October 2018, Week 4, End of Warm Growing Season Nears
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
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March 2018, Week 4, No Fooling......
Comments (117)Denise, Fig trees are pretty late to come out. Just be patient with them. It is not unusual for them to die back completely to the ground and then to be late to show new growth. It is just one of the frustrating things about growing figs here. The good thing is that once they start regrowing from the ground, they grow quickly. Two of the latest blooming peaches (they have chilling hour requirements of 1000 hrs or more) are Contender and Reliance. I don't see Contender in stores here often, but do see Reliance from time to time. Both are available from Stark Bros. Those are lovely cabinets! Nancy, The sleet part doesn't sound good, nor can it ever be good when Wyoming is warmer than we are in the month of April. Oh well, I just keep thinking "Lee warned us....". Because. he. did. (grin) We only dyed two dozen eggs---a dozen with a blue/purple Galaxy kit that had rub-on transfers of the stars, the Milky Way galaxy, etc. and a dozen in pastels that have a pearlized/marbelized finish you apply after the dye dries. I didn't think that dye ever would dry. We also had 60 (says Tim and Lillie, and I say 61) plastic eggs to hide. Tim says he hid 60. He counted. Lillie says she found 60. She counted. Yet, when I went out to the garden to throw row cover over the two beds that include tomato and bean plants, I found a plastic egg at my garden gate. So, I say 61 eggs. Regardless, the Easter festivities are over, our temperatures now are dropping (we were 64 at midnight, and still 55 until about 4 p.m., but no longer....) and it is sort of misty/foggy but maybe with not quite enough rain to call it light drizzle. Our prank was to fill Lillie's magical, mystical golden egg with brussels sprouts. Let me explain. She has gone on and on about how we have to hide the golden egg (my reply: what golden egg? why? we never had a golden egg when Chris was a kid) for a couple of months and it has to have a spectacular surprise in it. Oh, and how she must be the one to find it, and with no help. Hearing about it daily about drove me out of my mind, until I finally started teasing her on being fixated on a golden egg that we didn't have, weren't interested in and weren't going to have. She still went on and on and on about it endlessly. So, a couple of weeks ago I told her that I was so tired of hearing about it and that if she didn't stop talking about it, I'd buy a golden egg and fill it with brussels sprouts. She kept emphasizing it had to have a great surprise in it. I told her that brussels sprouts would be a great surprise. It all was a long running joke that she wasn't taking seriously until we bought a bag of brussels sprouts at the store yesterday. The look on her face when I put those brussels sprouts in the grocery cart was priceless. At home, she took a new approach, begging Tim to hide the golden egg so well that she'd never find it. Apparently she decided I am a woman of my word and that there really was going to be brussels sprouts in the golden egg. Guess what? She was right. I am not cruel. When she sat down her basket and started taking out the plastic eggs to open them up, I suggested she first take the golden egg (only a bright yellow egg) and put all those brussels sprouts in the fridge before they started smelling up her Easter basket. She promptly complied and, when she opened the fridge, sitting next to the brussels sprouts bag, there were two "LOL Surprises" toys on the shelf. So, she got the spectacular toy she loves and had hoped would be in the golden egg, and we got the fun of seeing her react to brussels sprouts in her actual golden egg. It was hysterical. She promised solemnly that there would be no talk ever again of a golden egg at future Easters. We'll see. Our forecast low for tonight has dropped to 38 and for Tuesday night to 35. Tim and I covered up the two raised beds that have some tomato plants and some green bean plants in them. We might not have needed to, but with a 38 in the forecast, I figured better safe than sorry. Tim is sicker and sicker. I told him I think he has the flu and not a cold. He won't admit it. He thinks that because he had the flu shot last fall, he couldn't possibly have the flu. I think he is wrong. He is just too stubborn to admit it. He is not planning on going in to work tomorrow morning. This is going to be the longest and most boring first week of April we've had in a long time. rere's not much that one can do out in the garden in this sort of weather. I brought in all the flats of plants from the front porch, even though lately they've been staying out 24/7. I'll probably put them outside tomorrow and bring them in again the next couple of nights. We will be cold, but not nearly as cold as places further north. We have had small numbers of hummingbirds recently, about a week or two earlier than usual. Suddenly we have a lot more. I suspect a bunch were arriving here on their way, just passing through on their way to points further north, and the cold front hit. So, here they are, feeding like crazy at the feeders. I'll refill the feeders with fresh nectar tomorrow. I am tired (apparently I am no match for a 9 year old's energy) and am planning to go to bed early. I'm trying to stay awake long enough that at least it will be dark when I go upstairs to go to sleep. Really, I don't care if it is light or dark, but even when tired find it hard to fall asleep before it is dark outdoors. I looked at the garden while covering up warm season plants and there's hundreds of warm-season volunteers uncovered. Either they'll sink or swim on their own, and it doesn't really matter. If they die, more will sprout. More always do. Dawn...See MoreMay 2018, Week 4...The Heat Is On, Part 2
Comments (94)Good Morning, Everyone! Nancy, Bruce alerted me earlier in the day to the fact that he had rain and it was moving my way, so I started watching, but I still wasn't really believing because it always seems to veer east of us. This time it didn't veer east until it had gone south of us, so we got almost an inch of desperately needed rain. I was so thrilled. So, the garden will be happy for a few days, but I suspect the moisture won't last long in the high temperatures. This really was our first good rainfall since around May 3rd or 4th, and for once, we got more rain than our Mesonet station instead of getting a lot less than was recorded there. Lillie helped snap beans and string beans for a couple of hours. She's a hard worker and loves gardening (she has a great-grandfather with a huge garden and always has helped with the garden since she was very small). We had 4 varieties of beans all harvested together, and she was fascinated with the purple ones and loved the Provider beans, which are more flat like Romas than round, because the Providers have very obvious strings and she loves pulling the strings. She'd pick those out of the pile to string and then snap. Catmint makes me think of Yellow Cat, who we lost a few months ago at a very old age, because he was the only cat we've ever had who liked catmint more than catnip. I can hardly bear to look at the catmint right now because it makes me miss him so, but we'll always have it in the garden because some of the little beneficial insects love it. Paula, I'm sorry to hear about the seizure. I'm so glad you're okay. Did they figure out what caused it? That must have been frightening. Take that Short Term Disability and live it up in the garden! God has a plan, and maybe his plan is for you to have a few months of gardening and grandkids without any other distractions. As far as gardening in one's PJs, my experience with that is that if I venture into my garden for just a minute in my PJs, I end up staying out there in them and that will be the day the mailman brings me a package that won't fit in the mailbox and there I stand at the garden gate accepting that package while wishing a hole in the earth would open up and swallow me right up. I'm always thinking "maybe he won't think these are pajamas" but who am I kidding? Melissa, I'd been wondering where you were. You poor mama! She'll come back, you know, even if only to visit and she's very young still so they might move back here at some point. Or, their relationship might not last anyhow. Often, what you think you want at 18 is not what you discover you really want later on as you continue to mature. Chris was the same age the first time he left home (for Georgia) and he was back home in a few months. Congrats on getting through to your son about the importance of living at home for at least the first year since he lives so close to school and congrats on his scholarship. I think college is such a huge adjustment anyway, and I think he has no idea how lucky he is to be able to live at home. I am glad that you and Sassy Pants will at least have the butterfly garden. You didn't mention how your mother-in-law is doing. I hope she is okay and is in remission. Mostly we're just excited to have 3 weekend days together because Tim's workdays are so long during the week. We're going out to the dinner tonight with our son and his girlfriend at their favorite restaurant in Ardmore. That's about it for our big weekend plans. Other than that, I suppose our big plans are grocery shopping and mowing a couple of acres. It doesn't sound very exciting, but I like having all the supplies bought and put up so we don't have to make little trips to the store during the week and there's nothing like mowing the grass to help make it easier to avoid stepping on snakes at this time of the year. Rebecca, I hope the next round of rain doesn't miss you. I know exactly how it feels to watch the rain fall everywhere else except at your own place, and it isn't encouraging at all. Jennifer, Your hen sounds okay then. Her broodiness should pass and she'd get back to normal soon I imagine. I probably won't be working in the garden this weekend, y'all, because I feel like I worked so hard all week getting that pallet of mulch into the garden that I deserve a break today....and tomorrow...and maybe the next day. I weeded and mulched until I couldn't see straight any more, and the last thing I want to do for the next three days is any weeding and/or mulching. Well, I'll have to harvest so that requires going into the garden, but except for that, I'll get a break. Actually, going into the garden is dangerous because if I see new weeds sprouting, which is so common in May after rainfall, that then I feel compelled to weed. It is sort of sad to see all the cool-season stuff coming out of the garden, but it is late May, so it is time. I've already got most of the hot season crops planted, so the succession crops to fill in empty spots left by the harvest of the remaining cool-season plants (onions and potatoes) will be mostly melons of all kinds (muskmelons, watermelons, Crane melons.....) and probably some zinnias. I am working so hard, lol, to have an easier summer that I'm being very careful to not plant too many succession crops of edibles. This is hard for me to do because I have to fight my usual pattern of just planting more edibles. I'll probably plant more zinnias over time, and maybe some cosmos. You never can have too many zinnias for the butterflies in the hot summer months. The heat and general lack of adequate rainfall are encouraging me to stay on my quest for an easier summer with less time spent processing and putting up the harvest. I still have 5 large containers to fill, or maybe six, and will be plant shopping for plants for those containers either today or tomorrow. I do not understand how this tomato problem keeps happening. We have so many tomatoes piling up on the kitchen counter that we either need to eat a ton of tomatoes for three meals a day all weekend long, or I need to make some salsa or sauce or something to use them up. I cut back so much on how many tomato plants I planted that I didn't think we'd hit the 'too many tomatoes' point until at least June. I think the heat is speeding up the ripening of the tomatoes too much. I'm not complaining about having tomatoes, but just about how they all seem to ripen together at one time instead of spreading themselves out better over a longer period of time. I need to have a talk with them about that. Last night, I awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of a bunch of coyotes that sounded like they were sitting right outside our bedroom window. It was at least one adult with a bunch of babies yipping and yapping, and it was close enough to be scary. I was glad all our animals sleep indoors at night. It is more typical to hear the coyotes howling further off, though not always very far away. I don't like it when I know they're in the yard. The cottontail bunnies are very plentiful at this time of the year, so I expect Mama was teaching the babies how to hunt for their meal. Something has been roaming through the woods all day and our dogs are barking at it nonstop. I never see anything when I look for whatever they're barking at, but Princess and Ace just have a conniption fit constantly. Now I'm wondering if that mama coyote is raising her young ones in there and if our dogs are hitting on their scent. I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend, whether inside of or outside of the garden. Dawn...See MoreSeptember 2018, Week 4
Comments (55)We have a huge mosquito invasion here. Hordes of them hang around just outside all our exterior doors just waiting for us to walk out the door, and every time a person, dog or cat goes in or out, the mosquitoes try to fly inside. Hunting them down indoors and killing them if they make it indoors is very tedious. It is the same thing when you get into the car---the mosquitoes fly in with you. Many counties near us, mostly on the TX side of the river, are reporting positive findings of West Nile in mosquitoes caught in traps. Fort Worth has had 200 mosquitoes test positive for West Nile in recent days. Some cities have begun spray programs. Y'all be careful around all these mosquitoes. I assume that with this many mosquitoes active and testing positive for West Nile, we likely will start hearing about human cases of West Nile soon. Tim and I suddenly have wasps---three new, big wasp nests have appeared on the house this week. He sprayed those with a wasp spray just around sunset yesterday and will spray again this evening if any wasps still are on/in the nests. I imagine the cooler weather explains the sudden appearance of the wasps and the building of nests on the house. We had wasps around all summer and just ignored them because they are very beneficial insects to have as many prey on caterpillars, but they weren't around the house much in the hot summer months, and they weren't building nests attached to the house. We won't even mention the huge fire ant mounds popping up everywhere, other than to say they are here. There's tons of grasshoppers still, and we also still have stink bugs and this week I am seeing a few squash bugs. Y'all know that squash bugs will feed on Halloween pumpkins and decorative pumpkins you have sitting outside for autumn decorations right? I watch for them and try to kill them when I see them there. Any that escape death will overwinter and be the start of next year's squash bug problem. Back in the summer months I got tired of weeding the asparagus bed, so cut back the asparagus really hard and sowed a ton of leftover flower seeds into that bed. I figured if weeds were going to grow mixed in with my asparagus plants, they might as well be the weeds of my choosing. So, in the asparagus bed we now have a lot of plants in bloom: cosmos, the grain type amaranths, Nicotiana alata, daturas, Laura Bush petunias, zinnias, rose moss and more. I'm sure there's weeds in there as well but you really cannot see them because of all the pretty flowers in bloom. The asparagus grew back of course. Nothing kills asparagus. The seeds I tossed into the asparagus bed were slow to sprout and grow because we were in drought, but the plants are doing great now. That is a good thing as many of the summer bloomers that have been growing in the garden since March or April are worn out and dying back or going to seed, but that one long asparagus bed is full of fresh fall blooms. Many of the zinnias I planted in the spring are rapidly declining now after this latest couple of inches of rain that fell this week. The soil is just too wet for them now, but at the same time, a few small zinnias that sprouted in the mulch in adjacent pathways are getting ready to bloom. I'm glad I left them in the pathways when I saw they had sprouted there. Usually I immediately yank out anything that sprouts in the mulch, but I can't yank out baby zinnias in August because I know the older ones are tired out and worn out and declining. Some of the pineapple sage plants are in the same condition of decline---they like well-drained soil, but I have a total of 9 pineapple sage plants, which means we still have plenty in bloom because only a couple have died. I believe the monarchs are migrating through here now. We had tons of them nectaring yesterday and most are flying south. Some are flying southwest, which also is fairly typical here at this time of the year. Some of the males are puddling. All in all, there's still a whole lot going on outdoors even as the season is winding down. The most amazing garden survivor is 2 or 3 flat-leaf parsley plants that somehow survived all the heat and drought (not bad for cool-season plants in a 100+-degree summer, growing in full sun), followed by purple datura volunteers that sprouted in August and are getting ready to bloom in the next few days. The fall tomato plants still don't have much fruit on them, likely because we stayed in the 90s very deeply into September so it won't be a great fall tomato year here, but the SunGold I put in the ground in March still is producing so at least there's that. So many morning glories, mostly Grandpa Ott's, sprouted and started growing along the fenceline in late summer that they are beginning to shade the pineapple sage, Russian sage and purple daturas, so I spent some time last evening yanking out a bunch of them. With sunlight/day length becoming increasingly limited as we go more deeply into autumn, I want for the flowers in the border along the driveway to not have their sunlight blocked by aggressive, weedy MGs. Today's task will be to cut back four o'clocks that are growing through the western fence and shading my peony plants and adjacent container plants. If only the four o'clocks would stay where they are supposed to grow outside the garden fence, but four o'clocks ignore boundaries. It is all fun and games out in the garden later today, at least until I encounter a snake of any kind. Then, the party will be over. Dawn...See MoreOctober 2018, Week 1
Comments (35)Moni, I have nights like that a lot, especially if I go to bed early. It is like my body decides it has slept enough and is done with sleep for the night, but my brain always is saying "No.....let me sleep!" I always think I'll make up for the missed sleep by taking an afternoon nap, but then I rarely do. Congrats on demolishing the shed. That's a lot of work! I bet gardening will be more fun with that eyesore of a shed gone. I hope you enjoy your camping in the rain. I like camping in the rain as long as there is a place to retreat to in order to stay warm and dry---even if that place is just a little tent. Larry, It sounds like you have a good solid plan in place. Isn't it amazing what a pain in the neck that tall okra plants can be? I don't want any plant so tall that it makes harvesting difficult. Amy, I am so sorry for the loss of Ron's sister. My deepest sympathy to you all. I hate hearing the news about his other sister's cancer already being end-stage before y'all even found out about it. While I respect a person's right to reveal their own health information as they see fit, I don't understand it when people don't even tell their immediate family members that they have a terminal illness. I totally understand why you wouldn't want to go to NJ given the current state of your mother's health. There are days I don't want to adult either. There's not much new to report here except maybe the snake in my garden. This week I have cautiously entered the garden and done a bit of clean-up work virtually every day. Even if it isn't much work completed in one day, it does add up over the course of a week. I have been careful and watched for snakes. Yesterday I was in the garden only long enough to pull up a few morning glories and moonflower vines sprouting near my tomatoes---mainly because I went out there to check on the tomatoes and then just noticed the vines accidentally. They were trying to climb the tomato plants, so I ruthlessly yanked out every one of them. I still don't know if my fall tomatoes will have time to mature, but the fruit wouldn't stand a chance of doing so if I let the vines climb the plants and cut off their sunlight. So, I never saw or heard a snake while in the garden, but..... While walking down to the mailbox very late in the day, I glanced over at the garden fence as I walked by and there was a shed snake skin woven through the fence about 5' from the entry arbor. I suppose the snake threaded itself through the woven wire fence and rubbed itself against the wire to help remove the skin. I am pretty sure that snake skin wasn't there when I was in the garden because it was right at eye level and there's no way I wouldn't have noticed it. I don't necessarily think it was a venomous snake. Based on the shed snake skin's size, appearance and location, I think it was from a Rough Green Tree Snake because they love to hang out on the coral honeysuckle and cannas there in that immediate area. Still, I'm never happy when snakes send me an "I am here" message in the garden. I think I'll stay out of the garden today. I keep waiting for cooler weather to arrive and make snake activity during the daylight hours more rare, but it just isn't happening yet. Maybe next week. It was a lovely and hot summer day here yesterday, which probably is a gift in October. The girls played in the wading pool for close to 3 hours while I sat in the shade, watching them and supplying an outdoor picnic lunch eaten beside their little wading pool. They'd already had lunch before we went out to the pool, but worked up a big enough appetite to eat a second lunch a couple of hours after the first one. I told Chris when he picked them up in late afternoon that they had an extra lunch in the afternoon and might not be hungry for dinner. It is possible that they crammed in a second lunch in order to avoid dinner because Chris was going to cook a fish "with eyes still on it", in Lillie's words, for dinner and the girls were uneasy about having to eat a fish that looks like a fish. We were joined by lots of butterflies and dragonflies lurking near the water the girls splashed out of the pool. I do not believe I saw or heard a single hummingbird all day. Maybe the last one has headed south. We had a lot of wind yesterday and it kept the mosquitoes off of us for the most part. We'd have a little skeeter trouble when the wind temporarily died down for a few minutes here and there. The mosquitoes? We have the usual ones in great profusion ever since rain started falling in significant amounts again, and 2 or 3 days ago the large gallynippers showed up. Ugh. If it is possible to hate mosquitoes more than I already hated them, then I really, really hate those gallynippers. Dawn...See Morehazelinok
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