If thy bean offend thee....

It's been hotter than blue blazes around here for the past few days.  What with the heat and all the corn-putting-up and the wallpaper-taking-down, the vegetable garden has been neglected these past few days.  (By me, at least; the varmints apparently have been visiting regularly.)  Yesterday when I came home from work, I pulled into Nanny's driveway instead of mine and went to see what needed doing. 

Grassy, grassy garden.  Some tomato plants drooping from last week's double drowning, others firing up with late blight.  Discarded nibbled tomato fruit all around.  Squash as big as baseball bats.  New green beans and new purple hull peas growing like crazy.  Old green beans and old purple hull peas still just sitting there, taking up space, not earning their keep.

I fired up the big black tiller and chomped them up with it.  The butterbeans survived the slaughter only because they are blooming better than they've bloomed so far.  They apparently liked all the water.

Anyway, there are four empty rows just itching to have something planted in them.  It's supposed to cool off later in the week.  Maybe I'll have decided what to plant by then.

The Writing on the Wall

When our younger son was about 3 or 4 years old, he had a burning desire to write on walls.  At first, it was just scribbles, then, when he learned to write his name, it started appearing in place of the scribbles.  He used to write the letter "L" backwards.  I went in his room one day and caught him, red-handed, writing his name on the wall, backwards "L" and all, with blue magic marker.  When I saw it, I asked him, "Who did that?"  He put the magic marker behind his back right quick, and said, "Josh" (his older brother). 

Yesterday, in preparation for a painter who is supposed to come this week, I began removing wallpaper from the hallway outside his room.  Under the very first strip I removed, I found this about waist high on the wall:

He'd learned to write his "L" properly by then.

I texted him:

 



Seconds later came his reply:

I didn't believe it 28 years ago, either.  ;)

* * * * *

I was still peeling wallpaper when The Husband came home from work.  He came in bearing a tub of about 60 ears of corn that my aunt had sent to me. 

Jeez!  I'd had my weekend all planned!  I was going to visit Mother (it's her birthday).  I was going to peel off the wallpaper in the entry hall.  I was going to digitize and sew some embroidery designs for a baby quilt that needs to be done in a month.  I was going to walk down to the garden, see how it's doing, maybe pluck a tomato worm or two.

But when somebody hits you with 60 ears of good corn, if you're smart you'll give it high priority.

And so I rolled out of bed at 6 a.m., did some digitizing, went to see Mother, went to the grocery store for canning supplies, and came home ready to battle the corn.  Thankfully, The Husband had already shucked it and was silking it when I got here.  While he did that, I went to work chopping peppers, onions, and celery for corn relish.  Those 60 ears produced 16 pints of relish and 4 quarts of creamed corn, which I cooked and froze. 

As I was doing the corn, The Husband started peeling the entry hall wallpaper.  Like the other wallpaper, it's been there 25 years, and it showed no signs of letting go any time soon.  It took me close to 5 hours to get the paper off the hallway walls yesterday, and The Husband and I spent close to 9 hours removing the entry hall paper.  Our feet hurt.  Our necks and shoulders hurt.  We have bits of paper stuck to us.

Of all the ideas I have had today, going to bed right this minute sounds like the best.  Check you later.

Squirrel Season 2015

Nanny called yesterday and said, "The squirrels are getting more tomatoes than you and me put together.  I saw one run out of the garden with a tomato in his mouth."

It just so happens that The Nephew is home from the boat, so I said to Nanny, "You tell The Nephew his assignment for tomorrow is to go squirrel hunting!"

Later that afternoon, I went down to start the sprinkler in the garden.  The grass and morning glories are thriving; the vegetables, not so much.  The July heat is atrocious.  Some of the vegetables are digging it, but not the green beans and butterbeans.  They don't seem to be dying, exactly, but they do seem unwilling to work in this heat.  I'm going to try to keep them from getting lost in the grass long enough to see if they perk up and go to town when the weather cools off. 

I don't much like these Mascotte beans.  This is the second year I've tried them.  Last year's TGF (Total Garden Failure) didn't give them a fair shake, so I planted them again this spring.  I like the idea of the beans growing in the top of the plant, where they're not such a pain to pick.  The first planting sprouted sparsely, and I had to re-plant a couple of times to get a decent stand.  Then the monsoons came, and drowned one whole corner the garden.  I replanted that corner AGAIN when the ground dried.  They came up fairly well, but now they are gone.  I don't know where they went.  The original beans that didn't get too wet grew nicely for a while, then became sort of stunted-looking, but I started seeing tiny green beans hanging up in the tops of the plants and thought they were about to crank up.  I like to pick my beans when they're about as big around as a drinking straw, so I waited and watched for them to get bigger.  And I never saw many eating-sized beans.  I picked everything worth picking last night, and ended up with a cereal bowl of green beans.   A rabbit may be helping me harvest them.

I went back to the garden this afternoon to do more watering.  As I went down Nanny's driveway, I heard a gunshot, and looked around, and spotted The Nephew shooting up into the trees at the edge of the hay field in front of Nanny's house.  Don't expect me to feel even a twinge of guilt for pronouncing sentence on those squirrels. 

Flora-cide

If plants could vocalize, I would be hearing weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth all around me, for we wreaked havoc in our yard this weekend.

The builder was supposed to start working on our house today.  The exterior improvements include a new roof and a new deck built on top of an existing concrete patio.  The patio is at least 25 years old, and for most of that 25 years I have been planting perennials around it - daylilies, phlox, roses, daffodils, monkey grass, four-o-clocks.  As of yesterday morning, our patio beds were riots of color.  By noon, it was all gone, cut down in its prime so that the builder can actually get to the patio.  My granddaughter cheerfully helped with the plant slaughtering.  (I do not know why she felt the bicycle helmet was necessary to the task.) 

Two crape myrtles had to go, too.  One grew near the corner of the patio, and the other grew along the back wall of the house.  In both cases, the limbs over-hung places where the builder will need to work.  We committed "crape murder" and sawed off the limbs with a chain saw.  Those limbs were so straight and sturdy that I saved several of them.  No idea what we'll use them for, possibly tomato stakes, if nothing else.

The back yard looks shockingly bare, except for the heaps of wilting flowers and limbs piled around it.  Hopefully, most of it will be back next year.  I dug up my favorite rose bush and moved it, but I fear that I vandalized the roots so badly that it may not survive. 

And after all that worked, the builder called to report that he had hurt his back and would be going to the doctor today.  He called this afternoon and said that he would be here as soon as he is able. 

All the plants may grow back before he shows up to work!

In the vegetable garden, the peas and beans we planted last week shot out of the ground like they were on steroids, a much healthier-looking stand than the first planting, which may be ready to pick by the end of the week.

We are steadily picking cucumbers, squash, and zucchini.  Hopefully, by the time Nanny's church does the food pantry again, we will have some produce to contribute to it.

Tomato worms are out.  I saw their poop around one of the plants and found two of the little nasties nibbling away.  One other plant has clearly been eaten, but I could not find the culprit.  He may be the size of a hot dog before I find him.

We had some rain late last week.  We had run the tiller over most of the garden a few days earlier, and the rain soaked right in.  When the above-pictured granddaughter and her older sister came to visit on Saturday, they followed me out to the garden.  I saw the older granddaughter eyeing the mud, and before I could warn her, she stepped onto the dirt and promptly sank in past her ankles.  After a momentary panic, she yelled for her sister to join her, and together they tracked up the garden something awful.  I don't think the garden cared, though, and neither did I. 

On Married Men Left Home Alone

We are about to do a little refurbishing around here, part of which includes new floor covering in some of the rooms.  Unlike many of the projects we've undertaken, this one is being done by a professional.  He said that he would move the furniture out of the rooms, but that we should clean out closets and put away breakable things.  I tackled the closets a few weeks ago, and since the start date is approaching, I thought I'd better get busy on the breakables.

I started in the kitchen, where a hutch sits full of breakable things, things like my mother-in-law's tea cups, which she got as a wedding present 50-some-odd years ago.  As I was emptying the hutch, I found this:

 



 

That, my friend, is part of a wooden duck.  Or goose, maybe.  He used to hang on my kitchen wall, near the stove.  He used to have two wooden feet on two wooden dowels, pegged into those two empty holes that you see in the picture.  They stuck straight out at right angles to him and to the wall.  The space between that duck's body and his feet was the perfect size for holding my big hickory rolling pin that was too big to keep anywhere else.  That duck hung there for years, safely cradling my rolling pin.

When I found the above-mentioned duck fragment, I took his picture and texted it to The Husband.  Didn't say nothin', just sent him the picture.  Here's why:

One day last year, as I was cleaning up the kitchen, I tried to slide the cutting board into it's usual slot in the jelly cabinet, and the cutting board hung on something and wouldn't go in.  I bent over to see what the problem was, and encountered this beneath the shelf (it had my rolling pin in it at the time):



Yes, those would be the feet that belong to the duck.

I was positively aghast.  In disbelief, I glanced over at the wall where the duck once hung, and sure enough it was gone.  I said, "What the - ?"

The Husband was sitting in his chair in the living room.  He was smirking.  He'd been off work a few days earlier, while I had gone to work.  Home alone, piddling around.  Washed his truck.  Mowed the lawn.  And at some point during the day, he thought it would be a good idea to drill a couple of holes in the side of the jelly cabinet (note that his first attempt was too high), saw my duck's feet off, and re-mount them in the cabinet.

This is what happens when you leave a man home alone without a to-do list.

He said it had been like that for days.

I did not know whether to laugh or choke him. 

I have begged him many times not to move stuff in the kitchen unless he intends to take over the cooking.  This one took the cake.  Not only did he move something that had been *right there* for 30 years, he destroyed my heirloom duck, as well!

Okay, okay...it wasn't an heirloom.  It's a cheap piece of crap wooden duck, an 80s left-over, and it's beyond tacky.  And it sometimes fell of the wall when we opened the nearest cabinet door. 

And it was kind of funny.

But I pretended to be miffed and sad at the loss of my old duck.  So don't tell him.

I asked him where the REST of the duck was.  He would not tell me.  To this day, he has never told me.  I have not looked for it, beyond a glance around the kitchen the day of the duck murder. 

When I found it today, I took a picture of it with my cell phone and texted it to The Husband.  Didn't say a word.  Just sent the picture. 

A few minutes later, I get: 





 After I cleaned out the jelly cabinet and saw those goofy duck feet sticking out, all by their lonesome, I took a picture of the feet and sent that to The Husband as well.  Didn't say nothin'.  Just sent the picture.  He said:

I'm not exactly sure what that smurky face means.  He could be commiserating with my mourning of the heirloom duck.  Or he could be smirking at remembering the dismembering. 

Either way, I'm laughing.  ;)

The Trickster in the Shed

I am convinced that there is a trickster living in the garden shed.  He/She/It vandalizes power equipment and hides things, and sometimes it goes out to the garden and digs up seeds and plants grass and weeds.

Nanny's birthday was Saturday, and we had a fish fry to celebrate.  In addition to the normal crew that hangs out at her house from time to time, we invited her siblings and a few nieces and nephews that we could reach by phone, about 16 folks from ages 8 to 80.  Cake.  Ice cream.  It was fun.

While the fish was cooking, the relatives visited on the back porch and wandered around the yard.  I spied Uncle B checking out the vegetable garden, and later, when I had a minute to sit down beside him on the porch, he said, "Yo' garden is a little grassy, ain't it?"

Hmph. 

I said, "Yeah, it is.  We've had 'issues'." 

He noted that some of the rows were "skippy." 

Gee, I hadn't noticed.  :-\

Truth is that nothing but grass will grow in part of the garden, that low spot in the northwest corner that holds water forever.  And, believe you me, we've had plenty of water for it to hold this year.  It's a waste of time to plant anything there, but I do it, anyway, when I can catch it dry enough to plant.  Hope is eternal, I reckon.

Anyway, yesterday was a relatively cool day, and I spent half of it trying to remedy the grass situation and the "skippy" situation.   Ran the big tiller down the wide rows and chopped with the hoe where the tiller couldn't go.  Re-planted the skippy rows, and put in a couple more new rows of peas in hope of a later crop.  I'd done about a quarter of what I intended to do when the tire came off the tiller.  AGAIN.  It made me so mad that I just left the tiller where it sat and came back to the house to cool off.  Later in the day, I went back to the garden and pressed Gloria into service while The Husband worked on putting the tire back on the big tiller.

The tire attaches to the axle with a bolt and a nut that goes through the axle on the outside of the tire.   When the bolt comes out, the tire doesn't immediately fall off.  It lets me till a little while before the tire slips far enough up the axle that it no longer gets traction.  By the time I notice the problem, there's no telling where the bolt is.  I've already buried several of them in the garden this year.

I keep wondering why this happens.  The menfolk in the family are fixing that tire for me when it comes off.  I've seen them bearing down on the wrenches to tighten that nut.  They don't play.  Those bolts shouldn't fall out like they do.  My conclusion is that the trickster loosens the nuts while the tiller is parked in the shed.  That's the only thing it could be.  ;)

Fortunately, The Husband was able to find yet another bolt/nut that would fit.  I'm thinking a new solution is in order - one of those elongated, pinchy question-mark-shaped things (the proper word escapes me at the moment).  I shall go to the hardware store today and buy two of them.  (Hopefully, the word will come to me by then, so I won't have to use the term "elongated, pinchy question-mark-shaped thing" to the hardware professional.)  We'll see if the garden shed trickster can get THOSE off.

In other news....

I planted a short row of tiger beans yesterday.  These seeds are some that I saved two years ago, when The Grandson wanted to try tiger beans just because he liked the name.  By the time I got around to picking those beans, some had dried on the vine, and I saved those dry ones in the freezer.  I'm curious to see if they will sprout.

I ate this season's first home-grown tomato last night, standing at my kitchen counter with a salt shaker in my hand.  It was heavenly.  Earlier in the week, we made the season's first batch of cucumber-and-onions-in-vinegar.  Served them at the fish fry, along with white beans, French fries, slaw, and hush puppies.  Yum!  Tonight, we'll be having some home-grown, pesticide-free squash for dinner. 

Speaking of squash, the "church row" is looking fine.  God's zucchini plants are show-stoppers.  Hopefully, it won't be long until we can contribute some to the food pantry at Nanny's church.

We had a gentle rain this morning, which ought to swell those pea and bean seeds right out of the ground.

Late June Garden Report

We went camping last week and came home to a garden fuzzy with grass and dry as a bone.  Saturday afternoon, I got after it.  The dry ground seemed to be the most pressing problem, so I stretched the hoses from Nanny's faucet and turned it on.  Water spewed from every connection and from the several places that we'd patched with duct tape near the end of last season.  I tried to place the spews where they'd do the most good and made a note to pick up new water hoses the next day.

Sunday, armed with new water hoses and a new sprinkler, I got after it again.  The first problem was that I could not get the old hoses unscrewed from the hose cart.  The Husband came out to help and ended up twisting the connection in two in the middle; the old hose came off, but the new one couldn't be screwed into place because part of the old connector was still there.  I decided to deal with that problem after the weeding was done.  I started with Gloria, the little red tiller, digging out the grass in the narrow middles of the bean rows, then I pulled the grass out of the rows by hand.  The next job on my list was to run the lawnmower over the three empty rows and plant more purple hull peas in them.  While I was pulling grass from the bean rows, The Husband offered to mow, then he offered to run the breaking plow over those rows.  I said, "If you do that, you'll have to run the disc over it.  I think the big tiller will do okay."  But he insisted (I think that he really just wanted to drive the tractor), so I told him to have at it.

He put the breaking plow on the tractor and made quick work out of breaking up the ground, but the progress came to a halt when he tried to attach the disc.  He called me over to help.  We could get one side of the hitch attached, but not the other side.  We worked and worked and sweated and cussed.  My frustration level was getting pretty high (I was racing daylight) when Nanny came out to "help."  I am ashamed to admit that I bailed out of the disc-attaching at this point, figuring she could give orders as well as I could.   They finally got the thing attached, but about the time The Husband got back to the garden with the tractor, the hydraulic lifter-thing quit working.  He detached the disc where it sat and parked the tractor. 

While all of this was going on, I cranked Gloria back up to finish the weeding.  She ran out of gas after about 3 minutes.  We had gas in a can in the shop, but I was too lazy to go get it and heave it out to the garden, so I dragged the big black tiller out of the shop, intending to work in the wide rows between the tomatoes and the squash.  I made a couple of passes, and as I was turning around at the end of a row, I scrunched the tiller's right-hand tire right off the rim.    The Husband tried to put it back on, but the air wouldn't stay in it.  I told him to chunk it in the back seat of my Jeep, and I'd take it to the service station the next day. 

With all of the equipment out of commission, I tackled the hose problem again.  That broken connector piece appeared to have been WELDED onto the hose reel connector.  I by-passed the hose cart altogether and hooked the hose straight to the faucet.  I did, at least, manage to get most of the garden watered.  I came home muddy, wet, sweaty, and horsefly bitten.

Monday came.  The tiller tire was fixed.  I talked The Husband into putting it back on the tiller so that it would be ready to go when I was ready to go again.  But I wasn't ready.  Screw the garden.

Most everything looks fairly well, now that it's had a drink, except the pepper plants.  They died.  All but one.  I stopped at a garden center this afternoon, bought more peppers, and planted them after dinner tonight.

I picked about 10 nice-sized cucumbers.

The green beans have matchstick-sized beans on them. 

Squash will be ready in a few days.

Tomatoes hanging in there.

Okra is growing.  It's loving this monstrous heat.

Rain and Greens

Rogue showers are plastering us with rain this evening.  It rains hard for 5 minutes and quits, waits 10 minutes, then does it again.  The water is good to help melt the pelletized fertilizer I applied last week, but not so good for the fungicide I sprayed on the tomato plants. 

We've had about a week without any rain, and the plants have begun to "green up."  I hope these showers move on and don't set the plants back again.

The green tomatoes have a malady.  Some of them are a strange rust color.  It looks like buckeye rot, but I'm not sure that's what it is.  Most of the descriptions say it happens to tomatoes that are on or near the soil, but the affected tomatoes are fairly high on the stem. 

Could it be that I bought a strange variety of tomato that is more brown/purple than red when ripe?  I don't recall buying any, but it's possible they were mislabeled.  Wouldn't it be a shame if I'm throwing away perfectly good tomatoes because they're a funny color?  It reminds me of a few years ago, when my brother was throwing away what he thought was diseased yellow squash when, in fact, they were perfectly good butternut squash.

My garden has about three rows that were tilled at the beginning of the season but haven't been touched since.  I'd saved those rows to plant more purple hull peas.  They're full of grass right now.  Last week, I started to run the tiller over them, but I noticed a fair amount of turnip greens. mustard greens, and kale thriving in the grass.  This afternoon, I picked the biggest greens and cooked them for supper.  Yum!  And the best part was that they were "freebies" - volunteers from last year's crop that never did very well - no effort at all on my part.

The stout little Mascotte green beans are blooming.  I am anxious to see them make their crop, which is supposed to occur in the top of the plant, rather than underneath the foliage like ordinary green beans. 

Cannellini and Squash

My brother treated me to a trip to Italy a few years ago.  Our plane landed in Florence, where we rented a car and drove northwest, to the Cinque Terra region and then down into Tuscany.  One day, we were in a tiny little town where there was only one tiny little restaurant open for lunch.  There were maybe 5 tables inside, and a few more on the terrace.  We chose a table on the terrace and discovered a fabulous view - a little valley below, with olive trees and grape vines growing on the opposite hill.  The dish I ordered sounded all exotic in Italian, but it was a bowl of white kidney beans stewed with chopped tomatoes, probably some onions, and a sausage link.  Little sprig of sage for garnish.  It was one of the best things I've ever tasted.

In remembrance of that trip, I planted some cannellini beans today - two short rows of 'em.  They're running beans, so I'll have to come up with a staking system;  I already have a plan for that.  I planted sage a month ago, but it has nearly drowned several times and looks puny.  We're beginning to feel the summer heat here, which should bring those beans right up and perk up the sage, to boot.

I also planted a few more hills of squash today.  Rather, re-planted some hills that never sprouted.  The squash is disappointing me.  Remember that I planted a "church row" of squash, the fruits of which I'd planned to donate to the local church pantries.  It needs to get cracking.  It took those seeds FOREVER to germinate, and all the rain has made the plants small and pale and sickly.  But they're beginning to bloom, and yesterday I saw one little baby squash.  Maybe there's hope for them.

Beans a-runnin'

It's been a week since the vegetable garden has had my attention.  This negligence is the fault of Mother Nature, whose intent seems to be to drown everything I've planted.  Most everything is a shocking chartreuse color, except the weeds and grass, but even they look a little pale.

But we've had a few sunny days in a row, and maybe a couple more down the road.  This evening, parts of the garden were dry enough to work, so I got busy.

Pulled grass from around the tomatoes and squash.  Dug trenches around each plant to hold 6/12/12 fertilizer, which I subsequently applied and covered with dirt.  Sprayed the tomatoes for blight.  When The Husband came home, he helped by doing a little weeding with Gloria, the tiny new tiller.

I feel so accomplished.  :)

Except...

Some of my tomatoes appear to have blossom end rot.  I can't remember whether this is the result of a fungus or a mineral deficiency (fixing to look it up).  If it's a fungus, hopefully the blight treatment will nix it.

And lets not talk about the beans & peas rows.  They are wet and grassy and will probably remain so for a few more days.  The Ford Hook butterbeans are putting out runners, though, and the green beans look like they're thinking about doing the same.  I'm anxious to see how these green beans do - I think they're called "Mascotte" beans.  They're supposed to bear their crop in the top of the plant, rather than underneath like most bush beans, making them easier to pick.  The plants look kind of stout in the middle, stocky, like they're about to blow out sideways instead of up.

I planted spinach, radishes, and lettuce in the horse trough a week or two ago.  It is all coming up and looking healthy.  Need to thin the radishes.

On the far edge of the garden, where I haven't planted anything yet, turnip greens from last year's seeding have come up.  I walked that strip today and noted that there are enough greens for a meal, so Sunday, I'm going to pick a mess and have them for supper.

I'm so tired it hurts to move.

No, it's not from working in the vegetable garden, it's from cleaning closets.  Two of them.  Filled up half a dozen garbage bags with stuff like old clothing and video games that haven't worked since my boys (now grown and married) were kids.  Found cool stuff I'd forgotten about.  Got it all back in (minus the 6 bags full), in orderly fashion.  Took more than 6 hours. 

During this cleaning frenzy, while some subconscious part of my brain was free to roam, I had an epiphany of sorts.

You see, lately I've been working on digitizing some camping-themed embroidery designs.  When I get a few done, I think I'll embroider them on some towels for our camper.  I've finished a raccoon, started an opossum, and plan to do a skunk, a squirrel, and maybe some ants and/or mosquitoes - all things that can plague you on a camping trip if you don't play your cards right. 

So while I was cleaning, it occurred to me that it is pretty weird (but mildly funny, in a twisted sort of way, don't you think?) that instead of doing pretty flowers, or S'mores, or campfires, I'm decorating my space with little thread idols of things that irritate me.

And then it hit me - the thing about the Babylonians and their hemorrhoids.

Okay, let me back up.  You might not know the story. 

Back in Old Testament days, the story goes that the Babylonians swooped in, wreaked havoc, and carried off the very Ark of the Covenant as a spoil of war.  What did God do?  Among other things, He struck the Babylonians with piles - hemorrhoids, if you must know.    And what did the Babylonians do?  They saw a connection between the Ark and the discomfort in their hinder parts, and after making little golden images of their piles and putting them in the Ark, they put the Ark on an oxcart and sent it up the road.  (I don't believe the scripture says whether or not this was a viable remedy.)

I've always wondered why the Babylonians made images of their hemorrhoids as offerings.  I would've shot for something impressive or beautiful. 

Or would I?  ;)

On the garden front:  it's probably down there drowning.  We've had a lot of rain.  Over the weekend, I managed to get cages around the tomatoes and do some light tilling to dig out the weeds. 

Fertilizing and Critter Watch

Butterbeans up.
Green beans up.
Purple hull peas up.
Cucumbers up.
Tomatoes blooming.

All seems to be well in the garden, except that (1) we're getting a lot of rain, and (2) there's a critter running amuck. 

In spots, my garden is still muddy from the last rain, and it's supposed to rain for the next three days.  I temporarily hilled up some dirt around my tomatoes, and dug some hoe-trenches running away from the hills, hoping to run some of the water away from the plants.  I also side-dressed the butterbeans and green beans with a fairly light dose of 6-12-12 in the hope that the coming rain will melt it nicely into the soil. 

As for that critter....  Whatever it is, it appears to be dragging a tail behind it.  It doesn't appear to be eating anything. 

Yet. 

I bet it likes tomatoes and squash.

This may mean war.

 

 

Purple Hulls and Rain

Hear that thunder? 

We've got rain this morning.  Needed it to bring up the seeds we planted last week.

Tuesday I planted 3 rows of purple hull peas.  I'll wait about two weeks, then plant 3 more. 

Green beans, okra, cucumbers, and Gloria

Say hello to Gloria, the newest tenant in the garden shed. 

I've never had a female tiller before, and I'm not sure how I'm going to like her. 

For starters, though I actually went to a store to buy her, she came out in a box, in a state of dishabille, not wearing her wheels or her handle.  I had to take the top off my Jeep to get her in it - not that I minded riding "topless" on this gorgeous, warm afternoon, but I may mind it in the morning when it's 60 degrees and I'm driving to work. 

She came with her own bottle of oil and a package of fuel stabilizer that I added to our existing gas can.  I filled her up, pumped her little fuel button a few times, and yanked.  It didn't crank on the first 5 pulls, but it did after a few more tries.

My intention today was to loosen up a row I tilled with the big tiller yesterday.  When I lined her up and hit the throttle, she immediately buried herself up in the soil, and I couldn't push her forward.  Eventually, I turned her around and went down the row backwards.

On firmer soil, which was plowed, disked, and tilled two weeks ago, she didn't bury herself up quite so easily.  I was able to work the soil going forward by letting the tiller run ahead and then dragging it backwards toward me as the tines turned.

She quit a few times during the job, but cranked right back up again.  Still, it peeved me that she quit.  Maybe she just needed to get her fluids flowing, or maybe I didn't have a throttle lever in the right spot.  We'll see how she does on the next job before we judge her.

Today I planted two rows of green beans, two short rows of okra, and six hills of cucumbers.  As I looked down those two long rows of green beans, I thought about how long it's going to take to pick them, and wished I'd planted two half rows today, and two half rows a couple of weeks later.  Pop-Pop used to tell me not to plant the whole garden at once, but I just can't seem to get that through my thick head.  I need to plant more squash, and some other beans and peas, but I'm going to try to force myself to wait a week or two, so everything won't come in at once.

Butterbeans, Squash and @(!)# Tillers

My boss turned me loose a little early today.  I rushed home, slapped a roast in the oven, put on my gardening duds, and headed for the garden with the intent to crank the little black tiller and prepare some rows for planting seeds.  I dragged it out of the shed, topped off the gas, and yanked the cord until I plumb gave out, but it wouldn't start.  I took its spongy-thing-in-the-metal-can off the front and sprayed some starter fluid down its throat.  On the third squirt, it fired off one time, but did not continue to run.  Nanny, who had joined the fray, suggested it might need a new spark plug.  I happened to have one on the bookshelf at my house.  On the trip back to my house, it occurred to me that the little black tiller uses a gas/oil mixture, not the straight gas I'd used.  When I got back to the shop with the spark plug and some oil, I drained the gas into a KFC cup, splashed some oil in it, and poured it back in the tank.  When I finally got all the parts back on the tiller, I yanked the cord once and it fired right off.  Yeah, it sputtered a tad - I guess my gas/oil mixture wasn't quite right - but I rolled him right out to the garden and got to work.

I did one whole 75-ft-long row and was working on the second row when the tines stopped turning.  Motor would run, but the tines wouldn't turn.  I abandoned it in the row and dragged out the big tiller to finish that row and do a few more.

Nanny and I planted Ford Hook butterbeans, 5 hills of yellow squash, and 4 hills of zucchini.  Nanny's church has a food pantry and gives food to the needy once a month.  Other churches do the same.  We designated the squash and zucchini row as the "church" row, and we will give it's produce to the church food pantries.  I told Nanny, "If God's going to make anything out here grow, this row ought to grow." 

I had intended to get some okra and green beans in the ground today, but the rows where the green beans are to go were a little too wet to work, and I plain forgot to buy okra seeds.  Need some cucumber seeds, too.

I came home and searched online for tillers.  Little Black ain't going to make it much longer.  He's 10 years old and has been used like a rented mule.  He is notoriously difficult to crank, especially for the first time each season.  It would probably cost more than he's worth to repair him even if I knew how to repair him, and so I shall be shopping for a replacement in the next few days. 

Does it make me a geek that I'm excited about the prospect of a new tiller?   ;)

Rainy Day Tomatoes

Earlier this week, a fellow told me that he already has green beans beginning to run up their poles.  When I accused him of lying, he swore he was telling the truth. 

It made me feel bad about my own garden.  On that very day, my garden contained only 12 drowning tomato plants and 12 hills of crookneck squash seeds which had not yet sprouted.  I resolved to get busy this week, weather permitting.  For the first time ever, I made a scaled drawing of my garden and laid the rows out on paper.  I bought 12 more tomato plants, some pepper plants, and some herbs.  The soil was too wet to plant them that day.  It was still a tad too damp when I came home from work today, but I planted everything, anyway.  I wanted to get some seeds in the ground, too, but a rain shower came up just as the last two plants were going in the ground, so I high-tailed it.  It rained enough to soak my shirt before I could put away the tools and gather up the debris.

And now that I am inside and dry, the rain has stopped, and I'm considering having another go at getting some of those seeds in the ground.

...annnnnd we're OFF!

Yesterday evening, we (The Husband, Nanny, and I) planted 12 tomato plants and 12 "hills" of squash. 

The 2015 garden is officially under way!

Hallelujah!

I have the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart...!*

Rumor has it that my garden is being tilled as we speak.  I have not yet seen it with my own eyes, but The Nephew called up here a little while ago and said that his buddy, Chris, wanted to borrow our disc, and as a favor to us, he (reportedly) disked our garden with his tractor!  Not only that, but he came back with a pull-behind tiller and is TILLING it. 

Somebody pinch me.

Earlier today, unaware of Chris's offer, I bought 12 tomato plants, feeling downright determined to get SOMETHING in the ground in the next day or two.  It supposed to rain tomorrow, so I may be out there digging holes in the dark.

* If you were raised in the South and went to church, I apologize for the brain worm.

Breaking up is hard to do....

Gardening wouldn't be such a b*tch if I could get people and equipment to obey me, instantly, and without debate. 

Every year, I have trouble getting my spring garden plot ready to accept seeds and plants.  It is most often because I depend on other people to break the soil; they get around to it when THEY are ready, which is understandable (I mean, they *are* doing me favors) but unsatisfactory when I am itching to plant and they aren't.

I thought I might have that problem solved last year when I went to a lecture on soil and learned about "no-till gardening," a method that does not require a deep breaking up of the soil, which, theoretically, should have enabled me to plant whenever I choose.  You've heard me sing that no-till blues song ad nauseum;  I will simply remind you that last year's garden was a colossal failure, for a variety of reasons. 

So, this year, it's back to breakin' and plowin', with the added joy of contending with the hay and the newspaper and the landscape fabric left over from last year's no-till fiasco.  My older son graciously offered to do (and did) the break-plowing for me this past Easter Sunday.  The job required about an hour of work just to get the old green tractor running - something about the battery, which is an easy solve IF you have all the right stuff.  I wanted him to disc the garden, too, but the tractor began to leak water from somewhere just as the breaking was finished, and the disking didn't happen.  I am left with rows of basketball-sized clods separated by deep trenches, over which I have sprinkled 120 pounds of lime that needs to be worked into the soil.

Dang it, I am *ready* to plant, even if the garden is not.  Today was an absolutely beautiful day, and I decided to see what my big black tiller could do with the clods and trenches.  It is supposed to rain this weekend, and I thought I might work up a small patch of soil for some spring greens before the rain turns the clods to bricks.  Big Black fired up right away (check!), but it didn't much like those clods, and I had to man-handle it a good bit to keep it going the way I wanted it to go.  All that wrestling wore out my winter-limp muscles really fast.  Finally, I gave the tiller its head and just followed where IT wanted to till, resulting in a pulverized curlique that meanders all over the garden, not the neat rectangle I'd envisioned.  Sooner than I'd hoped, I gave up, cut the engine, and left the tiller where it sat in the garden, for I had brought other power equipment - a riding lawnmower that had muled a heavy gas can down Nanny's long driveway - that I could put to good use.

I had cut up a snake with the tiller in the garden right off the bat (I don't think he was poisonous, and I might have saved him if the reptilian portion of my own brain had not kicked in before the logical portion of my brain could decide not to run over him), so I know that they are out and about.   And Nanny's grass had gotten really tall.  Nanny thinks any snake is a bad snake, and I hated to think about her walking upon one in the tall grass, so I mowed her yard.  In the process, I got too close to a shrub, hooked a limb under the lawnmower fender, and snapped it right off.  Pow!  It went flying into the neighboring bush.  I plucked it out, laid it on the lawnmower deck between my feet, and moved on.

When the mowing was done, I had to get the tiller back to the shop.  I'd left it leaning sideways, astride a big clog and aimed in the wrong direction.  When I finally got it off the clog and aimed the toward the garden shed, I noticed that one of the wheels wasn't turning.  Evidently, I'd twisted the tire loose from the rim as I was trying to turn the tiller out of the trench.  It limped back to the shed, and I got on the lawnmower, settled the gas can on top of the fender between my feet, and headed home.

There was enough daylight left to mow part of my own yard, and since it's going to rain tomorrow, I decided to go ahead and mow the high-traffic part of the yard.  On the second lap, I hit something serious - a big metal rod - in the grass.  I just knew I'd torn up the lawnmower, but it kept on trucking.  As I was about to finish the back yard, the lawnmower ran out of gas.  I still had the gas can between my feet, so I hopped off the mower and filled up the tank.  The lawnmower only grunted when I got back on and tried the key.  After about 50 grunts, with the battery beginning to sound tired, I got off the mower, shot it the bird, and came in the house, disgusted.  About 2 minutes later, The Husband went out there, twisted the key, and the thing fired right up.

I didn't shoot it the bird again, but I wanted to.

And I still don't have the garden tilled.

But as I was mowing, I could see Uncle B up the road on his tractor, mowing the part of his yard where he plants his garden.  If my guess is correct, he will soon be swapping the mower for a disc, and when he does, I'm going to beg or bribe (or both) him to do mine, too.

#)@(! Dog

The weather here today has been nothing short of perfect.  When I came home from work, I puttered around inside the house for a bit, and then headed outside with my loppers to tame a wild rose bush that I once foolishly planted too close to the walkway.  After trimming the rose bush, I decided to move on around the yard to trim another bush, but when I took one step off the walkway, I realized I was wearing my prized houseshoes, a wonderful felted wool pair that my friend knitted for me.  I didn't want to walk in the yard in them, so I kicked them off on the porch and went inside for a pair of garden clogs. 

Now, Cousin Roger across the road has a white pit bull named Homey.  Homey loves a stick better than anything.  He doesn't fetch, exactly; what he does is grab the stick (or whatever you're holding) from your hand and run with it like a crazy dog.  He zooms by at full speed, back arched, hind feet mostly parallel to the ground, almost close enough - almost! - for you to grab whatever it is he's got in his mouth.  Grabbing it, however, is futile, and possibly dangerous.  Once he's locked his iron jaws on the prize, there's no turning it loose, and when he's at full speed, if you are lucky enough to grab it, he's more likely to pull you down than to lose his grip on his trophy.  When he tires of the game, he lies down with the object until he sees you're approach, and he grabs it and runs again.

Homey is also a thief.  Lay something down, and he's got it and gone, and the only way you're getting it back from him is to trade him something more valuable, like a stick.

Homey came over to visit while I was lopping bushes.  I greeted him, and went on with what I was doing.  He sniffed around a while, and followed his nose on around the house and out of sight.  As the light began to fade, I gathered up my tools to go to the house, when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Homey trotting across the road with one of my houseshoes in his mouth.

I called to him and told him to come back with my shoe, and he stopped and looked at me for a split second, and then he took off like he'd been shot out of a canon.

I dropped my tools and took off after him.  Of course, there was no hope of catching him, but as I hurried across the yard, I grabbed up a good, long stick from the ground and yelled, "Hey, you sh!thead, look here what I've got!," and I waved the stick around for him to see.  By this time, he was across the road in Uncle B's yard, and he stopped and turned to look at me again.  As soon as he saw the stick, he dropped the houseshoe and came running, ninety-aught-nothing, ready to play.  Holding the stick out of his reach, with him leaping and snapping, I managed to get my houseshoe while his mind was on the stick.  I was so mad at him I wouldn't even throw the stick. 

I felt smug about having outsmarted Homey until I got back to my porch and saw that the other shoe was gone, too. 

Muttering words that would shock the parson, I searched (in vain) my yard and Uncle B's yard for the missing shoe, but it soon got too dark to see.  I came inside with my one shoe and texted The Husband:  "Text Roger [I don't have Roger's number] and tell him that Homey has run off with my houseshoe, and if Roger doesn't find it, or finds it in Homey's sh!t, Roger's fixing to learn to knit."

A few minutes later, my telephone rang.  Roger said he'd buy me a new pair of houseshoes.  I told him he couldn't *afford* houseshoes that special, and that if he couldn't find mine, he'd have to learn to knit and make me another one.

He said, "I'll try."

That's all I can ask of him, I reckon.


 

Spring 2015 Pre-Season Countdown

I did a little blogging elsewhere today and thought I might ought to hit this one a lick while I was at it.

In truth, I have very little to report in the gardening department.

You may recall from previous posts that last year's garden was a complete bust.  I spent a lot of time, effort, and money trying out a "no-till gardening" method that was part of the reason for the garden's epic failure (the bizarre weather pattern being another).

Before last year's gardening season was even over, I resolved to do better in 2015.  To that end, last fall, I cleaned off the garden debris and removed the existing support structures  (something I rarely do until the spring), and I attempted to "burn off" the garden spot, which had grown tall grass during my abandonment phase.  The damned thing would not burn.  Oh, the tall grass caught fire and vanished in a quick "poof," but the layers of hay and newspaper in the row - the stuff I really wanted to burn - would not catch fire.

The Husband went to the garden a few weeks ago and attempted to set fire to it again.  Same result.  And since then we've had snow and ice and rain, so all that compacted stuff is now re-soaked and probably won't dry up until July.

We may try one more burning before we turn it all under with the breaking plow come spring.  I suppose that hay and newspaper might eventually be good for my soil, but it's probably going to eat up a bunch of good soil nutrients in the process. 

I should probably be down there, right now, spreading lime and chanting magic spells over the soil.