Watered the Garden - June 30, 2023

My sister called earlier in the week and said that she'd found hornworms on her tomato plants.  Later that evening, The Husband and I went to the garden to inspect our plants for worms and, sure enough, found several.  

The Great Northern Beans (2nd crop) that we planted last week had still not sprouted Wednesday evening, so Thursday evening, I set the sprinkler out and watered most of the garden.  About the time I was finishing, The Nephew said that it's supposed to rain this weekend.  It'll be ok if it does rain.  We need it.

My first day home alone with Axel was not so bad.  About mid-morning, I went down to Nanny's to mow her yard.  When I got home, there was an empty and torn hamburger bun sack in the entry hall.  The buns had been on top of our chest-type freezer, and he just helped himself while I was gone.  Probably didn't even have to tip-toe.  Other than that, he spent most of the time splayed out and snoozing on the cool floor.

Besides being a great hulking beast, Axel has two very bad traits: (1) He stares a hole in you while you try to eat.

He has a very sensitive stomach, and we have to limit both the quantity and type of food he eats.  Nothing but canned dog food and water, or else he pukes.  He was very interested in the slice of frozen pepperoni pizza I was eating for supper.  (2) is he likes to press his anus against your knee (or whatever he can reach.  When I refused him my pizza, he got all offended and tried to stick his butt against my foot.  This is most annoying.

Pet-Sitting Again - June 30, 2023

While Son #1 and family have gone on short trip, The Husband and I are babysitting their great beast of a dog, Axel.  

He is a Rottweiler.  He weighs roughly 160 pounds.  He is a gentle giant, not a vicious bone in his body, but dang he is stubborn.  He does what you ask him if it suits him.  

The Husband and I do not have a pet and do not want one.  Both of our sons have pets.  We have babysat dogs and cats for Son #2, but this is the first time Son #1 has asked us to babysit Axel.  We had to day yes because we've babysat two dogs and a cat for Son #2.  Gotta be fair.

Axel arrived last night with a dogfood bowl the size of a big mixing bowl and a wireless fence.  When we let him out this morning to "do his business," he trotted out to the limit of his fence and would not come back when called.  He went over to the neighbor's yard and dropped a massive poop.  The Husband and I called and called, and he'd stop and look at us for a second or two, then continue his investigation of his unfamiliar surroundings.  There is no such thing as clipping a leash on his collar and dragging him back to the house.  At 160 pounds, he is impossible to lead.  

I wanted to choke him.  After about 15 minutes, The Husband and I gave up and started back to the house, at which time he came barreling toward us like a freight train and ran straight onto the back porch and into the house when we opened the door.

This is going to be a l-o-n-g weekend.

Pickling - June 29, 2023

This year's first batch of pickled cucumbers just went in to soak overnight in pickling lime water.

Experts recommend against using pickling lime in home-canned pickles.  The reason for this is that canned pickles need to maintain a certain acidity in order to prevent botulism.  Lime lowers acidity, and if any lime remains on the cucumbers as they go into the jars, botulism could develop.  

I wash the cucumbers very thoroughly when they come out of the pickling lime solution.  Wash, and wash, and wash, and I'm not talking about lifting them out of one bath and dropping them into clean water, repeatedly; I'm talking about washing them under running water (repeatedly), and then dropping them into clean water, and if a film develops on the clean water, wash them some more.

We have a good many jars of pickles - sweet and dill - left from last year, so today I am trying the "red hots" (cinnamon pickles) recipe that people used to make when I was a kid.  After these pickles finish soaking in lime water (24 hours), I'll rinse them well and soak them in ice water for a few hours.  I'll rinse them again (probably several times) before cooking them in the syrup.  There were a few hot peppers - cayenne and jalapeno - in the picking bucket, so I threw them in the lime water, too.  Might tuck them in the jars with the pickles.  

The recipe calls for red food coloring, which I think I will skip, since the red hots candy ought to tint them.

This makes close to 20 pounds of cucumbers that we have picked in a week's time. 

We planted W-A-Y too many cucumbers.

P.S. - That stuff behind the cucumbers that looks like meat is actually the little chunk of Nanny's birthday cake that she made us keep.  We want to eat it, but are trying to stay away from sugary things.

I suppose pickles also count as "sugary things," don't they?  ;)

A Surprise Birthday Party - June 27, 2023

Today is Nanny's birthday.  Until noon today, the plan was for the whole family - kids and grandkids - to meet at a local restaurant for dinner.  I was going to make the birthday cake.

Everybody but Nanny knew about this plan.  We weren't trying to keep it a secret from her to surprise her, we just all neglected to tell her.  

A little before noon, I went to the grocery store to get stuff to make a cake.  While I was in the grocery store, The Husband called and said the restaurant wasn't taking reservations, as it had been packed every night since Sunday night's storm (which had knocked out power in a large area, but not at that restaurant).  They couldn't guarantee us a table for 10.  

I didn't much care where we ate and named off a few other nearby restaurants.  The Husband said he'd call his sister and they'd come up with Plan B.  Meanwhile, I found a frozen strawberry cake in the deli section and decided it would do just fine for the birthday cake.  Shortly after I returned home from the grocery store, The Husband called and said that Plan B was "the party is at our house."   Surprise!  There was a moment of panic before he told me his sister was bringing barbeque and fixings.  Whew, no cooking.  Cool.

An hour before the party was to start, our next-door neighbor called and asked me to go check on her grandfather, who lives here on the hill.  "Uncle B" (as my children called him), age 93, had taken a nap on the couch and could not get up.  I put on some shoes and hurried across the road to check on him.  He was lying flat on his back on the couch and could not figure out how to sit up.  The couch had sort of swallowed him.  I helped him sit up, and once he had his bearings, I helped him to his feet.  Other than being 93 and frail, he was okay.  Once his daughter called and said she was on her way, I came home to set up for the party.  

The Husband came home just as I reached our driveway.  I had seen Nanny's car go by while I was with Uncle B, and it seemed odd that she would have gone somewhere so soon before the party.  When I asked The Husband if he had told Nanny about the party, he said he hadn't talked to her but assumed that his sister had told her.  His sister had assumed HE had told her.  In any case, she showed up on time.

The strawberry birthday cake from the deli freezer was absolutely delicious. Seriously.

After supper, Nanny opened her presents.  The "hit" gift was a bag of candy from each member of Son #1's family - 82 "Kisses," 82 Tootsie Rolls, 82 jelly beans, etc. - one piece of each kind of candy for each of her 82 years.  

Camera Trouble - June 26, 2023

I could not wait for The Husband to get out of bed Sunday morning to check his phone for trail cam footage of the critter we're trying to trap.  This camera is so weird.  It has WIFI, but in order to see the pictures on a phone, you have to use a wrist-watch-looking thing that somehow patches the phone to the camera.  I have not bothered to learn how to do it, so I went out to see if there was anything in the trap.

The trap had been moved, and fresh holes had been dug around it, but the digger had not gone in.  Nevertheless, I was excited at the prospect of finally identifying the culprit.  Surely the trail cam had caught the goings-on, because the digger had been there for a while, digging all those holes. 

As soon as The Husband got out of bed, we checked his phone for pics/videos.  

I don't get it.  There were videos of us setting up the trap, and one of us taking the SD card out of the camera the next morning, but nothing in between.  

The Husband said, "We have a ghost varmint."

For some reason that escapes me at this moment, I wanted to take the SD card out of the camera and examine its contents on my laptop.  I ended up accidentally deleting ALL of the files on the card.  All of them.  Probably a couple of years' worth of pictures.  

Once upon a time, I knew enough about computers and MS-DOS to have undeleted the pictures, if pictures can be undeleted from an SD card (the internet says it's possible).  So I spent about an hour trying to undelete the pictures from the DOS prompt.  No luck.  

I wasn't wildly upset about having deleted the pictures, even though they documented some pretty important events, like birthdays and weddings.  The thing is that if I go to the trouble of getting out my camera to photograph an event (versus using my phone camera), I usually transfer them to my laptop right away because I want to see how they turned out.  The good ones I copy to my hard drive right away.  Still, the fact that I had not been able to undelete the pictures perturbed me.  I like to do what I set out to do.  

Eventually, I paid for an app that promised results.  $75+, tax and all.  And it basically was doing the same thing I was trying to do from the DOS prompt.

It didn't work.

It might have worked if I had been willing to spring for the "premium" version, but I wasn't willing.  

So we put the card - the now empty card - back in the camera.  

Before I deleted the pictures, I had noticed that the date/time stamp was wrong and mentioned it to The Husband.  While I was trying to undelete the pictures, he fiddled with the buttons on the camera and fixed the settings.  Some time around noon yesterday, he strapped the camera back in place and re-set the trap.

The camera took pictures and 30-second videos from then until this morning.  HUNDREDS of them.  And although the camera was still going at it when I went outside to check the trap (it caught me in my nightgown), it failed to produce a video of the crazy out-of-nowhere storm that hit yesterday about 7 p.m. and downed a tree in the "way back" section of our yard.  And during the night, the only images it captured were bugs flying past.  No sight of the critter.

I'm beginning to think he's smart enough to delete the pictures of himself.  :-\

Be Vewy, Vewy Kwyet - June 24, 2023

Elmer Fudd and I just set the critter trap, the one that the critter busted out of the last time we caught it.  

The trail cam filmed a set of whiskers last night.  There was fresh digging in the yard.  

It so happened that yesterday, as I was puttering around in the yard, I noticed the trap and picked it up and examined the damage.  The critter had evidently rammed the trap door until he bent the wires that hold it shut.  I set the trap on the patio table and straightened the wires as best I could, but I could not get the trap to latch.  I put it aside and resumed my puttering.  This morning The Husband decided to have a go at it and managed to get the trap to set.  Figuring that the critter can bend the wires even easier next time (since they've already been bent once), he decided to try to reinforce them.  We had these two bizarre strips of flat, hard metal (can't bend it with your hands) that were just the right length to use, but how to attach them to the trap wires?  We wound up zip-tying them.  

This afternoon I said, "Let's set the trap, and put it where the trail cam can see it."  

A few minutes ago, we set it.  I dug up some fresh dirt in sight of the camera and set the trap over it.  We then poured a little potting soil through the mesh.  

It's ready for him.

Compost = June 24, 2023

Yesterday was something of a "red letter day" in my gardening history.

Yesterday, I spread my first batch of home-made compost around some tomato plants in our vegetable garden. 

This particular batch of compost began "cooking" nearly a year ago, when The Husband gave me a small compost bin for my birthday.  I already had a composter, but it was (1) big and unruly and (2) situated in a spot that made me worry about snakes, spiders, and such. 

See the black cannon-looking thing behind my newly-built compost bin?  (My granddaughters decorated the new bin.)  My sister gave me that black composter over years ago.  Now that I think about it, this composter did produce one small batch of compost.  The problem was that it was a b*tch to get the compost out.  AND when I dumped it, out ran the biggest spider I have ever seen in my life.  

Here's the composter The Husband gave me for my birthday last year. We parked it closer to the back door, in a non-creepy spot, in the hope that I would use it.  

It has two compartments.  I suppose one is for finished compost, and the other is for in-progress compost.  I have been sporadically adding things - mostly un-shredded dry leaves with occasional wet kitchen scraps - to both compartments.  After a year, the stuff in the right-hand compartment still looks pretty much like it looked when I put it in.  But in the left-hand compartment, this spring I added shredded leaves and wood chips.

Neither compost tumbler gets tumbled very often.

I figured an actual compost bin might be the solution, so I built one out of pallets, thinking I could tend the compost more conveniently.  That proved to be true, but the bin presents other problems.  

I know what you're thinking, and it's all true.  I don't know what I'm doing.  With all the tools at my disposal, I should have made enough compost to fill the world, but I haven't even made enough to fill the low spot in the vegetable garden.

I will keep trying.

There is one bright spot, though.  There were THREE big, fat earthworms in the compost that came out of the left-hand compartment of the birthday composter.  How they got in there is a mystery.  Although we can dig just about anywhere in our yard and find earthworms, we NEVER see one in the vegetable garden.  Are we chopping them up with the tiller?  Whatever is the case, I have been contemplating buying worms from a bait shop and relocating them to the garden (and still plan to do it).  Finding those worms in the compost made me so happy.  I took the compost to the garden, spread it around the tomato plants, and told the worms, "Be fruitful, and multiply!  Run free!"  

I hope the mid-day sun didn't dry them up before they had a chance to drill down into the ground.

 

   

Great Northern Beans, Round 2 - June 23, 2023

On May 3, I planted dried great northern beans, straight from the grocery store bag.  Those bad boys sprouted immediately and lived through the subsequent monsoon season when some other garden plants drowned.  They are now LOADED with beans.  

The dried pinto beans that I planted straight from the grocery store bag two weeks ago have not come up, so this morning I plowed up the rows and re-planted them with more great northern beans.  There is still a enough moisture in the ground from last week's rains to bring them up, and it's supposed to rain this weekend.  If this planting does like the first planting did, we might even have time for a third crop before the summer is over.  

While running the big tiller, I noticed that the bolt has come out of the tire again.  <sigh>

First Squash and Cucumbers - June 22, 2023

 At lunchtime today, I took a break and walked down to the vegetable garden.  It had been several days since I'd seen it, and several more since I'd done any work in it because the ground was too wet.  

And who did I catch out there hoeing between the purple hull pea rows?  Yep, Nanny.  She claimed she was just getting ready to quit and sat down under a shade tree while I went to look at the garden.

The whole squash row needed picking!  It yielded half of a 5-gallon bucket full of squash, quite a haul for a "first pickin'."   

On the cucumber row, there was a double handful of cucumbers big enough to pick, and a bunch more that will be big enough in a day or two.  I don't know what I'm going to do with all these cucumbers.  We still have pickles and cucumber relish left from last year.  Maybe I should start looking for some new recipes.

There were good-sized green tomatoes on the tomato vines.  Some fried green tomatoes would be yummy, but I have a strict rule against picking green tomatoes until I've had that first ripe tomato/mayo sandwich, and we're a ways off from that.  My brother texted me earlier in the week that he had picked a ripe tomato off of the plants I gave him.  I bet he had his tomato/mayo sandwich that very day.

There was work that needed to be done.  The tomato plants needed to be tied to their stakes.  (Some plants don't even have stakes - we ran out.  I am considering carpeting the ground with cardboard around those un-staked tomatoes and just letting them do their natural thing.)  There was grass to be pulled/dug up.  Since this trip to the garden was just an exercise break, I told Nanny I'd be back come evening.  She took some of the squash and cucumbers, and I lugged the rest home in the bucket.  

I took out enough squash for a small casserole and delivered the rest to Son #2's family.  

My casserole was not very good.  Tomorrow, I'm going to doctor it and serve it again.

Critter Watch - June 20, 2023

The Husband and I were absolute slugs yesterday.  He was home, being off work for Juneteenth.  We had leftovers in the refrigerator and had no need to cook.  He either sat in his recliner, surfing the internet on his tablet, or sat in the office, playing along with ukulele videos.  I sat either on the back porch (also surfing the internet) or on the bed in the spare room, playing the new Zelda game.  

I did manage a mid-morning walkabout in the yard.  The zinnia bed I showed you yesterday has been invaded by a weed that I've been watching for a week or two.  Didn't have a clue what it was.  Its foliage is pretty - rather fern-like - and I have been contemplating letting some of it stay.  Yesterday, I decided to try to identify it, to see if it is invasive or if it has a pretty bloom.  Come to find out, it is a type of prostrate spurge.  The pictures showed blooms that are not very showy.  I decided it had to go and spent a few minutes pulling it up.  I did leave one or two little samples, to see what they'll eventually do.  Will probably end up yanking them out once I see what the bloom looks like.

(A dove just landed on the swingset in the back yard and called its mate.  A few seconds later, the mate flew in, landed, and flew away again.  I've been hearing dove calls all morning, but I have never actually SEEN a dove doing its call.  Cool.)

After the weeding, I resumed my slugging.  (Slughood?)  Watched some watercolor tutorials.  Played Zelda off and on throughout the afternoon.  

This game . . . . 

I've written about the Zelda game series in other posts.  I've loved the games because they teach lessons.    Link, the main character, is the quintessential hero, determined to save the princess (and the whole society) from an evil presence.  He fights monsters, not people.  He has to use his wits to overcome obstacles.  In this new game, he encounters unfamiliar objects and must figure out their use in order to accomplish his goals.  Children probably don't have nearly the trouble figuring out what to do with these object as this old lady does!  

Ah, well . . . it keeps me off the streets.  ;)

* * * * * * * * 

The Husband did manage to set up the trail camera that he got for Fathers Day.  He strapped it to a two-wheeled dolly so that we can easily move it around the yard (which I thought was pretty smart).  

He aimed it at the shed, where we think Jose' lives, but we got no pictures last night.

Celebrations - June 19, 2023

We had a very nice weekend celebrating birthdays and Fathers Day with family.  

Saturday afternoon, we celebrated the birthdays of Son #2 and Granddaughter #1.  They were "big" birthdays - #40 for the Son, and #18 for the Granddaughter.  The son took a little ribbing about turning 40.

I am "Last-Minute Lucy" when it comes to planning family get-togethers.  Once upon a time, I cooked Sunday dinner every week for anyone who wanted to come eat.  Then our boys grew up, got jobs, and acquired wives and children and work obligations, and my parents passed away, and gradually the weekly dinners came to a halt.  But this weekend everyone was off work, and it was a triple-event weekend (two birthdays and Fathers Day), and just before the Saturday birthday parties were over, it occurred to me to invite everyone to Sunday supper.

They all came!

I cooked BIG - baked ham AND meatloaf, scalloped potatoes, green bean casserole, slaw, skillet corn - thinking we'd have enough leftovers to eliminate the need to cook for a couple of days.  The meatloaf was an afterthought that hit me when I went to the grocery store to buy stuff for the green bean casserole.  I made a big one, thinking The Husband and I would have meat loaf sandwiches the next night.  At the end of the meal, there was a 1" square of meatloaf left.  No meatloaf sandwiches for us tonight.  We packed up leftovers for Son #1, who is working today, and then we all retired to the back porch.

Both sons brought their guitars.  The Husband got out his baritone uke.  They played and sang everthing from old-time gospel to new-fangled country.  

It was a good ending to a good weekend.  :)

Essence - June 17, 2023

Look!  Since the trees came down, I have enough sun to grow zinnias!

This morning, there is one fully-open zinnia bloom, and buds are forming all over the place.

This bed has two different ages of zinnias - two full packets of seeds, planted about two weeks apart.  Most of the second sowing washed downhill to the lower edge of the bed and came up in a tight row.  Some of these I moved to another bed.  The move set them back a bit, but they'll be settling in soon.

There is also yarrow in that bed, and bee balm, and a few other things.  Lavender.  It shocked me that the lavender survived this year's freezes.  They didn't bloom this year (or at least haven't yet bloomed), but they're alive.

See that boat at the end of the flower bed?  The tree-cutters found this boat buried in leaves near the trees they cut.  One of them wanted it, and we said he could have it, but they left without it.  It probably leaks, and we've been offering it to everyone who comments on it.  This week, I toured a local woman's flower garden, and she had turned a boat like this into a planter.  Some things were planted directly in dirt in the boat, and other things were planted in pots on top of the soil.  It was kinda neat.  Since we have a pond just at the bottom of the hill, I may steal the lady's idea.

* * * * * * * * 

The title of this post - "Essence" - was written early this morning, when I was contemplating watercolor painting.  And fragrances.  And communities.  Maybe I'll pontificate on those things some other time, when I don't have to be elsewhere soon.  Today is another birthday party day.  I just checked on the two cakes I made yesterday to make sure that the icing hadn't slid off the cakes, and it hadn't.  Good to go.

Grocery Shopping - June 16, 2023

I despise shopping of any sort, especially grocery shopping.  When Kroger and Walmart came out with their "click list" shopping options, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.  Unfortunately, neither option is equipped to guard against user error, which is my main problem.

Yesterday, I sat down and placed an order to be picked up between 9 and 10 this morning.  As I was finishing up the order, one of those "Did you forget something?" windows popped up.  I had, in fact, forgotten something, so I went back and added to my order.

This morning, I went to pick up the order.  On the way, it occurred to me that I had not received a text confirming my order.  When I got to the store, I checked my cart and, sure enough, I had not completed the process.  My order wasn't ready.

Nasty words spewed forth.

I ended up going into the store to buy groceries, spending at least 50% more than the total of the online cart.

*sigh*

The problem with food shopping is that you have to handle the items so many times.  Put them in the cart, take them out of the cart, put them in a bag, put the bags in the cart, take the bags out of the cart and put them in the car, take them out of the car, put them in the cabinet.  THEN take them out to cook them.  Psssshhhht.  Bum deal.

I had just put away the last item when my telephone rang.  It was Son #2.  He and Granddaughter #1 are both having birthdays within the next few days, and there's a dual birthday party scheduled for tomorrow.  I had not volunteered to make a birthday cake and had not been asked to do so.  Since this year is a "big year" for both Son #2 and Granddaughter #1, I thought maybe they were getting a special, fancy store-bought cake.  But no, Son #2 was calling to let me know that Granddaughter #1 had requested an Orange Crush Cake, like I'd made for her and her sisters in years past.

So now I gotta go back to the grocery store.

After I find the recipe.

Touring - June 14, 2023

Two full days (plus some) of playing tour guide, and I am exhausted.  

This was a work-related duty.  We had two "advisors" come to see the town and evaluate it with a view toward community improvement.  A co-worker and I showed them around Monday and Tuesday.  This morning, I picked them up at their hotel (at 5:15!) and took them to the airport.

I despise driving on the interstate.  Because I do it so rarely these days, I am constantly anxious about being in the correct lane in time to make my exit.  The speed of the traffic makes me afraid.  This morning, it was raining cats and dogs, and my windshield kept fogging up, and I had two strangers in the car.  I was a nervous wreck by the time I dropped them off at the airport.  The drive home in the rain wasn't much less stressful.

On the way home, I remembered that I had the office credit card and two hotel invoices in my purse that needed to go to the office, so I passed right by my house and went on back to town.  

It was still raining when I made it back home.  I'd been up since 2:30 (worrying that I would over-sleep) and really wanted to go back to bed, but I also really wanted to practice painting with watercolors, something I've lately taken up.  Been watching tutorials, and occasionally get up the courage to pick up a brush and try to paint along.  

A Wild Week - June 11, 2023

It's raining at my house tonight.  Good.  We need it.  With all that's been going on around here, I never got around to watering the tomatoes I planted a few days ago, and it's going to be hard to find time to water them for the next few days.  

The third and final event of The Husband's class reunion was last night.  It was fun.  We got home about 11:30.

I had to get up and at 'em early this morning, which was made difficult by the gin I drank last night.  Today is Granddaughter #3's birthday, and I was in charge of the cake.  I baked the cake, made the filling, and assembled the cake yesterday, but the frosting was whipped cream, and I was afraid it would deflate overnight.  Although the birthday party wasn't until 2, I had to drop off the cake by 11:30 because I had to pick someone up from the airport at 1:15.  The ride home from the airport turned into a county tour that lasted all afternoon, but it was fun.

Tomorrow and the next day we will do the "official" tour, what he really came to see.  

Company - June 10, 2023

It's been a busy week on the hill.

The Husband's niece and her family were our house guests this week.  They arrived Monday and left for home yesterday (Friday).  Tuesday evening, we invited all the family on the hill to supper and fed them BBQ ribs and fixin's.  We had a good time.  One of our guests was a four-year-old boy.  It's been a long time since little boys were in our house, but we still have trains and tractors and superhero swords left over from two generations of other little boys, so the little chap was pretty well entertained.  I found his cowboy boots in the bedroom after he left, along with various hair clips, lotions, and lip gloss left by his 12-year-old sister.  Looks like I'll be mailing a package this week.  

This weekend The Husband's high school class is holding their 45-year class reunion.  Notice that I said, "This weekend . . . ."  It's not a one-day event.  Friday night there was a "meet & greet" at a local community center.  Last night, there was a cookout at a park.  The Husband spent all day Saturday hauling grills and ice and drinks to the park.  Tonight there's a final party at a venue just up the road from our house.  It is so weird to look at these high school friends and see an ocean of gray hair. 

Tomorrow is The Nugget's (Granddaughter #3's) birthday.  She asked for a coffee-flavored birthday cake.  I found a recipe for a tiramisu cake.  I will make the layers and the filling today, but will wait until tomorrow to make the whipped-cream frosting.

* * * * * * * 

I worked in the vegetable garden a lot this week, mostly chopping weeds/grass.  The pinto beans we planted last weekend still have not sprouted.  We're supposed to get some rain over the next few days, so maybe that will bring them up.

There were two small squash on the vines late in the week.  They're probably big enough to eat by now.

We finally have little tomatoes on the grape tomato plant.  The other tomatoes (some of them) are just starting to bloom.  I replaced the drowned tomatoes with the extra plants that have been living on our patio table all season.  I did not water them at the time I planted them, intending to come back to water them later in the day, but things came up, and I forgot.  I hope they're still alive to benefit from the coming rain.

Jose' - June 6, 2023

Well, we caught Jose' last night.

With POTTING SOIL for bait.  I kid you not.

Only trouble is, he fought his way out of the trap and vamoosed.  Sprung it, or rather BENT the spring.

He is one bad hombre'.  

I don't know what to do now.  We bought the biggest live trap we could find.  What else is there?  Bear trap?  

Jose', bad as he is, could probably dig up the post and run off with the trap.

Maybe we could nail it to a board so that even if only his tail got caught, he couldn't get back in his hole.  *snicker*

So I just went to Amazon and bought a trail camera that will send pictures to your phone.

Happy Fathers Day to The Hubby.  ;)

See that silver metal bar at the end of the trap?  It's not supposed to be bent.

Flour - June 5, 2023

Nanny did not come out of the house Saturday afternoon when The Husband and I went to the garden to plant the pinto beans.  I figured she was still sore at me for running her out of the garden earlier in the day.  

We'd driven the truck to the garden because it was full of broken-down cardboard boxes that The Husband has been saving from work.  Saving boxes is one garden-related chore that he doesn't mind doing, since it saves weeding work in the long-run.  He had a bunch of boxes.  After planting the beans (on a straight row, mind you) we slit the boxes open so that we could lay them out flat between the rows.  At least half of the garden is now "paved" with them.  We'll still have to do some weeding around the plants, but the middles will pretty much take care of themselves, and the cardboard will help keep moisture in the ground.

Nanny came out while we were putting the cardboard down.  She didn't seem too mad. 

* * * * * * * * 

Yesterday morning, I tackled our yard, which has suffered from neglect while we've spent our efforts in the vegetable garden.  The bed along the back wall of our house is in my line of vision when I'm sitting at my work table on the back porch.  It was so overgrown with phlox and daylilies and trumpet vine and other things that I felt like I needed snake boots to tackle it.  It looks better today.

Job 2 was planting the rose bush that I was given for Mothers Day.  This required more daylily digging.  I threw those in the compost.  When I finally got the hole dug and pulled the rose bush out of its pot to plant it, about a million ants fell into the hole.  I squirted them with dishwashing liquid and kept planting.  I hope it doesn't kill the bush.

Yesterday afternoon, after most of the yard work was done, a little rain shower came up, enough to do us some good.  This ought to bring those beans right out of the ground, if they intend to come out.

* * * * * * * 

We have been sleuthing Jose'.  Friday night, The Husband turned on the outdoor camera by the driveway to see if we could catch him red-handed, but all it recorded was a pair of unidentified glowing eyes.  I had the bright idea to dust around the shed (under which we believe Jose' lives) with flour so that we could see how he's coming/going for intel on the best place to set the trap.  I also dusted a path across the front sidewalk.  

An hour later, the rainstorm came and washed away most of the flour.  <sigh>

This morning, there was a faint sprinkling of flour remaining near the shed.  I didn't see any tracks in it, but there appears to be new dirt on TOP of the flour.

I hope Jose' has dough stuck to his belly fur today.

Sunny Day for Pinto Bean Plantin' - June 3, 2023

I hurt Nanny's feelings a little bit this morning.  I can't say I didn't mean to, because I knew what I was about to say to her would hurt her feelings and I said it, anyhow, but my intentions were pure; it was for her own good.  And mine.

My gardening plan for this morning was to plant pinto beans (dried ones from the grocery store) in the empty ends of the white bean rows.  The soil would need tilling, first.   I drove my car to the garden because I knew that after wrestling the tiller, I'd be too tired to make it home on foot.

Nanny did not come out when I drove up, and I hurried to the shed and got out the tiller and went straight to work.  I'd been running the tiller for about an hour and a half when I shut it off for a minute to pull weeds, or something.  I knew it was a mistake.  When Nanny hears the tiller quit, she thinks it's time to plant seeds, and that's one way she can help.  And sure enough, when I looked up, Nanny was coming across the yard with a bottle of cold water in her hand.   

She gave it to me and started on about how I was getting too hot, my face was beet red, I need to get in the shade and cool off.  I agreed that it was, indeed, hot, but said that I only had a little more to do, then I would go home and cool off and come back later in the day to plant.  I drank some water, thanked her, and turned the tiller down the next row.  When I got to the end and turned around again, Nanny was at the other end of the row, hoeing around the squash.  

Pushing 82 years old, heart trouble, one kidney, had JUST told me it was too hot to be working in the garden, and she's out there hoeing.  I knew what she was doing:  (1) helping, and (2) watching me in case I fell out with a heat stroke.  But, still, I was irked.  I shut off the tiller and went over to her and said, "Nanny, I want you to put that hoe down and get out of the sun.  It's too hot for you to be out here, and I can't concentrate on what I'm doing for worrying about you."  I might have used the word "hindering" somewhere in the conversation.  

Her chin quivered, but I stayed firm and told her to go inside and watch from the back door, if she had to watch.

She went inside. 

I went back to the tiller.  As I started up the next row, a cloud came over.  The temperature dropped a few degrees, and a little breeze came up and felt good on my sweaty skin.  I said to myself, She's probably in there telling God on me.  And He's probably thinking, I can't make the hard-head quit without hurting her, but I can cool her off a little bit.

The tiller ran out of gas at the end of that row, and the sun came out again, just as I was contemplating making a quick pass around the tomatoes.  I took it as a sign; time to quit; no more tilling for today.  I went to the shed for the gas can, intending to fill up the tank, crank the tiller, and let it walk itself to the shed.  The gas can has one of those safety nozzles that you have to squeeze and push down at the same time to get the gas to come out, and I squeezed and pushed, and there was gas in the can, but it would NOT come out the nozzle.  I set the gas can in the shade and went to Nanny's back door and hollered inside, "You can stop praying now.  I'm quitting.  I'll be back later to plant."

I'll need to run the tiller again before we plant, to straighten out the rows.  Crooked rows drive Nanny and The Husband crazy.  (I guess it's genetic.)  After the minor skirmish that Nanny and I had when we were planting purple hull peas for the second time, I made a plumb line with hemp string and stakes, thinking we'll not have this problem again.  So this afternoon, when gardening re-commences, I'll take out the plumb line and Nanny and The Husband can mark off some nice, straight rows, and The Husband make up the rows and Nanny can drop the seeds.  In a straight line.

While I go around the tomatoes.  

* * * * * * * * 

Jose', that S.O.B., dug in my flowers again last night.  These petunias are never going to grow if he keeps digging them up.  I hate his ass.  He's got to go.

He avoided the trap we baited with dirt.  We probably put it in the wrong place.  Tonight, I'm moving it to the front sidewalk, near where he's been digging. 

Afternoon Rain - June 2, 2023

I'd planned to work in the vegetable garden this afternoon, but a sudden rain came up and nixed that idea.  

I'm not complaining; we need the rain.  The Farmer planted corn in the field across the road, and he fertilized it yesterday.  Rain will help dissolve the little pellets. 

Today's gardening chore was to do some tilling.  A quarter of the garden - the low spot - is empty.  I intend to extend the northern bean rows, either with more northerns or some pintos.  Never have grown pintos.  Might ought to try it.

And the rest of the empty space can be a melon patch.

Diggers - June 1, 2023

I have HAD IT with whatever critter is digging up my flowers.

Asshole.

It must be the smell of fresh dirt that's attracting it.  I said to The Husband, "We should bait the live trap with a pile of dirt."  

He said, "I suggested that a couple of months ago, and you said it was silly."

"Well, you should have tried it, anyway."

Neither of us has baited the trap with dirt, yet.  I'm going to do it tomorrow.

To discourage the animal (I think I will call him Jose') from digging up the flowers I planted this weekend, I set a mouse trap in the flower bed near the new plantings.  He sprung it the first night and side-stepped the flower bed but dug in the newly-planted flower pot on the sidewalk.    

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, The Husband made another silly suggestion:  sprinkle red pepper flakes around all the new plants.  I did it immediately.  Let Jose' get a snoot full of that!  He hasn't dug there since (that I can tell).  Instead, he dug up one of the daylilies I transplanted yesterday and had forgotten to pepper.  

In this, Jose' might have done me a favor.  The area where I planted those daylilies is the hard-packed shoulder of a gravel driveway, and loosening the soil was a nightmare.  By the time I got to the third clump, I flung it at a shallow hole, mashed it down with my foot, and called it quits.  Replanting the daylilies this evening, I observed that the clump settled in a little better.  Jose's digging had loosened the soil a bit, I guess.

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