My brain runneth over - May 18, 2021

 

After I wrote that last post in which I threatened to round-up everything in my yard, I got a text from a fellow gardener:

"Hey google the medicinal benefits of the houttonya (chameleon plant).  You won't believe it. It may make both of us appreciate it more.  Maybe we will stop trying to kill it."

This is the very same wench that gave me chameleon plant ten years ago and then laughed about it when it ate my yard.

But I googled it, like she suggested. 

Here, let me save you some trouble

Anti-inflammatory functions of Houttuynia cordata Thunb. and its compounds: A perspective on its potential role in rheumatoid arthritis (nih.gov)

After I read that and some other stuff, I went outside, got me a leaf, and ate it.

It wasn't too bad.  I could stand a little bit of it raw in a salad.  Or maybe in salsa.  And I could for sure dry it and make tea with it.  

I'm 'bout to show the chameleon plants who's the boss around here.

Reading those articles reminded me that somewhere in the house there's an herbalist book.  It was on the "how-to" shelf.  Chameleon plant wasn't in it, but I thumbed through it and noted about two dozen plants that grow in and around my yard that are good medicinal plants.

This calls for further investigation.

Sunday Yardwork - May 17, 2021

 

I don't know how it started, really.  One minute I was sitting on the back porch, thinking of working on a new embroidery design, and the next I was head-down in flower beds, pulling "sticky weed."

This stuff is awful.  Even the leaves will stick to anything they touch - when you pull it up, it won't let go of your hand - and when it goes to seed it produces millions of tiny, sticky green balls.  I pulled up a wheel-barrow load of the stuff and had to de-ball myself before I could go back in the house.  

While pulling weeds, I found a bloom on a David Austin rose that I thought had long since died.  It was in full sun when I planted it, umpteen years ago.  For the past ten years or more, it's lived in the shade of a volunteer crape myrtle tree that we should've cut down the minute we discovered it.  When I saw the bloom, I decided that I should dig the rose up and move it to where it could get some sun (there are precious few of those places in our yard).  

Problem:  the rose is embedded in crape myrtle roots.  I dug and dug, and couldn't budge it, and in the process knocked off every spindly cane on the bush.  (I put one of the canes in a vase of water, hoping it'll root.)  The only thing I know to do is cut down the crape myrtle.  We ruined our electric chainsaw while cutting back Nanny's crape myrtles last month.  The Husband said he will buy a new one this week, and we will tackle the crape myrtle this coming weekend.  (I told him to buy some stump killer, too.)  

After battling the rose bush for about an hour, I decided that I need to kill everything in our yard and start over.  Every bed in the yard is choked with phlox.  In addition to the sticky weed, we also have a crown vetch problem.  And a chameleon vine problem.  And poison ivy and Virginia creeper.  Plus seedlings from every tree in the neighborhood.  I can't keep all of this stuff at bay.  It's going to wrap up our house!  Though I hate the thought of using Round-Up in our yard, it looks like that's the only way to win this battle.  

Weekend Warriors - May 16, 2021

 

Son #1 called early yesterday morning, wanting to know if he could borrow our power-washer to wash his house.  I said, "Sure, if you're brave enough to get it out of the shed."  (I won't go in past the door.)

I bought this power-washer for The Husband's birthday a couple of years ago.  At the time, we had a camper, and he'd been washing it with the water hose and a brush on a long stick.  We subsequently sold the camper.  The power-washer had never been used.  I didn't even know where all the gizmos were, but I did, at least, find the instruction manual.  

As my son was getting the thing out of the shed, I said, "I wish I'd put a condition on loaning this to you.  I wish I'd said, 'Yes, you can borrow it, if you'll do my house when you finish."

He said he would, but I didn't hold him to it.  He's been working the night shift for the past umpteen months, and this was the first Saturday in a long time that he hasn't needed to sleep half the day.  I figured he had plenty to do at his own house.

A little later in the afternoon, Son #2's wife texted me this picture:

Son #2 has worked 40 days with only 4 days off, and yesterday he decided to climb up on their roof, clean gutters, and saw off some low-hanging limbs that were brushing the roof.  

I texted her back:  "Make him get down."  

The Husband went to work yesterday to get some stuff done while the office was quiet.  I spent the day working on embroidery designs.  About 5 p.m., I fixed myself a big, stout gin & tonic and retired to the back porch to enjoy it.  I was just finishing it when Son #2 called and asked if we could babysit The Granddaughters while they ran some errands.  "Bring 'em on!"   I did not tell him I was half-looped.  I just made sure not to hold the baby while I was standing up.  ;) 

* * * * * * * * *

We walked down to the garden Friday evening to check on it.  Looks like we're going to have to re-plant all the beans and peas.  

 

I reckon I've just been too lazy to write for the past week or so, or maybe it's just that I haven't had much to write about except rain, rain, RAIN, and I'm sick of that subject.  So let's talk about something else.

Last Friday was my brother's birthday, and it was a big one (75!).  My sister made him a delicious carrot cake, and we gathered at his house on Saturday to eat and visit.  My siblings and I have taken the pandemic precautions seriously from the get-go, and the three of us have not been together for over a year.  It was nice to finally see everyone at the same time, now that we've all been vaccinated.    

Saturday evening, I went down to the garden to plant the squash and zucchini that I'd sprouted from seeds.  Yeah, it was muddy, but I waded in and punched the sprouts into the dirt.  Nanny came out to the back porch as I made my way across the yard.  She was upset.  Some critter had dug up all of the petunias that we'd planted in her flower pots a week or two ago.  Not only did it dig up the petunias, it dragged them all over the yard, and Nanny had to go around gathering up the plants.  I suggested that we set a live trap to see if we could catch the vandal.  I suspected that it was an armadillo (because I blame everything on the armadillos).  A friend told me she had trapped an armadillo by using a rotten banana for bait.  I didn't think that armadillos would go after bananas, but I had a half-rotten banana on my kitchen table, so I came home to get it, and we baited the trap with it.  We also strapped a trail-cam to a porch post so that we could at least see the culprit even if we couldn't catch it.  

Sunday was Mother's Day.  My older son invited us to his house for a cookout.  Of course, it rained - a light drizzle in the middle of the day - but we cooked out, anyway.  Later, when we took Nanny her present, we asked if the trap had caught the petunia thief.  It turned out to be a raccoon, but the trail-cam filmed it pulling the banana through the back side of the trap; it never went inside the trap, so we didn't catch it.

Later that evening, a storm came up, and a tornado touched down less than a mile up the road from our house.  Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the tornado tore up a neighbor's barn, uprooted a bunch of trees, and damaged rooves along a 5-mile path.  The Husband and I were standing at the front door, watching the sky swirling above us as a wall of rain approached from the west, when the local weatherman came on TV and started naming communities all around us that were in danger.  I said, "We probably shouldn't be standing in front of this glass door."  The tornado formed and touched down less than 5 minutes later.

I got some good loot for Mothers Day.  The Husband gave me a metal peacock garden ornament, and our younger son gave me a tall shepherd's hook with a solar light to hang from it.  

Yesterday afternoon it was sunny, and I took Mr. Peacock outside to scout out a place to put him.  I wanted to set him on the timbers surrounding the old raised bed in the front yard, but the landscape timbers were so rotten they wouldn't hold a nail.  (I was going to bend nails over his feet to keep him upright.)  I ended up setting him on the dirt and stuffing the back parts of his feet under the timbers, but this set him at a crazy angle, like he was looking up at the sky, so I stuffed a piece of a limb between his butt and the landscape timber to set him upright.  A couple of hours later, another little rain storm came up, and . . . 

Mr. Peacock needs a better plan.

About suppertime, Granddaughter #2 called to see if I would alter a dress for her.  She's "graduating" from elementary school to middle school this year, and the school is having a graduation ceremony and a dance Friday night.  Her mom had brought her a fancy dress to wear to the dance, but it was a little too big.  The shoulder straps needed to be shortened, as did an elastic strip at the back.  The shoulder straps were easy to fix, but the elastic strip gave me fits.  I had to send her home with a promise to fix the dress before the dance.  After supper, I sat down and managed to take up the elastic enough to protect her reputation.  ;)  I'll take it to her tonight when we go to her softball game.

As for the vegetable garden . . . <shaking my head sadly> . . . .  I am resigned to having to re-plant most of the seeds I planted a few weeks ago.  Some seeds just never came up.  Some came up, but a rabbit ate the sprouts.  

I bet rabbit dumplings would be good.

Garden Report - May 5, 2021

 

After work today, I made a quick sashay to the garden to see how things are looking.  I wasn't too happy about the present state of things.

The tomatoes and peppers are looking okay - growing, with a few blooms here and there.

Last season's cucumber seeds sprouted to beat the band.

But the beans and peas are pitiful.  Only a few green beans have come up.  The lower thirds of the purple-hull pea rows look pretty bare.  Nothing is showing in the butterbean row.

I'm kind of irked about this state of affairs.  This is the first year that I've been able to plant the garden when I wanted to plant it instead of when other people were ready for me to plant it.  When Pop-Pop was alive, he called the shots on the planting date by simply refusing to break up the garden until he thought it was time.  In subsequent years, I relied on other people to do the breaking, people who had jobs and kids and other obligations and would get to me when they found time.  Sometimes, the weather just didn't cooperate.  But this year, we had the equipment and the weather, and we got to work early.  

And it has rained, and been unseasonably cool, ever since I planted.

And it's supposed to rain again this weekend.

The seeds that haven't sprouted may be water-logged.  I may have to start over with seed planting after the ground dries up enough to work.  

Or it could be that it's just not warm enough yet for the seeds to sprout.

However, the squash and zucchini seeds I planted in the seed-starting trays sprouted like champs.  Maybe they just tolerate cooler temps better than beans.  <shrug>  They need to go in the ground, as some of them are already developing their second set of leaves.  But I'd sink to my armpits in the garden as wet as it is right now.

Well, poop . . . May 3, 2021

 

This weekend didn't turn out exactly like I'd planned.

Saturday morning, I was a real dynamo and got a lot done, both in the house and in the yard.  A mid-afternoon baby shower interrupted my progress.  My plan for after the shower was to go to the greenhouse to get soil and plants for the front flower bed.

The shower was actually kind of fun.  I saw a couple of ladies I hadn't seen since high school.  The expectant mother is the granddaughter of one of my father's friends, a big, freckled, red-haired dude that folks called "Red."  He is the slowest-talking person I have ever met, and he always had a story to tell.  At the shower, I related to his daughter a story about a litter of five puppies that Red had told Daddy in my presence:  

". . . I went out to feed them puppies.  There was five dawgs, and three fights going on.  Two puppies was fightin' two other puppies, and one puppy was tryin' to bite his own leg off."

I actually made it to the greenhouse after the shower, driving The Husband's truck, which I am not accustomed to driving.  It took three tries to park the truck straight between the parking space lines.  As I was getting out of the truck, I whacked my knee on some knob on the dashboard - hit it right in the same place that the doctor hits it when he's testing reflexes.  It took my breath away for a minute.  When I finally recovered my wits, I noticed that a bell was dinging in the truck, and it took another minute to figure out that I'd turned on the headlights with my knee.  

I didn't find the kind of plants I wanted, so I just went back home.

About 5 a.m. yesterday morning, I woke up to stomach pains.  Spent the first half of the day running to the bathroom every few minutes.  We had invited the kids, grandkids, and relatives on the hill to our house for a cookout at 6 p.m.  About mid-morning, I sent a text message to everyone, calling off the cookout, not wanting to expose all those folks to a potential stomach bug.  It was raining, anyway.

At 2 p.m., there was scheduled an annual meeting for The Husband's credit union.  It was the first annual meeting since he was named the CEO.  He was worried that, due to covid and the weather, not enough people would show up to make a quorum.  If not enough folks showed up, they'd have to re-schedule the meeting.  I felt like I should go to the meeting, both for moral support and to add to the "body count," but I was a little leery about leaving the house, considering my tummy issues.  I waited until the very last minute to leave the house, and high-tailed it out of there the minute the meeting was over.  Fortunately, I made it back home without a nasty, embarrassing incident.

It rained all night last night and is still raining this morning.  I've got to leave for work in a few minutes.  After work, I'm going to another greenhouse to see if I can find the plants I want for the front bed.  

Yardwork - May 1, 2021

 

It's noon, and I my gardening energy is shot for the day - or at least for a few hours.  

It started with an early morning coffee stroll out to the new bed to see how things were doing.  So far, so good.  While looking at the bed, I remembered that I wanted to move a little bit of bee balm and some yarrow into the back corners of the bed, so I got a trowel and dug up a little bit of each and moved them.  Filled up the big watering can and watered them in.

Then I turned around and saw that ugly-ass flower bed in the center of the front yard.

I wish I'd taken a "before" picture.

This bed was built around a tree 35 years ago.  Thirty years ago, we cut the tree down but left the frame, which is made of landscape timbers and is now nearly compost, it's so rotten.  I planted a dozen white daffodil bulbs in the frame - that was about all I could afford at the time.  Over the years, the daffodils multiplied so much that I gave away a wheelbarrow-full of bulbs when I re-did the bed several years ago.  Every year, I've cut back tree saplings and dewberry vines and assorted weeds, but it all grows back by the end of the summer, and the thing looks ragged.  

So today I clipped the foliage off of the daffodil clumps, and dug up some trees and vines.  Then I ran the little tiller between the daffodils.  Later this afternoon, after I get home from a baby shower, I'm going back to the garden center to spend next month's rent money on flowers and dirt. 

I think I'll divide the daffodils again, and spread them around the bed a little bit.  Then I'm going to fill the spaces with supertunias, or something.