Random Wednesday

64°f/17.8°C, cooler and cloudy with rain expected today. I sure hope that happens!

A few random pics today.

Cherries are getting close! We covered what we could reach. It looks ugly but maybe we can keep the birds out. The new tree we planted last year also has a few cherries on it.

My current project. A dog (not ours!) chewed the top and one side of this cabinet, so we replaced the top and used body filler to repair the side. It's now in the process of getting painted, white this time with a natural finish on the top. We picked this up at Goodwill for $2.99. I guess they thought it was not fixable.

I am painting it white because this black was the style a few years ago when everyone was into the "prim" decor, but now I have trouble moving black furniture. I am still planning on the distressed finish though.

The herb garden is all planted, but still needs a little mulch to finish it up.

This bank is planted with oregano as a ground cover, with some wild yarrow, red clover, daylights and asparagus that self-planted there. There are also black raspberries along the fence that I planted last year.

I let the wild daisies stay too.

A little miniature rose that made it through the winter. I have one that is 10 years old.

I can't remember the name of this plant. I put in two of them last year, and only this one survived. I really like it.

Coreopsis also self-seeds around here, which makes me quite happy!

The grape arbor that is in the herb garden, and drift roses, which I still need to trim to get rid of winter-kill.

Last night was open mic night, and I had agreed to be the guest host this time. We had a great evening with 10 performers, three of them spoken word, plus the featured artist. A local preacher joined us and read the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's inauguration speech, both fitting reminders for this Memorial Day weekend. 

This guy was passing through, on his way from Maryland to the Midwest, and found our event online, so he came and joined us. He did some fun rockabilly-style songs that invited singalong. His name was Dino Delray--- wonder if that was just his performance name?

The featured presenter was interesting but I couldn't understand a word of her songs! Beautiful voice but she needs to learn to enunciate, in my opinion. 

I always find it intriguing that most women tend to dress up when performing, while most men show up in whatever old thing. Why is that, I wonder? I did the same when I was storytelling, or even just doing workshops. 

Today is a much slower day. I did some watering since the rain has not yet appeared, did laundry, and tidied up in the cellar a little. It will soon be time for the annual cleanout, not a job I look forward to but necessary. The only other thing on my radar for today is to finish up the dresser I have nearly completedcx, and work on that cabinet above.

Larry is working on the fridge, again. That evaporator fan stopped working, again. We put in a new one Monday but it has already failed. Not sure if it was a defective unit or what, but it worked for a day and then quit. Fortunately these little fans are less than $20 and easily replaced, but we seem to have to do this every 6 months.  I ordered another one Monday and it should be here tomorrow. Time to be on the lookout for another fridge, I think. I hope it is just the fan and not some other issue right now.

Onward and upward! Stay well, friends.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

In the Garden

67°f/19.4°C, breezy and mostly clear, but clouds moving in as I write this. Put in 2 hours in the gardens and stringtrimming.  It was 80° by the time I finished up at 10am.

I went out yesterday evening and took photos in the vegetable garden. Not the best light for it, but here they are.

This is the middle section.  In front right is a row of gladiolas and marigolds, along with a few radishes.

Then onions, a mix of red, yellow and white, then Tenderette bush beans, and beets and kale. The back is planted with the wax and the purple beans and a row of flower seeds, but none of these are up yet. 

This is the front end of the garden. I have a few cheery-type tomatoes in here, a row of dill and a row of basil.

The dill and basil are still tiny.

I only planted one hill of yellow squash and one of zucchini. Last year I planted 2 of each and we were overrun with squash.

The girls were curious! I have to think about having them here. They are a bit....smelly.  Not terrible, but I think we need to move them further up the garden. I am a little worried about the smell come high summer.

The broccoli and cabbage patch. Some plants have holes in the leaves. I treated them with diatomaceous earth, and am watching to see if I need to do something different.

The rattlesnake beans are on this arch over the brassicas.

My teeny tiny onions, started from seed! This photo is much zoomed. They actually look like thin new grass.

The lettuce patch, green ice and red sails, with radishes in between. Above that is the kale the cat dug up, and spinach.  Somewhere, either here or in the middle section, I planted bok choi, but can't remember where!

And above the kale and spinach, a row of carrots and leeks (the leeks disnt get in the photo, but they're tiny anyway), the peppers, then a row of ornamental corn. That's horseradish in the top left corner. Running at right angles to this area is two rows of sweet corn and the purple asparagus patch. The asparagus is completely overrun with ground ivy, which we will have to deal with soon.

Looking down through the garden. That first arch is where I just planted lima beans.

A peek at Larry's garden, complete with Mr. Blowy on duty to keep critters away. The front row is onions, then a row of potatoes, then 3 rows of tomatoes, and 2 rows of sweet corn.

The cucumbers are on the first arch. They are struggling.

These, on the upper side of the arch look okay though. Under this arch I just planted the rest of the onion sets I had, along with more lettuce, and radishes 

Just wanted to show this interesting plant. It's a type of henbane, an ornamental variety. It looks pretty with the Mexican primroses.

And last, my only David Austyn rose, 5 years old and nowhere near the large shrub it was supposed to be. But the blooms have the most heavenly fragrance.  The chair protects it from Larry's weedeatee and the dogs!

That's about it for the veggie gardens. Now, we need Mother Nature to cooperate,  and she can be a very fickle lady!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Smoldering

68f/20C, breezy, partly cloudy, humid and HOT. Currently 84f/29C. Whew.

One of the roses currently in bloom. I can't remember the name of it.

You can believe we were up and out early this morning to get our outside work done! 

I got a bit of a start on it yesterday evening, spraying roses and grapes for fungus and black rot, and then I finished planting my herb garden and put in the lima bean seeds and butternut squash seeds in my veggie garden. I was completely drenched with sweat by the time I was done, but this morning I was glad I had got that much done. I mulched most of the herb garden this morning, planted a few planters, and pulled bushels of that horrid ground ivy out of my flowerbeds while Larry moved rabbits into new cages and got his garden ready to plant more tomatoes. 

As usual, I have bought too many tomato plants, because we like so many different kinds. There's 4 kinds of cherry tomatoes, for example. Four! And of course, you have to get four or six, they don't sell just two. Then there are the Amish Paste tomatoes I am trying again--they didn't do well last time, but everyone swears by them, so we'll see. I like Brandywines and Better Boys, and of course the Black Prim. Larry likes yellow and pink tomatoes and the striped ones, which I am not sure I bought this time. Anyway, you can see how it is. The crazy part is that we usually get all we want to can for free from a friend, but that's a one-shot deal--go in and pick them all on one day. So we still need tomatoes for eating the rest of the time, and we ear a lot of them. 

I think I have too many peppers too. There were 12 sweet banana plants, plus 4 chili peppers, and I think a dozen bell peppers. I'm not a fan of hot peppers at all, but I grow the chilis to dry and to make my own hot sauce.

My garden is completely full now. Larry will have space for some bush pumpkins and another row of corn, and then his is done too. Of course, we will pull things like peas and onions when they're done, and probably replant with late corn or something. Anyway, all that's really left to do now is finish mulching, keep things weeded and tied up (tomatoes), and watch for bugs and such.  I will try to remember to take some photos this evening, although a lot of plants are still pretty small and not much to look at. 

The lawn furniture needs to be painted badly, and the patio pressure-washed. Maybe next week? I mixed the paint, using leftovers of various cans, and it came out pretty close to the same green that is on some of the chairs now.

We did have a fire in the firepit last night, but watched it from the cool of the porch, under the ceiling fan! We may just do the same tonight. Having the fire makes us stop work and relax together, same as the fireplace does in winter. Otherwise we'd probably keep pushing until after dark. As it was, I still had to pack ebay before going to bed.

In the middle of the day, I worked on pricing things for the booths, and Larry worked on cleaning up 4 chair frames that are part of another midcentury dinette set. This set has an aqua and green floral pattern, and I don't know if it will be as popular as the solid red and the aqua sets we've sold recently. I guess we'll find out. 

I finished a few of the books in my stack. The Country of the Pointed Firs was an interesting read, particularly because I was reading through Culpepper's Complete Herbal at the same time. In The country of the Pointed Firs, the protagonist stays with a ladybwho was the local herb doctor who was always collecting herbs from her garden or the countryside. (Apparently people had a lot of trouble with their bowels and headaches back in the 1800's, because so many of the remedies in Culpepper's Herbal addressed those, as well as coughs and "female complaints".)

I also finished South-Facing Slope. I can't say it recommend it but perhaps other find the essays by a Southern belle who marries an English country gentleman farmer interesting. I had a hard time with her sending her son off to boarding school when he was nine, although I suppose that's common practice among English well-to-do families. That, and many of her opinions and comments, I could not relate to. 

But Traveling Light, by Lynn Branard, was an absolute joy to read. Light, funny, touching, quirky, it was the kind of story that made you think, well, I guess I could see that happening,  and then reading on to see what happens next. I will look for others by this author.

Now in the reading stack: continuing with The Assassin's Cloak and The Book of Days, added Women in the Kitchen by Anne Willan, The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth by Barbara O'Beal and The Country Diary Herbal by Sarah Hollis.

Not much else going on around here. Just trying to stay cool and hydrated! 

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.