Ready to Plant - July 31, 2020

If Casper the Color-Changing Frog sang his love song last night, I missed it.  I was too tired to listen.

I went to the garden at 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon and didn't quit until almost 8:30.  The Husband joined me around 6:30.  By that time, I had pulled up all the green beans and the grass and had piled them in three big heaps.  The Husband got a pitchfork and hauled them away.  When he finished, I sent him to pull up the yellowing cucumber vines while I dragged the tiller out of the shed, gassed it up, and began plowing the space where the purple hull peas and green beans had been.

At the far end of the garden, the grass was still tall.  I don't know what kind of grass this is, but it is vigorous.  It grows 2 feet tall and makes a wispy seed head.  The stems are a purple-ish-red near the root.  It pulls up fairly easily if the soil is soft.  I have pulled up truck-loads of it this summer in an effort to keep it from going to seed.  I did not want to run the tiller through that grass - it would have wrapped around the tiller tines - so I mowed it down with the lawnmower.  While I put the mower away, The Husband took hold of the tiller and began tilling that end of the garden.  I took hold of a rake and smoothed out the soil where I had tilled.

The squash is out of control.  I don't know why it continues to bloom and produce squash this time of the year.  By now, it has usually collapsed from heat and squash bugs, but it is still going strong.  It needs picking almost every day.  I picked a pretty good pile of it yesterday.  We gave some to Nanny and Aunt B, and I brought some home to make a squash casserole.  

We're still getting cucumbers, too.  The Husband left a few of the cucumber vines so that we'll have a few to soak in vinegar for salads.  

The okra needed cutting again, but I ran out of energy and decided to save that job for today.  It rained last night, so I may have to wear my mud boots to cut it.

The poor tomatoes . . . blight has set in with a vengeance.  It may be too late to rescue the plants.  They are still loaded with tomatoes, but many of them are watery on the bottom - too much rain, I guess.

I'm still waiting for the butterbean seeds to arrive in the mail.  

I have not yet delivered the brussells sprouts seeds to Uncle Jack, who agreed to sprout them for me in his greenhouse.

The sweet pea seeds are still on my kitchen table.  If the ground is not too wet, I will try to plant them this weekend.

  

Singing Frogs - July 30, 2020

I am tired today.  It's Casper's fault, mostly.

Last night about midnight, I woke up when The Husband got out of bed for a potty break.  As I lay there trying to go back to sleep, I heard what I initially thought was a cricket chirping.  Dang, it was loud!  I thought it must be right outside the bedroom window.  After a few minutes, I decided that I might as well make a bathroom run, myself, since I was awake.

When I passed by the bedroom door, the chirping got much louder, and I began to wonder if the cricket was INSIDE THE HOUSE.  The bedroom door opens into my office.  When I came back from the bathroom, I stepped into the office, and the chirping immediately stopped.  I stood there for a minute, listening.  Complete silence.  I went to the kitchen for some water, and as I made my way back to the bedroom, I heard the chirping start up again.  It stopped when I went back through the office.

I went back to bed, and as I lay there trying to go back to sleep, the chirping started again.  It was all I could think about.  After a few more minutes, I got up and went to the office to investigate.  I turned on the light and looked for the culprit.  The office is wall-to-wall with bookshelves and furniture; the damned thing could've been hiding anywhere.  Finally, I got my book from the nightstand and went to another bedroom to read until I fell asleep.  I closed all the doors between me and the noise, but once I settled in bed with my book, the singing started again.  I finally decided that it wasn't a cricket, it was Casper, the color-changing tree frog that hangs out around our front porch, perched somewhere near the office window.  

I was reminded of an old cartoon, probably from a Saturday morning Bugs Bunny show.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkjsN-J27aU

A guy had a singing frog in a box.  When he opened the box while he was alone, the frog would sing opera tunes, or popular songs. (The song I remember best went, "Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal.  Send me a kiss by wire.  Baby my heart's on fire!")  But when the man tried to show his singing frog to someone else, he'd open the box, but the frog would just go, "Ribbit!"  

Canning tomatoes, part deux - July 29, 2020

I canned 9 pints of tomatoes after work today.  Instead of chopping the tomatoes into soup-sized chunks like I usually do, I whizzed these in the Ninja - three short pulses.  They are just the right size for salsa. 

About the time the canner finished, a rain shower popped up.  I'd planned to go to the garden and tackle the green bean rows, but when I saw that it was raining, I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the couch with a book about Loretta Lynn's friendship with Patsy Cline.  I finished it tonight, and enjoyed it.  It was a welcome break from all the history and biographies I been reading.  During the day, my sister texted me another book recommendation - Until The End Of Time by Brian Greene.  She called it "good but challenging . . . he thinks about everything through the lens of math . . . ."  It may take me a while to get through it.  I'm convinced there is a "useless information sponge" in my brain where math should reside.

Getting Ready for Round 2 - July 29, 2020

For the past couple of weeks, every time I've picked the purple hull peas and delivered them to Nanny to shell, I've said, "There's probably one more picking, and then they'll be gone."  She'd begun to doubt my word, and rightly so.  The blasted things just keep GOING.  

But today really was the last picking, because I pulled up all of the vines.  In the process, I found more peas, many of which were dry.  (I'm saving those for seeds for next year, just in case.)  This time I said to Nanny, "There's probably about a cereal bowl full of peas in this bucket, once they're shelled.  Do you want to fool with them?"  She said she did not, so I brought them home and shelled them, and had nearly a quart bag full.

It took nearly three hours to pull up the vines (and a good bit of grass) and haul the debris out of the garden.  I have never seen such long runners on purple hull peas.  They were all tangled up with the squash, and twining around the tomato cages and making love knots with the cucumbers - ten or twelve feet long, some of them.  Is that normal?  

I picked a grocery bag full of squash and another bag full of tomatoes.  Cut half a bag of okra (not counting what had gotten too tough).  Picked a shirt-tail full of pimiento and cayenne peppers.  I am sending all of it (except the tomatoes) to work with The Husband tomorrow.  Might even send that bag of shelled peas.

Tomorrow, I'm going to leave work early and come home to can these tomatoes.  After that, if it doesn't rain, I'm going to go back to the garden to snatch up the green beans.  If daylight and dry weather hold out long enough, I'll till up the empty rows and get them ready to plant the next crops.  Butterbean seeds are on their way in the mail, and there are packets of sweet peas waiting on the kitchen table.  

I wish my energy had held out long enough to till up two rows this evening.  Today was supposed to be (according to some folks) a fabulous day to plant above-ground crops.  It would've been fun to plant one row of peas today and another tomorrow, to see if the peas would acknowledge a preference.

Meteor Shower - July 28, 2020

 

There's supposed to be a "fireball" meteor shower tonight, with the peak happening in the middle of the night.  When I saw the news article about it, I was reminded of the time my sister and I decided to go to the Ozark mountains to watch a meteor shower.  

Our preferred destination was Mountain View, Arkansas, a little town I love to visit.  I spent some time looking for a house (one that wasn't surrounded by trees) on top of a mountain, where we'd have an unobstructed view of the sky.  Finally found a good one, and sent the link to my sister.  She called later in the day to tell me that she'd called the owners of the property and discovered that they would not allow her to bring her little dog.  I said, "Fine.  YOU find us a place, then."  Later, she called and said that she'd found a pet-friendly place along the White River.  Now, I'm not always the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I knew that most rivers are in valleys, where we might not have the most unobstructed view of the sky.  As it turned out, it didn't make much difference where we were, mountain-top or valley, for that evening the sky clouded up and it began to rain.  Oh, well . . . we enjoyed our little trip, anyway.

I did not set foot in the garden yesterday, though I'd planned to finish pulling up the pea vines and get the ground ready for butter beans and sweet peas.  When I suggested to The Husband that we ought to go work, he gave me The Look.  Too hot, he said.  I didn't need much convincing.  However, this morning on a "Planting by the Signs" page on Facebook, I saw that yesterday and today are supposed to be two excellent days for planting above-ground crops.  In the limited time I have to garden, it would be next to impossible to clean up the pea rows and get new seeds in the ground today, even if I had butterbean seeds on hand.

Yesterday, I shopped for butterbean seeds, but couldn't find any.  My local seed source said that they may have some in a couple of weeks.  I do have a jar of dried butterbeans for cooking, and I have planted grocery-store beans in the past.  The thing is you're not really sure what you'll get when you do that.  The beans might be old, or they might have been treated with something to keep them from sprouting.  One source I read said to put a few seeds in a wet paper towel, seal them up in a plastic bag, and see how many seeds will sprout.  If half of them sprout, plant twice as many as you'll need.  I did the paper towel thing last night.  Of course, it may take a week or so to determine if the beans will sprout, and by that time the purportedly good planting days will have passed.  

But I would like to at least get the pea vines and grass out of the rows this evening.  It's supposed to rain tomorrow.

About that acrylic sheet - July 26, 2020

I wanted to get the acrylic sheet installed on the porch this morning so I could be done with it and move on to the next thing (whatever that was).

The sheet needed about 4" cut off one end.  We have this nifty table that folds flat but opens out to a small workbench.  I dragged it out and set it up in the yard, rounded up some clamps, and clamped the acrylic sheet to the table to hold it while I cut it.

I'd watched some videos - different techniques and tools.  The acrylic could be scored on both sides with a utility knife and snapped off.  Tried it.  Didn't work.  It could also be cut with a jig saw..  Tried it.  Splintered the shit out of the acrylic.  How about a table saw?  I set one up on the workbench.  It splintered the sheet even worse, and a dinner-plate-sized chunk fell out.

We (for by this time, The Husband had come out to help) managed to splinter off enough length to enable the screen door to open, and said EFF IT and screwed the damned thing to the porch, jagged edge and all.  I duct-taped the chunk back in (which kind of ruins the whole point of the CLEAR acrylic that was not supposed to show).

It will keep the rain out (until the tape gives and the chunk falls out), but I'm afraid it will slice up the grandchildren.  There's a glass company in town that can probably sell me the exact size I need, all neatly edged.  I should have gone that route in the first place.  I will be calling them this week.

By the time we finished, I was dripping wet with sweat and thoroughly pissed off.  Everything else fell off my to-do list, and I sat down on the back porch and practiced my mandolin for a while.

Nanny called us down for an early supper.  She served up some of the purple hull peas that I picked yesterday.  After we ate, I pulled up a few weeds in the garden and made a mental list of things I need to do out there tomorrow afternoon. 

But I'm hearing thunder this evening (though the sun is shining), so . . . .

Post Script - July 25, 2020

It was pushing 7 p.m. when the tomatoes finished processing, and I had not seen anything of The Husband since I left him at the shop earlier in the day.  I wrapped a cold beer in a towel and drove the truck down to Nanny's to see what he was doing.

He had un-stuck the bush hog shaft/bar/whatever.  It was hooked to the tractor, and he was about to try to mow the field in front of Nanny's house.  "This damned thing better work after all this," he said.  I handed him the beer.  He took a couple of swigs, handed the beer back to me, and climbed on the tractor.  I stuck the beer in the shop refrigerator and went out to the fence to see if the bush hog was going to cut.  IT DID!

While he mowed the field, I went back to the garden to see about the green beans and the peas.  Bugs have been having a feast on the green bean foliage, which was about half yellow from all the rain.  I was going to pick beans but decided it wasn't worth the effort; they were gnarly and bug-eaten.  The peas, however, needed to be picked.  As I picked each plant, I pulled it up and tossed it in the middle.  The vines had run all through the squash, across the new row of tomatoes, and into the cucumbers. 

It got dark on me as I was getting to the end of the last row.  I just hurried and picked the peas and left the rest of the vines.  Tomorrow, I'm going to pull up the rest of them, and the green beans, too.

When I took Nanny the peas to shell, I told her I was going to clean out the garden and start some new crops.  She wants butterbeans.  I hope I can still find some seeds.

Canning Tomatoes - July 25, 2020

Land sakes, I'm tired.

And the day ain't over yet.

I'm just resting my feet until the canner finishes.

I got up early this morning and test-sewed a couple of embroidery designs.

After breakfast, I went to the garden to pick some vegetables for my son and his family.  Got 'em some squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, and okra.

About mid-morning, I went with The Husband to buy a tractor.  He'd already picked it out; I just had to escort him home.  I am excited about this tractor.

He got a cultivator with it to make rows for the vegetable garden.  We need a bush hog, too, but there's an old one at my son's house that belonged to my parents.  We took off the cultivator and went to get the bush hog.  It has been sitting in weeds for years, but we managed to extract it and get it attached to the tractor to bring it home.  There's a bar thing that's supposed to slide up and down to connect it to the thing that makes it spin, and the bar is a bit rusty and wouldn't quite reach the spot to hook it up.  We hooked it up enough to get it home and down to the big shop at Nanny's.  He's been lubricating and hammering on it all afternoon.

While The Husband worked on the tractor, I mowed our yard, and then went down to Nanny's to mow her back yard.  I'd have done the front, too, but I looked up and The Brother-in-Law had come up with his big mower and was doing the front.

The tomatoes needed picking, and there were enough to justify canning them.  I got 7 pints out of this batch (I had twice as many tomatoes as in the picture).  They're in the canner now.

I still need to pick green beans and (hopefully) the last of the purple hull peas. 

A few minutes ago, I planted the potatoes that have been drying on the back porch for a few days.  They're in a big plastic tub.  As I sit here now, it occurs to me that I did not drill any holes in the bottom of the tub for drainage.  Must do that tomorrow.

Yesterday, I bought a big sheet of acrylic to attach to the outside of the back porch.  The porch makes a "T" with the house, and water pours down the valley when it rains.  It splashes on the ground and then splashes onto the porch floor.  If this keeps up, it'll rot the boards.  So I bought this piece of acrylic to keep the rain from splashing in.  We'll have to do that tomorrow, since it's going to require cutting to size and having some pilot holes drilled in it for the screws, and we're about pooped for today.

Where have all the squirrels gone? - July 24, 2020

Well, now, THIS is peculiar.

Ever since I hung the squirrel horse head in my yard, the squirrels have been in hiding.

Yesterday I asked The Husband if he had seen any squirrels.  He said, "I haven't seen a squirrel ALL WEEK." 

It's like they've made some kind of pact.  Maybe they're insulted that I've hung this horse head to mock them, and they have agreed to not go anywhere near it.  Maybe they've staged a mass exodus.  If you see a troop of squirrels with nut sacks thrown over their shoulders, tell them I'm sorry I intended to make fun of them.

And tell them there's a horse head full of peanuts waiting for them at home.   *snicker*

Mud! - July 22, 2020

Sunday, when I last picked the purple hull peas, I took only the ones that were the deepest purple, the stage that is so easy to shell.  The plan was to pick again on Tuesday (yesterday), at which time I could finish off the crop and pull up the vines.  Well, it rained yesterday - bucket loads - and the storm was in process just as I was getting home from work.  I didn't want to pick peas in the rain, so I didn't, but I knew that I'd left peas on the vines that would be pushing their good-ness limit if they weren't picked pretty soon.

It was not raining when I came home today, but the southwest clouds were dark.  Even though I knew the garden would be muddy after yesterday's rain, I put on my boots and went down there to pick the purple hull peas.  The soil was soupy.  I started at the driest end of the garden and had worked my way only halfway down the first row when it began to rain.  There was no warning sprinkle; it was not raining, then it was. 

Nanny came out on the back porch and hollered, "It's raining!"

I hollered back, "Yes, I know!  I'm fixing to quit!"  My 2-gallon bucket was already full. 

I extracted my feet from the mud and hurried to the back porch with the bucket, swiping my muddy boots on the way.  Nanny met me at the back door and took the bucket.  I came home and fooled around with my mandolin for an hour, and when I looked up, it had quit raining. I put my boots back on and went back to the garden.

Nanny hollered, "Aint it too muddy?"

I hollered back, "Yes, but everything out here needs picking."  And on to the garden I went, carrying a basket because Nanny still had my bucket.

I was halfway down the last row, when Nanny hollered that she was through with the bucket if I needed it.  I did need it.  My basket was heaped up.  She said she'd bring it to me, but I knew she couldn't get to me without marring up.  I asked her to bring it to the edge of the garden, and I would come get it.

She came out a few minutes later in her mud boots and a long sleeve shirt, announcing that she was going to cut the okra.  I had slogged across that end of the garden on my way out when the rainstorm hit, and I knew from experience that it was r-e-a-l-l-y muddy on that end, and I nearly begged her not to fool with the okra.  I told her I wasn't sure I could even get myself out to rescue her if she fell.  But nothing would do but for her to cut the okra. 

She let out a little "woops!" as soon as she stepped in the garden, and I thought to myself, Um-hmmm....  It wasn't two minutes before she fell flat on her butt.  I flung my pea-basket down and was trying to get myself loose from the mud, hollering, "I'll be right there!," when she hollered back, "I'm OK.  I can get up by myself!"  And so I waited, and in a minute she hollered, "I'm up!" 

I said, "Nanny, LEAVE the okra.  If it gets too big, we'll cut it off and grow some more!"  And she complied, thank goodness.  It probably shook her up a little more than she tried to let on.  I met her in the grass at the edge of the garden and traded her my full basket for her empty bucket, then I went back and finished picking the peas.  Got another gallon. 

Nanny and I are both a bit awed at the amount of peas that have come off those vines.  I planted four long rows, but only half of them came up.  We expected to get only enough peas for a meal, now and then, but Nanny has kept busy for two weeks shelling and preserving peas. 

I don't think she knows, yet, about the four new half-rows that have sprouted on the back side of the garden.

When those peas finally poop out, I'm going to try some sweet peas in their place.  I bought a couple of seed packets this afternoon - just those little things you find on racks.  I also got brussels sprouts  seeds and carrot seeds.  And dirt for the potatoes I'm going to try growing in a tub in my back yard.

Uncle Jack said he'd sprout my b.sprouts for me in his new greenhouse. 

Squirrel Bait - July 21, 2020

I was hoping to have a bunch of time today to sit on the back porch and watch for a squirrel to find the horse head.  Since The Husband is working from home this week and has laid claim to my office, I brought my laptop and my coffee out to the table on the porch to do my morning reading.  The horse head was in my direct line of view, but during the time I could spend on the porch, I did not see - or hear - one single squirrel.

This is unusual.

Most mornings, I see them leaping between the trees in the gully, running up and down grapevines, and scampering across the yard.  And they usually chatter and bark in the morning.  This morning: nothing. 

When I came home from work, I set up shop on the porch again.  Still no sign of any squirrels.  The inside of the horse head still had peanuts stuck in peanut butter (though the peanut butter was a bit runny from the heat).  My friend suggested that I lure them toward the horse head by dropping a trail of nuts from the woods to the horse.  While I am not willing to share my good nuts with the squirrels, I did drop a line of honey mustard trail mix (that we don't like and won't eat) to the horse head.  The squirrels might not eat it, either, but maybe the scent might make them curious until they get close enough to smell the peanut butter.

A raccoon will probably eat the trail mix tonight.

Horse Head for Squirrels - July 20, 2020

I got a present from a friend in the mail today.

OMG...I am going to have so much fun with this.

It is a rubber horse head.  I have smeared peanut butter inside its snout and stuck peanuts and almonds to the peanut butter.  It is suspended about 10" from the ground.  Now, I just sit here and wait for the squirrels to find it.  ;)

This is what will happen:

 [belly laugh]  I cannot wait for my squirrels to find it.  Once they do, I'm going to suspend it over the monkey bar so that the squirrel has to stand on the monkey bar to get it.  :)

Yesterday, when I was preparing to cook supper, I discovered that my potatoes had sprouted.  The Husband picked up some new ones while he was out running an errand.  I saved the sprouted ones to plant in a big plastic tub.  When I came home from work today, I cut a few of the sprouted potatoes into chunks and have laid them on the back porch to heal.  Tomorrow, I'm going to buy some dirt, and when the potatoes heal, I'm going to plant them.  

I tried to grow potatoes in the garden one year.  Because I couldn't get the garden plowed until May, I was late planting them.  I dug a 6" deep trench x 50 feet long with a shovel.  My father-in-law, who used to supervise my gardening from the back porch, told me to put some blood meal in the trench with the potato sets to keep them from rotting, so I did.  Every night for a week, something dug up the potatoes.  It didn't eat them, just laid them aside.  I planted them again every day.

Pop-Pop said to hill up the dirt around the potato plants as they grew, so I did.

Come potato-digging time, I wanted to cry when I found just a few golf-ball-sized potatoes in the ground.  

When I showed them to Pop-Pop, he said, "Got yer seeds back."

He was a wise-ass.  :)

More Pickin' - July 19, 2020

I mostly took the day off from gardening today.  Spent most of the morning doing genealogy research.  Had a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich for lunch, with a side of the hot sweet pickles I made last week.

After lunch, I snapped a big pan of green beans and put them on to cook for supper.  There were far more than we needed for supper and for left-overs tomorrow night, so when they finished cooking I put more than half of them in the freezer in their cooking juice.

For a couple of hours, I sat on the back porch and picked on my mandolin.  I am trying to understand how this thing works.  Even printed myself some cheat sheets (though I've about got the chords down).  They're taped to the cabinet on the back porch. 

It is a cheap mandolin, one we picked up in Mountain View for under $100 (new).  I do fairly well at picking out simple melodies, but my chords don't sound so great.  I'm blaming part of it on the cheap mandolin.  The Husband asked me if I wanted a better one for my birthday, and I told him no, I'd like to wait until I can try some out in a store without embarrassing myself.  Who knows if that will ever happen?  But at least I'm starting to see some of the relationships on the fret board.

After supper, I went to the garden to pick squash to give to a co-worker.  A half-hearted inspection of the cucumber vines yielded a few cucumbers to slice and put in vinegar.  She won't appreciate what I had to go through to get them.

I picked the tomatoes that were turning.  Hated to do it, but the sun is scalding their faces; they already feel a little petrified on top.  I've put them on the back porch where they can ripen a little more gently.

The new crop of purple hull peas is coming up thick as cat hair.  The old crop is still cranking out peas.  They'll need picking tomorrow.

Mmmm...chili sauce - July 18, 2020

By 7 o'clock this morning, I was washing cucumbers, getting them ready for their 3-hour ice-water soak.  They were in jars, pickled and processed, by 11, then I finished the chili sauce.  It took more than 2 hours to cook that stuff down and can it.  Man, it is delicious, but I'm not sure the 4 pints it yielded were worth the effort.

I spent the hot part of the afternoon on the back porch, practicing on my mandolin.  Here's the truth:  I can't strum worth a damn.  The pick spins around between between my fingers, and slips out altogether, sometimes. 

At 7 p.m., we went to the garden to pick peas and green beans.  I was not expecting to get many peas, but wound up with the biggest picking yet.  While I picked the peas, The Husband picked the green beans.  We didn't get all that many beans this time, but the rain and the watering set everything to blooming again.  I'm not real sure I'm happy about that.

The four short rows of purple hull peas that I planted only a few days ago are coming up!  It looks like there will be a good stand this time, not skippy like the last planting.  I squeezed those 4 rows into a spot that probably should have held just 3 rows, or maybe just 2, but I had a lot of left-over seeds. 

Now, I'm starting to think about a fall garden.  I don't really know what to put in it.






 

More Relish - July 17, 2020

Lord have mercy, I'm tired.

There were ground relish fixings waiting on me when I got home.  They needed rinsing, spicing, cooking, and canning.  I found some regular-mouth jar flats at a little country store on my way to work, and since I didn't have to hunt for anything today, the canning went smoothly. 

Let me tell you, I am SICK of these freakin' cucumbers, but I still need to make kosher dills, and so when I finished canning the relish, I put on my boots and went to the garden to see if I could find enough cucumbers to make a batch of pickles.  And then I'm done with the cucumbers.  I told The Husband tonight that I am going to yank up those vines pretty soon.  He said he'd pick them and take them to people at work.  He'd better get his ass to pickin' this week, because next weekend, they're coming out.

After four hours of watering and a bodacious rain, the garden was muddy as heck.  My first step onto the soil sank nearly to the top of my boot.  The whole garden was that way, and I came close to face-planting in the mud more than once.  Everything out there needed picking.  I cut okra, picked tomatoes, yanked up a tomato plant that had turned lime green with blight, and went after the cucumbers and squash.  I made Nanny take the okra and the squash; I did not want to deal with them.  The green beans and purple hull peas will have to wait until tomorrow.

I came home, washed off my boots, and went to washing and slicing a dishpan full of cucumbers.  They're soaking in lime in the refrigerator.

After that, I scalded and peeled the tomatoes for chili sauce.  I had a collection of peppers in the vegetable drawer that needed to be used.  The Husband came home about the time I was heating up the water to scald the tomatoes.  We started an assembly line, where I scalded and iced the tomatoes while he peeled and cored them, and then I cored and seeded peppers while he chopped them in the Ninja.  I won't be able to finish the chili sauce tonight because I'm out of one of the spices and will have to make a grocery store run in the morning, but it's had its first cooking.  As soon as it cools enough to go in the refrigerator, I'm going to bed!

 

More Watering - July 16, 2020

I spent nearly 4 hours watering the garden over the previous two days., and now it is raining its ass off.

The Husband picked a 2-gallon bucket full of cucumbers Tuesday night, and they've been in the refrigerator, waiting on me to do something with them.  I tried to get The Husband to take them to work and give them away, but he said, "Nawwww, make more relish!"  So I came home from work today and set to grinding cucumbers, onions, and peppers to soak in salt overnight.  Looks like I'll be spending my Friday evening cooking and canning relish.  I'm in a bit of a pickle, though (no pun intended); the remaining jars we brought down from the attic are regular-mouth jars, and the remaining lids are wide-mouth.  I'll either have to go to the store for lids or to the attic for jars before I can can the relish.

Hah.  ". . . can can . . . ."

In the process of cleaning up the kitchen - there are tiny cucumber bits on everything - I managed to stop up the sink.  I stopped it up last week, too, when I made the first batch of relish.  The Husband managed to un-clog it last week with vinegar and baking soda, but that didn't work this time.  Neither did the plunger.  Neither did two big doses of Drain-O.  To be fair, the Drain-O might have worked, eventually, but The Husband got a plumber's snake and jabbed it around.  The sink is running fine now.  And I learned my lesson about washing up after cucumber relish.  I have mesh strainers in both sides of my sink, and they catch enough stuff for soup every day.  I don't know how all those cucumber bits got past them.  But tonight, when I was finally able to clean up the kitchen, I washed everything in a big roasting pan and dumped the wash-water into the flower bed instead of the sink.

I also had a gallon of cucumber innards and pepper seeds to dispose of.  In my heart, I knew I should walk them out to the compost tumbler, but it had been raining cats and dogs, and my back yard was soup.  PLUS, I'm about half scared of the compost tumbler.  Every year, I get stung by wasps when I first use it.  They build nests in the recesses of the legs.  And spiders live in and around it.   One time when I was dumping the compost, the biggest spider I ever saw ran out of the tumbler.  Scared the tee-total sh*t out of me.  Third, the english ivy has tethered it to the ground and has rendered it stationary.  I'm going to have to hack it out before I can use it.  That's when the wasps will get me, the bastards.

So, instead of doing what my heart said to do, I walked the bucket to the edge of the woods and pitched all that stuff over the hill.  One or more critters will have some good eatin' tonight.

Watering and New Peas - July 15, 2020

The garden was looking dry yesterday, so we rolled out the water hoses, turned on the sprinkler, and watered for about an hour, until it got dark, but we didn't finish.  I went back to the garden after work today and started the sprinkler again.

While it was running, I sat in the shade, looking at a grassy spot that never got planted or maintained.  It was full of crab grass and wild morning glories that were trying to wrap around anything they could reach.  I've been meaning to weed that spot and plant something there, so today I did.  I tilled up the spot, raked out the grass, and planted 4 short rows of purple hull peas.  It's been two months since I planted the original crop.  Sixty days from now puts us into the middle of September, so hopefully these new seeds will have time to produce.  We've picked peas twice, and will probably pick twice more before the vines poop out, but we haven't had a very big haul.  Those original peas came up sparsely.  I was going to replant the skips, but my Almost-Son said he would be growing enough peas for both of us, so I didn't bother.  Today, he said that deer have eaten all of  his peas. 

He intends to thin the herd, come fall.

A Not-So-Fabulous Day - July 14, 2020

Yesterday was a sucky day, if you want to know the truth.

It started at midnight, when I got out of bed to take an Advil to ease my aching muscles.  I took my Kindle to the spare bedroom and read until the medicine kicked in.  Woke up at 6 a.m., tired, with my glasses drilling into the side of my head.

We had court yesterday.  The clerk's office had been closed for 2 weeks because one of the employees came down with the coronavirus.  Everyone was tested last week, and two of the workers had not gotten their test results back as of yesterday, so the office was short-handed - there was only the Clerk and one Deputy Clerk.  Instead of going to the courtroom, I stayed in the office to help the Deputy Clerk answer the phone, make copies, etc.  It was a madhouse.  New rules:  everybody in the courthouse had to wear a mask all day.  The phone rang non-stop.  The docket was full, and there was a constant line at the counter.  We finally finished about 4 p.m. 

I rushed home to test an embroidery design I digitized over the weekend.  It needed more work, and I ended up fooling around with it until bedtime.  (The 2.0 version is running as we speak.)

Supper?  I didn't even want to think about it.  We ended up eating breakfast for supper. 

Post Garden Tour - July 12, 2020

When I made the bug balls, I had a little bit of goo left over in the can, and we came up with the idea to paint a milk jug with the remainder and hang it to catch bugs on Nanny's back porch.  I emptied a milk jug today, and so about 5:00, I took the supplies down to her back porch and set to work on it.

Things I learned from the bug balls:

1.  Hang whatever you're going to paint, and THEN paint it with the goo;
2.  Wear rubber gloves.

Anyway, I got the thing painted and hung up, hopefully out of the path of the hummingbirds but directly in the path of wasps and horseflies.  As I was standing there admiring my work, a little breeze blew up and knocked the thing against the porch wall, and it made me worry that Nanny would Nanny think someone was knocking on her back door if I left it hanging loose.  I found a little bracket screwed to the porch post, and ran a second string down to it.  Hopefully, it won't bang on the wall all night.

That done, I went out to the garden to check for tomato worms.  Found a couple of big, juicy ones and crushed them into the dirt.  I also found a good bit of blight on the lower leaves, and a bunch of limbs on the ground that I've been meaning all week to take care of.  So I picked all of the semi-ripe tomatoes, dosed up the sprayer with fungicide and herbicide, and did the tomatoes.  Cut off the blighted leaves, hauled them away.  Tied up the drooped limbs.  Pulled some grass.

Moved on to the squash.

I was talking with my brother about squash earlier in the week.  He complained that the squash bugs always get his first crop of squash.  I suggested we should both do some preventative spraying before we see squash bugs.  So, after I did the tomatoes, I picked the squash and sprayed it.

While I was picking the squash, I noticed that the purple hull peas needed picking again, so I picked them.  And gathered a few cucumbers for The Boss.

All that took three hours.

My everything hurts.

Garden Tour - July 12, 2020

Since I discovered tomato worms on the plants Friday evening, I went to the garden early yesterday morning, picked all of the nearly-ripe tomatoes, and sprayed neem oil.  The horseflies were wearing me out so badly I couldn't even finish.  It made me so mad.

My garden helper.

I'd read about some stuff called "Tanglefoot," an adhesive that you can spray on non-porous surfaces to create a giant version of fly-paper.  I went right to the store and bought the Tanglefoot, some inflatable rubber balls, and a bicycle pump and needle.  I made the mistake of trying to put the goo on the balls before I affixed them to the poles on which I was going to mount them.  Got that stuff all over me, nearly glued my legs together from trying to hold the ball between my knees while I painted on the goo.  We finally got the balls attached to some metal fence posts.  Both of us were sticky when it was over.  The only thing we found that would get the goo off of us was some shop towels in a canister. 

By the time I came back to the house, The Husband had snapped the green beans we'd picked the day before.  I canned them, got six  pints out of that batch.

We'd also picked cucumbers for relish.  I chopped them and some peppers and onions in the food processor, salted them with pickling salt, and put them in the refrigerator overnight.  Today, I rinsed off the salt water, added vinegar and some spices.  They're cooking on the stove right now.  It looks like there'll be 6 pints of those, too.

I took some pictures around the garden yesterday afternoon.  Have a look.

Cayenne Peppers

My garden shed, where the tillers and hoes live.

Dinner bell

Ford Tractor.  Needs work.  That's the "big shop" behind it.

Green beans and okra.  There are actually 4 rows of green beans, but they don't understand "social distancing."

I like to pick the green beans while they're small and tender.

Tomatoes ripening on the back porch.

Purple hull peas.

Squash, between two rows of purple hull peas.  I don't know why I did that.  Lost count, I reckon.

Squash

Tomatoes

Pimentos.  They're camera shy. 

Purple Hull Peas - July 10, 2020

We picked our first batch of purple hull peas this evening.  It wasn't a lot - I carried them in my shirt-tail - but it was enough for a meal or two for Nanny.  She went straight to shelling them the minute I brought them in the house.  By the time we finished picking the other vegetables, her thumbs were purple.

We picked a basket of green beans, a grocery bag full of squash and as many cucumbers, some peppers, and some tomatoes.  Nanny took possession of the squash.  She's going to freeze them.

I saw evidence of tomato worm feasting and squished four or five of them.  I've caught them early - they were tiny worms.  Tomorrow, I'm going to pick the tomatoes that are ripe and spray some bug spray.  It's supposed to rain tomorrow night, but maybe I can "off" a few worms before then.

Speaking of tomatoes, look at this:

Does that not look exactly like a butt?

I showed it to my sister, who said, "You should make it some little pants."

How can it wear pants?  It doesn't have any legs.

But it could wear a thong.

I just happened to have some little plaster of paris feet, so . . . . 

HAH!

I'm telling you, something weird is going on with that tomato vine.  Look at the one I found this evening:

If that's not a perfect complement to the other tomato, I don't know what is.

There's a lot of weird stuff going on around here, now that I think about it.

We have a very noisy frog living on/around our front porch.  Earlier in the week, I heard a noise that sounded exactly like a puppy barking.  There are no puppies in this neighborhood, as far as I know.  I went to look out the front door and didn't see a puppy, but I did hear the noise again while I was looking out the door.  It came from up high and to my left.  I walked out on the porch and looked up, and found this:

It's a tree frog, and IT CAN CHANGE COLORS!  When it climbs onto the wall, it turns either a sand color (if it's on the siding) or a lighter eggshell color (if it's on the trim).  I'm calling him "Casper" because of the ghostly white color he was wearing when I first saw him.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day in the kitchen.  First up:  washing, snapping, and canning the green beans.  Then, if there are enough cucumbers, I'll start a batch of cucumber relish.  Nanny said it takes 10 pounds, she thinks, to make a batch of relish.  I've been collecting cucumbers for a couple of days, so maybe there'll be enough.  If not, there should be enough in a day or two.

Pasta night - July 9, 2020

Well, the pickles are done - 6 pints, plus a "sample." 

To the sweet pickle recipe on the lime bag, I added sliced jalapenos, sliced cayennes, and a couple tablespoons of crushed red pepper flakes.  The jalapenos and cayennes went in the brine to soak with the cucumbers.  I added the red pepper flakes as the cucumbers were cooking. 

They are hotter than a firecracker.  Just the way I like them.

But my kitchen is a wreck.  Canning stuff is everywhere:  pressure canner, water bath canner, jars, lids, rings, tongs, measuring cups, you name it.  Normally, most of this stuff lives in the attic, but there is no way I'm hiking up those scary pull-down steps every time I finish a batch of something. 

Nanny did get to come home from the hospital yesterday.  I went down to see her before supper-time to see if she wanted me to fix her some supper.  I'd planned to make a shrimp and pasta dish that she likes, but my sister-in-law had said that Nanny was complaining that her throat was irritated from the surgery, and I wondered if potato soup would go down easier.  When I offered Nanny those two choices, she said, "I can swallow shrimp and pasta just fine!"  (She really likes the pasta dish!)

Meanwhile, Nanny's 85-year-old sister, Aunt B, called and said she was bringing pot roast.  I offered to hold off on the shrimp/pasta until the next night, but Nanny said there was no telling what time Aunt B would get there with the pot roast, if she got there at all. 

I said I'd go ahead and make the pasta, and if Aunt B came with the pot roast, Nanny could have the pasta the next night. 

The pasta dish is very simple and quick to make.  I use:

Sliced fresh mushrooms - about any kind will do
Chopped green onions - separate the white ends from the green ends
Frozen cooked shrimp
Fresh chopped garlic
Olive oil
Butter
Cooked angel hair pasta (any pasta will do, really) - save a cup or so of the pasta cooking water
Fresh grated parmesan cheese

Thaw the shrimp.

Cook the pasta (don't forget to save a little of the cooking water). 

In a big skillet, saute the mushrooms in just a tad of olive oil over medium-high heat.  Give them a little dash of salt and pepper.  Cook them long enough that they give up their liquid and get a little brown.  Cook them until the mushroom liquid dries up and leaves a film on the bottom of the skillet.  This film is flavor! 

Turn the heat down to medium-low.  We're not frying now; we're softening and warming.  Add a little more olive oil or butter if the skillet is too dry. 

Add the white parts of the green onions and garlic.  Cook and stir it for just a minute, until you can smell the garlic and the onions get a little soft.

Add butter to the skillet (I use about 1/2 a stick).  As it melts, scrape the bottom of the skillet to incorporate all that good brown mushroom film.  Is there enough "sauce" to coat the pasta a little bit?  If not, add a little of the pasta cooking water and stir it around.  (You could also de-glaze the pan with chicken broth or white wine.)

Add the shrimp, and cook it long enough to heat the shrimp (it only takes a minute or two). 

Add the pasta and toss it around.  Add a little more butter or olive oil if it seems too dry.

Plate it up.  Give it a little dose of parmesan cheese.  Sprinkle the green ends of the onions over the top.  Yesterday, I had a fresh tomato, and I chopped it into tiny bits and sprinkled them on top, as well.  It looked very pretty!

Bacon.  Crumbled bacon would be nice, too. 

Do you like black olives?  Roasted red peppers?  Toss 'em in. 

(I tend to make stuff up as I go.)  ;)

Okra - July 8, 2020

Important things first:  Nanny's surgery went fine.  She's probably going to come home this evening.

Now,

I got up early yesterday morning and started slicing cucumbers for pickles.  After seeing how many I had (my big mixing bowl was full), I decided I needed more - if you're going to go through the canning process, you might as well make it worth the effort - and there were more, at least again as many as I'd already sliced. 

The squash needed picking again, and so did the peppers.  While picking the peppers, I noticed that the okra was bearing, but I hadn't brought a knife to cut it, so I left the garden without it, intending to go back in the evening to get it. 

Came home, sliced the newly-picked cucumbers, and put them in lime water to soak.  The directions said to soak them 12 hours or overnight.  According to my (incorrect) way of thinking, the cucumbers would be ready to go in the jars about 8 p.m. last night.

Wrong.

It's been so long since I've made pickles that I'd forgotten what all has to happen.

First, the 12-hour soak in lime.  Then a 3-hour soak in ice water.  After the ice-water bath, the pickles go into the brine for another 5 hours (or overnight), and then, finally, they can be cooked and put into the jars. 

Hoping to get the canning done by bedtime, I "fudged" on the 12-hour lime soak and let them soak only 8 hours before putting them in the ice-water bath.  But I forgot about the 5-hour brine soak.  At 7:30 last night, I re-read the directions and realized that the pickles weren't going to make it into the jars that day unless I wanted to stay up until the wee hours of the morning.  Uh, no.  So, I'll be canning pickles this morning.

The recipe I'm using is on the back of the lime bag.  It's a sweet pickle recipe, but I'm going to make them spicy by adding hot peppers.  Sliced jalapenos and cayenne peppers have been soaking in the brine with the cucumbers.  Before I seal the jars, I'm going to add some hot pepper flakes.  That ought to fire them up nicely.

While the cucumbers were soaking in lime, I made 6 pints of jalapeno pepper jelly.  I did not have any rubber gloves - they're hard to come by these days - so I tried an experiment to keep the peppers from burning my hands.  Remembering that capsaicin sticks to oil, I smeared a few drops of olive oil on my hands.  After slicing the peppers, I washed my hands with soap.  It worked!  No burning!

It's time to get after those pickles.

Canning - July 7, 2020

I canned four pints of green beans yesterday, and saved about another pint to cook for supper.

The first canning of the season is always a bit dis-combobulated at my house.  From the time of the last year's canning, my equipment gets scattered.  Where is my jar-getter (you know, the thing with handles that you use to lift hot jars out of the canner)?  Where are my rings and lids?  Where are the jars?  It was especially disorganized this year, for I have not canned in about two years.

I had meant to make pickles yesterday, too, but forgot to put the cucumbers to soak in lime overnight.  I meant to soak them last night, but forgot that, too.  My intention is to slice and soak them today and can them tonight.  We'll see if that happens.

It appears that in the last few years, soaking the cucumbers in lime is frowned upon by the experts.  I don't know why.  The experts now recommend using some other kind of powder (the kind I have is called "Pickle Fresh," I think) that you add to each jar.  That stuff, while less troublesome to use, does not crisp a pickle like the lime does.

Supper sure was good:  meat loaf, green beans, mashed potatoes, sliced tomatoes, and cucumbers and onions soaked in vinegar overnight.  Mmmmmmm!

Nanny is at the hospital today, finally getting the heart valve replacement that should have happened months ago.  She was scared to have it done and kept putting it off.  Then, when she finally relented to the procedure, she came down with shingles a day or two before surgery day, and had to put it off for more than a month.  I felt so sorry for her yesterday when she came up here to leave a bag of her "treasures" for us to distribute to family members in case she doesn't make it through the surgery.  Poor thing; she was a nervous wreck.  Hopefully, by the time I finish this post, the procedure will be over and she can be on the road to feeling better.

First Ripe Tomato - July 6, 2020

I hope you (all/both) had a pleasant Independence Day.  Ours was rather quiet.  Although a cousin invited us and the whole extended family for a 4th of July barbeque, we opted not to go.  At the time, we still did not know the results of The Husband's co-worker's COVID-19 test, and we didn't want to take the chance on infecting someone in case The Husband had been infected.

That same day, Nanny needed to be driven to her doctor's office to have a COVID-19 test in preparation for surgery that's supposed to happen tomorrow.  The Husband and I thought he probably should not be in a car with her.  The Sister-in-Law is a nurse and had recently been to a Florida beach.  On top of that, the hospital where she works is over-flowing with COVID patients, some of whom have been put in the cardiac ICU where she works because there's nowhere else to put them.  So she didn't need to be in the car with Nanny, either.  We decided that I was probably the safest person to take Nanny to the doctor, so I took her.

After driving Nanny to the doctor, I spent most of the afternoon practicing my mandolin on the porch.  The Husband came out with his ukulele, and we played a bunch of songs with a dude on YouTube.  Later that evening, we went to the garden to pick green beans.  We also found a bunch of cucumbers, and picked three tomatoes that were *almost* ripe enough to be delicious.  We brought the tomatoes home and set them in a windowsill to finish ripening, fearful that if we left them on the vine, a turtle or a squirrel or some other critter would get them before we did.

Yesterday, we worked our butts off in the yard.  I weeded a flower bed then push-mowed the tight spots while The Husband chopped down some sumac bushes growing along Nanny's driveway.  Come lunch time, The Husband said, "I'm going to make a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, and I'm going to slice one of the tomatoes to go on it."  I said, 'OH, NO, YOU ARE NOT!  They're not ripe enough yet!"  He grumbled about it, but he left the tomatoes alone.  I'm not sure I can fight him off of them for another day, though.  Heck, I've been jones-ing for a tomato/mayo sandwich, myself!

About sundown, we heard thunder.  The Husband got out the riding lawnmower to finish the yard.  I went to the garden, intending to run the little tiller down the row where I planted the new tomatoes.  There are purple hull peas in the rows on both sides of the tomatoes, and they've put out runners that reach across the tomato row.  I started the tiller and realized that if I used it, I'd likely snatch some of the pea vines right out of the ground, so I weeded with the hoe, instead.  I'd just finished the weeding and was about to set some tomato cages over the new tomatoes when it started to rain.  Maybe I can finish the job this evening, if it's not too wet to walk in the garden.

Quarantine day - July 2, 2020

I had big plans for today.

First, I was going to the courthouse to drop off some things for a co-worker.  Then I was going to make a quick run to the post office and to my office to open mail and return phone calls.  After that, I was going to the quilt store to rent a quilting machine and finish the quilt I started for my nephew two years ago.

Scratch all of that.

Yesterday, one of The Husband's co-workers received a call informing her that someone with whom she'd been in contact over the weekend has tested positive for COVID-19. 

Shit.

The co-worker immediately left the office and went to be tested.  It'll be a couple of days before we know the results.  Meanwhile, we are running under a caution flag.  Our son and his family have been visiting, and we were going to have dinner together last night, but we cancelled it.  They will have gone home by the time we know the test results. 

The Husband has, wisely, been working half of his crew from home on two-week rotations.  One of the at-home crew stopped by the office to pick up some supplies earlier in the week, and yesterday she discovered that her daughter, who lives with her, has tested positive for COVID-19. 

It's EVERYWHERE.

Wear your masks, folks.  Wash your hands.  Keep your distance from others.

From the back porch - July 1, 2020

I swear to you that in the few minutes I've been out here on the back porch this evening, the temperature has dropped 10 degrees.

First, the sky clouded over, then the wind started blowing - hard!  Hickory nuts started falling onto the shed roof and the metal roof of the porch.  It sounds like I'm in a popcorn popper! 

This cooling is a welcome relief, for I have been sweating like a pig since 11 a.m., when I went to the garden.  I hadn't intended to do any gardening, I just needed a walk.  But I ended up pulling weeds for about an hour, and as I worked around the green beans, I noticed they need to be picked again.  The picking would have to wait until later in the day. 

I may have already told you this, but I took my mini-tiller to a repair shop, and after about 3 weeks they called me and said they couldn't fix it.  It needs a new carburetor, they said, and they couldn't find one.  So I picked up the tiller, came home, and found the part online in about 2 minutes.  It came in the mail today.  Since then, I've watched a couple of videos on how to repair carburetors.  It seemed simple enough, so when I found the new one in the mailbox, I dragged the tiller onto the porch, took the old carburetor off, and installed the new one.  Piece of cake (kinda).  I took it outside, put some gas in it, and yanked the cord (which was hanging about halfway out of the cord hole), and IT CRANKED RIGHT UP!  It even sucked the pull cord back where it belonged.  I hurried to get my phone so I could send The Husband a "look what I did" video, but the tiller quit before I could film it.  And it would not start again.

I left it alone for a little while, and tried again.  It cranked again, but when I pulled the lever that engages the tines, nothing happened.  The lever wouldn't even move.  And the tiller quit again. 

I lugged the tiller back to the porch and watched more videos.  It's hard to find the right video when you don't know the real names for stuff.  Finally figured out it's a "throttle cable."  It goes BEHIND the carburetor, so I had to dump out the gas and remove the new carburetor.  The business end of my throttle cable wasn't connected to anything, and I had to watch another video to figure out where to hook it. 

Knock on wood, I believe it's fixed.  It cranked again, and the tines will turn when the lever is pulled.  I was going to try it out in the garden this evening, but now it's raining hard. 

At least I won't have to water the garden this week.  But I might have to pick beans in the mud.

Cucumber - June 30, 2020

My "get-up-and-go" is AWOL this morning. 

Yesterday was a frustrating day. 

The morning went fairly smoothly.  I took Nanny for some medical tests.  While she was in the doctor's office, I had an hour to visit with my sister, who lives nearby.  Nanny and I were home by noon.  On the way home, I told her about a cabbage casserole recipe I'd tried the night before.  We decided that the recipe would also be good with squash instead of cabbage.  She said she was going to try it for supper that night, if she had enough squash.  I had picked the squash the previous evening and had offered them to her, but she wouldn't take them.  They were in a bowl on my kitchen table.  I told her that I'd stop and get them for her casserole, but she wouldn't hear of it.  In that case, I said, I'd go to the garden and see if any more squash were ready to pick.  There were enough squash.  There was also grass, lots of it.  I made plans to remedy that situation, come evening. 

Nanny and I had also talked about craving cucumbers in vinegar and fried green tomatoes.  I told her I'd I checked the cucumber vines yesterday and didn't find any cucumbers, but we have plenty green tomatoes, and she could have one to fry.  She wouldn't hear of that, either.  (We sort of have a rule that nobody eats a fried green tomato until everybody gets a ripe one.)  Nevertheless, I pulled a green tomato and took it to her with the squash. 

At home, I went straight to the sewing room to test an embroidery design, a cute little pod camper, that I'd started the previous day.  It's not a complicated design, but it takes a L-O-N-G time to sew.  The first time I tested it, it sewed perfectly, but I did not like the way I'd done the tires, so I went back to the computer.  Big mistake.  I ended up tweaking and re-testing the design 4 times, and it still doesn't suit me.  I'd revert to the original design, except I saved the changes and will have to do the tires from scratch. 

At 4:30, I went to the garden to sweat out my frustration.  While pulling grass out of the cucumbers, I found one cucumber big enough to slice.  I didn't even offer to share it with Nanny, but brought it home, soaked it and some sliced onion in vinegar, and we had it for supper (but the cucumber hadn't really soaked long enough, so it didn't quite fix my craving).

After supper, I was tired and came out to the porch to rest and cool off under the fan.  While I was sitting here, I saw a lizard climb out from between the sofa cushions and scamper across the porch.  I spent the rest of the evening reading about how to get rid of lizards.  I don't mind the lizard; what I mind is his POOP.  He POOPS on the sofa.  Makes me so mad. 

I didn't really find a good solution for evicting lizards from sofas without using poisons and other distasteful remedies.  I don't want to kill the lizard, or run him off - he eats bugs, and I could use some help with the spiders that also want to live on the porch - I just want him off my furniture!  There was one curious suggestion that I might try:  egg shells.  Lizards reportedly do not like to encounter egg shells, for it makes them think there's a snake (or some other predator) in the vicinity.  I might slip some egg shells under the pillows.  I'll let you know if it works.