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.

Quiet Weekend

80°f/26.7°C already, and it's only noon. Humid as can be after a showery day yesterday, then thunderstorms last night. 

So thankful for rain! At last, it was enough to get the gardens well-soaked. You can almost see the plants growing. A half-inch of good rain is a real blessing.

It has been such a busy week that I have had little time to even think about what to write. Friday we worked hard in the gardens and yard. We put down cardboard and spread all the grass clippings mulch we picked up Thursday evening.  I took a fall while we were getting that, didn't really hurt myself except for soreness, but I could not get up! That new knee would not bend enough for me to get the leverage I needed.  Very annoying. Our friend Glenn got a stepstool and I got up easily enough then. But good grief, I can't carry a stepstool everywhere. So I will call my doctor and see about physical therapy so I can find an alternative way to get up. That should be fun.  Not. 

Poor Glenn was so worried I was hurt or had broken a bone. I told him God built me well-padded for a reason. Larry, on the other hand, was more concerned about whether it was his fault--- which it was, because he had, for no good reason, taken the truck way up the hill, so Glenn and I had to walk up, and I stepped in a hole. That's my man, self-defensive first and always, even though no one blamed him. But my strong bones stood me in good stead, again. This was the first time i have actually knelt on that knee, and it wasn't too bad, since it was on soft grass. Didn't even get a bruise!

I finished planting the herb garden Friday evening, so now I just need to finish mulching it. I added more rosemary and lavender, along with French tarragon, more parsley, some anise hyssop, borage, and one that had no tag and I can't recall what it is. 

Yesterday I took it easy. I went to our Ravenswood booth and had a good visit with Leah, the owner, who is facing brain surgery for an aneurism next week. She is scared, of course. It has been a rough year for her: first that weird infection last summer that almost killed her and took 5 months for recovery, then a small heart attack that required surgery to repair an artery, then last week her beloved dog died, and now this. Please keep her in your thoughts, and prayers if you pray. 

I did a good booth tidying,  which was needed since a cabinet and a table had sold, along with a few other large items. I hadn't brought in anything, so could just focus on rearranging. A stop at a thrift, the grocery store, and to pick up another cabinet, a rustic thing that will need sanding and new shelves, but for $5.00? Yes please. And that was pretty much my day. 

Today? Well, very slow again! Just too hot and humid too fast, after being so cool for weeks. I made a big brunch of leftover waffles, blueberry syrup, sausage and eggs, coffee, and tomato juice. That will hold us til dinnertime!  I also finally rearranged my hot weather/cold weather clothes, and we moved the old iron bed I won at the auction into my workroom.  I thought it was a steal for $4.00. 

It needs one brass ball replaced which I can get on ebay, and just a good cleaning. I hope that this winter I will have that room cleared out enough to also add a dresser.  It will still be my ebay storage and workroom, but having the extra bed will be nice. (The tall mirror with the gold frame was an auction buy too).

Another thing from the auction was kinda funny: an Irobot roomba vacuum. I got it for $8, and felt pretty sure it wouldn't work, even though it was in the original box with all the papers, etc. But it works great (so far), and vacuumed the whole house this morning. I feel spoiled.

Tomorrow I will be up early, getting done what I can before it gets hot again. The rhythm of our lives will shift to summer mode, outside work in the mornings and evenings, inside in the afternoons. Last week we had a firepit every evening, but I think that might not happen again until things cool off mid-week. 

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