Week 3, May 2017 General Garden Talk,
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
7 years ago
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luvncannin
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
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Week 4, May 2017, General Garden Talk
Comments (102)I laughed so hard about you canning outdoors on the propane burners, Amy. Had to read that one to GDW. We both got a good laugh. Thank you! :) GDW says, "And the bottom line is, 'I DON"T WANT TO!;" I must say, the first two were enough to convince me I wouldn't be doing that. Maybe my mode of gardening is work really hard one day, do nothing the next, as I am exhausted tonight. I will be in bed by 12:30, which is a reasonable time for me. Up early for church. . . then into dirty jeans (I swear I could stand these jeans up at the end of every day and they'd stand on their own, and still, I insist on wearing them at LEAST two days of heavy yard work and sometimes 3). I feel like a bit of a degenerate cooking dinner in my filthy jeans and T shirts, but I do, honest, wash my face and hands and arms first. Just call me Pigpen. When GDW and I first reconnected 3 yrs ago in August, I looked just like this, as I was slaving all week in jeans moving my Mom into assisted living in Buffalo Wy. But the next time he saw me a month later, he visited me at my "contemporary" condo in Mpls, and I was in dress uniform, hair fixed, a minor bit of make-up, semi-dressy slacks and tops, nails done.. He must have been scared to death wondering who in the heck I was. My condo (that I had just moved into 4 months earlier) was a very cool contemporary eclectic mix, with off-white carpeting, and wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling paintings (of mine) ranging from small to large, mostly abstract. His jaw dropped, and I laughed pretty hard. . . I think at first he was pretty sure he'd made a terrible mistake. . . that I wasn't who he thought I was or who he remembered. (But I knew he was wrong, and have since proven it. LOL) Ahh. But I DID bring my wonderful bamboo floor lamp and Oriental writing desk and very cool custom couch (that I bought on Craigs list for $200) and wonderful large framed print sumi ink black stallion for my new home here, AND ALL my quilting fabric (which was one round trip for him before I moved, hauling back many boxes of fabric in the truck) AND all the painting supplies and classical music CDs! And the severely pruned collection of books. And now I'm Pigpen, and am quite comfortable and happy, happy as a pig rolling in mud. And he is mightily relieved, as you can imagine. I don't cost him much. No nails done, no expensive hair appointments, no clothes, prefer home cooking (and he prefers my home cooking). Work like a son-of-a-gun in the yard, don't ask him for help but if he offers I accept. I'm a cheap date and good bargain. And I'm even "kind of religious," to boot. He told me a couple months into our reunion, in the interest of full disclosure, "Umm, I have to tell you I'm kind of religious." I laughed, surprised and delighted, and said, "Ha! Well, I'll tell ya, I'm kinda religious, too." So now a friend just dumped 3 bags of sand plums on me at church this morning. And I've got to deal with those on Tuesday. Need to go to town to get some small jars. AGGHH. I really have no idea how you all do all the stuff you do! I love growing the stuff. But canning? OMG. Freezing, no prob. (I see a new freezer in our near future.) Onions, potatoes, good to go. Tomatoes, peppers, no problem. I can do those. Sauerkraut. . . okay. Pickles........... now sand plums, and GDW has visions of apple butter and pear stuff. The lady who brought me the sand plums has a bachelor/widowed? neighbor who is a jam and jelly, pickle-canning freak, and has all these wonderful exotic specialties. I told GDW tonight that he could do that; after all, he concocts the hummingbird nectar with great precision every 3-4 days. Know what? He didn't tell me I was crazy. He said well maybe he could do that if he didn't get the stuff cloudy.. . . .. . oh my gosh......... Gotta get the tomatoes staked up better tomorrow, finish clearing and enlarging this enormous southeast "bee balm/cleome/daisy/coreopsis" back bed, relocating many flowers and herbs that heretofore were IDKs or inappropriate for their locations, and do the laundry. . . and if time, to mulch mulch mulch. GDW is on a rock border mission. He confessed to me today that where our utility easement "alley" is, he'd long thought of digging up rocks there so he could mow it instead of tediously weed whip it. But it's hard work. . . . to state it mildly; and he didn't know what he'd do with any reasonably sized rocks he might run into, so he never did anything about it. But now he realized he could make rock borders around all my beds, so that's what he's tackling--and I'm here to tell you all it's a heroic mission. And I'm astonished at the difference it makes with the beds. It makes them look "finished," like they actually are a plan (which they never were!). I spent 5 hours today with my best loved new tool for decimating Bermuda grass, the hori-hori (tedious, yes, but ever so effective). digging it out of an area about 8x10 feet. Meanwhile, GDW had uncovered at least a dozen 20-60 lb rocks from his utility easement alley. And so it goes with our chores. I do all the little doo-dad stuff, while he's out performing miracles. I do laundry and vacuum, and meanwhile he has put in new shocks on the truck. It doesn't seem fair that I do all this little insignificant stuff (which to me is nothing) while he's performing miracles, but it's working out so NICE. Well I've rattled on far too long. . . and how little of it had to do with gardening. I was so overwhelmed with all the "little" things I have to do out in the gardens tonight that I told him just to take all the rocks away, plow it under and let it go to the weed lawn again. And we both laughed, knowing that's not gonna happen. Kim. . . thinking of you. . . my pioneer woman. BTW, found your friend on the internet, who does the pepper seeders. . . wonderful reading about her. Would love to get a couple pepper seeders and your sachets when you get them ready....See MoreWeek 2, June 2017. General garden talk
Comments (112)Amy, It is a PITA to find places to stash things when you buy in bulk, but the upside is that when you buy in bulk, you tend to not run out of things so quickly. CostCo is so far away that I'd like to only make that drive down there once a month, but most of the time we make it twice a month. I'm trying to always remember to keep a list running and to not forget to take it with me. Really, though, just the act of making a list, even if I forget to take it, usually means I do remember everything that was on it. I get tunnel vision during canning season and don't even want to leave the house to go get canning supplies, so I try to stock up ahead of the start of canning season and then I never have to drop everything to go get lids, pectin, canning salt or just whatever. It is funny---on our way down to CostCo I'll be thinking that I want to stop at a Barnes & Noble, and then pop into Hobby Lobby or Michael's for this or that or whatever, and by the time we're through in CostCo, all I want to do is get home. I'm not much of a shopper any more unless I need to get something specific. Most of the time now, if I 'need' something and cannot find it at CostCo, Sam's Club, WinCo or Walmart, I figure we don't need it. Well, except for gardening stuff, but that's a whole category unto itself. About once every month or two we'll make a short side trip to Central Market to get something special but their produce section just kills me and you almost cannot avoid walking through it because the main entrance brings you in there. They have the biggest, most diverse produce section you'll ever see, and tons of organic stuff, and it isn't so much that I am buying much there.....but, rather, I'm looking at things and whispering to Tim...."Look, organic Habanero peppers are $6.98 a pound...." or whatever, just in awe of the fact that people will pay that price when they could be growing their own. It is like a trip to Disney World for me, and then when we get to the meat and seafood area, it is the same thing there for Tim. I get my Dr. Bronner's Lavender soap there, and a few food items, but we could live without it if it wasn't there. They do have the biggest selection of cheeses you'll ever see. I could kill an hour in there just looking at stuff, but there's always that nagging feeling that I ought to be at home working on something. They are one of the few stores that have pickling cucumbers, and they tend to have them all summer long. It isn't the same as homegrown pickling cukes pickled the same day, but if a person has a crop failure and absolutely, positively needs to buy pickling cukes, at least you know a place to find them. I'll try to weigh the potatoes tomorrow to see what we actually got. It won't include, of course, the ones we already ate. The year I planted too many and had to dig over 300 lbs. of them myself from pretty dense clay (it was amended, but it was a drought year and the sun/heat had baked the clay into concrete anyway) in immensely hot weather surely did break me of planting too many potatoes. I said 'never again' and I meant it. I still plant too many, so will try next year to reduce again and plant only about 50-60% as many seed potatoes as I did this year. I also need to plant fewer tomatoes. The good news is that Tim's new work group means I only need to can about 60 jars of salsa for him to give away at work, and that is so much less than I usually can for Christmas that I am almost giddy with joy. Except.... Well, what about the what if's? What if I can enough giveaway salsa for Christmas gifts to cover those 60 people and then his boss rotates the Asst Chiefs around to new areas (this job rotation is very common in his department) and suddently he has an area with 150 people and maybe tomato season already has ended? So, even though I am going to can less, I'll have that nagging worry in the back of my mind. Next year, I'd love to cut back the number of tomato plants I grow by 50% but I don't know if I have the self discipline to do it. No matter how hard I try to cut back, there's always more plants in the ground than I ever intended. That results in tomatoes piling up everywhere and me feeling stressed by the need to hurry up and process them all. Tomorrow will be a long day in the kitchen with tomatoes, but then I'll be able to breathe much easier after it is done. Still, silently and under my breath, I am starting to chant "die,die, die!" to the tomato plants every day when I am picking tomatoes. I know that is wrong. I know it is a sign of tomato overload and tomato burnout, but still, I can't help doing it. I dream of only having 10 or 12 tomato plants and not even doing any canning at all, just one summer, to see what it is like to not wake up every day in June and July with harvesting/canning/food preservation goals first and foremost in my mind. If it doesn't rain soon, I'll likely get my wish for plants to start dying, but with Murphy's Law being what it is, the wrong plants will die and the tomato plants won't die. That would be so funny, and so sad. So, after having believed for many years that it is impossible to have too many tomatoes, I've noticed increasingly that we have too many and I'm tired of having too many and I'm more and more ready to cut back. Of course, in June I see that, recognize it, understand it and acknowledge it, but in the hard winter months of December through February, all logic and rational thought flies out the window and I want to grow everything, and lots of it. If Bigfoot shows up here, I'll just throw tomatoes at him and scare him away. Or, I'll sic our big, bad, mean black rooster on him. Whatever it takes. Millie, Bears would be too scary. My first face-to-face encounter with a feral hog while at a wildfire near Thackerville one night was horrifying. It was huge and my mind couldn't even process what I was seeing. I'd seen them before in state parks while out camping and such, but the first time you see one up close and personal still is a shock. I remember my first thought was "what? Is this a hippo? a rhino?" I laugh at myself now, but I was so flabbergasted when I saw it that I couldn't even process what I was thinking. After about 30 seconds and when I'd had time to calm down a little, I realized it was a feral hog. A couple of years later we were driving from Marietta to Durant to have lunch with our son when he was a student there, and we saw this big dead animal on the side of the road near Lake Texoma. It looked like a small bear or a very large bear cub. We were flabbergasted, so we turned around and went back to look at it. So did everyone else. As each vehicle pulled up and people got out to look at it, someone would say "feral hog" and the new arrivees would say "oh, we thought it looked like a bear" and we all would laugh because we all thought the same thing. Now we see them so often that no one even bats an eye at them, and that's not a good thing. There's too many of them now and they don't stay down in the river bottom lands like they used to---they are right here in our rural neighborhood. We have them a lot at the back end of our property, which is about 1000' west of our house so we rarely even go back there any more. Sunnydew, I grow a lot of hollies but don't have any inkberries. I do know that spider mites like them though, so watch for those. Maybe your web is just some sort of spider. We live on rural acreage and it seems like we have about a million spiders per acre, and each and every different kind has different forms of webs and put their webs all over plants, more so further out....not right up around the house where humans, dogs, cats and chickens will walk right through their webs and bust them up. Spiders can do some odd things some times. Dawn...See MoreNovember 2017 Week 4 General Garden Talk
Comments (87)Amy, I think the feeder on Fred's truck was the type that would drop cubes into something. This truck had a hay spike, I think (I should know for sure as I've seen this truck drive by our place a million times), but they weren't doing round bales yesterday. Billy Fred thinks that as they drove through the pasture (the pastures near the Old Home Place looked to have grass maybe thigh high), some bits of grass got hung up underneath the truck between two things, and I think maybe he said transmission and something else, perhaps engine block, but I don't remember....and then the grass first ignited as they drove up the road from one pasture to another, and the burning grass ignited the truck. The round bales in the field belonged to the guy whose land is across the street....but I am sure Fred's ranching insurance or auto insurance would have paid for the loss. By the time we got there, the guy whose hay was in danger was standing in the yard near the house, watching the firefighters extinguish the fire. I am sure he was feeling very relieved that his hay was safe. Our eggs get eaten, used in baked goods for the firefighters (I can use a lot of eggs when we are having fires several times a week) or they get taken to work by Tim to give to folks. We are using tons more eggs since giving up grains and sugar because we eat a lot more protein and healthy fats than we once did. Most of the grain-free recipes for tortillas, bread, muffins, pancakes, etc. have a lot of eggs in them---the flaxseed muffins I make every week, for example, have 5 large eggs per batch of 12 muffins. Some of our chickens are molting, some have molted and are done, etc but we aren't getting many eggs now because daylength is too short and I don't like artificially forcing egg production by keeping a light on in the chicken coop all night. While we have quite a lot of chickens, many of them are useless roosters because we are too soft-hearted to execute all the roosters hatched out by our hens. I guarantee you that if we let a broody hen set on eggs, 10 out of 12 that hatch will be roosters every time. Why? Why? Why? Every time we lose a chicken to a coyote (haven't lost any in the last 2 months, but before that we were losing them quite regularly if they were stupid enough to wander off into the woods, well away from the flock), I secretly hope it was a male. We also don't kill chickens when they get too old to lay and be productive, so we are in effect running a retirement home for geriatric chickens. While it is not very cost-effective to feed so many non-laying poultry, they do seem to keep the snake population down and each one of them eats its weight in grasshoppers, so at least they are useful for something. I think Fred took the burning of the truck very, very well. You know, by the time you are 95 years old and have been farming/ranching your entire life, there's not much that can happen to you now that hasn't already happened in the past. I am sure he had insurance because he's just that way. There's no shortage of trucks at his place---when we took him home there were 4 or 5 late model trucks lined up in front of the house, and one was a really nice flatbed that only needs to have a feeder added to it and he'll be back out there feeding his cattle again. I teased him about having more trucks than people at his house. He's a wheeler-dealer who's always buying vehicles, tractors, mowers, etc. for well-below value and then either keeping them or flipping them for a profit. He's just good at stuff like that. I was just mostly worried about him and Billy Fred---both have bad backs and mobility issues (even though I think Billy Fred is exactly my age, he seems to have inherited Fred's bad back genes)---afraid they'd inhaled smoke or gotten burned or whatever but they seemed fine. For the last 3 or 4 years, I've had a creeping feeling of fire disaster related to Fred---I cannot tell you how many times I've told Tim that I was worried about Fred's house catching fire at night and him not being able to get out of it---like a premonition. I don't know why I had that feeling, and I feel pretty confident he no longer sleeps in an upstairs bedroom but has instead moved to a downstairs one. Still, I've just had that feeling. Maybe this truck fire is the thing my premonition was leading me towards. Does that sound crazy? If so, then I am crazy. I did hear about Owasso winning state and thought that was cool! Yellow Cat's death hit me extra hard---perhaps because he had such a hard life as a feral cat roaming the countryside and I know how much he appreciated finally having a family, a climate-controlled home and steady meals that he enjoyed. I spoiled him all that I could these last few years as I saw his once ginger-colored hair turning snow white. I could see him aging, and could see his health failing, but stayed in denial for so long because I couldn't bear the thought of letting him go. When his health had deteriorated to the point that he wasn't going into the garden any more, I cut him catmint and/or catnip and brought it to him daily. He was such a garden cat when he was young and healthy. These last few weeks, I knew the end was coming soon and tried to make sure he had lots of time outside on pretty, sunny days and lots of loving when he was inside. He was purring up until shortly before his death, as I held him and talked to him and promised to see him again at the Rainbow Bridge. I agree with you that there's not much worth getting dressed up for any more. If I am going to put on pantyhose, heels and makeup, it is going to be for something at a church, a funeral home or a big family gathering. I don't hardly wear heels much either, preferring low heels or flats. I'm beyond thinking that heels are worth wearing to anything. Nancy, We went through this same thing with dogs several years back---we had 8 dogs, the oldest of which was about 18 or 19 years old when she died. Then, it seemed like we lost a dog a year (or even more often than one per year) for a while until we went from 8 dogs down to two. Then Ace and Princess showed up and we were back up to 4 dogs again. That's the down side to having a bunch of dogs or cats live forever and forever and forever---once one of them finally dies, it seems like the others just fall like dominoes. We've certainly had what with the old cats these last few months. Pumpkin seems the most upset over Yellow Cat--he came to me this morning from the direction of Yellow Cat's grave and had the oddest little expression on his face. I think he knows exactly where YC is and that he is dead. He even seemed sad, which is odd, because the only thing he liked to do with Yellow Cat was to hiss and growl and try to challenge Yellow Cat to a duel. YC dealt with it by ignoring him, a la' W. C. Fields "go away kid, you bother me...." Sometimes I wonder what the animals know---when it is practical, we will let the other animals see and sniff the deceased animal before we bury it because it helps them understand and accept that animal's death, but yesterday we got paged out to a fire while burying Yellow Cat so just had to hurry and get it done so we could leave. It is hard for me to believe that Shady is our last old cat left. I really thought Yellow Cat and Emmitt both would outlive him, but they didn't. (sigh) I did notice today that Shady took over Yellow Cat's favorite porch spot and was sleeping there in the sunshine. Maybe he's waited a long time for that spot to become his spot. Shady was bitten by a copperhead when he was a couple of years old. He survived, but was very sick---the bite was in his groin area. He actually got the raised copper-colored rash that they say "can" happen, but which we've never seen with any other animal of ours. The spot where he had the rash didn't stay copper-colored forever, but after the rash eventually faded, hair never grew there again, so when he sprawls on his back sleeping, you see the white scar still, after all these years. It amazes me because the vet really didn't think he'd live, and now he has outlived all his siblings, his parents, and even cats a few years younger them him. He had a twin brother named Slim, who was very skinny his whole life and who died several years ago. Shady was a big bruiser---like a big offensive lineman on a football team---but was gentle and didn't throw his weight around. Slim and Shady were identical, except one was thin and one was big and hefty. As Shady has aged, he's gotten skinnier and skinnier, and now I find myself accidentally calling him Slim more and more because he looks so much like Slim now---then I hastily add Shady, calling him Slim Shady, which is the Emimem song they were named after when they were born---we were running out of names for a litter of almost identical black cats, and had named their sister Emimem because she was the spitting image of their dad, Emmitt, so then from Emimem to Slim Shady wasn't much of a stretch. (And now y'all know what sort of music Chris was listening to in 2000.) Yellow Cat once was very sick similar to what Titan had this past summer, and we thought we'd lose him then. We had to keep him caged up and medicated and worked so hard to keep him eating/drinking and alive. The vet kept him in the clinic on an IV for several days before we even could bring him home and take care of him here at the house. He was still about half-feral when all that happened, but by the time he was well, he was my little shadow cat who followed me everywhere I went. He also thought he owned the house (prior to that, he preferred the yard, the garage, the chicken coops---anything but the house) after that. So, I feel like he had another good 7 or 8 years after that round of illness, and he appreciated every day. He was just a happy, purring machine all the time. When Tim joined the VFD, which was way back in 2002, I believe, I never, ever, in my wildest imagination knew how it could/would take over our lives at times. We can have very long periods of relative quiet where he runs on a ton of medical calls and smallish fires and it doesn't really involve me at all. But then, let drought roll around as it has this fall, and let everything dry out after we freeze, and suddenly it takes completely over our lives. You just do whatever you have to do. Our worst years have been 2005-2006, when we had horrific drought and wildfires from roughly October 2004 through probably January of 2007, when we would have fires almost daily and sometimes, at its worst, up to 5 fires in one day, and then 2011 when we had incredible summer drought and had multiple fires daily (or sometimes one big wildfire that lasted for multiple days) from June through August, with lesser periods of fires for months before and after the summer. Really, then, we had recurring drought in 2012, 2013 and 2014, but nothing like the summer of 2011. As a gardener, the hardest part for me is that the winter wildfire season's peak tends to coincide with spring planting season, so I'm constantly trying to put transplants or seeds in the ground and having to drop everything to run to a fire. On April 9, 2009, I couldn't even get all my seedlings moved indoors into the sunroom (which was still a screened-in porch then, but it had half-walls that protected the plants from the wind) before I had to rush off to a fire just after lunch, and I lost most of my plants to the wind that day. We had a 15,000 acre wildfire that kept us away from home for about 12 to 14 hours, and when I got home and wearily carried in the seedlings, most were windburned beyond saving---our wind had gusted as high as 53 mph that day. We built the greenhouse soon thereafter so that the plants could get sunlight as I prepared to plant them in the ground but wouldn't have to be out in the wind if I had to run off to a fire. One year, in 2012, I was trying desperately to get fall transplants in the ground. I was so far behind and finally had just decided I was going to do it period. I was not going to leave no matter what was on fire. And I didn't. When our VFD became the 9th department paged out to a wildfire at the eastern end of the county, I called Tim and told him I wasn't going---I had to get those plants in the ground that day or else it wouldn't be worth planting them and that was that. He was fine with that. Our local county emergency management director was not okay with that---he kept calling me and calling me and calling me and I kept telling him I was busy and couldn't leave and he'd have to find someone else to bring drinks and food to the firefighters. I pointed out to him that 8 other VFDs were paged out before us, and surely one of them had a fire rehab person bringing drinks. It was like my words were going in one ear and out the other, and I finally quit answering my phone because he wouldn't stop calling. That's probably the only time he ever really just infuriated me. I remember asking him what part of "volunteer" he didn't understand, because on that specific day I was NOT a volunteer who was going to a fire, I was a woman making a last-ditch, late effort to get a fall garden planted in the midst of tremendous drought. I did, by the way, have a marvelous fall/winter garden that year and we were still harvesting from it in April....and I had to yank out overwintered plants to replace them with new Spring plants. On one other day, probably in 2013 or 2014, I was behind on getting tomato plants in the ground and told Tim one morning that I absolutely, positively was not going to any fires that day. I was going to start planting in the morning, and was going to plant, weed, water, mulch, etc. and wasn't leaving my garden for any reason. I was so determined to do this that I did not take my fire radio or phone out to the garden. So, guess what happened? I looked up from my garden at some point, and the ranch across the street had a fast-moving wildfire. They had been burning a brush pile and the wind kicked up and the fire got away from them. I could see our neighbors and their hired hand running around with a tractor and hand tools, but the fire was moving faster than they were. So, I had to run to the house (no phone, no radio, remember?), get Tim and Chris on their way to the fire station, with Tim using the radio to tell Dispatch to page out 3 VFDs and then using his cell phone to call the neighbors and say "we're on our way", etc. Then, I came back out of the house with my radio and cell phone in my hand, but couldn't decide what to do. I finally decided to run across the road and open the ranch gate and stand there directing the trucks where to turn into the property. So, the firefighters came, got that fire put out, I checked on our neighbors and made sure they were okay and eventually headed home to the garden. Tim headed inside to take a shower because he worked 3 to midnight back then and needed to quickly leave for work. I returned to planting the garden. For me, the important thing was that we kept the fire from jumping the ranch road and hitting their gigantic barn/indoor riding arena. As luck would have it, after Tim left for work, I looked up about an hour later, and there was fire running across that field again. The firefighters had put out the wildfire burning through the pasture, but not the huge pile of burning trees (not enough water available to put out that brush pile), and somehow the fire had escaped from the brushpile and was burning across the field just east of where it had burned previously. This time I had my phone and radio and could call everyone, and then I ran across the road with a shovel or rake or whatever and helped Chris fight that fire by hand after he got there with the brush truck. It seems like I got there in time to open gates for him, and then as he drove across the field to hit the fire head on and stop its forward movement, I followed on foot and worked the fire flank with hand tools, as the owners also were doing. So, I learned an important lesson about never, ever saying I am absolutely, positively not going to a fire on any given day, because the last time I tried it, I had to fight fire by hand twice just across the street from my garden. There's no way anyone involved with a VFD can ignore a fire across the street from their own house---I never would do that to our neighbors. I don't think I've had that much trouble getting the garden planted since then, though I know I have had to postpone planting a few times because I cannot be away at fires and home planting the garden at the same time---it just doesn't work. : ) We've been very lucky and had 3 wet years in a row and so our winter fire season has only lasted maybe a month or two, usually in Jan-Feb or Feb-Mar, so having it start up pretty strong in November is very discouraging. It is a long, long time until we'll green up enough out in the fields to drop the wildfire danger. We now are at the point that anything will start a fire---several wrecks have started fires recently, as have chains being dragged by a truck, or pieces of a rubber tire coming off a semi truck on the interstate, or a spark from a welder or whatever. Once it is like this, there basically is no justice, no peace, and no rest for the weary, so to speak. However, even though there were several fires today, none of them were in our fire district or involved us, so we got to stay home and get stuff done at home. Both tomorrow and Monday are expected to be much worse in terms of fire danger. Our Keetch Byram Drought Index numbers really are climbing now and we are in severe drought, so our county commissioners ought to be considering implementing a county-wide burn ban. However, they are elected officials and all the farmers and ranchers tend to give them hell over passing burn bans because it interferes with their ability to burn off crop stubble or do prescribed burning to burn brush out of pastures, so getting a burn ban passed here is like pulling teeth because the elected officials don't want to irritate potential voters, The firefighters aren't picky. They get lots of coldcut sandwiches when the weather is hot, but in the winter I like to make them stuff that's easy to eat by hand and quick, so often it is sausage balls, Sweet Bacon Chicken Wraps, cinnamon rolls, muffins, or breakfast burritoes (and coffee) if it is an overnight/early morning fire (and coffee of course). If we have time, Fran and I have been known to make Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas, taco soup, chicken tortilla soup, meat loaf, casseroles, chili, stew, etc. Much depends on how much advance warning we have, what food we have on hand, and how much we cook in advance. If we are going to have a Red Flag Fire Warning and we know the day before, we often cook in advance because any day that there's a Red Flag Fire Warning, we're likely to have fires. For snacks, we always carry prepackaged snacks, which we usually buy at Sam's Club or CostCo---a blend of sweets and proteins (we have lots of firefighters who are diabetic or pre-diabetic and have to watch their carbs), so we've always got several kinds of cookies (Nutter Butters are a special favorite of the firefighters), packages of nuts, Sweet and Salty trail mix, etc. I often make (as I did today) a copycat version of the Doubletree Hotel's Chocolate Chip cookies---today I made the standard version with chocolate chips and walnuts, but also a separate batch with white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts. These cookies are big, like the cookies you buy at mall cookie shops, so are the perfect size for a firefighter to wolf down (with a bottle of Gatorade or water) while he's refilling his brush truck water tanks at a tanker truck. I have been making things daily and freezing them if we don't use them for a fire that day, so just about have filled up the available freezer space now. It will pay off later. I do not mind, ever, ever, ever, going to the fires except when it interferes with planting time day after day, but my efforts to put the garden first do not exactly pay off, so I tend to just drop everything and go to the fires instead. Tim went outside intending to mow a lot today (as a method of slowing down fire with very short grass) and I never heard the mower start up. I was cleaning grout haze off the mudroom floor, so I wasn't really paying attention to what he was doing. I still have no idea what he did for a couple of hours, but when I finished the floor and went out, he had the dead lawnmower on the charger because he wasn't able to ever get it started---and nothing got mowed. I guess if the battery isn't charged up by tomorrow, we'll go buy a new battery for the mower. Butterflies were out all over the place today (our high was 79 degrees so it was nice weather for them) but I still have no idea what they're eating because nothing is in bloom. I won't say it felt hot outdoors, but it did not feel like December. Of course, in a couple more days it will feel very much like December and we'll be wishing to have that 79 degrees back again. I need to find time tomorrow to go into the garden and see if any zinnias are sprouting or anything. If they aren't, it is because the rainfall has been MIA for the last couple of months, but it wouldn't surprise me if they are---we've certainly been warm enough. There's pink evening primrose plants sprouted all over the place down by the road---and I mean those plants are 2-5" tall. If we weren't expecting freezing weather in a few days, I'd expect to see the pink evening primrose plants blooming soon. Dawn...See MoreDecember 2017, Week 1, General Garden Talk/Discussion
Comments (96)I'm so far behind I cannot catch up. Yesterday was a fire department day all day long, and I fear that much of today will be the same. I'm not complaining, as our participation in the VFD is a choice we make and all the firefighters in all the FDs are our brothers and sisters. We may be 14 separate departments in this county, technically speaking, but we also consider our selves one big family---one big department---the Love County Fire Department. I never knew I'd be part of such a huge family of people who would, literally, walk through fire for one another. Yesterday was our Christmas parade in town. How did it go? I have no idea. At two minutes until parade time, our VFD and two others got paged out to a grass fire slightly east of Marietta. Two of our firefighters grabbed their bunker gear, jumped out of the engine, and raced to our station in someone's personal vehicle to pick up a brush truck and respond to the fire. The rest of us were going to follow as soon as we got through with the parade, which start to finish, only travels a few blocks through town and takes about 5 minutes. Since we were near the start of the parade lineup, we knew we'd whizz through town quickly and be on our way. And we were. Our truck seemed to please the children---tons of lights and a loudspeaker playing a song they loved and danced to as we passed them. That's all that matters to us---that the kids were happy. As we were making the short trek down Main Street, our pagers went off again because the grass fire was igniting a home, RV and there were other structures (like sheds, etc.) in danger. As soon as we could turn off the parade route, we stopped, removed a couple of large decorations that couldn't handle the fast response to a structure fire, and removed our decorated firefighter (so wrapped up in lights, he couldn't move) who had been setting on the firetrucks large front bumper throughout the parade. We unwrapped him, got him into the truck and took off. I did have to laugh at myself---once we knew we needed to leave to go to a fire, we still were trapped in the parade lineup---with side streets blocked by crowds of people there was nothing to do but follow the route to its end so we could leave. I found myself waving faster and faster at the crowd, as if the faster waving would someone make the parade vehicles move more quickly so we could go to the fire. I am here to tell you that waving faster and faster and faster didn't speed up anything. Amy, I am hoping for the best for your dad. I know all of you must be exhausted and no one more than him---it is so hard to rest in a hospital (that's ironic, isn't it?) with all the lights, the people in and out all the time, etc. There's no place like home and I hope he gets to return home as soon as possible. Nancy, You have a seed problem! I know a seedaholic when I see one because I am one, though I am attempting to reform myself. I totally understand about Make-A-Wish not being for everyone and certainly respect your son's viewpoint. There are many different ways to deal with cancer, as I know myself, and I think every family has to do what is best for them and particularly what is best for the person most affected by the cancer---the person who has the cancer itself. I know that Russell accomplished his mission in life, and at such a young age! He certainly was a handsome lad. I have had HJ in my thoughts this week as well, as I know the anniversary of her son's death was this week and I cannot imagine how hard that must be to endure. Saturday usually is our big shopping day---we make a list and try to make the circuit of the usual places and gather all the supplies. Sometimes it is complicated---getting two baskets at Sam's, for example, with one filled with fire supplies and one with stuff for us at home, and then paying separately to keep the money and receipts separate. Tim is so bad when he has a shopping cart in front of him and a fire supply shopping list. I fill the basket with food and drinks we need to take care of the firefighters. Tim then thinks of odds and ends they need---fuel cans, a box of red shop rags, bungee cords, zipties, fuel additives, extra pairs of leather work gloves, new chains for the chain saw, etc. etc. etc. and before you know it, the VFD shopping cart has 39 items in it, though our list only had 20 items on it. He's as bad about impulse shopping for the VFD as I am about impulse shopping for the garden. (grin) I think he forgets about that nagging little list of odds and ends that they need until he is in a store shopping, and then he 'needs' everything he sees. Unfortunately yesterday was all about fire dept activity from start to finish so today is going to be our shopping day. I'm so tired from yesterday that I wish we could just sit around at home and do nothing, but we can't. I just hope we make the shopping/errand run, get everything done and get back before any fires break out. Yesterday wasn't to awful in our county until very late in the day, but the adjacent county (Carter County, also under a burn ban) had a lot of fires. Tis the season for that, unfortunately. For items only available from fire supply companies or whatever, there's a constant stream of vehicle parts, supplies, etc. arriving in various ways---often in our mailbox or as a package left on the porch. It is a logistics nightmare trying to keep old, often-used fire trucks running on a wing and a prayer, but thankfully our VFD has several incredibly accomplished mechanics (it is their career and their hobby as well) and welders. Sometimes the UPS guy or the FedEX guy cracks me up---he'll say "this is a big heavy package, be careful...." and I'll reply "yep, it's a radiator for our fire engine". (grin) Kim, It is your home for as long as you're there, so make it what you want it to be. I feel like my soul always needs lots of flowers and ornamental plants in order to be happy, no matter how much I also enjoy growing the edibles. There's nothing wrong with that! Bloom where you are planted, girl! I rejoice over every bloom I see on any given day, even the tiniest little wildflower blooms that often appear randomly in winter on nice days. For those of you wondering if your garden needs to be watered, In winter, depending on the soil moisture level in your area, you may have to water, but not as often as in summer because the temperatures are cooler and not as much moisture is evaporating from the soil nor is it transpiring from dormant plants like it does during the growing season. One thing you can do is look at the attached map. Keep in mind it reflects conditions at your local Mesonet stations, so soil moisture levels at your place may be different. Anyhow, if the number on the attached map is less than 0.50, your plants probably need to be watered. Amy, I think you mentioned asparagus? Mine is well-established and I don't water it in winter ever for any reason. I just don't think it needs it. Asparagus is bulletproof---it won't die and you cannot kill it. If your plants are less than 3 years old, you might want to water them---but not too much at once and not constantly. Maybe once a month in a dry winter. One-Day Plant Available Water (Updates each morning) Gotta go. I'll try to check in on the new Week 2 Thread tonight. Dawn...See MoreOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoluvncannin
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6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoluvncannin
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoluvncannin
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agohazelinok
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agohazelinok
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoluvncannin
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agohazelinok
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agohazelinok
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agohazelinok
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6 years agojerrydaniel87
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoLoneJack Zn 6a, KC
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6 years ago
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7Original Author