Green beans - June 30, 2020

When The Boss left the office last Friday, she was going home to pack for her vacation.  The last thing she said to me was, "I don't care what you do next week."  I assumed she meant that I wouldn't have to come to work if I don't want to.  ;)

Seriously, The Husband and I had planned to be on vacation this week, too, but . . . you know . . . coronavirus.  We didn't make any reservations.  It's a good thing, too, because Nanny has three doctor appointments this week in preparation for a heart valve replacement next week, and she needs someone to drive her.  As The Boss was leaving the office Friday, I was reminding her of these appointments, which prompted her comment.

So yesterday when I got out of bed, I decided that I didn't want to go to the office.  I had other things I wanted to do.

First up was some digitizing, a little pod camper.  While I tested the design, I began straightening up my sewing room.  What I was actually doing was looking for a bag of embroidery design tests that I had promised to give to a local quilt guild.  Last winter, I gathered up all of these tests, set aside the few that  I wanted to keep, and offered the rest to my crafty Facebook friends.  Lots of people expressed an interest in having them, but nobody came to get them.  I stuck the bag in a closet, or so I thought.  Yesterday, I dug through every closet, drawer, and tub, and that bag of embroidery tests was  was not to be found.  But I still have the stack of designs I'd held out for myself, and I've added more new design tests to the stack since then.  The reality is that I will probably never do anything with them, so I offered them to the quilt guild.  I'm supposed to drop them off today on my way home from Nanny's doctor appointment.  The shopping bag full of design tests is already in my car.  I hope I can remember to drop them off.

During the sewing room cleaning, I found all sorts of things I'd forgotten.  One of them was a blouse that a co-worker had sent home with me more than a year ago; it needed two buttons.  I paused the cleaning to sew on the buttons.  I also found a bundle of burlap mini-baskets that I'd offered her for use at her son's wedding rehearsal dinner.  The blouse and the baskets are now in a shopping bag in my car, ready to be dropped off tomorrow.

The cleaning also un-earthed a quilt that I started as a wedding present for my nephew two years ago.  The top is finished, and I'd even started quilting it on my rickety old quilting machine.  But while quilting it, I sewed all the way through the pinkie finger on my right hand.  http://sfancy.blogspot.com/2018/08/quilting-is-dangerous-work-81818.html
This was not the first time I'd nipped a finger, but it was the first time I nearly fainted from it.  The quilt sat, abandoned, in the frame for months and months.  Finally, during a sewing room reorganization, I took the quilt off the frame, ripped out the quilting, and stuffed the whole business in a garbage bag, planning to either have someone else quilt it or do it myself on a rented long-arm machine at the local quilt store.  I found this quilt bag yesterday and dropped what I was doing to make an appointment to rent the quilting machine.  The bag is already in my car, ready for Thursday.

As suppertime approached, I stirred up a cabbage casserole to go with some left-over sausages we'd grilled on Sunday.  It was a new recipe I saw online (if you are my FB friend, you can find it on my page).  While the casserole baked, I went to the garden with a pickin' bag, and found squash and enough green beans for dinner!  Since we'd eaten squash a couple of times last week, I gave the squash to the neighbors, but brought the green beans home and sauteed them with mushrooms in garlic butter.  There are enough left-overs for tonight's dinner.

The sewing room is in better shape, but needs more work.  Maybe I'll tackle that after Nanny's appointment.  Or maybe not.  The garden needs a little attention.  I pulled up some grass while I picked the beans, but there's more.  Always more.  I need to check the cucumbers.  And I saw some poop on the tomato leaves, but couldn't determine its origin.  (It tasted more like bird poop than tomato worm poop.) ;)

Night noises - part 2 - June 29, 2020

Last night about 9 o'clock, I heard the pterodactyl again.  It sounded close.  I recorded this call on my cell phone, thinking I'd text it to my sister-in-law to see if she could identify the call.  She is a bird-watcher and has bird-watcher friends and family.  I figured surely one of them would surely know what it is (unless it was not coming from a bird).  I was going to post it here, too, so you could hear it, but the system isn't having it, so you'll just have to imagine your own pterodactyl noise.

The thing kept screeching.  It got to the point that it was almost annoying.  Determined to identify this critter, I went inside to get the spotlight.  The Husband followed me out to the porch.  I pressed the spotlight against the screen and moved the beam around the back yard.  As I was scanning the trees, I wondered what the neighbors across the road (an elderly aunt and uncle) would think if they happened to see the beam moving around.  

We had a similar experience, once upon a time.

I had strung a set of dragonfly lights from a low-hanging tree limb in our side yard.  They were tiny little lights - mini-Christmas tree lights - and there were only 10 of them.  I had grouped them close together, imagining a concentrated hazy glow, rather than stretching the string out to its full length.  

Several weeks (or maybe months) later, on a night when it was pouring down rain, the telephone rang.  We were all in the living room, watching TV.  My younger son answered the phone.

"Yes, ma'am."
"No, ma'am."
"Well, hold on a minute, and I'll go look."

He laid the phone down and said, "Aunt B says there's a UFO in our yard."  He bolted out the back door into the rain, and came back in, wet and laughing.

You guessed it; Aunt B had noticed the lights for the first time.  I guess the rain amplified the glow.

Anyway . . . . 

I kept moving the beam around the yard, and after a minute, I spotted something on a low limb at the edge of the yard.  We couldn't tell if it was an animal or a loop in a giant grapevine that grows out there.  I opened the screen door and went a few feet into the yard.  As I got closer with the spotlight, the thing I was spotlighting moved!  It turned its face away from the beam and started side-stepping across the limb.  We could see its big old claws raising and lowering.

It was an owl!    

Mystery solved.

Garden check-up - June 27, 2020

Yesterday was Nanny's birthday.  We didn't have a party or a family get-together.  Nanny is scheduled for some surgery in a few days and is trying to stay virus-free so that the surgery doesn't get put off.  When we go down to check on her, we visit on the back porch, keeping our distance. 

The Husband decided that we should get her a re-blooming hydrangea for her birthday.  She planted one on the left-hand side of her front porch steps, and mentioned wanting a second one for the right-hand side.  We found one at the greenhouse and The Husband planted it for her.  It was a bit of trouble, for there was a gnarly old boxwood growing on the right-hand side of the steps, and she wanted it gone.  The Husband went to the garden shed and came back with a shovel and an ax.  Digging up the boxwood looked like a lot of work to me, so I went to the garden.  ;)

The day after my sister told me she'd found Japanese beetles on her rose bushes, I found Japanese beetles on mine.  And my hibiscus.  Because those beetles attacked my vegetable garden one year (they seemed fixated on the green beans), I have been monitoring the garden every day.  So far, I haven't seen any in the garden.  Now that I've said that, they'll probably attack with a vengeance. 

The garden continues to do well.  We've picked squash twice this week and will need to pick again in a day or two.  The green beans are about to start producing.  The cucumbers are blooming their heads off and should be producing soon.  The biggest, oldest tomatoes look like they might be thinking about ripening.  I would love some fried green tomatoes, but we never cook any until we've eaten the first ripe one.  A few of the tomato seeds that I planted about a week ago have sprouted. 

I spent about an hour pulling grass and examining the plants for bugs.  When I saw Nanny and Thus Husband chilling on the back porch, I made my way across the garden to join them.  About 10 days ago, when I planted the new tomatoes, I stuck one lonesome zucchini plant in a skip in the okra row, and I looked for it as I was leaving the garden.  It was about 6" tall when I planted it.  I couldn't find it!  The Husband had weeded the okra row last weekend, and I was about to accuse him of chopping down the zucchini when I finally located the zucchini.  It had grown at least a foot, had filled in the gap, and was about the same height as the okra. 

When we came back home, we spent the afternoon practicing our instruments.  The Husband has turned into a pretty good ukulele player.  I am struggling to learn to play the mandolin.  We rarely practice together because our skill levels are so far apart.

However, we must begin practicing together, for we have a specific mission to accomplish; we must learn to play "I'll Fly Away" well enough to play at my boss's funeral. 

No, she hasn't died, isn't even sick.  But she has made a request.

In the 25+ years that I have worked with Martha, we have been through many joys and sorrows.  Our children were in elementary school in 1994 when she hired me.  We've been through graduations, empty nests, weddings, births of grandchildren.  She lost her husband 10 years ago, a blow that about brought her to her knees.  Since then, we've both lost both of our parents.  These things take a toll on a person.  Our office chit-chat can get pretty morbid at times.

A couple of months ago, as we were sitting around, shooting the breeze, we somehow turned to the subject of funeral music.  She said that she did not want a traditional funeral with sad, piped-in music.  I flippantly said, "[The Husband] and I will play "I'll Fly Away" for you."  Her eyes lit up, and she said, "DO IT!"  I started back-pedaling immediately, but she pressed forward with the idea.  I reminded her that, considering the life-spans of her parents (her father lived to 100, her mother to 93), she will probably out-live me.

As badly as I play, she'd better live for a long, long time if she doesn't want to be embarrassed by me at her funeral.  ;)

Garden Report - Green Beans - June 26, 2020

My sister called me yesterday and mentioned in passing that the Japanese beetles are alive and well on her rose bushes.  I remembered that the last time I tried to grow a garden, the beetles attacked my green beans, so The Husband and I took an evening walk to the garden to check for them.

We didn't find any beetles (or any other bug problem), but we did find a few baby green beans! 

My favorite way to fix green beans is to saute' them in garlic butter with mushrooms and onions.  As soon as I can find a double-handful of green beans, I'll fix us some.

I am keeping a watchful eye on the tomatoes, waiting on that first ripe one.  I hope to get it before some animal gets it.  The animal I'm most worried about right now is a turtle.  I haven't seen one in the garden yet, but I suspect they're out there, just waiting.  They will eat the bottoms off of the low-hanging tomatoes.  I go to pick what looks (from above) like a beautiful ripe tomato, but when I reach under it to pick it, it's a wet, sloppy mess on the bottom, with V-shaped bite marks where the turtle has been feasting.  I have been pondering a way to barricade the tomatoes so that the turtle can't get to them, but haven't come up with a good idea yet.  They can climb a little bit, so whatever I do needs to be slippery and fairly tall.

If the turtle gets to the tomato before I do, he will be a soup ingredient, if I can catch him and figure out how to get him out of his shell.

In my yard, the phlox are beginning to bloom.  There are so many that I can actually smell them when I walk out the front door.  There are other plants in the mix - bee balm, day lilies, obedient plant, sedum - but the phlox just elbow them out of the way. 

That stuff you see growing under the seat on the arch is chameleon vine (it my yard, it never turns colors, just stays green). 

NEVER, EVER plant this stuff in your yard unless you want it everywhere.  See that pathway?  That is almost 100% mown-down chameleon vine.  I don't even know how it got started on this side of my house.  I planted it in a front flower bed that is surrounded by concrete, and somehow this stuff still managed to escape.  Last year, I yanked two wheelbarrow loads out of the front bed.  It came right back with a vengeance.  I dug it up and chopped it down all summer long, thinking I'd eventually kill it.  Didn't work.  One day, after we'd made ice cream and were ready to dump the ice, The Husband dumped it in that front bed to see if it would kill the vine, and that DID work.  We don't know if it was the ice or the salt that killed the spot where he dumped it, but it turned brown and shriveled up, and nothing else grew there all summer.  That tactic might have worked, but there are day lilies and rose bushes in the mix, and I don't want to kill them.  So the chameleon is back this year, and I'm going to just leave it alone. 


Changing the subject from gardening, last night on PBS, I happened to catch the first episode of The Musketeers.  It is a short mini-series that showed a few months ago and is being re-run on our local PBS station.  We caught a bits and pieces of the original broadcasts, but we didn't see the first episode, and I never saw enough of any episode to catch on to the story.  A week or two ago, I finished reading The Three Musketeers, and after watching the first episode last night, I give a thumbs up to the series.  While the first episode doesn't precisely follow the story line of the book, the characters' personalities and weaknesses do seem right.  I love the expansive music that accompanies the scenes in which the Musketeers are riding out on a mission.  Reminds me of old western movies, when the hero rides out.

This week, I began reading John Bolton's book.  I'm about halfway through it.  So far, he's being a little nicer than I expected.

First Squash - June 24, 2020

We picked our first "mess" of squash this afternoon!

That's only half of what we picked.  We gave the rest to Nanny.  When she saw them, she exclaimed, "Oh, I'm fixing to heat up a skillet and make some cornbread right now!"

I came home and did the same thing.  Sauteed the squash in olive oil, with an onion and a small pimento pepper, heated a can of white beans, and fried up two thick slices of bologna.  Man, it was a supper fit for a king.

While the supper cooked, we washed the cayenne peppers and made a jar of pepper sauce.  When that jar sealed with a popping noise, it was like music to my ears.

My euphoria over the season's first harvest was dampened a few minutes ago when a friend called to tell me of a death in the community.  The deceased - "Mr. Buddy" - was 95 years old.  He was one of my father's best friends.  They used to sit under the maple tree, chew tobacco, and swap stories for hours.  Otherwise, when they were together, they were out on the Mississippi River in a john boat, running "trot lines"in pursuit of catfish.  A trot line is a long cord from which are suspended multiple hooks.  One "runs" the line by grabbing it with a pole to lift it out of the water, then one pulls oneself along the line, hoping a fish is on one of the hooks.

My most vivid memory of their fishing expeditions happened when I was a teenager.  They came home with a good-sized catfish, but they were both sopping wet.  When we asked why they were both wet, they told this story:

Buddy was in the back end of the boat, and Daddy was up front, "running" the line.  There was a fish on one of the hooks, and as Daddy raised it out of the water, the fish came off the hook, the hook (still attached to the line) buried itself in the palm of Daddy's hand, and yanked him out of the boat.

We said, "Well, that explains why YOU are wet.  Why is Buddy wet?"

This part of the story was scary.

The trot line was taut, and with the hook in his hand, Daddy could not swim to the surface.  He had to yank out the hook, and it took him a minute to surface.  Meanwhile, Buddy panics and jumps in the river to save him.  In waders.  They both finally fought their way to the surface.  The boat was going down the river with the current.  Daddy told Buddy to try to swim to the bank, and he would try to catch the boat.

They both made it.  And came home with a big fish.  At the time, Daddy was probably pushing 60, as was Mr. Buddy.

Funny, I don't recall them going out on the river too much after that.  If it was their last fishing story, it was a good one.

Mask yourself - June 24, 2020

My nephew emailed me last week, wondering if I would make him a good mask, with a pocket for a filter and his company logo embroidered on the side.  I said I would.  I ended up making him four masks.  Hopefully, at least one of them will fit. 

The problem, then, was how to get them to him.  He lives 40 miles away.  Ordinarily, I could have sent them to work with The Husband, and my nephew could have picked them up during his lunch hour, but The Husband is working from home this week, so that idea was a no-go.  Fortunately, my nephew has a really sweet sister who lives less than 10 miles from me, and we devised a plan to hop-scotch the masks from here, to my niece's house, to my sister's house, to the nephew's house.

My niece came by to get them yesterday afternoon.  We sat on the back porch and visited for a long time.  Naturally, since masks were the reason for her visit, we talked about them.  She wears one when she goes out in public.  So do I.  She said that she had read that if everyone would wear a mask in public for two or three weeks, we could pretty much end this pandemic.

But too many of you will not comply.

I see you people whining about wearing masks on social media. 

Buncha self-centered pussies, all of you.  And you're the ones who won't observe the social distancing rules. 

I was in the Dollar General a couple of weekends ago (wearing my mask, of course).  There was only one person working in the store, and multiple customers.  Only I and one other customer were wearing masks.  I tried to stay away from folks, especially the un-masked ones.  When I went to the check-out line, there were several people ahead of me, all of whom were standing on the red Xs six feet apart on the floor.  The line wrapped from the counter all the way down the next aisle.  I planted myself on the first vacant X.  While I waited my turn, an un-masked man walked up behind me.  Big, hairy dude.  He stopped on his X, but as the minutes passed, he got closer and closer to me.  The line was moving slowly, and he kept sighing his frustration.  I imagined I could feel his breath on the backs of my arms.  I could not maneuver away from him without getting too close to the un-masked woman in front of me.  When the line advanced and I got to the corner, I stepped around my basket to put some distance between me and the man.  Of course, he stepped up, too. 

I didn't say anything to him about keeping his distance - as I said, he was a big, hairy dude - and now I regret it. 

Next time, I will.

How's this?  "Sir, if you are not going to stay six feet away from me, could you at least not breathe?"

The Whoop - June 23, 2020

The farmer came to spray the fields and plant the soybeans this weekend.  My heart just sank when I saw the tractor with its big rig.  Since we're more than halfway through June, I was kind of hoping that maybe the farmer had gotten some government subsidy to NOT plant this year, and maybe my vegetable garden would be safe.

I haven't been down to the garden to look.  It has rained every day since he sprayed.  Maybe if my garden did get some drift, the rain washed it off.  Will the damage have already been done?  We'll see.

The other thing I hate about the herbicide is this:  Aunt B across the road, who has battled cancer multiple times in her 80+ years, is convinced that the farmer is giving her cancer with the spraying.  Regardless of whether or not she's correct, Nanny agonizes about it every year.

I have been keeping an eye out for ways to grow something that won't require poisons but would still make enough money to pay the land taxes.  Most of them are so labor-intensive as to be impossible for us right now.

This morning, I saw a Facebook post from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency about the animal habitat program.  I knew that this program existed; I've sat in on court hearings in which farms were in that program.  I also knew that in front of a house on my path to work, every year there grows a big patch of what looks like echinacea, black-eyed Susans, and daisies, and someone told me that this patch of wild flowers is the result of some governmental conservation program.   I've been meaning to find out about this program.

Why couldn't we have that on our farm?

I'm looking into it.

The real reason I started this post was not to tell you about the habitat program; the real reason was to tell you about Cousin Roger's whoop.

You've seen a story or two about Cousin Roger.  My favorite one is about the time he came over here with a can of beer in his hand, complaining about having heartburn, and I gave him a big glass of kefir to cure it.  He didn't want to drink it, but I called him a sissy and shamed him into it, and he knocked back the whole glass and chased it with a swig of beer.  He shat his pants on the way back across the road.  Now, that's funny, I don't care who you are.  ;)

Cousin Roger, like his older brother, does a whoop when he sees you.  He does it as a long-distance greeting, as well as to announce his presence.  I heard him let go with one just before I started this post.  He was over in his mother's yard.  His 90-year-old father was on the riding mower.

This whoop has always mystified me, to some extent.   I mean, who does this?  Is it a family thing?  A local thing?  Perhaps a relic of days gone by?

Both my family and my husband's family were early settlers in this county, and neither of us knows anyone else who does this.

But today I got to thinking . . . .

Cousin Roger's grandmother, or maybe his great-grandmother, was reportedly a "full-blood Cherokee Indian."   (They're not claiming she was a "Cherokee princess.")  ;)  I have been reading about the early settling of west Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi - first-hand accounts, when I can find them - and these books quite often mention the Native American whoop.  It seems to have been the pre-electronic-age equivalent of a walkie-talkie.   If Cousin Roger's purported genealogical background is true, it seems logical that this whoop could be something passed down through his family for generations.

Which would be kind of cool, if you ask me.

Twenty-four dollars - June 22, 2020

Twenty-four dollars.  That's all it took to fix my problem.

That's how much a wi-fi repeater cost me.

I could have avoided all that agony for $24.

As you may have guessed by all the "From the back porch" headers, I do most of my blogging and digitizing work at a table on my back porch.  I love working out here; only the coldest of days run me in the house (when it's hot, I just turn on a fan and truck on).  Out here, I get to see animals and hear birds, and see my flowers bloom, and keep an ear on the neighborhood comings and goings. 

But I need the internet for much of what I do, and out here the wi-fi signal is sporadic.  It's not horrible when I'm home alone, but when The Husband gets home and fires up his tablet and watches videos, I'm out here on the porch "sucking hind tit," as my friend says.  Since he has been working from home a good bit, he has been needing the internet in the day time, and if I get on, it sometimes knocks him off, so I try to do things that don't require internet.

Anyway . . . .

I've been thinking about getting a signal booster of some sort.  Problem is, I don't know anything about that stuff.  Also, I have old computers, and rinky-dink internet service.  I did a little reading about extending the wi-fi signal, but the thing I wanted was kind of expensive, and I wasn't even sure it would work with my equipment.

So I finally broke down and just ordered a cheap ($24, you might be guessing) wi-fi repeater.  Reviews said it was easy to install. 

It came in the mail today.  I opened it up while the supper simmered, and pulled out the instructions.  They were evidently written by someone from a different planet.  I stuffed them back in the box, tossed the box on the couch, and went back to my spaghetti sauce.  When The Husband came through the living room and saw it, he picked it up, and just as I had hoped, took it back to the office.  Thirty minutes later, I turned off all the burners and went back to the office and asked, "You get it figured out, yet?"

He said, "No!  These instructions are horrible!"

So it wasn't just me.

I picked up the instructions and read them again, and it seemed to be telling us to do things that made no sense.  Finally, I found a YouTube video that explained it, and followed along, doing everything just like he did it.  Then we got to a step where my computer would not do what his computer was doing.   I was about to get ill when The Husband picked up his tablet and was able to log on to the new extender thing and used it to surf.

Hallelujah!

I ran out to the porch and woke up my rickety old laptop, and IT COULD SEE THE WI-FI GADGET!  Not only that, but it jumped right online when I told it to, no lolly-gagging. 

I ran inside and told The Husband, "Pull up one of your ukulele videos so I can see how my laptop acts when we're both online!"  And he did, and the laptop didn't even notice.

I am back in business!  :)

Killer Horseflies - June 19, 2020

Last Friday night after supper, we walked down to Nanny's to take her a plate of enchilada casserole.  While The Husband took the plate in, I went out to check on the garden.  The tomatoes that I'd planted Wednesday were laying down, limp, on the ground.  I panicked and started stringing the water hoses together.  Nanny found a sprinkler that has been stored on her back porch since the last time I raised a garden.  The Husband came out and hooked it up, and we were in business.

While the sprinkler ran, The Husband and I chopped a little grass in the areas where the sprinkler wasn't reaching.

Then the horseflies found us.

At first, it seemed they were just doing a little aerial reconnaissance, but then they got serious and started zooming in close.  The Husband and I looked like we were doing jujitsu, trying to swat them away.  One even chased The Husband across the yard.  The thing about horseflies is that when they get through doing their reconnaissance and come in for the bite, they go into stealth mode.and sneak up on you.  Those bites will drive you mad with itching.

I went back to the garden on Saturday.  All but 3 of the tomatoes had straightened up and were looking better.  Three were stuck to the mud and were struggling.  I peeled them off the ground, loosened up the soil around them, and watered them with a bucket.  It rained yesterday, and is raining again this minute, so the tomatoes may now be drowning.

Night noises - June 19, 2020

I promised The Husband the evening off from gardening yesterday.  When I came home from work, I peeked at the garden to see if the prior day's fertilization had worked any miracles.  Not yet - nothing had doubled in size overnight - though the squash plant that I'd tipped over with the water hose had righted itself during the day.  There was a little grass coming up in one of the first rows we weeded last week, but I had a headache and did not want to fool with it.  I wanted to take a nap, instead.

I never nap.  A catnap just makes me grouchy, and a longer nap ruins my night.  But yesterday, a nap seemed like a good remedy for the headache.  I came home, puttered around for a few minutes, then stretched out on the couch with a blanket and The Three Musketeers.  I'd no sooner laid down and gotten comfy than the telephone rang.  It rang twice more - robo-calls - in the next hour.  It made me mad; my nap-time was dwindling away!  Finally, I dozed off, and woke up 30 minutes before The Husband was due home from work.

Earlier in the week, I'd picked up a bag of frozen Chinese chicken nuggets with orange sauce.  I popped them in the oven, cooked some rice, and called it dinner.  We had a lot of rice left over, so I stirred up a rice pudding and went out to the back porch to play Solitaire on my laptop while the pudding baked.

By the time the pudding finished baking, it was pitch dark outside.  I went back out to the porch to resume my Solitaire game.  After a few minutes, I heard a strange noise, an animal noise, coming from somewhere close by.  I sat up straight and listened, and heard it again, so I went inside to get the big flashlight.  On the way through the living room, I said to The Husband, "I just heard a reeeeeally strange noise out there."

When I came back with the flashlight, he was on his feet, interested.  He asked, "What did it sound like?"

I thought about it a minute, and said, "A pterodactyl."

He gave me The Look; this time, it said, "I'm pretty sure it's not a pterodactyl."

I said, "Well, you ASKED what it sounds like."

He followed me outside.  I shined the light through the screen, and moved the beam around the yard.  We couldn't see anything, but we heard the noise again.

I handed him the flashlight and said, "Go out there and see what it is."

He evidenced a bit of reluctance, but he took the light and walked out in the yard, and shined it all around, up in the trees and on the ground.  Didn't see anything.

We think it was a hawk.

Sorry I made you read all that.  :-)

Tomato Seeds and Fertilizing - June 18, 2020

After yesterday's post, I went back to work in the garden.  We've been working hard at weed control for the past couple of weeks.  I've been trying to pull the weeds up rather than just chopping them down.  Between the rows, there were piles of pulled-up grass.  I've been deliberately leaving those piles in place to see if they would form a mat to keep new grass from sprouting under them.

My mother had a friend, Evelyn, who grew awesome vegetable gardens.  I used to quiz her for garden tips.  Once I asked her how she managed to keep her garden so clean.  Of course, her answer was that she worked hard at it.  She said that her son would run the tiller between the rows until the middles got to narrow (as the plants grew), then they'd use a hoe.  I asked her if they just cut the weeds down or if they dug them up by the roots.  She said they dug them up.  I can still hear her saying, "...turn them roots up to the sun . . . ."

So that's what I've been doing, turning them up to the sun. 

It doesn't take long for the sun to dry them.  As the days have gone by, I've just added new grass to the original piles.  Of course, some of the stuff under the bottom wasn't entirely dead when I tossed new grass on top, and some of it managed to take hold and keep going.  But for the most part, leaving the pulled-up grass in the middles really did act like a kind of mulch.  I could see a difference in how much grass had sprouted BETWEEN those piles versus how much grass was UNDER them. 

However, yesterday's to-do list included fertilizing, and I planned to do it with liquid fertilizer and a sprayer.  I knew that if I left those grass piles in the garden, the not-dead-yet grass would revive and create monstrous clumps, so I raked all of the clumps out of the middles before I sprayed the fertilizer. 

For the first time ever, I hated to throw away dead grass.  We normally toss it over the hill into the field.  Yesterday, I piled it up beside the shed.  It needs to be spread out in the sun so it can finish drying.  I'm going to do that this afternoon, and when all of the grass is good and dry, I'm going to use it for mulch.

I remembered to plant the tomato seeds, but I did something dumb: I planted them too close to the cucumbers.  Those runners will have no problem reaching the spot where the seeds are.  If they don't shade the seedlings, they'll try to climb them.  It'll be interesting to see which of them - the tomatoes or the cucumbers - wins the fight.

Tomatoes Round 2 - June 17, 2020

I knew when I bought just 12 tomato plants that it wouldn't be enough.  They came from a local greenhouse, where the plants are usually their healthiest.  I was late buying plants, and they were all scrawny, like little bonsai tomato plants.  I got the two 6-packs that looked the best.  A dog broke one of the 12 the day I planted them, so I was down to 11.

They are doing okay.  I bought two different varieties, and one of them is out-performing the other like crazy. One is bushy and has scalloped fruit.  I think it's some "____ Boy" variety.  The other is
leggy with round fruit.  Maybe Celebrity.  I can already tell that these 11 plants aren't going to make enough for us to eat - I'm feeding more than one household - much less enough for me to can tomatoes.

So I went out in search of about a dozen more plants this morning.  It's slim pickin's out there, folks.  Slim pickin's.  The local greenhouse had ZERO tomato plants - none of any description.  I moved on down the road to Home Depot.  They still had tomatoes in big pots, but no 6-packs.  I wasn't about to pay $4.00 apiece for a dozen tomato plants.  I did buy a $4.00 cherry tomato plant, and a couple of pepper plants, and a zucchini, but I went on down the road in search of a 6-pack with 6 live plants in it.

I hit paydirt at a farm store in the next town up the highway.  They had some NICE Arkansas Travelers.  I got 18.  I set them in the shade in Nanny's yard, planning to go back to the garden later in the day, then came home and texted The Husband:  "You're going to be so happy when you see these 18 fine tomato plants I found today."  He texted back a happy dance gif.  He so loves gardening.  *snicker*

Since there are gardening plans in our evening, I figured it would be nice to have something quick and easy when we finish.  Been craving a BLT and had stopped at the store for the necessary ingredients.  I washed the lettuce and tomatoes and fried the bacon.  All we have to do when we come out of the garden is slap the sandwiches together.

Boy, I wish the tomato I bought at the store was a home-grown tomato.  I just finished eating my first tomato sandwich of the year, with one of the store-bought tomatoes.  It was mealy and tasteless and not worth the mayonnaise on the bread.  We're at least a week away from a ripe tomato, if a turtle doesn't get to it before we do.

After prepping the supper, I went back to the garden and planted the 18 tomatoes and the rest of the plants.  Six of them went in the skips in the beans and the okra.  The other 12 are in the sunniest part of the row where the peas didn't come up.  I plowed up the row yesterday, so the digging wasn't hard.  The Husband is going to be so happy again, until he finds out that I also bought a fence post driver (those new 18 tomatoes will have to be staked).

I also bought a package of tomato seeds today.  There's some room at the end of the new tomato row.  I'll plant them this evening, if I can remember.  Let's see how long it takes to get sliced tomatoes from seeds.

Maintenance - June 15, 2020

I went straight to the garden after work today.  Didn't even stop by the house to pee.  I intended to just look at things and see what needed to be done tomorrow.  But when I checked on the purple hull peas, I saw ants parading up and down the stems.  You know what that means:  aphids.  They secrete something that is reportedly like crack to ants.  So I loaded up the sprayer and doused the peas, and gave the tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers a shot for good measure. 

After that, I pulled grass out of the green bean rows.  I have given up on trying to chop the grass out with a hoe.  The bean plants are a hoe width apart, but they lean over so that the root is here (.) and the bushy part is here ( --------------->), and I end up chopping down about every 10th bean plant.  Pulling the grass works better. 

I can't squat to pull the grass; my knees don't want to do it, and if I do manage to get in a squatting position, I need a crane to lift me up.  Twenty years ago, I ruptured a disc - one that's right in the middle of my back - and the neurosurgeons wouldn't work on it.  Oddly, from the minute the disc ruptured, I have been able to bend from the waist without much pain, and so that's how I pull the grass - bent double like a hairpin, moving move sideways, backwards, and forwards without raising up.  This evening, I spent about two hours in this position, and when I DID finally stand up straight, I felt drunker than Cooter Brown for a minute.  And my back went, "WTF?"

By this time, The Husband had walked down to the garden and was chopping grass from the middles.  I said, "Let's give it up."  We put away the sprayer and the hoe and came home.  I went straight to the shower.  The sports bra I was wearing was so wet I didn't even want to pull it over my head, so I just wore it into the shower, soaped it up, rinsed it, and then peeled it off.  Same deal with my shoes.  They are upside-down in my bathroom sink, draining as we speak.  (Don't panic; they are washable.)

The Husband, bless his heart, had done a drive-by at Popeye's on his way home from work, so we didn't even have to cook tonight. 

If I can get up out of this chair and make it to the bed, I'm going to read a page or two of my book.  I'm reading The Three Musketeers.  It came as part of a "50 books everyone should read before they die" collection.  Books like Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, probably For Whom the Bell Tolls.  I know there's a Sinclair Lewis in there - The Jungle? - and probably Tolstoy.  I started with Musketeers partly because there currently happens to be a Musketeers series showing on PBS.  I know I must have read this book growing up, mostly likely in grammar school, but it was probably an abridged version, or an "age-appropriate" version.  I'm enjoying these characters more as a grown-up.  As part of an armchair puzzle quest I did a few years ago, I studied the time period in which the story is set, and am familiar with the real-life characters of Richelieu and Louis. 

That d'Artagnen is the MAN, ain't he?  ;)  I'm halfway through the book, and he has not yet failed to out-wit or best every challenger. 

Poisoning the earth - June 3, 2020

For today, I feel a little better about the garden situation.

Yesterday, I dropped off the tiller tire to be fixed, and picked it up this morning.  They put a tube inside the tire, so maybe it won't go flat so much anymore.  The Husband put it back on the tiller this evening after supper, and I took a spin down one row and up another.  It worked just fine.

The farm supply store is right next to the tire repair store, and before I picked up the tire, I went in the farm supply store and bought POISON.  Yes, poison.  Hated to do it, but experience has taught me that I simply cannot grow vegetables without fungicide and insecticide unless I want to sit in the garden 24/7 with a bucket of soapy water.  I do try to find the least viscious products out there, things that don't linger for weeks.  In addition to the garden poison, I bought ant poison.  After 35 years of living in this house, we suddenly have an ant problem.  Big old black things that seem to have a sweet tooth.  I don't mind poisoning their asses.

At the farm store, I also bought myself a bodacious sprayer.  Blue metal thing, with a beefy hose and a metal sprayer attachment.   No more of the cheap plastic stuff.  I'm tired of non-working equipment!
While The Husband put the tire on the tiller, I sprayed the tomatoes - just dosed up that new sprayer with a combination of fungicide and insecticide and went after the tomatoes.   The garden plot harbors every kind of blight known to man, and keeping it at bay is a constant battle.  And, of course, we have squash bugs and tomato worms, and last year we saw Japanese beetles for the first time.  We put cages around the tomato plants tonight, and removed any leaves that were touching the ground, then I gave them a good soaking with the sprayer.  The fungicide directions said to re-spray every two weeks.   Remind me if I forget.  ;)

Overall, the garden is looking pretty good.   The peas still need to be re-planted.  Hopefully, I can do that tomorrow.  Cucumbers and squash are looking good.  The okra is still kind of puny, but I thinned it and have faith that it'll beef up once the weather warms up.  I need more tomato plants - only planted 12, and something broke one.  I'd like to have enough tomatoes to can, and 11 plants probably won't make enough.  But there's not much room left in the garden.  I may have to get inventive and plant tomatoes in the skips in the bean rows.

As I sit here on the back porch writing this (9 p.m.), I hear a critter lumbering around outside the porch.  It's probably that nasty, scruffy raccoon that fought the cat for its food, the one that knows no fear.  Or it could be the mama coon we saw last weekend, coming down a tree with two babies waddling behind her. 

Let me get the flashlight and the bb gun.

More gardening - June 1, 2020

Damn it!

I have the hardest time accomplishing anything I set out to do.  :(

I went straight to the garden this afternoon after work with a mental list of things I needed to do:  (1) re-plant the pea rows that did not sprout for some mysterious reason; (2) re-plant the cucumbers that didn't come up; and (3) fertilize all the plants.

The soil in the pea rows was crusted over, hard as a brick.  I pulled the tiller out of the shed, cranked it, and started toward the garden with it when I realized the right tire was flat.  No problem; there's an air compressor in the big shop.  As I wrestled the tiller around to the front of the shop, the tire kept  trying to come off the rim.  Finally got it there with the tire still on the rim.  I turned the compressor on to let it build pressure while I hooked up the hose.  The business end of the hose did not have a fitting for tires on it.  I found all sorts of fittings, but none that would fit the tire nozzle.  The Husband was due home any minute, so I decided to wait and ask him to air up the tire.  Meanwhile, I would start fertilizing the plants.

I had one of those Miracle Gro sprayers in the garden shed, and found a bag of powder to go in it.  Now I just needed to hook it up to enough water hoses to reach the garden.  Nanny had a pile of water hoses.  One looked brand new, but two others had seen better days.  I twisted them together - it's about 150 feet from the water faucet to the garden - and had more than enough hose to reach the garden.  When I turned on the water, a geyser erupted from the center water hose, stealing so much water pressure that my sprayer wouldn't work.  I thought I'd still have enough hose if I took out the center hose and reconnected the first and last hoses, but I could not get the center hose unscrewed from the last hose.

I dropped everything and went to the Dollar General and bought three new 75-foot hoses (two for the garden, and one to replace the hose that The Husband busted two weeks ago when he forgot to turn off the water).  Attached the two new hoses, attached the Miracle Gro sprayer, and turned on the water.  Guess what?  The sprayer didn't want to work properly.  The water more or less poured out of it instead of spraying.  *sigh*  I think I managed to pour enough fertilizer water on all the plants to do them some good.  Hopefully.

Meanwhile, The Husband came down to the shop with a proper fitting for the air tank.  He worked and worked, but could not get the tire to seal to the rim.  While he worked, I gathered up all of the dead water hoses and stuffed them in Nanny's garbage can.  She said, "The garbage man is going to hate me."  I said, "I do not care."

I attempted to roll the new hoses onto a hose cart I'd bought for the garden a couple of years ago.  Unfortunately, someone had previously CUT an old hose off the cart, leaving part of the fitting from the old hose on the nozzle where you screw the hose onto the cart so it can get water.  I could not get that old fitting off, even with channel-lock pliers and WD-40.  I finally managed to get the new hoses rolled onto the cart, but they can't be connected to the water supply on the cart until I can get that fitting off - which probably will never happen - I'll have to get a new cart.

We finally tossed the tiller tire into the back of my car.  I will take it to the service station tomorrow to have it properly aired up.