October week 4, are they still lying about rain?
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
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slowpoke_gardener
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April 2018, Week 4, Planting and Rain
Comments (63)Kim, If it is any comfort, hilling potatoes is not my favorite thing either. I don't do it. I just plant them 8-10" below ground in the first place, and then, once they have broken through the ground and it is time to hill them, I pile on the mulch instead. Inches and inches of mulch. Instead of hilling up a couple more times, I pile on more mulch. Insane amounts of mulch. If it means I don't have to hill, I'm all for it. I realize this works because my potato patch is small. There's no way at a place your size that you could mulch all those potatoes, which is too bad. I'd give you a 2 a.m. wake-up call except for the fact that I will not be awake at that time. Sorry. Hailey, Zinnias are great in our climate. I've grown them every year for as long as I can remember---dating back to my childhood in the 1960s. They love heat and tolerate drought well---I don't mean that they are xeric and never need water, but just that they don't need as much water as most other flowering plants do. They reseed prolifically. I just redid our zinnia bed this Spring after 15 years of letting it reseed itself because I wanted to add a lot of compost to the soil, and I wanted to start over with fresh seed in certain colors. After 15 years of reseeding, our flowers had gotten too predictable and were mostly the more common colors, so this year I added lemon yellow (a lot brighter than the yellow of other zinnias) and lime green. I think I added purple. Or, at least I added a mix that includes purple---let's hope that some of the plants from that mix actually are purple. Just be sure to give your zinnias good spacing. They need good air flow to avoid powdery mildew, which is about the only problem that I think zinnias have. Butterflies love zinnias too. Rebecca, Whatever you're going to do to the squirrels, we support you. More tomatoes, less squirrels, you know. Good luck with it. Go ahead and plant the cukes. I'd only hold back if powdery mildew is an issue with your peas, because you wouldn't want for PM to start on the peas as they near the end of their lives and then transfer to the cukes as they are sort of just starting out. Most years my peas don't get PM....so it isn't something I worry much about. If I see it starting up I just go ahead and yank out the pea plants to get the PM out of the garden before it can begin to spread. Amy, I'm laughing about Curious George. I loved those books. I probably wouldn't appreciate them as much now as I did when I was a kid. I think the violas will survive under the coleus. I just finished interplanting Lemon Yellow Profusion Zinnias with my pansies and violas today, with the idea being that by the time the now-tiny zinnia plants are taller than the violas, the weather will be heating up and the violas will be about done. My violas either come back every year or they reseed themselves....one way or another, they come back. I just saw seeds on a viola yesterday and was shocked. It seems too early for them to go to seed, but we have had some days with high temps at 88 or 89, so maybe the violas think summer is here and they are done. Yes, I think Elbon rye (or even just plain old winter rye grass like people use to overseed lawns) would crowd out the crabgrass if you plant it in the fall, but I haven't tried to do it. I do know that when we overseed the lawn with annual or perennial rye grass (both are annuals here, by the way) so we have a green lawn in bad wildfire seasons, all the summer grasses are late to appear because the rye grass shades them and keeps them from really getting going in the Spring time. I don't recognize your plant in the photo, but it looks vaguely familiar. Do the plants have square stems like the plants in the mint family? So what kind of gulls scour the Wal-Mart parking lot occasionally looking for food? Do we have a name for those. (grin) I love gulls. Feeding them at the beach was one of our favorite thing to do when Chris was a little kid. I suppose having our kids treat us like we are children is karma for the times we have treated our parents like they are children. Of course, we can look at it in a positive light and say that our children learned their nurturing behavior from us, but it does make me think "oh, he thinks we are getting old....". lol. Well, of course, we are getting older every day---all of us are getting older---us, our parents, our kids, our grandkids....our pets. I still maintain that getting older isn't that bad when you consider the alternative. Jennifer, Getting older is interesting. I don't like all the physical changes that come with it, but I do like the mental/psychological changes that occur over the years. It is funny when I look back at things I worried about in my 20s and 30s and now realize that it was just a waste of time to worry about them. I do think wisdom comes with age, so that's a plus. I know I am a lot more laid back now than ever before, and I think that's a positive. The body changes after menopause suck, but guess what? That's life. At least we're still here, still alive, still kicking and still gardening. I look at some of our older friends who are on the verge of being wheelchair bound and am so grateful that at least we still have our mobility (despite all the aches and pains that come with it). I'll probably color my hair forever. At least that's what I think most days. Then, other days, I look at my cousin who has lovely silver hair and think I wouldn't mind having hair like that. I think the hard part is to go from coloring it to letting it grow out to its now-natural shades of gray and white or whatever it would be. For me, that would be the hard part. Hailey, I agree with Nancy that your flower is an osteospermum. That particular one is Blue Eyed Beauty, sold by Park Seed. Osteopermums are cool-season flowers so generally don't last long here (at least in my part of OK) before the heat burns them up. They were in bloom down here in the Feb-Mar time frame...of course, March was warm, and then April turned back cold, so this year they're probably going to stay in flower longer than usual. Rebecca, Wear whatever is comfortable! Keep in mind that we'll be handling plants and eating, so white probably is not the best color to choose. (grin) Based on that reasoning, I ought to wear brown or black so that all the stains hide. I worked my fingers to the bone in the garden this week and planted, planted, planted. Weeded, weeded, weeded. Mulched, mulched, mulched. Still, in the end, at least it seems like I made progress. I hope to make more either next week or the week after. We'll see what life throws at us and what the weather throws at us as well. The problem is now that it is warming up, everything is growing like weeds----especially the weeds. I have been working hard to get the warm-season flowers in the ground so they can get off to a good start before the weather gets too hot. We still are rain deficient here for April, so probably will end April that way. It looks like May will bring more rain though, and with it, all the thunderstorms and stuff that we don't especially want. See y'all tomorrow. Dawn...See MoreOctober 2018, Week 4, End of Warm Growing Season Nears
Comments (32)Jacob, Every year I always hope that the first frost of autumn will be later than average. It rarely is. There was one glorious year in the early to mid-2000s when the first frost/freeze (and it was both at once) didn't arrive until around December 17th or 18th. We had the best fall garden production that year anyway, and then it got to go on and on and on forever. We went from not having had a single frost or freeze to dropping down into the mid-teens. It was a very dramatic ending to the growing season. Filling the garage/shop (1200 square feet of space) with 'stuff' wasn't as big of an issue 10-15 years ago as it is now because Tim always knew exactly where everything was. It might have looked like a mess to other people, but he could walk in there and instantly find what he needed/wanted (though no one else could) no matter how small or obscure it was. The problem is that as you get older, your memory gets worse and now that he is in his 60s, he has a harder time finding stuff. When you cannot find what you need after much searching, you go buy a replacement. I think when we do clean up and reorganize the garage, we'll find duplicates of a lot of tools and things. To me, that's a sign we need to clean it up and organize it. And, so we shall, hopefully on a few winter weekends. Our trees have done about the same as yours. One day last week I saw a few glimmers of red and yellow foliage in our woodland areas but everything mostly was green still, and this week the there has been an explosion of color. I am so excited. We often go from green foliage to falling brown foliage literally overnight, so to have a year where we are having glorious reds, yellows and golds is awesome. I want to enjoy every minute of it because it likely will be several years before we have such good autumn color again down here. Nancy, It is SO true that the older one gets, the older that 'old' gets pushed out there into a higher age range. When we moved here, we were barely 40 and had moved into an old farm and ranch neighborhood where everyone here had lived here pretty much their whole lives. Most of them were in their 60s, 70s, or 80s and seemed impossibly old to us, although our next-door neighbors were about our age. Some of our new neighbors had kids our age or older, all of them were grandparents or great grandparents. Not some of them are great-, great-grandparents. Of the original neighbors still alive, most are in their 80s or 90s, and to us, 60 no longer seems old at all. (grin) Even the 80 year olds don't seem as old to us now as they once did because we're getting closer in age to them. When a younger family moves into our neighborhood now, I am all too aware that they undoubtedly see us as the old folks..... The bad thing about moving into a neighborhood where almost everyone is so much older than you is that you find yourself going to tons of funerals over the years. But, then, on the other hand it is an awesome blessing to have neighbors you love and adore so much that you truly grieve for them after they pass away. I'm glad you can see in the formerly dark room. I have been amazed to discover how much good lighting can improve any space. Larry, That tree is gorgeous! Nancy, I totally understand about wanting someone to be at home taking care of the animals. That is what we usually do, and it usually is Tim who travels to PA for family stuff, and I stay here and mind the zoo. It isn't that I don't want to go to PA with him, but rather that it just would be so hard to find someone to take care of all our dogs, cats and chickens. When you go, I wish you safe travels. Cats are such a hoot! They are incredibly entertaining and, yet, they steal inside your soul and capture your heart as well. When going through a box of stuff in the closet the other day, I came across a calendar I had saved from 2014 because the cat poems in it are too precious and at the same time hysterically funny. The cat calendar is entitled "I Could Pee On This" and it has a cat poem (theoretically written by the cat in that month's photo) and I believe it is the January cat who wrote "I Could Pee On This". That poem completely cracks me up because it is so true---if you seriously upset some cats, they will retaliate by peeing on something precious to you. Earlier this week, two of our cats were playing with each other---but one (Lucky) was inside sitting on the desk in the girls' room and the other one (Pumpkin) was outside. They were play fighting with one another, separated by the window. I had a hard time focusing on the cleaning task at hand because I was watching them and laughing at them. We finally had sunshine on Friday. It was pretty chilly for much of the day, but got a little warm in the afternoon. The important thing was that we had the sunshine! The foliage here still is largely green, but there's big bursts of reds, golds and yellows now scattered around all over---still mostly elms, persimmon groves and, for the red foliage, a handful of red oaks (most red oaks are just beginning to change color), sumac, ornamental pears, Chinese pistache, and poison ivy. For anyone who doesn't think they have poison ivy running wild in their native woodland areas here, all you have to do is stand and look into the woods and you'll see the poison ivy now a scarlet red wherever it has climbed upward through the trees. Later on the Virginia creeper vines will change color as well. There's still a lot of red in the garden, mostly in the form of the flowers of zinnias, pineapple sage and Texas hummingbird sage. Oh, and autumn sage of course. I'm going to miss all these colors when frost and freezing temperatures arrive and take them away from us. We're supposed to hit the lower 80s today and tomorrow, so I hope everyone will remember to watch for increased snake activity. Why are we hitting the 80s? Well, I'm not complaining, but it is making me rethink my costume for tonight's Halloween party. I based the costume (I'm going to be a black cat) on wearing a black sweatsuit. Hmmm. That might be too warm, so I guess I'll switch to lighterweight black clothing and attach my cat tail and cat accessories to those clothing items. Here in OK, you never know if Halloween will be hot/warm or freezing cold. I think the actual Halloween will have cold, rainy weather, but most of the community Halloween stuff here is happening this weekend during the heat wave. Of course it is. At least the kids who go to the Trunk or Treat event in town tonight won't have to wear coats over their costumes. I saw some persimmons on one of our trees yesterday and am going to try to get them today (they're too high to reach but maybe I can knock them down with a pruning pole). I want to cut them open and see if the southern OK persimmons also are showing spoons like those in other parts of the state and the country. Dawn...See MoreSept week 4 "I wish it would rain"
Comments (56)Amy, we have not been too fond of dry peas either, but Madge will cook them from time to time. We have a few pounds of PEPH seeds, and have more fresh peas in the freezer, and still some on the vines that should be dry by now. I would have already cut them down if it were not for the added hot wires we strung over them. I have deer problems, but this year they were worse because of the dry weather. The deer would jump the electric fence to eat the peas. My neighbor and I bought over a mile of electric fence wire to discourage the deer. Moni, does your rain gauge ever freeze? I have bought many, only to forget about them and let them freeze and break. I have had a new one for over a year, it had beveled sides. I bought it thinking that maybe the ice would slide up the sides as it expanded. Madge tells everyone that keep it under my bed to protect it, the truth is, I have no idea where it is. We have not done much today. Madge's older brother died this morning. We did go out to eat, but nothing tasted good. I need to go to the wildlife garden and repair the fence. I doubt that I will pick any peas, because we just had another shower, and I dont want to fool with a bunch of wet peas....See MoreOctober 2021 Week 4
Comments (50)Ok, now I am the one that lost what they had been typing. This had NEVER happened to me..but the browser suddenly refreshed to a blank page. Oh my...well I need to eat my own medicine and start typing in a word processor and then copy/pasting again. Weather...weather is cold, wet, and very windy. I am loving being retired with nothing to do but huddle in my soft warm fleecy bathrobe...it’s a good day for it. I’ll have to get out and walk Jasper about 4 though. While I was typing the first time, I had to stop and think..did I walk him this morning with everything going on? And the answer was yes. I’ll wear (which for me is a ‘gasp’) long pants, and a light coat with a hood. It’s like it’s winter or something! I think we can’t visit the dog park this weekend, it’ll be a muddy mess. So it’s probably a greenway paved trail walk time. Today started with house-cleaning (and I hate cleaning) and taking out trash. Then the AT&T installation of fiber-optic internet (and darn if I can’t tell that it’s any faster, despite being 4x faster down and 30x faster up). Then trying to interface with Moni, every time one is busy or the other is busy when one tried to call. We finally got it done and settled. I had to move furniture around too for the install (getting all the wires, cables, stands, chairs) out of the way. Then of course I had to move them back to protect wires and cables from dogs (hopefully). And darn, if despite the down speed being 4x and the up speed being 30x faster (according to a speed test), I can’t tell any difference yet. I need to download some big things and see if I can see faster. First freeze/hard frost (32) is forecast for Thursday for us. I do want (tomorrow..when sunny and warmer) to get out and forage in the yard, the rain and cooler temps have caused some spring greens to come up. I can collect some plantains, dandelions, violets, and dock and have some wilted greens to supplement the lack of green vegetables I don’t usually eat. It sounds like things are coming together for several of you. Nancy, there’s one good thing, you can keep track of hubby easily for a while..he won’t be going anywhere....See Morehazelinok
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Kim Reiss