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.