okay. All right. Okay, so we veered off course a little bit talking about the chickens. We don't want to get too much into that because that could be a future podcast. Right. So, you have all these different ways that you store the food. Mm hmm. What all do you do?

Um, well we do, like I said, brine. Um, I make sauerkraut. And I still have some jars of sauerkraut from last year. And there's a lot of health benefits to both cabbage and in particular sauerkraut.

Right. That really is, mostly why I eat it, because it's supposed to help with your gut bacteria and probiotics. Yes. Which, yeah, I mean, great. I just need more brats to eat with it. Yeah. So yeah, we do the brining. I freeze a lot of stuff. I freeze [00:15:00] rhubarb, so you can make, like, rhubarb pies in the middle of winter.

Mm hmm. So. We don't, we haven't had enough apples yet for that to be an issue. We usually, Aris still fighting our gang of mag pies. God, that pisses me, me off. You know, I love birds, you know, I love birds. Yeah. I don't love mag pies. , they're, they're just assholes. They kind of are. They're little jerks.

They like hurt other birds. I don't know. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. Don't let it, but, so you have a gang of them. Yes, and as soon as the apples start turning red, they all descend on the orchard and just tear it up, tear up all the apples. They pack them until they fall off the ground and leave big, gaping gouges on them.

So, God, last year, we had a tree that had like 15 apples, and I was so excited because this has been, our first tree that was producing. [00:16:00] in any amount, really, since our fire. And so it's like, okay, they're ready. So Aaron and I, we go out there, we have our basket, we're going to pick these apples. The tree was bare.

All the apples were on the ground with big chunks taken out of them. It's like And they didn't even eat the whole apple, right? So they didn't even, it's not like they really needed the apple to eat. They're just being assholes. Yeah. And now they're back this year, and so that's, it's like, oh my god. I don't know.

I'm sure that there's a purpose for a magpie, but I have yet to discover what the real value of a magpie is. If anybody knows that, let us know. Yes. Yeah, that'd be great. So I, I mean, I think one of the big things that we want to talk about in this podcast was growing our own food. Why we do that. Why do we garden?

And, , I mean. Not just the food, but why do we garden and the big part is really growing your own food, right? [00:17:00] And that saves you a lot of money, right? It does. When the garden starts producing I rarely have to buy produce. I mean, I there's still stuff Of course, I have to purchase like milk or cheese or stuff that I can't find here You know, you could get a milk cow No, I'm just kidding.

No, actually, we've talked about it. But we don't have a barn, so we would need to get a barn first. Yeah. But, um, I don't think I'll ever do that. I was joking, but, you know, go for it. Yeah. So we've talked about it, because I would love to have fresh cream to make ice cream. So, you know, I did some studying on, cost savings for people growing their own food.

 There were several studies by the National Gardening Association, University of California, several different case studies that basically showed, that, yes, you will save money if you garden, if you produce your own food, that in the long run, it's going to save [00:18:00] you money.

In fact, one of the things that I thought was really interesting is that there was a USDA report They talked about the average garden can yield about a half a pound of produce per square foot. So, if you imagine that all you had was a four foot by eight foot, we're going to do math here, it's going to be fun, Ann, four foot by eight foot raised bed, and we're going to say that produces half a pound of produce per square foot.

So, four by eight is? Thirty two. Thirty two. And half a pound is? Times 32 square feet equals 16. 16 pounds of produce. That's a lot of produce. It is. It's a lot of produce. And these other studies show, so if that's all you did, and like you have 600 square feet, so what's that add up to? But, um, a lot of these studies basically depends on what, how big of a garden you have, obviously.

But you can, if you have an average sized garden, you can [00:19:00] easily, produce, uh, You know, six to eight hundred dollars worth of produce every year. Yeah. And that's, that's a huge savings to a lot of people. Mm hmm. That, and especially if you're trying to eat more fresh or eat organic or eat food that you know where the source is coming from.

Yeah. You know, it's, it's like, that's not always feasible for everybody because they can't afford it. Mm hmm. Now the flip side to that is a lot of times we don't think about the fact that, there's some upfront cost for that, but again, in the long run, all of these studies show that upfront cost can be kind of high,, but yeah, there's ways to save money.

You can get seeds from a friend, you know, you don't have to go hog wild or anything in the beginning. Um, so, and then we don't always consider our time and labor, you know, our time is, is worth it. But I, the way I look at that is it's also beneficial to me health wise. Oh, absolutely. [00:20:00] Anyway, there's just something about knowing where your food comes from.

Especially when you grew it yourself. Like you said, you know, it's my time, my energy, my money is going into this. And it just tastes better knowing that my work has produced this really delicious, , It's P, or broccoli, or whatever, you know? I found a strawberry in my, my sea of, um, clover the other day.

It wasn't very big, but I'll tell you it was the most delicious strawberry I've ever tasted. Yeah, it's fun, it's so much fun to just pick your own food and then, you know, eat it right there. That's great. Yeah. I, I picked, I picked a carrot. I had the hose close by, so I just I just washed it off with a hose and ate it as I was walking around, admiring the flowers.

Yeah. And it tastes so good. Obviously we feel that growing your own food is the first choice. Mm hmm. But [00:21:00] sometimes you just can't, or it takes a while to get that established, or, or whatever. So, um, wh What's the next step? You know, we want to, we want to buy local.

Yeah. And farmer's markets are usually a good source. There are some things I'm a little suspicious of. And honestly, going to farmer's market irritates me because people irritate me. There's too many people at the farmer's market. Yeah. But I do try to, I do like to buy organic. And one of the things that the farmer's market that makes me suspicious is It gives this impression that it's organic, but it's probably not.

Yeah. You know, I mean, I mean, if it's local, that's still I think, beneficial. Mm-Hmm. , because I think food loses its nutritional value the longer it sits somewhere. Right. The longer it's been transported, you know, in a truck or anything. So it's still probably better than just going to the grocery store.

Maybe. Maybe. Unless the farmer's market people just went to the grocery store and bought the groceries [00:22:00] from there. You know, I've often wondered because, so, they, I've seen a certain, you know, you see people rolling into Costco and filling up their carts, and then I see them at the farmer's market selling produce, and all I can think of is, really?

Because they're selling like these massive, beautiful, perfect carrots. I can't grow a perfect carrot.

Not only that, um, I think a lot of people are not local. These vendors are not local. Right. Because, you know, we went there, I think it was in June, and they already had some stuff that I know for a fact is not ready yet.

 So unless they have got greenhouses, massive greenhouses, I don't know. That and then just people with their dogs. Yeah, and you know, like I said, I really like to buy organic because, I mean, I know personally, I mean I think there's plenty of studies out there that show that organic food is better for you.

It's better for [00:23:00] the environment, there's less chemicals, you know, they have more sustainable, farming practices, all of those good things. So certified organic food is always going to be better to me than just your standard grocery fare. However, I think there's not a lot of regulation around that.

I think people find, they find ways around it. So now I'm very suspicious about even just going to the grocery store. And do I really trust that this is organic? And even if it is organic and they've really done They're doing their best to do what they need to do to, to, to really fit the organic, I don't know if you want to call it a movement, but what people, the ideal of what organic means.

 How long has it been sitting there? Right? Cause it's still, that's still that shelf life thing of fresh produce that after a while it just starts losing all of its nutritional value. It still drives me crazy. So like if I go to the local organic store and I want an apple. You know, these [00:24:00] things have been sitting well over a year.

You know this. Cause, I mean, I've, they always look good. I buy one and it's mealy and it's just not a fresh apple. You know when an apple is fresh. Right. And so that's why I always, Aaron listens to me bitch and moan about how nobody is carrying fresh apples. And you know what else I think, so I'm going to get on a little rant here.

Because I think it's the consumer's fault. And the farmers, okay so, maybe they could have done something about it. There's some shared responsibility, I'll say that. But, we as consumers are, expect everything to be so perfect looking. All the time. And I don't, I think that's just, it's ridiculous. Really, I mean there's, there's nothing wrong with a carrot that has like a bend in it.

Or something like that, 90 percent of the time, right? I mean, or if not, probably higher than that. And so we as consumers are expecting everything to be [00:25:00] perfect. And so even if they're really trying to be the ideal organic, they're still wasting food, you know, and, and throwing away things that probably, you know, hopefully they're composting, so that'd be good.

But, you know, It's still a waste. There's still waste that is going on, so even if they're organic and even if they're doing the true ideal organic, thing that would make my heart happy, I still feel like probably buying from the grocery store, is still not as good as just making your own food.

Right. Oh, I completely agree. I mean, the apples on my tree, they're lopsided. You know, sometimes they've got spots on. They still taste really good. The ones that I can pry out of the magpie's beaks. Uh, yeah. Um, my carrots aren't perfect, but they still taste, I think, much better than anything you can buy in a grocery store.

Yeah. Well, anything just tastes better when you picked it yourself. True. There's, there's a little bit of that kind of just [00:26:00] mental, uh, I think security. Knowing where your food is from, what to eat. Yeah. It, it's fresh, what it's gone through. There's no uncertainty of what chemicals it might have come in contact with.

And you nurtured it in, in and brought it to its maturity. I wouldn't say nurtured, probably threatened . Okay. Whatever. No, but you were, you, you took an active part , in its growth. Yeah. And so there's just something really satisfying about that. That helps I think. I think, it creates some real beneficial, uh, chemicals in the body to make, to, that you feel better.

I mean, I know I feel better just being outside. Than being inside. It's just, it's just night and day for me. I mean, maybe not everybody, but in general, I just think that being outside and in nature is better for your mind. It's also better for your body. Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. I absolutely agree. I agree.

Get so [00:27:00] tense like when I'm done with my eight hours of work. It just I am mentally just fried. And physically I'm exhausted even though I've done nothing but sit in that damn computer chair. Right. So it's like, sometimes it is a mental effort though to get outside because I'm just done after working.

But I find that if I can just get myself outside, I immediately start feeling better. And even if it's just taking my cat for a walk. Right. And I can look at my trees. I can, you know, smile at my rhubarb. I can threaten my chestnut tree that will not give me an apple. I have heard, and this is, I've heard that the chestnut, it's a crab apple, but it's an eating crab apple.

So it's not like the ornamental crappy ones that are just there [00:28:00] for their blossoms and then have those stupid little Apple crappy things. This is supposed to be a really good apple And I've had one that I planted back in 2018 So I've been in the ground six years and that damn thing just will not give me an apple Is it giving you blossoms?

It did bloom this year. Okay A little bit it had like three blocks. It needs Must need something. It did have an apple on it. Okay, and then the magpie got it I don't know, but it's gone now. And so, I mean, every year I threaten that thing. Every time I walk by it, it's like, What the hell is your problem, jackass?

Get on it. Lazy. Yeah, I can tell you, when I'm inside, , I think my brain is going a hundred million different directions. Right. Okay, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this, I'm creating lists, I'm working on the computer, whatever.

And, I find it really hard. I mean, I have a few things that I can do that, [00:29:00] that I like to do that kind of will calm my brain down. But, it's just my nature is to have a billion things going on and hop from thing to thing. All the time. And so I just have trouble focusing sometimes because of that because I have so many things to do.

So that and menopause, oh my god, menopause is so beautiful. Yes, that too. But what I have found, besides, I mean I also like to knit, I like to meditate, those things help. But , I have found that when I go outside, , all of that noise kind of goes away. Because then I'm, I'm like, I don't, I just leave it. It just can leave it behind in general.

And especially if I leave my phone in the house, or whatever, you know, it's really easy to just ignore any buzz from my smartwatch or whatever. I don't even have that on today. So, but you know, I mean,, oh, speaking of buzzing though. What I love about being outside are all the bees. All the different species, types of bees that I [00:30:00] have, even though my garden is like mostly clover, , there, there are so many different bees and they make different sounds and they behave differently. It's fun to watch Yeah, that's, that's something I found that I really like a lot.

And then soon you'll start noticing moths. I mean, have you, do you have any sphinx moths? The kind that look like, um, the hummingbird, you know, they go. Oh yeah, yep, yes, yes, I have seen some of those. Aren't they cool? Because you think, oh, is that a baby hummingbird? Is that what you, yeah, they kind of look like little baby hummingbirds.

And then, but they're not. And yeah, so those are fun to see. Yeah, they're really cool. So, um, yeah. And then, you know, it's, it is just that and just moving dirt around and pulling weeds or something.

It's just that physical activity Yeah. Is just really satisfying and it gives you something, , to focus on That's not a computer screen, not all that [00:31:00] noise. I just like, it is just a bunch of noise. It's a bunch of noise. And then I could go back and be more focused. So, I mean, it's not like I just ignore it all.

Well, think about it. I mean, you're giving your brain a break. Mm hmm. From, like, the computer screen. , like you said, you're doing, like, a hundred things at once. So you can focus on a single thing, and it kind of, it's like a brief nap, almost. And I can't even tell you how satisfying it is for me to pull weeks off.

I love pulling weeds. I went to a friend's house the other day and, helped her pull weeds. And she kept saying, Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Almost like it was like some great, I said, You just don't understand how much I love to pull weeds. I do. It's so satisfying for me to pull those crappy things out and toss them over into a pile.

Well, I will always be very grateful that you helped me plant that row of weeds. Yeah, that was fun, too. I enjoyed that. [00:32:00] Yeah, so, I mean, pulling weeds. Uh, you know, we talked about this the other day. Remember we talked about what is a weed? And I've been sharing this information. Because that gets complicated when you're a novice like me and you don't really know about gardening and all that kind of stuff as much.

I'm learning, but there's all these things. Are they weeds? Are they not weeds? What's a weed? And there's weeds that are good and there's weeds that are bad, you know. So what is a weed? And I loved your definition, which you told me, which is a weed is just a plant that is growing somewhere you don't want it to grow.

Right. So that's my new definition. And so if I'm pulling a plant, it's just something I don't want to grow there. And whether it's a weed or not, I might be pulling things I wish I didn't pull, but you know, it's still very, very satisfying. I love that. Cool. Alright, Let's talk about birds a little bit. I saw a blue heron the other day. Oh! That was cool. [00:33:00] We had, , for a while, something called, I'm probably going to pronounce this completely wrong.

Uh, Lazuli. Okay. Have you ever heard lapis, lapis, lazuli, the blue? Yeah. How do you pronounce it? Exactly. Anyway, Lazuli bunting. And it looked like a bluebird, but it's not. It's a bunting, and it's a lazuli bunting. So we used, we had one of those, that one. Yes. I have this really cool app. I don't know, can we name drop it?

Sure. It's called, , Merlin ID. Okay. And you can, it, you can actually put it out and turn your, it records it. And it'll identify the different birds that, by the sound, and then you can pull it back and see the pictures so you can confirm, oh yeah, that's that one, that's that one, so, anyway. Little commercial.

Okay. I don't know. I'll have to try that. So, Merlin. Because [00:34:00] we hear a lot of birds that I wish I knew what they were, and I finally figured out. So, in the evening, like, pre twilight to twilight, we would hear this bird. And we could never figure out what it was, and it turns out it's a Nighthawk. Oh, cool. It would start calling about that time.

You know, the sun's down, but So that, I thought, was really cool. So here's who I had just the other day. House finches. They're little sparrows, swallows, chickadee, nuthatch. Oh, we have a ton of goldfinches. Spotted toadies. Spotted toadies. And then we get a bunch of woodpeckers, um, pine siskins, robins, obviously.

Flycatchers are really fun. They nest underneath our deck and so they kind of Nice. They make a really neat little sound. Lots of Canadian geese. Cedar waxwings. Oh yeah. I saw those the other day. Those are cool looking [00:35:00] birds. Have you ever seen those? Uh huh. Oh yeah. You can't see my phone. I'm showing the pictures.

Yeah, these little guys. They're so cool looking. Right. They kind of look, um, like just brownish cardinals. Kind of, yeah. And they've got like that kind of orange y head with the black. It's really striking black, um, around their eyes. Yeah. Anyway. So I've been really kind of enjoying the birds., I've cut back on their food because they were getting a little crazy.

I mean, I was paying a lot of money for food. But I feed them twice a week. I figured they need to be able to get some of their own food. Lazy birds. Yeah, they were getting pretty lazy. And I'm sure the squirrels are at it a little bit too. Oh yeah. Not just the birds. Well, I was pulling out, sweet clover out of the jungle.

That is one of my gardens. And, uh, get, like, three. Okay, the sweet clover gets to be four to five feet tall, if you [00:36:00] let it. And unfortunately, I let it. So I was in there trying to hack down some, some of that sweet clover and there was this bird just scolding me and scolding me and it's like, what, you know, I mean, it's August.

Go away. You know, go do your whatever it is you do anyway. So I pull out this big chunk of sweet clover and I look up and there's a nest with eggs in right in front of me. It's like, crap. So I had to stop pulling out all this sweet clover till she can get her damn babies raised and out of the nest.

But yeah, she, she would let us know. And you showed it to me the other day, and I was trying to figure out what it was, actually I went home and I was looking, and it looks a lot like some kind of warbler, it's not a yellow warbler. No. Because it's kind of a brownish. Yeah, she's brown. Or some kind of chickadee, maybe, or something.

She's got a very high pitch. Okay. [00:37:00] Yeah. It'd be kind of, I need to maybe see if I can figure that out, but they're pretty cool. These guys are really cool too, these brown headed cowards. They're pretty big. Oh yeah, I've seen those guys? Yeah. They show up on their way through. Oh, see, I found them. Yeah. I had a Lazuli Buntine at one point.

Nice. Anyway, it's kind of fun to do that. And then, it's not, I'm sure it's not 100 percent accurate, but most of the time though, I can find them. Anyway. Cool. Cool. So yeah, , being outside gardening is probably one of the most therapeutic things, at least for me, that helps me stay less crabby.

Be less of a crabby only, I guess, but. I think so, too. Yeah, I would say that, you know, and you'd mentioned menopause the other day, and I think that's true, women our age are going through changes and all that kind of stuff, and I do, I feel like the last couple of months in particular, it's been so hot, [00:38:00] too, that, uh, it's just been crappy, but it does help that, for sure.

Yeah. To go outside. Just mentally. Yeah. And physically. Yeah. I don't really see a downside of gardening. I don't either. What's the downside? There's no downside, in my opinion. Well, I mean, there's a little bit up front cost, but, you know, once you start harvesting food or just hearing the bees and smelling the flowers, I think it definitely evens out, or pencils out, so.

Yeah, I'm sure it does. , yeah, that's what gets me off my lawn. Yeah. Into a good space. Yep. Yeah. All right. I think that's good enough for today. What do you think? I think I think we're done here. All right. Well, we'll see you next time. I'm Anne and I'm Shelly and you've been listening to get off my lawn.