August 2018, Week 2, I Love A Rainy Night
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
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Rebecca (7a)
5 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
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August 2017, Week 2
Comments (97)Amy, Jet's personality has undergone a tremendous change since his big brother, Duke, died. I think Duke was always the protector of us all, and now Jet feels it must be him as he is the oldest male. So, he barks at everything---he barks at Chris, he barks at Tim, he barks at our other dogs and our cats. He barks at thunder. (sign) He'll even bark at me if I come into the house wearing sunglasses and a hat. He is super protective and tries to put himself between Chris and I or Tim and I (Duke never did that). I think he is carrying his made-up oath to protect mama (the feeder of all pets and the giver of dog treats) a bit far, but mostly it makes me laugh at him. He might not appreciate that. This morning he did not bark at the thunder (I don't know why). He is 12 years old and going from gray hair to white hair (he once was jet black) so it wouldn't surprise me if his eyes and ears aren't what they used to be. He doesn't even chase deer, rabbits or squirrels any more, even if they are 10' away from him. He doesn't really even bark. He just stares at them and, if I am pretending to read his mind, I'd bet he is thinking something like "In my younger days, I would have run you off.....". He is sweet to me and very protective of me, but increasingly intolerant of the rest of the world. I just automatically put him upstairs in our bedroom if someone comes over because I don't know if I can trust him around anyone else--I'm not saying he'd attack, but he'd probably bark, and I would imagine that would make someone feel unwelcome. The Calloway's in Southlake has Renee's Garden Seeds too, but I usually order them during her late summer/autumn sale. Our proposed pantry off the north side of the house will happen, but I am almost positive it will not happen until Tim retires. At the same time we build it, we want to build a big sun room on the north side of the house...probably about 16' x 24' or something---a nice place to have nice indoor/outdoor furniture and a place we can sit in the summertime. The sunroom off the west side of the house, even with trees shading it late in the day and with an air conditioner in there, is just too, too hot for us to use it late in the day unless we really crank up the AC. The great thing about the west sunroom, though, is that it is a great solar collector in winter, so you can let heat build up in it, then open the door between the mudroom and the sunroom and let the heat flow through the mudroom and into the house and warm it up. I'd like to have a sunroom on all 4 sides of the house that I could use at will as greenhouse space or sunroom space or solar collector space, but that's never gonna happen. We have a nice wraparound porch on half the east side and half the south side of the house, but we just don't use them. The cats lay on them. Sometimes the chickens come up onto them (I wish they wouldn't), but if we're outdoors, we aren't sitting still. They are nice and shady though, and help shade some of the east-facing and south-facing windows from the sun, so I do like that about the porches. I had a hard time getting Zebrina started here. It just didn't thrive. Maybe my soil still was too high in clay content back then for it. Or, we were perpetually too dry. Over the years, though, something changed and now it is an invasive thug that even pops up and grows in the pathways, and sometimes in the grass or driveway outside the garden. Since it reseeds, it is possible the ones we have now are better adapted to our soil and conditions, but it is just as likely that the soil has improved enough for it. I like most invasive thugs that are volunteers from something I planted on purpose---if I am going to have to pull 'weeds', it might as well be pretty ones. I'm laughing about the bucket seat. You know, it is always something, and if it is not one thing, it is another. That's so true about gardening here. I seem most inspired to not do anything in the summer when Tim is at work. He's only at work for a few hours today and then he'll be some so we can go to that funeral. He only went in for the big Monday morning staff meeting, and he had to drive through rain all the way there. Miraculously, I fell back asleep after he left (which almost never happens) and I was sleeping so incredibly well when our fire pagers went off about 90 minutes late. Back to that 'it's always something' thing again. I bet if I was wide awake, the pagers wouldn't have gone off. The sun is out now and I bet we get steamy quick. We're supposed to have high heat index numbers down here this week, with them getting higher each day as the heat returns more and more. Oh well, we have had a good run of cooler, wetter weather and I knew it wouldn't last forever. Rebecca, Of course something wonderful will come out over the winter, probably in January or February after I've already got seedlings going. It is the way of the gardening world, is it not? Still, I like to beat the rush. I still remember when we had the big economic downturn of 2008-09 and tons of people decided that growing their own food was one way to deal with it. The seed companies were swamped with orders and shipping was weeks and weeks behind. It didnt' bother me, because I tend to shop ahead anyway, but a lot of people got really behind while waiting on their seed orders to come and I've never forgotten that. It motivates me to stay on top of things and order seeds in the fall. Renee's Garden Seeds has really pretty artwork on their seed packets---the same type of beautiful illustrations you'll see on Botanical Interests Seed Packets. You can look at their packets here to get an idea what to watch for in stores: Renee's Garden Seeds (Currently 50% off!) One thing, among many, that I love about Renee's seeds is that you can get some packs with 3 varieties in a packet, and each variety is dyed a specific color with non-toxic food coloring so that you can carefully select seeds of each variety to plant if you aren't going to use the whole packet. I grow a lot of her melons, lettuce, bean, greens and some tomato varieties. Also, a lot of her flowers and herbs. I tried growing Creole several times, both in the ground and in containers, and all I ever got was big monster plants that rarely produced much fruit, which is not a problem I often have. Maybe you'll have better results there than I had here. How crazy is it that the squirrels prefer OPs to hybrids? All my life I've heard the squirrels are mainly after the water and not the fruit, but now I am wondering if that's really true. If it were, it seems like they'd choose any tomato---so if they are choosing OPs, that makes me think they are choosing for superior flavor (like I do, lol). I hate, hate, hate stink bugs with a passion. I know that God created the world and everything in it, but I cannot help thinking the Devil himself somehow created stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs, squash bugs, squash vine borers and bermuda grass. Otherwise, why do any of them exist? Nancy, Don't overdo it on your first few days back in the garden. The pain is not worth it. I am always shocked at how sore I get in springtime when I'm suddenly out in the garden all day every day endlessly, trying to stay on top of everything for as long as possible before the heat and the snake season set in and cut my time in the garden significantly. Our garden in our early years here had tiny paths 12-18" wide. I wanted all the space possible for growing space, but we were in our early 40s then and life was easier. Now that we are older, a few years back, we widened most of the pathways to 2' wide, and now I'm wishing we'd made them 3' wide. One of these days we'll do that. One of my closest gardening friends down here has kept gardening well into his 90s, although now that he is in his mid-90s, his son does most of the heavy labor involved....and, they've always plowed with a tractor, which in a lot of ways is so much easier, except you cannot have the sort of raised beds we need for both better drainage and erosion control. I cannot imagine living into my 90s, much less still gardening at that age....but, if it were to happen, I'm pretty sure we'd be up to 4' wide pathways by then (hopefully long before then). If we ever get around to building raised beds in the back garden (also on the after-Tim-retires To Do List), I imagine we'll start out with 4' wide pathways in between 4' wide beds. It will mean giving up garden space for wide pathways, but it also will mean raised beds lined with hardware cloth to exclude the voles, so it will be totally and completely worth it. Even though we aren't quite in our 60s yet (Tim will be in a few more months), I'd rather do the planning and building for our golden years sooner rather than later....while we still have the energy to do it. One thing I've long noticed here is that the men and woman who retire and sit in the rocking chair on the porch do not live nearly as long as the ones who get outdoors and work in their flower beds, yards, gardens or with their horses, cows, chickens, goats, dogs, cats or whatever. I've also noticed those same physically active folks are involved in community activities and volunteer work and are busy all the time. I really think that staying active as long as possible, and as long as one's physical condition allows, helps a person live a longer life. Another half-inch of rain today puts us at 5.9" for the month of August, more than double our usual August rainfall. It is such a blessing and everything is turning green again. I just love it. Dawn...See MoreApril 2018, Week 2 Better Weather....and Friday the Thirteenth
Comments (100)Denise, I'd get the kind of row cover that gives 6-8 degrees of cold protection. Something heavier probably isn't needed this late in the season, but something lighter might not be enough, especially if your temperature happens to drop down lower than forecast, as mine often does. I use anything and everything heavy to hold it down (rocks, bricks, heavy lumber, heavy metal fence posts, etc.), but also use metal U-shaped landscape fabric pins to hold the fabric down tightly to the ground to hold in the heat. On really windy days, I use zip-ties to attach the heavier fabrics (the ones I have that give 8 degrees and 10 degrees of protection) to the low tunnel hoops because really strong wind can pull the fabric out from under the weights and can pull the landscape fabric pins right out of the ground. lcdollar, With Agribon-19, it is fairly lightweight and probably would have ripped in these winds, but I have used it on some fairly windy days and when I did, I just used anything heavy I could find (I hoard rocks, bricks, lumber and fence posts for this purpose---even pieces of rebar can work if it is only moderately windy) to hold it down. Since the Agribon-19 is light enough to float on top of the plants without hoops, it seems easier to hold it in place than the heavier fabrics that have to be placed atop hoops. I've even used cans of dog food or 20-oz bottles of water to hold down row covers in a pinch. Jen, Sage generally does root well from cuttings. Just keep the soil moist and it ought to work just fine. Dawn...See MoreAugust 2018, Week 3, I Made It Through The Rain
Comments (30)When an old dog who has chronic kidney disease insists he must go outdoors now, you must drop everything and take him out. If you don't, you'll find yourself mopping up the floor. There's none of that "wait a minute and I'll take you out". Nope, he is a little dictator (unwittingly, perhaps) now---one sharp bark and I drop everything and take him out because I know the consequences if I do not react quickly enough. Kim, No lady bugs around? Sometimes you can attract them to your garden (if they are in the general area) by making wheast. Or, even just by spraying a sugar-water mix on your plants. Here's some recipes for these: Recipes To Help Attract Beneficial Insects This morning I did a quick walk-thru of my garden to see how it has been doing without me and I did see some ladybugs (real American ladybugs, lol, not the Asian ones) hard at work on some of the watermelon plants. Sometimes in extreme July/August heat, the ladybugs seem to lie low---and who can blame them? I always wonder if they are up in some shadier spots just trying to survive the heat without subjecting themselves to full sun and full heat. Jennifer, It is great that Stella knows how to have a good time, but unfortunate that she chooses to have that good time in the garden. I've been leaving my garden gate open every day so the chickens can go in there now if they wish. Now that they can go into it, they no longer want to. I guess they've been excluded for so long that they've forgotten that good times can be found in the garden. Or, now that's there's no low-hanging tomatoes or melons for them to enjoy, maybe they just aren't motivated to go in there and eat grasshoppers and such. I'm glad you don't have a stress fracture because I know the time you'd need to stay off of it would drive you crazy. Still, take care and let it heal. The older I get, the more prone I am to catch the flu. I hardly ever got it in my 30s and 40s and, when I did, recovered quickly. These last 5-7 years, I seem like I get it every year and the recovery is harder every year. All my life I've heard that peoples' immune systems weaken as they age, and I see that now in my own life---at the age of only 59. By the time I'm 70, I'll have to hibernate at home during cold and flu season because I won't have any immune system left at all. On the other hand, an immune system is a funny thing. Last year, nationwide, a lot of young people in their 20s, 30s and early 40s died after they went sepsis during a case of the flu. When you go into sepsis like that, it normally is caused by your immune system over-reacting to an infection, which in these cases was the flu. What is it about the flu last year that caused young peoples' immune systems to overreact and throw them into sepsis shock? This sort of thing puzzles me. Obviously we want to have healthy immune systems but maybe not such robust immune systems that they overreact and kill you. It is such a conundrum. My garden is dry and pitiful looking, as the drought continues and no more rain has fallen here. It is what it is. August in a drought year is a tough month as it is, and the rain we got a while back was nice, but not drought-busting type rainfall. The rain made plenty of weeds sprout though. I see lots of morning glory, bindweed and foxtail grass to deal with---that will be next week as long as I don't encounter any snakes in there between now and then. Eileen, I bet it was the flu. I'm just basing that on the fact that there's low levels of flu cases being reporting across the country in August. My BIL in PA had it two weeks before I did. I did an uncommonly high amount of flu research while sick---trying to figure out if there was anything more I could learn about it that I didn't already know. One thing I learned is that it is not uncommon for the cough to persist for up to 4 weeks after you've otherwise recovered from the flu. I didn't know that, but I do remember that last year, the cough did persist for an uncommonly long time. Just take care of yourself and get your energy back. Last week I tried to do too much too soon and promptly relapsed, so this week I've been trying to take it easier on purpose so I don't do that again. Larry, I'm glad you're finally going to be able to go and get that PET scan. I hope all the news is good after it all is done. I love the deer but they sure can be destructive. What I've noticed is that when I plant stuff on purpose for them---like one of those fall and winter deer plot mixes, they ignore it. If I plant stuff for us, well, that's what they want to eat. It drives me crazy. Have y'all been watching the weather? Are some of you still getting rain? I've been out to lunch, weather-wise, not watching very carefully, while sick. Now I'm starting to pay attention again, and am not happy to realize we're back to being hot and dry, hot and dry, hot and dry. We had a couple of cool mornings earlier in the week and they sure were nice but I didn't even feel like sitting outdoors and enjoying them because of all that smoke in the air. It doesn't seem as smokey today, but then tomorrow is supposed to be really windy. I hope the wind blows away any lingering smoke, and not that it blows more smoke down to us, which I guess always is possible. Hurricane Lane has been a surprise. The last time I paid any attention to it was probably early last week and it was way out there in the Pacific as a topical depression, not expected to come within hundreds of miles of Hawaii, and not expected to do much of anything. So, fast forward a week or more, and I click on Dr. Masters Wunderground Blog maybe on Tuesday night and discover it is a Cat 4 headed towards Hawaii. By the next morning it was a Cat 5, but it now is weakening as it encounters wind shear and is back to a Cat 4 again. Still, they are going to get tons of rain if nothing else. I suppose that rain is usually good, but not when it comes in feet instead of inches. I hope everyone there stays safe and above the flood waters and out of any potential mudslides. I would joke and say why can't we ever get a hurricane here to bust our droughts, but you know, we got the remains of Hurricane Erin once, and also of Hermine, and the flooding was awful, so I won't even go there.... Have a good day everyone. Dawn...See MoreAugust 2018, Week 4, Hotter than Hell
Comments (55)Kim, I am sorry it has been such a hard summer and hope things will continue to get better. Making a living in agriculture is so hard---many of the market farmers here in OK have had a horrible year mostly due to uncooperative weather and have been importing organic produce, especially fruit, from other farms in other areas/states so they will have something to sell at their farms or to put into their weekly CSA baskets. Importing produce like that from other organic farms means their profit margin is small to non-existent---I see so many of them appear to be in a struggle to survive and I wonder if every year is this hard for the small farmers here. They have chosen farming because they love it, it is their mission and it is exactly what they want to do----but it seems almost impossible to make a living doing it. Nancy, I do think it is possible Tiny got himself all worked up. I'm glad he is feeling better and I do believe our animals have feelings. I also think there is a mind-body connection between health and illness---not that we can avoid every illness, but rather that we, and our animals, can make ourselves ill at times just by being stressed out. Jennifer, I'm glad Kane continues to heal. I wouldn't surprise me that your melons were carried off by coyotes. Here they will eat them in the field, but also will drag them off (and I have wondered if they drag them off because a car comes by or more coyotes show up or whatever). Back when Fred was younger, like in his early 80s, he'd raise an acre or more of melons, and some years the coyotes got most all of them. Of course, he was growing them on the old home place closer to the river and more remote than where his house is near us, and always had more wildlife issues out there because of it. I used to wonder why he'd plant an acre or two of corn or blackeyed peas or beans, but finally realized he had to plant that many to have enough for him/his family and for the wildlife. If he didn't plant a whole lot, the wildlife got it all. He hasn't had that much trouble with his garden in our neighborhood, but it is near a highly traveled road and likely that helps scare off the wild things. Jen, That will be a houseful of pups. You're on the verge of running a puppy resort? Who doesn't love dogs, though? We had 8 dogs for a long time---some slept in the house and some slept in the garage. We're down to 4 dogs now, all of whom sleep indoors, and 2 of them are very, very old. I don't regret the days when we had 8 dogs, but 4 is a much more manageable number. And, when they all are wound up and barking, it doesn't feel that manageable either, but I love them anyway. Farmgardener, It is the same here. All the beautiful green that the rain brought us is rapidly drying out, turning brown and curling up from stress. It is like the dry wind/heat are dehydrating the plants right in the ground. New brown plants appear daily as they continue to lose the battle to the heat and drought, and I blame this week's hot wind for a lot of that. New cracks are appearing in the ground. We desperately need for good rain to fall to keep the drought from worsening, which it already appears to be doing. We're about back to the point we were before the rain fell a couple of weeks ago. I think if we could get an inch or two of rain next week, that would help a lot, but our local TV mets keep emphasizing that the rain down here will be spotty and not everyone will see the moisture. Oh well, the rain has to return sooner or later. It always does. We have no control over the weather we get. I have no gardening news---it remains hot and dry, hot and dry, hot and dry and is the peak of our venomous snake season here, so I am mostly avoiding the garden for safety reasons. I have noticed the last couple of nights have cooled off a bit more than those that preceded them, but then the temperature and heat index zoom back up high very early in the day still. I'm looking forward to fall weather, whenever it finally arrives, and to cool mornings and cooler days. September can go either way here. I'm voting for cooler and wetter, but that doesn't always happen. I thought about mowing this morning, but there's not really any grass tall enough to mow, and the heat index here already was 95 at 10 a.m. so I'm sort of glad there's no grass tall enough to mow because I'd probably be the fool out there mowing it despite the heat. There's still tons of hummingbirds here so at least there's that, and lots of bees (and wasps, hornets, etc.) and butterflies. At least they are out there enjoying the remaining flowers in the garden. Last week we took the granddaughters to IKEA to look at all the kids' furniture so they could pick out their beds for the spare bedroom (formerly Chris' bedroom when he was a teenager, and in recent years a weight room with a weight machine and treadmill). They looked at everything and told us what they liked the best, so tomorrow Tim and I are going back in the pickup to buy what they chose, haul it home and assemble it. (This also requires moving the weight machine, which is attached to the wall, and the treadmill to the other spare bedroom, so it will be a busy weekend.) I'm excited about having a room set up just for them when they visit and sleep over, which is about every other weekend. They've been referring to our house as "home" for ages and ages, but I think it will feel even more like home to them once they have a space that is just for them. I want them to feel at home versus feeling like a guest. Today I'm going to work on cleaning out the closet in that room so they'll have some closet space too. By the time they come to visit next weekend, they'll have their own room decorated and furnished just for them. It isn't gardening work, and y'all know I'd rather be out in the garden, but at this time of year with the heat and the snakes, I have to sort of give up on gardening and just wait for conditions to improve. Dawn...See MoreRebecca (7a)
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Nancy RW (zone 7)