As I write this, it’s coming up on 4:30pm, and we’re at 29C/84F, with the humidex at 33C/91F – and we are just reaching our high for the day. Things are not supposed to start cooling down for another couple more hours.
We have a 1% chance of rain where we are now, but some areas to the south of us and into the US are expecting storms with high winds, heavy rain and potentially baseball sized or larger hail.
!!!
I’m still hoping to get outside and get more done, but my goodness, I just can’t handle the heat like I used to, anymore!
Which is why I was out by about 8am, when it was still relatively cool.
My main task of the day was to start working on where I plan to plant corn this year.
A few years back, this area had been a squash patch, but we had to cut back and lost control of some areas. Little by little, I’ve been working to reclaim areas, and this tarp covered area is one of them. I keep calling it a tarp, but I think it’s landscape fabric of some kind. It’s been sitting in this spot for several years now, moved only a short distance to plant where the asparagus and strawberries are now.
The first thing I had to do was remove the things that were keeping it from being blown away. Pieces of wood. The old kiddie pool we sometimes use as a planter. Bricks. Rocks. Lots of rocks. I’ve been tossing rocks onto there while weeding, and some were put into piles to hold corners down. I grabbed as much of the rocks as I could and loaded them into the wheelbarrow, and they have been set on a piece of sheet metal I use in the winter to cover the fire pit. The fire pit has enameled bricks around it – those bricks are everywhere. The problem is, the enamel gets incredibly slippery when wet, and quickly get buried. We will be removing the enameled bricks and replacing them with something else, as we are able. Around the fire pit, it will be rocks from the garden.
Once most of the rocks were removed, I lifted the edges and pulled the tarp over itself to push any remaining rocks and debris together, to make it easier to gather the rest of the rocks.
Which is when I found the ant hill.
Fair warning, if ants give you the heebie jeebies. The second picture in the slide show above is of the ant hill, and the third file is a brief video showing just how many there were, and how they got just everywhere! I uncovered more ant tunnels closer to the opposite corner, and I suspect those were part of the same colony of ants.
In the next file, you can see the whole area that had been covered for so long. It’s amazing how much still managed to grow under there! For the most part, though, any grass or weeds under that tarp has been killed by it.
Ideally, I would have taken the lawn mower or weed trimmer over the next area, but I just didn’t want to lose the time. What I did do was drag over logs, each about 4′ long each, that we used to make temporary frames on the low raised beds several years ago. Logs, a board, the kiddie pool, bricks and larger rocks were laid out or scattered over the tarp. Over time, it will flatten more, and I can stretch the edges out to reduce the slack, over time.
This newly uncovered area is now quite compacted, so it’ll need quite a bit of digging and loosening of soil before anything can be planted.
I started at one corner and immediately hit something, stopping my garden fork. I shifted, tried again, and hit it again. Then again. I finally manage to get under it.
That was one of the bigger rocks I found. Most were more of a size that can be used around the fire pit. As I worked, the rocks all got dumped into the wheelbarrow.
Worse than the rocks were the roots. They were flippin’ everywhere! I was able to pull up some longer ones, but only so far before they stopped dead, because I hit another root they’d gone under.
I had to get the loppers, which meant going into the old garden shed.
The raccoon mama and her babies are still there. The mama didn’t move, one of her babies was nursing, I could see one other that was just sort of leaning against a wall joist, I couldn’t see a third one, but the fourth was just looking at me curiously. No chittering warnings or acting nervous. They have learned I will leave them alone.
I grabbed the lopper as quickly as I could and left them be.
In the next photo, you can see several of the larger roots I tried pulling up before they hit something below ground and stopped.
Loosening the soil alone would not have taken long at all, but between the roots and the rocks, I ended up working at it for almost 3 hours. I got a roughly 4′ wide area loosened, cleaned up, de-rooted and most of the larger rocks removed (there are always more…), then leveled and smoothed out with a landscape rake. Then I brought straw over and set it around the edges, like a frame.
I have two types of corn I want to plant, so I plan to dig at least one more strip like this, with straw covering the paths in between. Someday, these areas might be reclaimed as raised beds, or be converted to a perennial beds.
After finishing up this bed, I watered all the garden beds deeply. The garlic was getting too tall for the netting, so I took that off. I can see some second sowing of spinach and chard where they were planted in between, but not many. I think it’s just been too hot for them. If they don’t take, I might plant some bush beans, instead.
Then I went inside for lunch. Which is when I heard a lawn mower.
My brother had brought out their zero turn mower and started mowing the outer yard.
After I had my lunch, I grabbed the wheel barrow and the landscape rake and headed to the side of the garage their zero turn mower is stored in. The cats have been using the lean-to’s on both sides of the garden as litter boxes over the winter. With the mower out, I was able to rake things up into the wheel barrow to dump out, then use the rake to level the floor, so they would have a nice clean spot to park their mower in.
While getting the wheel barrow I realized my SIL was now mowing – and she was mowing the inner yard! So I moved hoses and logs aside. She even went into the jungle of un-reclaimed main garden area. An area that is extremely rough and is what broke our own push mower. I had planned to very carefully use their push mower they’ve made available to us, with the mower set as high as it can go. I’ve used their little riding mower there before, but really didn’t want to risk damaging it again. That zero turn mower is way more robust and made light work of the mess!
After cleaning up in the garage and putting things away, I backed our truck up to the house to load it with our garbage bags – it’s been several weeks since we’ve gone to the dump, so there was a lot – then headed to the dump. By the time I got back, my SIL was almost done mowing both the inner and outer yards. Since I left the gate open while I was gone, she even mowed the sides of the driveway outside the gate.
I so, so appreciate that she did this! I still need to get the push mower and weed trimmer out, but I no longer have to worry about those huge areas.
It’s now past 5pm as I write this, and I have been seriously considering asking the girls to do the outside cat feeding and calling it a night. I’m falling asleep at my keyboard (which I am now thinking isn’t just being tired from the heat, but from the low iron levels I found out about just yesterday). I should at least try to get the push mower out in some areas, though. It’s not something that can be done in the mornings, because the grass is too wet and would jam the mower. Which means working at it in the evenings, when things would finally have a chance to dry – but we’re not really expected to cool down much overnight, and tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, even before the humidex is taken into account.
The second corn bed is definitely going to wait until tomorrow morning. Digging through all those rocks and roots to prepare the bed is not something I want to be doing during the heat of the day!
Oh, dear. The weather group I’m on just sent a notification out. Some areas now have tornado warnings. Not our area, thankfully, but between potentially baseball sized hail or potential tornados, the south end of the province is not looking good right now!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 