Dirt

I am probably the only person in my family who did not inherit a green thumb. My sister Kat said, “YOU loved stuff to death, i.e. too much water of feed.” (I don’t have that patience MA is always talking about)  She was probably right. Shirl can grow tomato vines 8-10 ft tall. her back deck is 10’ off the ground and she can pick tomatoes from her deck.

Florida has great black dirt in areas for growing.

I love grapes and Muscatines (I have always pronounced that muskydine, dine). I must have tried 30 or more vines and NEVER got one to grow. Once when our Motor home was behind Shirl, Sherry was in the edge of the woods and discovered a Muscatine vine with purple fruit. I was able to fish that out of the woods and trestle it and now Shirl keeps it up.

I know black dirt is supposed to be good for growing. In school  we were taught about crop rotation, but that would never help me because I could never get a crop to rotate. If you are familiar with North Georgia thru SC to North Carolina you know about RED DIRT. It has ruined more carpets than grease. It is slick as grease when wet and hard as a rock when it is dry.

    

Close to the coast the dirt turns sandy. Imagine my surprise when I learned that not all deserts are sand. After seeing pictures of the Sahara and other sandy deserts I thought our USA desert lands were sand, NO SO. For the most part they are sort of a hard dry packed dirt/sand combination, with a lot of small, medium and large rocks, scrub brush and cacti.

I never thought I would like the desert, but I do. I loved walking and looking at the formations and areas where creeks once ran, or do when they do get rain, in the Arizona deserts.

            

(This is the site of the Oatman Massacre note the rocks on the ground)

I mentioned the Chuck-Wagon Dinner at the Sons of the Pioneer’s Concert.  We still laugh at one line of the MC that night. He said, “You may be from Arizona, if you  don’t associate bridges with water.”  We got a big laugh out of that because we had commented on the many bridges and no creeks and rivers running under them.

         

This is north of Yuma, these are deer and mule trails.

I had really thought that it would be hard to walk in the desert but using the animal trails it was a very pleasant walk. I did collect too many rocks thought. But one of my fun things is painting rocks, and it is a great past time.

Nite Shipslog

PS: The one sandy desert area we have seen is “White Sands new Mexico” That area looks just like the Sahara did in pictures.

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This 3-D truck painting reminds me of Chuck in AOL Journals.  Remember Dribbles by Chuck? Chuck posted from a nursing home. He lived  next door to the producer of the movie ‘King Kong’. The man had the arm and hand in his back yard from the movie set. The kids played on it.