I've Been A Bad Blogger

I've been an absent blogger.  No good excuse except that this summer is proving to be an extra busy one.  With challenges.

 

I've planted more of a garden than ever before using every plot of soil to grow what I can.  Have you noticed the price of food?  Of course, you have.  Plus, the lack of availability of food to purchase, at least in our area, is starting to appear.  So I'm doing all I can to grow all that is possible to feed the Hungry Hermans (as my dad called my brother and me when we were growing up) who tend to show up around here.

 

Good thing I love the "work" of gardening.  No doubt about it, gardening is work.  And if one has an infirmity that causes pain upon using certain muscles or joints, it's hard to keep going.  But I do think that if one keeps moving, stretching, bending in a sensible manner, those muscles or joints will remain in good working order.

 

I bought myself a sign last year that is hanging in my kitchen right now.

 

I sincerely hope I never have to change my mind on the sentiment expressed.

 

I'm spending a lot of time watering all my plants with either the sprinkler or hand-held hose.  We haven't had any rain since April.  Yes, that's many, many weeks lacking the blessing of adequate moisture.  I'm mulching with straw and/or grass clippings as much as I can.  The soil is dry and dusty where there is no mulch.  I'm amazed things are as green and growing as they are.  But I'm also concerned that we're putting possible stress on our always-in-the-past adequate well.

 

Today we discovered we had another challenge.  Our two strawberry patches are, amazingly enough, blossoming and forming fruit abundantly.  Earlier than usual even.  The problem?  We have several marauding crows that are stealing the half ripe berries.

 

Papa Pea and I spent a couple of hours this morning putting Agribon over both the old patch . . . 

 

. . . and the new one.  Now if I could just stop thinking of what a hassle it's going to be taking the cloth off and putting it back on again throughout the picking season.  But at least it will hinder those blankety-blank crows helping themselves to our hard-earned berries. 

 

I have a feeling the crows may like the blueberries, too, once they approach the ripe stage.

Blueberries just starting to go from

blossom to berry.

With luck, the strawberries will be done by then so we can use the Agribon to protect the blueberries.

As with all time these days, our summer is going by way too quickly.  Many folks count July 4th as the signal that the season is half over.  I can't believe we're less than two weeks from that mile marker already.

 

 

Growing Things

Hard to believe, I know, but our daffodils are finally in full bloom.  Goes to prove that if one waits long enough . . . 

 

One other thing today.  This, my friends, goes to prove that you should not doubt the vitality of old seeds.  (Or old people.  Hee-hee.)

 

I had some slicing cucumber seeds (good ol' Marketmore 76) from 2014.  I planted them down an 8' long mound in a raised bed (inside their own little quasi-greenhouse) on May 24th.

 

All I hoped for was that two seeds would germinate as those two cucumber plants would give us all the cukes we could possibly eat.  Or give away.

 

Looks like the seeds were still viable, wouldn't you say? 

What We Do For Fun Around Here

Papa Pea was doing some (temporary) repair on a fence post a week or so ago.  He was finding it difficult to pull the steel post into position while using the small sledge hammer to pound it back into place.

 

So he called in the muscle to pull the post into place with a rope.

 

No further explanation necessary.

 

Added note:  This was a day before the onslaught of mosquitoes arrived.  Omigosh, are they horrible this year.  We literally cannot go outside to do chores, garden work or walk down the driveway to get the mail without dressing in full bug shirt garb.  Everyone is saying they can't remember the bugs being this bad.  The strange thing is that we haven't had a decent rain fall in weeks, and that's what usually brings out the first batch of the nasty little biters.  But they are here and blood-thirsty!

 

 

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Actually, it was more of a loud crash.

 

At 12:40 a.m. this morning, Papa Pea and I were wakened out of a sound sleep by a very loud crash.

 

(Warning:  None of my pictures are of good quality.  I blame it on being a little upset.)

 

We have three double hung windows in our kitchen and a bookshelf over each of them.  The shelves have been there for over twenty years and have happily held a line of books on each one.  Last night the one over my desk apparently decided it had had enough and let go of its wall fastenings.

 

 

Blearily, we stumbled out to the kitchen to see the shelf balanced on top of the three plants I had on the upper part of my desk and all the books scattered on the floor.  The receiver of the wall phone had been knocked off.  Do you see that black and red roundish blob on the floor to the left?  It is a (demised?) metal rooster I had on the shelf with the plants.

 

We took the time to pile the books (and the shelf) on the kitchen table before going back to bed.

 

This morning I took the following three pics.  First, a close-up of one side (the back side) of the support of the shelf.

 

Next, a close-up of where it had been fastened to the wall.

 

Turns out the rooster wasn't dead.  He just lost his tail which we've managed to reattach.

 

All in all, it certainly could have been a lot worse.  Would I have been hurt by the avalanche of books coming down if I had been at my desk?  I'm just as glad I didn't have to find out.

 

Now to figure out how to reattach the shelf . . . and be sure not to laden it with too many heavy books. 

Not Panicking . . . Quite Yet

 I have all but five of my twenty-six 4' x 8' raised beds planted.  The field garden and two other flat planting areas are still bare, but tilled up and ready when the weather cooperates.  And when I can get to them.

 

The only seeds that should already be in and that I'm feeling really anxious about are the shell peas (our favorite vegetable to have in the freezer for the winter months).  They like growing in cool weather and should be one of the first seeds to be put into the soil.  Nope.  Hasn't happened yet.  But Papa Pea helped me mark out the rows and put up the trellises in the field garden for them yesterday so as soon as I can, the pea seeds must go into the ground.

 

We also put up the trellises for the pickling cucumbers but they will definitely have to wait for warmer weather.  I grow a variety of cukes specifically for making pickles only every other year.  I get enough of a quantity of them to make a two-year supply of our dills and sweet pickles which works out well for me.

 

The weather has been crazy.  Still down into the 40s at night, but reaching the high 70s and close to 80° with lots of bright sunshine during the day.  How are my seeds supposed to germinate with these fluctuations in temperature?  

 

Plus, after all of our snow melt earlier this spring, we've not had  but a few drops of rain, and our area is currently under extreme fire danger alert.  Go figure.  If I'm not watering nearly every day with the hose, we're setting up the sprinkler system for the strawberries, blueberries or haskap berries.

 

I just went out to turn on the sprinkler a few minutes ago (6 a.m.) with a temp reading of 46° and without any sun yet it felt darn cold out there.

 

The beginning of the gardening season for me usually means everything needs to be planted at once.  But there's no way I can sensibly put in the warm weather crops such as beans, pumpkins, squash, peppers and the like when the soil still gets such a shock of cold every night.

 

I did give myself a good talking-to yesterday while weeding the old strawberry bed.  (Hey!  That's not fair.  I'm not even done planting everything and I have to work at weeding areas that are sprouting big, healthy, invasive weeds already!)

 

What did I say to myself?  Believe it or not, I've finally realized I can't do it all.  No question that I love gardening and each year think of new and different things I would do if I could somehow find the time to make it all happen in a perfect way.  You know, the way it would look and grow in my fantasy wished for world.  But for that to happen (sigh), I'd have to have a crew of twelve  full-time gardening helpers and another crew to help handle my other responsibilities each day.

 

No worries.  I'm through teetering on the edge of panic and have decided to cut back on the plans for all I'd like to create out there using every inch of fertile, could-be-so-productive and possibly even beautifully photo-shoot worthy area I'm so fortunate to have available.  Well.  I can't do everything so why feel bad about what I can't do and be more appreciative of what I do accomplish. 

Besides, there's always next year when I'll find a way to do it all.  (Snicker, snicker.)

 

 

The Garden Today

Seems I do nothing each spring but grouse about how cool it's been and how far behind we are for the start of the gardening season.  But this year I feel totally justified because the weather has been really cool (38° this morning), and we are definitely behind this spring season.

For instance, here's a clump of our daffodils that are just now finally, almost, just about, ready to blossom.  I know, I know.  Everyone else's daffodils have been long gone for over a month.  Or two.

However, good ol' reliable asparagus has been doing its thing, and we've already had many servings from our patch.  It's going strong.  I shan't complain about that.

Also the chives, which are always the very first green to show, have been ready for preserving (my frozen stash for the winter) for a few days now.  So far, I've only worked up one of the four clumps but must do more soon as I noticed blossoms starting to form this morning when I took these pictures.  The horseradish in the center of the bed is coming on like gangbusters, too.

Our apples trees.  Oh, my.  Although we have our small wire enclosed orchard (foiled you, you pesky birds!) pruned, weeded and heavily mulched, compared to the below picture, you can see how far behind their growth is this season.

This shot is from this same day in a past year.  Oiy.

Garlic is looking good.  I grew w-a-a-a-y too much of it last year so cut down considerably for this year's crop.

 

Rows of spinach and a mixed variety of lettuces in a raised bed is finally poking through.  I'll have to thin the plants soon.  The carnations planted down the center of the bed are shivering.

This is the old (very old) strawberry patch ready for its last year.  No matter who (Papa Pea) tries to convince me to leave it in for "just one more year," it's coming out this fall.  There is too much intensive work to keep two patches in good shape.

The new strawberries daughter and I planted last year consist of five double rows of plants instead of the three single rows I experimented with for the last several years.  Garden space is used more efficiently as the double row planting contains the same number of plants as the single row configuration.

Well, that's it for this first of the season garden report.  I planted a raised bed of slicing cucumbers and another of edible podded peas yesterday.  The cukes are under a cold frame (their own little greenhouse) as they will be for nearly the whole growing season.  They certainly would have caught chilblains and died last night with that ridiculous low temp we had if they hadn't been protected!