A Little Every Day

I have so much to do right now it makes my brains spin in a whirlpool of get it done.  The Yard is a giant mess of weeds, leaves that weren't raked last year, sticks sticks everywhere and more weeds.  I have tons of boxes to unpack and need to find a new job.  Some times it just makes me tired to think about!

I'm trying to get myself into a schedule (at least until I start work) starting with yard work first thing in the morning.  The heat and humidity during the day makes working all day in the yard out of the question ... at least until I get more use to it.  Yesterday I gathered up some of the yard debris to start up my compost bin it didn't take long but boy did I work up a quick sweat. There are so many leaves on the ground that I may have to set up a bigger compost bin.  There is no way my little tumble bin will handle it.  I started on this pile here

 It may not look like it but the leaves have been left there so long it was actually composting in place.  You can tell this is composting because every where else in the yard is all sand but here it looks like top soil.

Look at that rich earth under the leaves

I gathered up some of the already composted leaves as well as the stuff on top to give my bin a good head start.  I think I'll start in the tumble bin add plenty of good kitchen scraps to get a nice hot start. Then set up a second bin and dump the tumbled compost into the second bin to finish and start with more of the leaves from around the yard.  If I clean up one section of the yard every morning I should have it cleaned up in no time with out over doing it and wanting to quit.  

After that I have to figure out how I want to configure my back yard to meet all my needs.  I was hoping to catch a few episodes of Yard Crashers on HGTV (yes we have cable back the hubby insisted) but it turns out that the show has moved to the DIY channel which is part of the "sports and information" package and I'm not paying for a bunch of sports channels that I will never watch for the one show I would watch.  I won't be watching HDTV anymore either its no longer a home and garden channel now its all about buying and selling houses ... they need to change their name to the Real Estate channel.  Lucky for me their website still has plenty of good ideas so I guess I'll go take a look there.

Turkey Creek

We went to check out the local hiking trail here in Niceville called Turkey Creek.

Its a nice little hike with some swimming areas set up.  Its 3/4 of a mile one way so 11/2 miles round trip.  There were some canoes in the river we are not sure where they put in ...there is a place at the end of the trail but they didn't go by us on the way in so there must be another place outside the trail. Here are some pics of some of the wild life.  We went rather late in the day so there wasn't a lot but the snake we saw would make me think twice about swimming there.

Cotton Mouth ??? Maybe not sure

can you see the frog?

this isn't the best picture of the spiders that were all along the trail I'll have to try again next time

Turtles ... its weird we only saw them on one part of the trail the whole area was covered in water

Frog on a lily pad ...talk about cliche lol 

We Are Here

I got lots of updates for you but for now ...We have made it to Florida and obviously now have internet.  We are livablely unpacked but still have tons to go.  The dogs are enjoying their new backyard but I don't think the neighbors are enjoying the games of chase the squirrels the dogs have been playing.  We are keeping that game between 10 am and 5 pm  so at least we will hopefully not be keeping anyone awake.  We are not leaving them out all day but when they have to go do their duty before or after that we bring them right back inside to keep them from getting started.  The kids are not to happy since they have already started school but they are also excited about meeting new people so it balances out.  We went to our first Niceville High School Football game... these are really big deal down here the place was packed!  I'm still picking a spot to put my veggie garden and I've been talking to some of the locals about growing here.  The winter is suppose to be really good for cool weather veggies I can't wait.  I'll be sharing pics soon as I find my camera.