Say goodbye to July, and hello to August 2022
slowpoke_gardener
6 months ago
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HU-422368488
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Idyll #490 Goodbye Summer, Hello Fall
Comments (100)So exciting to see Drema and Skip under the arbor at Woody's! I'm glad they picked a decent weather day for their visit! One day when the timing is right we'll nab them over in our direction. Today was a busy day in the garden, pretty much like Chelone's efforts. Lots of cutting back of stuff in the yellow & blue garden, with just a few bits of eye candy left to enjoy. Today DH cut back all the asparagus and carted it away...a good start and a big help! Tomorrow I hope my friends will be able to come help me once more. So much left to do. Well Chelone, it may seem simple, but infant care is delicate tricky stuff with lots of intuition and guess work involved. This has been 4 weeks from He!! for DD. At the beginning it was a twisted uterus (requiring chiropractic attention), severe afterpains (involving heating pads, belly binding and ibuprofen) and mastitis (which is excruciating and requires painful nursing to help heal and antibiotics as well). Add to this the cough and cold which Skyler, Ivy, Sarah and Leo developed and which caused Sarah to stop breathing at times, and you can see that rest was not much of an option for her. The lack of weight gain in her third child was a mystery to her. So then it became apparent that Thrush was an issue for both Mom and Leo. So now both of them are on oral antifungal. Yesterday Sarah developed a pain below her knee on her calf, and a blood clot was suspected. All in all it has been a terrible beginning...and yet, Sarah feels she has bonded sooner and better with Leo than with Reed and Ivy. I am so proud of all she deals with! You can be sure that Skyler's mother takes advantage of these days to pursue childish games. Skyler too. Tonight he is to write many lines in regard to putting things away (bike & helmet) and taking responsibility for taking his medicines. He has been whining and stamping his feet lately... Oh the joys of being an "evil" stepmom, always wrong and supported by none. I think I'd help him pack his bags personally! I planted white anemones today (soaked last night) in Reed's garden for spring. I think there are only 1-2 plants yet to go in the ground. Tomorrow I hope to empty the last of the containers and save none of it. I simply don't have the energy to overwinter things this year. I am waiting for tulips and a few other bulbs, but no rush on planting those, even though we expect a killing frost this weekend. The pe4ach cobbler is beyond ready to take out of the oven!...See MoreJuly 2020, Week 5....and Hello, August
Comments (44)Jen, Everyone here with big pieces of property seems to have utility vehicles of one sort or another. We don't. We just walk everywhere and consider it good exercise, but we can pull a cart behind the riding mower if we need to move something heavy. This evening I had to do a little hippity hop over a small non-venomous snake in the driveway, and I laughingly said to myself that I just got 30 seconds worth of aerobic exercise. Then, Tim had to act like a 6-year-old boy poking and prodding at the snake, and I kept asking why he couldn't just leave the poor little thing alone. Why does seeing a snake turn a 60-something year old man into a little boy again? Jennifer, Poor Juno---wishing your kitty a fast recovery. It wasn't exactly chilly here but it was nice---in the upper 60s before the sun came up. It warmed up fast and Tim started telling me how hot and miserable it was, and there I was thinking it was pretty nice out there. Perhaps the difference is that he is in a climate-controlled office all day long every day during the work week so he doesn't experience/perceive the heat the same way those of us who are outdoors do. Even later in the day he told me it was too hot, and it was 82 degrees. When I pointed that out, he said it must be the heat index, so I checked that and it was 84. I thought it felt really good and he didn't think that at all. Maybe his Yankee blood is betraying him...after almost 4 decades of living in TX and OK. Falling asleep would have been okay---sometimes a person just needs a good nap! Larry, Those little pop-up showers always miss us. I watch them fly by on the radar and sigh. I've given up wishing and hoping for one to hit us. We had great rainfall back on July 1st or 2nd, but then everything missed us until this week so we were really dry. It felt good to get some rain again, and I'm sure it won't last long. I still had to hand-water containers this morning. My garden is weedier than usual. I plucked a few weeds while hand-watering nearby containers this morning, but it is so snakey that weeding is risky now, and I'm not going to risk my safety by doing hard core weeding. With a garden surrounded on three sides by trees, we just have too many snakes slithering into the garden for me to let my guard down. Every time I hear a conservationist type person proclaim that timber rattlers are rare and endangered, I just roll my eyes. Here at our place, I see them more often than I see any other type of snake most years, so the timber rattler population seems plenty healthy to me in this part of the country. I'd be happy to see a lot less of them. I think Tim's next mower will be a zero-turn. I notice he is looking at them a lot nowadays, probably just waiting until the old mower finally dies. We have a dear friend who was a John Deere repairman for several decades, and he was the busiest person I've ever seen---he literally could have worked 24/7 and never, ever caught up on all the repair tickets, and he was busy year-round, not just in the traditional growing season. That made me think twice about buying a John Deere. We had a John Deere push mower and it was the absolute worst piece of garbage in the form of a mower that we've ever had---it was constantly broken and we bought a different mower to replace it after less than 2 years. Kim, That looks nice, but when I look at those in stores and compare them to where my body would be if seated on one of those in my own garden, I think I'd have to bend over so much, like it would put me higher than I needed to be if I was weeding or mulching or planting in the raised beds or, even worse, at grade level. It wouldn't be bad if I was harvesting from plants 2-3 feet above the ground. You'll have to let us know how yours works out for you. Larry, I bought all my seeds for 2020 and 2021 back in February and March since I wasn't sure what the Covid-19 supply chain issues would mean for gardeners since most seeds are grown overseas nowadays. I'm not sorry I did that either. I don't have to worry what the stores do or don't have in stock. The fall seeds always seem to show up in the stores here in August, so maybe they'll be in stock soon in the stores near you. I haven't seen any at the stores here yet, but then, with Covid-19 around, we aren't in the stores as often as usual either. Kim, I'm glad being a granny nanny is working out for all of you and for the garden too. It seems like a win-win situation. Larry, I think they'll hold until whenever you did them. I've had them pop up early like that some years, and I just throw more dirt over them and ignore them and harvest them at the usual time. You can get some big monster potatoes the longer they are left in the ground, so if you don't want them big, harvest them whenever it pleases you to do so. Lynn, Cilantro bolts once temperatures hit 85 degrees, so it likely won't be growing much in summer, especially on the south side of the house where sunlight may reflect off the house and onto the soil and heat it up more. It will grow great in spring, fall and part of winter. If you can cover up your cilantro in winter when the temperatures are dropping below 20 degrees at night, you can keep it growing for quite a while into winter, especially warm winters. A lot of folks here in southern OK sow new cilantro seeds successively every 2 or 3 weeks from fall into winter so they always have new plants coming along to give them a constant supply of cilantro. Cilantro's leaves will need some sunlight in order for photosynthesis to occur in order to fuel plant growth, but I've grown it in as little as 4 hours of morning sun, and then in shade the rest of the day in the warm season. I didn't really garden today, other than going out very early just after sunrise to water all the container plants. The hummingbirds were at the feeders before the sun came up. When I was opening the drapes and raising the blinds at the dogs' favorite window where they like to sit and watch the world go by, we had 3 hummingbirds at one feeder and 2 at another and they were busy easy and zipping around. I don't usually notice them quite that early but they seemed hungry this morning. Perhaps they are fueling up for the migration south that will begin soon. The deer were out back waiting for me to bring them deer corn this morning. They are greedy and impatient, but if I feed them deer corn, they leave the wild birds' food and the hen scratch alone for the most part, so I feed them. We found more pressure-treated lumber for the new deck, so now we have about 75% of what we need. Tomorrow we need to remember to get all the hardware. The building supply section of Home Depot really seemed reloaded today, as if maybe they'd had some good deliveries since last weekend but most of what they had gotten in seemed to be drywall, tons and tons of drywall, and interior lumber, not the pressure-treated lumber. I was so excited about finding the long-sought pressure-treated lumber that I completely forget to go outside and see what was in the garden center which, in this particular store, is at the opposite end of the building. This particular store (the next closest HD to us is 60 miles away so we don't go that far often) is small and often doesn't have a very good selection, so finding anything has been challenging this year, but I also know that finding pressure-treated lumber for yard projects is an issue nationwide. I guess everyone who's been staying home more has been busy improving their yards and gardens. Today's weather was awesome. I hope it lasts awhile. Tim was not as impressed with the weather as I was, but he works in air conditioning all day and I think he forgets how awful the August heat normally is. It is hard to believe it is August. Dawn...See MoreJuly 2022, Building a Home
Comments (596)Thanks Keen! My builder will custom size mirrors, but I really want black metal and then champagne bronze and with rounded edges. So I think buying is my only option :/ K H - thank you for sharing that! @gerard - This is off topic, but if you need larger font there are options on your phone/iPad/computer to be able to enlarge (my husband has to do this!). @t_wag - Fair point! I think my lights are around 10”, so I’d end up with a bit of overlap, but not horrible I suppose....See MoreVeggie Tales - August 2022
Comments (129)I sliced the Garrison tomato by mistake. I meant to slice the Red Brandywine. But the Garrison tomato had black seeds on one side of the tomato, Some of the seed cavities looked very black. Most looked OK. I looked it up and the result is that the seeds were over ripe. Supposedly sometimes some of the black seeds will have sprouted inside the tomato. Some even have cotyledon leaves. This tomato was a little soft. Surprised me because my recent ripening tomatoes seem to be ripening very quickly. From blushing to ripe in maybe as quick as a week? But the black seeds could also be caused by blossom end rot or too much nitrogen. Or uneven watering. I discount the uneven watering because some folks grow tomatoes in the desert and if I never watered at all my plants would get more water from only rain water as what those folks plants get. I discount the too much nitrogen because the plants aren't all that tall, less than 6 feet. I think I'll sprinkle a little lime. They say you can eat these tomatoes. I tried the good side of the tomato. Wasn't a great tomato taste, but it was a tomato taste! If you don't hear from me....................See Moreslowpoke_gardener
6 months agoslowpoke_gardener
6 months agoslowpoke_gardener
6 months agoslowpoke_gardener
6 months agoslowpoke_gardener
6 months agoKim Reiss
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6 months agolast modified: 6 months agoslowpoke_gardener
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6 months agoslowpoke_gardener
6 months agoHU-422368488
6 months agoHU-422368488
6 months agoKim Reiss
6 months agoslowpoke_gardener
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6 months agoslowpoke_gardener
5 months agoNancy RW (zone 7)
5 months agoKim Reiss
5 months ago
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