Memorial Day - May 31, 2021

 

We did not make any cookout plans for Memorial Day (though I briefly considered it).  Instead, we worked in the yard and in the vegetable garden.

The Nephew has been mowing Nanny's yard lately.  She complains that he mows too fast and leaves un-even spots.  He complains that the lawnmower blades are dull.  So this morning about 10:30, The Husband said he was going down to the shop to change the lawnmower blades.  He said he didn't need my help.  I gave him about a 30-minute head start, then went down to the shop to see if he'd changed his mind.

He was still sitting there looking at the lawnmower when I got there.  Still didn't need my help, he said, so I went on to the garden to pull up some weeds.  The middle between the peppers and the tomatoes was pretty grassy, but the ground was too wet for hoeing.  Instead, I hauled a few more loads of pine needles from under the trees and covered about 2/3 of the row before I pooped out.

About this time, The Husband needed help.  We finally managed to get the lawnmower back together.  He rode it on up the driveway to our house to mow our yard.

I walked back to the house and got the push-mower out of the shed.  Did the tricky parts while he mowed the rest of the yard.  

We are both pooped.  I cannot WAIT for bedtime!

Bugs B Gone - May 30, 2021

 

When I went outside this morning to check the mousetraps (both traps were sprung, but the plants they were protecting are still standing), I noticed that something has been eating the leaves of my hardy hibiscus.

This is not acceptable.

It looks like there might be more that one kind of bug munching on the leaves, or else the different-looking things are various stages of the same bug.

I went down to the garden shed and got the pump sprayer and the liquid Sevin.  Those bugs are now (or will soon be) toast.

While I was near the garden, I laid down a bunch of cardboard between the cucumber hills to help keep down weeds and grass.  I laid metal fence posts on the cardboard to keep it in place.  

The tomatoes are doing very well!  There are a good many green tomatoes on the vines.  I had my battery-operated toothbrush in my apron pocket, and I buzzed every bloom on every plant, as I have been doing every time I go to the garden.  This may actually be working to increase fruit yield!

Hardly any of the new green beans have sprouted.  I just can't figure this out, unless something is digging up the seeds.  When I take the sprayer back to the shed, I'm going to plant more seeds in the skips, and then I'm going to spray the plants that did sprout and the dirt between them, hoping to discourage any critter that might be digging up the seeds.

Addendum:  

I planted the green bean skips again.  The garden soil is pretty wet, and I just punched the seeds in the dirt and smeared a little mud over them.  

The beans that had already sprouted are about as bug-eaten as the hibiscus.  (The oldest ones have reached up and grabbed hold of the fence.)  Since I'd mixed up 2 gallons of bug spray, I sprayed the beans and the ground where I'd planted the seeds.

After that, I sprayed the squash and the tomatoes.  They didn't look eaten, but neither did the hibiscus until yesterday.

At my urging, The Husband strapped the trail cam to the Wrangler hitch, and he's set it on "video," because I'd like to see the critter's reaction when the trap snaps.  ;)

Gourds - May 29, 2021

 

Gourds are so stinkin' cool.

This morning I planted some gourd seeds that for years have been lying at the bottom of a catch-all bowl in my kitchen.  I don't even know what kind of gourd they came from.  They may not have a speck of life left in them.  

We'll see.

From the back porch - May 28, 2021

 

Granddaughter #2 was scheduled to play her last softball game of the season last night.  I worked a full day yesterday (I know! *gasp*), so I was a little short of time between work and the game.  No time to cook and clean up, so before I left town, I went by a "hot and ready" pizza drive-thru and bought our supper.

I stopped by Nanny's to have a look at the garden, hoping that the rain had sprouted the green beans.  The garden looked like it hadn't rained on it at all, which is weird, because it rained at my house across the road a good bit Wednesday.  A few of the green beans were up, but nothing like a good row.  I don't know if there are more seeds underground, waiting to sprout, or if something has eaten most of the seeds right out of the dirt.  We had a pouring rain last night (rained out #2's game) and this morning, so if it's moisture that the beans are lacking, they ought to be up soon.  I'm going to give it a couple more days and re-plant the beans AGAIN if they don't come up.

When The Husband came home from work, I asked him to re-set the mouse traps by the tomato and the rose bush.  They are both sprung this morning.  I suppose the hard rain could have sprung them, for they are lying near where they were placed.  But the rose bush and the tomato remain standing.  

I wonder if the raccoon will figure out that once the trap is sprung, the rose and the tomato are fair game.

 All day yesterday I was mad about the critter digging up my rose bush.  During a break in the rain, I discovered that he had also dug up the tomato that the Tomato Fairy had left in our driveway over the weekend.  

I spent the whole day planning revenge.

When The Husband came home, I sent him to fetch the trail cam from the garden.  He came back with the cam and a live trap.

We strapped the camera to the trailer hitch on my Wrangler and pointed it at the re-planted rose bush.  The Husband set the live trap near the rose bush.  He had the bright idea to bait the live trap with dirt - yes, DIRT - rationalizing that since the animal liked dirt so much . . . .   Yeah, that didn't work.  

We also set two mouse traps - one between the bricks surrounding the rose bush, and one beside the tomato plant.

I woke up early this morning and hurried outside to see if our efforts paid off.  There was nothing in the live trap (surprise!).  Both mouse traps were sprung.  I couldn't find one of them and had a few moments of delight at the thought that, somewhere in the woods, some critter had a mouse trap on its nose.  

But the tomato and the rose bush were still standing, so we sort of won that round.

I retrieved the SD card from the trail cam and brought it inside to see if we had captured an image of the beast.  Sure enough . . . . 

Tonight, we might bait the live trap with food.  ;)

Rain! Peas Up! - May 26, 2021

 

It's raining this morning.  YAY!  The vegetable garden needs it.  

The second batch of green bean seeds still haven't sprouted.  If the weather-people had not predicted a chance of rain this week, I would have watered the garden with the sprinkler two days ago.

I am not convinced that there are any green bean seeds left in the rows.  It appears that something has been digging where I planted them.  I say "appears" because the soil is soft, and the beans aren't all that deep, and some critter that wants to dig them up doesn't have far to dig to get them.  The soil is not disturbed all that much, but there are suspicious indentations all along the rows, more like paw-prints than holes.  

Last night after supper, I asked The Husband to set up the trail camera in the garden.  If something is digging up the seeds, maybe we can at least find out what it is.

On the other hand, maybe the seeds are still there, but it's just not been damp enough to sprout them.  If that's the case, maybe they'll sprout now that we've had some rain.

The purple hull peas that we re-planted last week are UP - there's a solid green line down the center of each row.  Hallelujah!

The tomatoes look wonderful, and some of them are producing fruit.  My father-in-law used to hope for a ripe tomato by the 4th of July every year.  We just might beat that deadline this year.

Cucumbers and squash are growing well.

About a week ago, I dug up a stunted rose bush from a phlox-choked flower bed and moved it to another area where it can get some sun.  Yesterday, as I was puttering around the yard, I noticed that something had dug it up.  I was SO MAD.  I re-planted it, watered it, piled some concrete edgers around the base of the bush, stood back and said, rather smugly, "Dig it up again, asshole."  

Writing that paragraph made me decide to go out in the rain to check on the rose bush.  This is what I found:

ARGHHHHHHH!

I don't know what kind of critter is strong enough to move those edgers!  

This means war.

We're moving the trail cam to the yard tonight.

Sunflowers, Houttunyia Tea - May 25, 2021

 

Sunday afternoon, after I rested a bit from the first round of gardening, I went back to the garden to finish what I'd started.

I planted the tomato, pepper, and basil plants that the Tomato Fairy left in my driveway.

Also planted some sunflower seeds.  

Spread the last wagon-load of pine needles.

Put away all the garden tools and closed up the shed.

My wrist was killing me by the time I finished.

I came home, showered, cooked supper, cleaned up the kitchen, and took my ass to bed.

Yesterday morning before work, I made a poultice of houttuynia leaves (chameleon plant).  I put leaves in the blender with a little water and chopped them up really fine.  Next, I laid down on the counter a strip of cheesecloth about 3" wide and long enough to go around my wrist.  I put the chopped leaves on the cheesecloth, laid my wrist on it, and wrapped it around.  Then I secured it with some of that stretchy bandage wrap.  Wore it most of the day.

My wrist is better today.

This morning, I chopped up a few leaves and stems and dropped them into some boiling water.  They're steeping now - 15 minutes.  I am going to strain it into a cup with a teaspoon full of honey to see if it'll work on the rest of my joints.

From the back porch - May 23, 2021

 

I am pooped.  And my wrist hurts.  And I'm hungry.

Not long after breakfast this morning, I went to the garden to plant a cherry tomato plant I bought yesterday.  

It was a pleasant morning, and so I grabbed a hoe and did some weeding, mostly in the middles.  The tomato and pepper rows are in good shape, as far as weeds go.  The pine needles that we used for mulch around the peppers during the cold snap have compacted and are doing a pretty good job of keeping the weeds down.  The tomato rows have landscape fabric under the pine needles, and they're not grassy at all.  

A few days ago, I put pine needles around a few squash plants - I only had enough at hand to do a few.  At first, I put it right around the roots, but then I thought maybe it would be a good place for bugs and fungus to live, so I re-considered and raked it into the middles.   Not that a bug can't walk that far.  But, you know . . . <shrug>.  

This morning I decided to rake up more pine needles and do more mulching.  I'd already raked up the "easy" stuff around the outer edges of the pine trees along Nanny's driveway.  The trees grow on a bit of a bank, and the pine cones drop off and roll down the hill, into the yard.  The soil is all root-y around the trees, not safe for a lawnmower.   So what the folks who tend Nanny's yard (that would be Nanny, us, and The Nephew, on occasion) have been doing for several years is to pitch back under the trees all the pine cones and branches that roll into the path of the lawnmower.  What's under the trees now - or rather, what WAS under the trees - is a compact mass of years worth of needles, cones, and sticks, dewberries, poison ivy, and saplings from every tree in the neighborhood.

I decided to tackle this systematically.  First, I picked up pine cones.  Three big yard wagon-loads did not get them all.  I hauled the cones to a spot in the garden that has not yet been planted, and set fire to them.  I figure it will help with the weeds in that spot.

After the cones, I did the needles.  Three big loads.  They were a foot deep in some places, and underneath them was white stuff that could be fungus or it could be *smolder*.  It might not have been smart to haul fungus to the garden for mulch, but that's what I did.  I turned the white stuff up to the sun.  We'll see what happens.

About 2 p.m., I gave out.  I raked up one more wagon-load of pine needles on my way back to the house.  The wagon and rake are still sitting under the pine tree.  I'll deal with them later.

At the end of our driveway near the road, I found three little white plastic cups, laid over on their sides.  One held a tomato plant, one held a pepper plant, and one was full of basil sprouts.  Nearby was a plastic bag with planting instructions.  How cool is that?  I believe there is a tomato greenhouse not far from here.  I bet they're the tomato fairy.

Going back to the garden later this evening.  

Re-Planted Peas, Planted Okra - May 20, 2021

 I was surprised to find The Husband already home when I got home today at 3:30.  He'd already changed out of his work clothes.

After making sure that he wasn't ill, or something, I said, "Good!  Just look at how much daylight we have left to work in the garden!"

I changed out of my work clothes and put on my gardening apron.  I asked The Husband whether he wanted to walk to the garden or drive, but before he could answer, I said, "Let's drive.  I'm up for the walk right now, but I won't be when we're done."  

We put up the hog-wire fence for the tomatoes.  We lacked a few feet on both rows, so we just put tomato cages around the 6 or 8 plants growing where the fence didn't reach.  We tied the other tomato plants to the fence, pinched off suckers, and cut off any leaves that were touching the ground.  I buzzed all the blossoms with the battery-operated toothbrush.  Two or three of the plants already have little tomatoes on them.  The tomatoes on the north end of the garden (which has stayed pretty wet ever since the tomatoes were planted) - the ones in the cages - were a little yellow, and stunted-looking.  I thought I saw some dots on some of the lower leaves, so I removed those leaves and sprayed the plants with copper fungicide.  The fungicide may be several years old, so I don't know if it did any good.  Tomorrow I'm going to mix up a sprayer full of baking soda, water, milk, and dish detergent, and spray everything in the garden with it.

Next on the agenda was re-planting the purple hull peas.  We decided to just plow under the few plants that had sprouted, and start over.  I used the bicycle-on-a-stick planter, but it doesn't cover the seeds enough to suit me, so I raked a little more dirt over them.  

Looking at the green bean rows, I suspicioned that a rabbit had been there since yesterday.  There were odd indentations in the soft dirt:  two long ones, and two round ones, like two dotted letters - ii - two hind feet and two front feet?  I asked the menfolk to come take a look, but they were non-committal.  I didn't see any poop, so maybe it wasn't a rabbit.  

Would a rabbit eat bean seeds right out of the dirt?  

He'd better not.  Nanny doesn't want us to shoot the rabbit, and I'd hate that, myself, but I don't mind trapping his furry ass and turning him loose somewhere else.  Don't piss me off, or I'll turn him loose in YOUR garden.  ;)

While The Husband did some weeding, I raked up another wagon-load of pine needles to use for mulch around the pepper plants.  They were full of pinecones and bits of branches. I piled that wagon as high as I could get it, and as I added the last little heap, a squiggly little stick rolled down the heap and landed by my foot.  For a split second, I thought it was a little snake.  My life flashed before my eyes, and I sucked in about half of the air in the county in one great gulp.

The Nephew came home from work just about the time we finished spreading the pine needles.  He loves okra.  I told him I'd plant some if he'd run the tiller over the rows.  He said he needed to visit the potty after his long drive home, but would be right back out to help.  By the time he came back, The Husband had tilled the rows and was almost finished planting the seeds.  

I was right about being too tired to walk back home.

  

Replanting Green Beans - May 19, 2021

 

I looked in on the vegetable garden after work today.  

It is mostly pitiful.

If a butterbean dared sprout, something got it immediately.  Empty row.  (I take that back:  not "empty," for it's full of weeds and grass, just no butterbeans.  'Ne'er a one,' as folks used to say.

The purple hull peas need to be replanted, too.  The seeds in the south end of the garden sprouted skippy.  North end didn't sprout at all.  Except weeds and grass, of course.

The green beans did a little better than the peas, but those rows are skippy, too.  And grassy.

Tomatoes and peppers are doing okay.  Picked two Cuban peppers (tacos tomorrow night!) and saw a little green tomato.  Eggplant has a bloom on it.  The pine straw mulch job we did on the pepper rows seems to be working well for weed control  Or maybe it's just hiding weeds.  We also piled pine straw around the tomatoes, on top of landscape fabric, to help battle blight.  So far, so good.

The squash, zucchini and cucumber hills and middles are grassy.  The ground was dry enough to work, so I came home, got my gloves and some seeds (never found the butterbeans), and went back to the garden.  Ran the tiny tiller (it cranked on the first pull!).  Sharpened my hoe, and chopped around the squash and cucumbers.  I raked up a few more pine needles and spread them around the little plants, aiming to keep down the grass.  Not so sure that's a good idea though, as it might harbor the kind of bugs that like to eat squash and cucumbers.  

When I got to the green beans, I decided not to re-plant both rows all the way from south to north, as I did the first go-'round.  We planted the first seeds with the little bicycle-on-a-stick planter.  I don't trust that thing, so I planted by hand.  I stopped planting the skips half-way down each row.  The other half (which has NO plants in it, except grass) probably could've been worked but, being a lazy and out-of-shape person, I rationalized that it might be better to hold off on planting the remainder of those 70-foot rows.  Do I really want to deal with that many green beans at once?   I'm going to see how this planting does before I plant the rest of the rows.  I may even decide to use that space for something different.

As I started planting the seeds, a crow landed in a nearby tree and started to broadcast the news to his family and friends.  I looked up the row, and those white seeds were just shining, so I hurried and covered them up, and I covered up the rest as I went, hoping to hide them from the crow.  It made sense at the time.  I stopped and texted all my kids and grandkids:  "One or more of you wildly creative people should make a scarecrow for my garden."  In just a few minutes, I got a nibble.

I went back to chopping weeds.

Then, it hit me:  white seeds.

I was pretty sure the original green bean seeds were brown, for I remembered having a hard time seeing them drop out of the planter.  I reached around in my apron pockets and came up with a part of a bag of brown seeds.  I'd found the white seeds in the freezer.  What the heck had I just planted?  

When I pooped out and came home, I put on my glasses and read the label on the white seed bag.  It said "pole beans."  Whew.

Still need to put up the fence for the tomatoes.

Need to replant the peas.

More butterbean seeds on the way.

My brain runneth over - May 18, 2021

 

After I wrote that last post in which I threatened to round-up everything in my yard, I got a text from a fellow gardener:

"Hey google the medicinal benefits of the houttonya (chameleon plant).  You won't believe it. It may make both of us appreciate it more.  Maybe we will stop trying to kill it."

This is the very same wench that gave me chameleon plant ten years ago and then laughed about it when it ate my yard.

But I googled it, like she suggested. 

Here, let me save you some trouble

Anti-inflammatory functions of Houttuynia cordata Thunb. and its compounds: A perspective on its potential role in rheumatoid arthritis (nih.gov)

After I read that and some other stuff, I went outside, got me a leaf, and ate it.

It wasn't too bad.  I could stand a little bit of it raw in a salad.  Or maybe in salsa.  And I could for sure dry it and make tea with it.  

I'm 'bout to show the chameleon plants who's the boss around here.

Reading those articles reminded me that somewhere in the house there's an herbalist book.  It was on the "how-to" shelf.  Chameleon plant wasn't in it, but I thumbed through it and noted about two dozen plants that grow in and around my yard that are good medicinal plants.

This calls for further investigation.

Sunday Yardwork - May 17, 2021

 

I don't know how it started, really.  One minute I was sitting on the back porch, thinking of working on a new embroidery design, and the next I was head-down in flower beds, pulling "sticky weed."

This stuff is awful.  Even the leaves will stick to anything they touch - when you pull it up, it won't let go of your hand - and when it goes to seed it produces millions of tiny, sticky green balls.  I pulled up a wheel-barrow load of the stuff and had to de-ball myself before I could go back in the house.  

While pulling weeds, I found a bloom on a David Austin rose that I thought had long since died.  It was in full sun when I planted it, umpteen years ago.  For the past ten years or more, it's lived in the shade of a volunteer crape myrtle tree that we should've cut down the minute we discovered it.  When I saw the bloom, I decided that I should dig the rose up and move it to where it could get some sun (there are precious few of those places in our yard).  

Problem:  the rose is embedded in crape myrtle roots.  I dug and dug, and couldn't budge it, and in the process knocked off every spindly cane on the bush.  (I put one of the canes in a vase of water, hoping it'll root.)  The only thing I know to do is cut down the crape myrtle.  We ruined our electric chainsaw while cutting back Nanny's crape myrtles last month.  The Husband said he will buy a new one this week, and we will tackle the crape myrtle this coming weekend.  (I told him to buy some stump killer, too.)  

After battling the rose bush for about an hour, I decided that I need to kill everything in our yard and start over.  Every bed in the yard is choked with phlox.  In addition to the sticky weed, we also have a crown vetch problem.  And a chameleon vine problem.  And poison ivy and Virginia creeper.  Plus seedlings from every tree in the neighborhood.  I can't keep all of this stuff at bay.  It's going to wrap up our house!  Though I hate the thought of using Round-Up in our yard, it looks like that's the only way to win this battle.  

Weekend Warriors - May 16, 2021

 

Son #1 called early yesterday morning, wanting to know if he could borrow our power-washer to wash his house.  I said, "Sure, if you're brave enough to get it out of the shed."  (I won't go in past the door.)

I bought this power-washer for The Husband's birthday a couple of years ago.  At the time, we had a camper, and he'd been washing it with the water hose and a brush on a long stick.  We subsequently sold the camper.  The power-washer had never been used.  I didn't even know where all the gizmos were, but I did, at least, find the instruction manual.  

As my son was getting the thing out of the shed, I said, "I wish I'd put a condition on loaning this to you.  I wish I'd said, 'Yes, you can borrow it, if you'll do my house when you finish."

He said he would, but I didn't hold him to it.  He's been working the night shift for the past umpteen months, and this was the first Saturday in a long time that he hasn't needed to sleep half the day.  I figured he had plenty to do at his own house.

A little later in the afternoon, Son #2's wife texted me this picture:

Son #2 has worked 40 days with only 4 days off, and yesterday he decided to climb up on their roof, clean gutters, and saw off some low-hanging limbs that were brushing the roof.  

I texted her back:  "Make him get down."  

The Husband went to work yesterday to get some stuff done while the office was quiet.  I spent the day working on embroidery designs.  About 5 p.m., I fixed myself a big, stout gin & tonic and retired to the back porch to enjoy it.  I was just finishing it when Son #2 called and asked if we could babysit The Granddaughters while they ran some errands.  "Bring 'em on!"   I did not tell him I was half-looped.  I just made sure not to hold the baby while I was standing up.  ;) 

* * * * * * * * *

We walked down to the garden Friday evening to check on it.  Looks like we're going to have to re-plant all the beans and peas.  

 

I reckon I've just been too lazy to write for the past week or so, or maybe it's just that I haven't had much to write about except rain, rain, RAIN, and I'm sick of that subject.  So let's talk about something else.

Last Friday was my brother's birthday, and it was a big one (75!).  My sister made him a delicious carrot cake, and we gathered at his house on Saturday to eat and visit.  My siblings and I have taken the pandemic precautions seriously from the get-go, and the three of us have not been together for over a year.  It was nice to finally see everyone at the same time, now that we've all been vaccinated.    

Saturday evening, I went down to the garden to plant the squash and zucchini that I'd sprouted from seeds.  Yeah, it was muddy, but I waded in and punched the sprouts into the dirt.  Nanny came out to the back porch as I made my way across the yard.  She was upset.  Some critter had dug up all of the petunias that we'd planted in her flower pots a week or two ago.  Not only did it dig up the petunias, it dragged them all over the yard, and Nanny had to go around gathering up the plants.  I suggested that we set a live trap to see if we could catch the vandal.  I suspected that it was an armadillo (because I blame everything on the armadillos).  A friend told me she had trapped an armadillo by using a rotten banana for bait.  I didn't think that armadillos would go after bananas, but I had a half-rotten banana on my kitchen table, so I came home to get it, and we baited the trap with it.  We also strapped a trail-cam to a porch post so that we could at least see the culprit even if we couldn't catch it.  

Sunday was Mother's Day.  My older son invited us to his house for a cookout.  Of course, it rained - a light drizzle in the middle of the day - but we cooked out, anyway.  Later, when we took Nanny her present, we asked if the trap had caught the petunia thief.  It turned out to be a raccoon, but the trail-cam filmed it pulling the banana through the back side of the trap; it never went inside the trap, so we didn't catch it.

Later that evening, a storm came up, and a tornado touched down less than a mile up the road from our house.  Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the tornado tore up a neighbor's barn, uprooted a bunch of trees, and damaged rooves along a 5-mile path.  The Husband and I were standing at the front door, watching the sky swirling above us as a wall of rain approached from the west, when the local weatherman came on TV and started naming communities all around us that were in danger.  I said, "We probably shouldn't be standing in front of this glass door."  The tornado formed and touched down less than 5 minutes later.

I got some good loot for Mothers Day.  The Husband gave me a metal peacock garden ornament, and our younger son gave me a tall shepherd's hook with a solar light to hang from it.  

Yesterday afternoon it was sunny, and I took Mr. Peacock outside to scout out a place to put him.  I wanted to set him on the timbers surrounding the old raised bed in the front yard, but the landscape timbers were so rotten they wouldn't hold a nail.  (I was going to bend nails over his feet to keep him upright.)  I ended up setting him on the dirt and stuffing the back parts of his feet under the timbers, but this set him at a crazy angle, like he was looking up at the sky, so I stuffed a piece of a limb between his butt and the landscape timber to set him upright.  A couple of hours later, another little rain storm came up, and . . . 

Mr. Peacock needs a better plan.

About suppertime, Granddaughter #2 called to see if I would alter a dress for her.  She's "graduating" from elementary school to middle school this year, and the school is having a graduation ceremony and a dance Friday night.  Her mom had brought her a fancy dress to wear to the dance, but it was a little too big.  The shoulder straps needed to be shortened, as did an elastic strip at the back.  The shoulder straps were easy to fix, but the elastic strip gave me fits.  I had to send her home with a promise to fix the dress before the dance.  After supper, I sat down and managed to take up the elastic enough to protect her reputation.  ;)  I'll take it to her tonight when we go to her softball game.

As for the vegetable garden . . . <shaking my head sadly> . . . .  I am resigned to having to re-plant most of the seeds I planted a few weeks ago.  Some seeds just never came up.  Some came up, but a rabbit ate the sprouts.  

I bet rabbit dumplings would be good.

Garden Report - May 5, 2021

 

After work today, I made a quick sashay to the garden to see how things are looking.  I wasn't too happy about the present state of things.

The tomatoes and peppers are looking okay - growing, with a few blooms here and there.

Last season's cucumber seeds sprouted to beat the band.

But the beans and peas are pitiful.  Only a few green beans have come up.  The lower thirds of the purple-hull pea rows look pretty bare.  Nothing is showing in the butterbean row.

I'm kind of irked about this state of affairs.  This is the first year that I've been able to plant the garden when I wanted to plant it instead of when other people were ready for me to plant it.  When Pop-Pop was alive, he called the shots on the planting date by simply refusing to break up the garden until he thought it was time.  In subsequent years, I relied on other people to do the breaking, people who had jobs and kids and other obligations and would get to me when they found time.  Sometimes, the weather just didn't cooperate.  But this year, we had the equipment and the weather, and we got to work early.  

And it has rained, and been unseasonably cool, ever since I planted.

And it's supposed to rain again this weekend.

The seeds that haven't sprouted may be water-logged.  I may have to start over with seed planting after the ground dries up enough to work.  

Or it could be that it's just not warm enough yet for the seeds to sprout.

However, the squash and zucchini seeds I planted in the seed-starting trays sprouted like champs.  Maybe they just tolerate cooler temps better than beans.  <shrug>  They need to go in the ground, as some of them are already developing their second set of leaves.  But I'd sink to my armpits in the garden as wet as it is right now.

Well, poop . . . May 3, 2021

 

This weekend didn't turn out exactly like I'd planned.

Saturday morning, I was a real dynamo and got a lot done, both in the house and in the yard.  A mid-afternoon baby shower interrupted my progress.  My plan for after the shower was to go to the greenhouse to get soil and plants for the front flower bed.

The shower was actually kind of fun.  I saw a couple of ladies I hadn't seen since high school.  The expectant mother is the granddaughter of one of my father's friends, a big, freckled, red-haired dude that folks called "Red."  He is the slowest-talking person I have ever met, and he always had a story to tell.  At the shower, I related to his daughter a story about a litter of five puppies that Red had told Daddy in my presence:  

". . . I went out to feed them puppies.  There was five dawgs, and three fights going on.  Two puppies was fightin' two other puppies, and one puppy was tryin' to bite his own leg off."

I actually made it to the greenhouse after the shower, driving The Husband's truck, which I am not accustomed to driving.  It took three tries to park the truck straight between the parking space lines.  As I was getting out of the truck, I whacked my knee on some knob on the dashboard - hit it right in the same place that the doctor hits it when he's testing reflexes.  It took my breath away for a minute.  When I finally recovered my wits, I noticed that a bell was dinging in the truck, and it took another minute to figure out that I'd turned on the headlights with my knee.  

I didn't find the kind of plants I wanted, so I just went back home.

About 5 a.m. yesterday morning, I woke up to stomach pains.  Spent the first half of the day running to the bathroom every few minutes.  We had invited the kids, grandkids, and relatives on the hill to our house for a cookout at 6 p.m.  About mid-morning, I sent a text message to everyone, calling off the cookout, not wanting to expose all those folks to a potential stomach bug.  It was raining, anyway.

At 2 p.m., there was scheduled an annual meeting for The Husband's credit union.  It was the first annual meeting since he was named the CEO.  He was worried that, due to covid and the weather, not enough people would show up to make a quorum.  If not enough folks showed up, they'd have to re-schedule the meeting.  I felt like I should go to the meeting, both for moral support and to add to the "body count," but I was a little leery about leaving the house, considering my tummy issues.  I waited until the very last minute to leave the house, and high-tailed it out of there the minute the meeting was over.  Fortunately, I made it back home without a nasty, embarrassing incident.

It rained all night last night and is still raining this morning.  I've got to leave for work in a few minutes.  After work, I'm going to another greenhouse to see if I can find the plants I want for the front bed.  

Yardwork - May 1, 2021

 

It's noon, and I my gardening energy is shot for the day - or at least for a few hours.  

It started with an early morning coffee stroll out to the new bed to see how things were doing.  So far, so good.  While looking at the bed, I remembered that I wanted to move a little bit of bee balm and some yarrow into the back corners of the bed, so I got a trowel and dug up a little bit of each and moved them.  Filled up the big watering can and watered them in.

Then I turned around and saw that ugly-ass flower bed in the center of the front yard.

I wish I'd taken a "before" picture.

This bed was built around a tree 35 years ago.  Thirty years ago, we cut the tree down but left the frame, which is made of landscape timbers and is now nearly compost, it's so rotten.  I planted a dozen white daffodil bulbs in the frame - that was about all I could afford at the time.  Over the years, the daffodils multiplied so much that I gave away a wheelbarrow-full of bulbs when I re-did the bed several years ago.  Every year, I've cut back tree saplings and dewberry vines and assorted weeds, but it all grows back by the end of the summer, and the thing looks ragged.  

So today I clipped the foliage off of the daffodil clumps, and dug up some trees and vines.  Then I ran the little tiller between the daffodils.  Later this afternoon, after I get home from a baby shower, I'm going back to the garden center to spend next month's rent money on flowers and dirt. 

I think I'll divide the daffodils again, and spread them around the bed a little bit.  Then I'm going to fill the spaces with supertunias, or something.