Gloria the Second - September 28, 2017

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered 10 pots of yellow chrysanthemums from the local FFA boys.  They should arrive some time this week.

I knew when I ordered them where I was going to plant them - five in each flower bed on the sides of the porch.  Those flower beds were a mess, full of iris and daylilies and monkey grass that are long over-due for dividing.  The plan was to dig all that stuff up, divide it all, and re-plant it where it made better sense, leaving room for the incoming mums. 

I had the day off yesterday, and it was warm and sunny.  By 9 a.m., I was outside, digging up the plants with a shovel.  When I finished digging everything up, I went down to the garden shed to get Gloria, the little red tiller, who needed a little work.  Her cord was hanging halfway out and wouldn't go back in.  I had ordered a new crank mechanism, and we'd have to put that on before I could till up the soil.  As my luck would have it, the part didn't fit.  Plan B was to start Gloria with a drill (she has a belly button that receives a chuck thing).

Plan B didn't work, either.  I drilled and drilled, but the thing wouldn't start.  The Husband said to check the oil.  I did.  It looked low.  Back to the garden shed for a quart of oil.  The Husband said the manual said to fill it up, so I did.  When I tried to crank it with the drill again, Gloria belched, and a stream of oil shot out of the air filter.  Simultaneously, The Husband and I said, "Oooo, that didn't sound good."

I went to the store and bought Gloria the Second.  While waiting for the cashier to ring up the sale, another cashier checked the records.  Gloria the First had a two-year warranty.  I had bought her in April 2015, so she was five months past her warranty.  My luck holds out again, eh?

I may re-name her, just so she won't quit as soon as her warranty expires.

Anyway, the beds are both re-planted and awaiting the arrival of the mums.

From the back porch - September 18, 2017

My favorite component in this year's view from the back porch is the Elephant Ears.  My sister gave them to me last spring, two bulbs - one large, one small - that I stashed in the "trunk" of my Wrangler.  I open that trunk about twice a year; there's normally nothing in it but a 10-disc CD changer and a ratchet strap, neither of which I need on a regular basis.  So it was that those bulbs rode around, forgotten, in my trunk until the fall, when I discovered mouse poop in the front passenger seat and had to tear the Jeep apart to dispatch the offender and its leavings.  It was when I went to set a baited trap in the trunk that I found the bulbs, and I thought, "Oh, sh*t, I bet they're dead," but decided to plant them, anyway, in case there was still a living cell or two in them.  I brought them around to the back of the house and laid them near the spot where I intended to plant them.  And that's as far as I got.  They laid there all winter on top of the ground and STILL haven't been planted. Aren't they magnificent?

I cleaned out the two of the three raised beds on the left this weekend and planted lettuce seeds in the first one, which still holds the stump of the kale tree.  It looks pretty dead, but who knows?  It might sprout again.  The middle bed had zinnias in it.  They were leggy and unsightly, so I yanked them out.  All that remains is the freebie cabbage that a garden center gave me late this spring.  It currently has four leaves on it.  We'll see if it has any plans.  Beyond the middle bed is the Blue Apron bed. It contains the root ends of the scallions that go into the dinners, as well as several heads of garlic. (Blue Apron folks, if you're reading this, one head of garlic per shipment would suffice).  They grow! Some of the onions are as big as grocery store onions.  I probably should take those up before winter, eh?

Waaaay over to the left, the black thing is my compost tumbler.  I am making a serious effort at making compost to go in the vegetable garden, which is in bad need of additional dirt and apparently is starved of nutrients.  All of our food waste goes into the tumbler, but I had very little "brown" matter to add to it until I decided to shred the Blue Apron boxes and add them to the compost.  It seems to be working.  I hope it's ecologically OK to use the cardboard - things I've read say it's fine, though it apparently doesn't contain a lot of nutrients.  It sure gives bulk to the compost, and solves the problem of what to do with all that cardboard!

It's starting to rain now.  Maybe my lettuce seeds will sprout!

From the back porch - 9/6/17

Supper ingredients are prepped, and after we've eaten and cleaned up the dishes, I intend to have a one-woman Zelda-thon until nearly bedtime, if I wanna.  But I have a little time between now and when The Husband gets home.

It is an absolutely gorgeous evening here.  Temp is about 76 degrees.  It's sunny and still.  Birds chirping.  Crickets and frogs and various unknown things humming.  If  I didn't know that the northwest section of this country is on fire, and the southeast section is (or is about to be) under water, and some crazy guy on the other side of the world is playing with big guns, I might spend this pleasant evening less anxiously.

I might also be less anxious if The Husband had not killed a baby snake on the sidewalk yesterday evening.  Finding a baby snake is WAY WORSE than finding an adult snake.  He thought this one might've been a copperhead.  I'm hoping it wasn't.  I'm hoping it didn't have 10 or 12 siblings living under my porch.  They can't crawl up through cracks in the floor (we had the underside screened to keep mosquitoes out), but I bet they can get it around the screen doors.  If I find one on the porch, I'll be trapped in the house for the rest of my life.

The Husband sprinkled Snake Stopper all around the house.  It looks like it snowed here, and smells like Red Hots.