Well, my attempt to get stuff done early before things got hot, taking a nap, then continuing working outside when it got cooler almost worked.
The nap part was a fail.😄 I can’t complain too much, considering what kept me up was adorable snuggles and kisses from Cheddar. Usually, he just slams himself against my back when I sleep, so I wasn’t going to turn down a snuggle session from him.
My daughter got out the riding mower to do the inner yards, then grabbed the loppers to remove the little poplars that are starting to take over one side of our driveway. By then, it was getting into the hottest part of the day, and that area is in full sun, so she just got a start on it for now. There are a lot of them do remove, so any progress at all is bonus.
Unfortunately, the hottest part of the day tends to be late afternoon, early evening. We hit 28C/82F by 3, and it stayed there until about 6, which is roughly when I headed out again.
The garden definitely needed a second watering, in this heat. I took the time to do a bit of weeding, using the hose to make it easier to remove their roots. Despite being watered in the morning, it was amazing how dry the soil was already.
I’ve been thinking on where to thin by transplanting some of the zucchini, and the surviving strawberry plants from last year that have been neglected, but didn’t get to that this evening. The weeding was needed more.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to get it done tomorrow evening, after I get back from helping my mother with various things. I called her to remind her I’d be there in the morning to take her to the lab for her monthly blood test, and she immediately started telling me to go to her place first, then the pharmacy. I wasn’t expecting to go to the pharmacy; her meds are supposed to be delivered. I suspect she intends to give them a hard time over having to pay for her meds. I think she’s re-convinced herself that I paid for all her meds when I picked up her inhaler. Well, I’ll find out tomorrow, I guess.
I got the supports I picked up for the black currant bush in the South yard set up.
These are dollar store supports marketed for tomatoes, but I find them handy for other things. I’ve got two sets put together around the currant bush. After I got the first picture, I decided to raise the upper connectors almost to the top of the stakes, which you can sort of see in the second picture. The hard part was getting the stakes into the ground evenly, since I kept hitting rocks or roots or something. I think this will work out just fine!
I also got the string of solar powered LED lights set up. I decided to just wrap it around the top of the section of chain link fence between the two gates, with the solar panel set into the end of the top horizontal bar, rather than into the ground. I will check it out after it gets dark, to see how it works out. The yard light might be too bright for them to work, there. If that turns out to be true, I’ll move them to the driveway gate to replace the old string of lights on the fence, there. We used to have white Christmas lights strung together all along the fence line. I really liked how that looked but, for LED lights, they failed an awful lot, and I ended up not being able to find the right type of replacement bulbs. The little string of solar powers lights I’ve got there now has actually outlasted the Christmas lights rather handily!
While I was out and about outside, I found myself being followed by a little blue eyed beauty, and managed to get a few more photos. I just had to post the whole series of them…
The expression on Eyelet’s face after Stinky pushed his way between us was just hilarious!
The first couple of pictures come closest to showing how white his eyes can get at times.
The Cat Lady has said she will try to find a home for Eyelet; a Siamese cross can sometimes be easier to place than other cats, though not a lot people would be willing to take on a deaf kitten. I don’t want her to end up with yet another permanent keeper.
She sent me some security camera images today. She’s actually out of the country right now, and her mother is house/cat sitting. A strange cat showed up, triggering their cameras, and was lounging on the roof of a catio. He managed to get into the house and won’t leave. He was intact, had all the usual ear mites, fleas, etc expected in a stray, and has permanent damage likely from being hit by a car. She hasn’t even seen the cat in person yet, and has already spent some $700 in vet bills on him! After asking around, one of the neighbours recognized him as a cat they saw getting dumped this past spring. It ran off and disappeared.
….ggggrrrrr….
What is it with people, that they do that?
Now he seems to have claimed the Cat Lady’s house as his new home. Even though Cabbages has been territorial and going after him, he won’t leave!
Looks like they’ve got another cat. Not sure how many that makes now. I think it’s over 30 now!
So you can understand why I’m hesitant to have her take another cat from us to adopt out. Too many people have backed out of adopting, even after assuring that they understood that they were taking in a colony cat that would likely need more vet care than typical. The Cat Lady and her family have quite a few cats permanently living with them, and not just from us, because of that. There is, however, a rescue that specializes in Siamese cats. They were going to take Ghosty, once they had an open space for her.
They seem to have ghosted the Cat Lady about Ghosty, though.
I can certainly understand why the Cat Lady is bowing out of rescues at the end of this summer. Other small rescues have shut down this year already, for much the same reason. Burnout.
Of course, being deaf, Eyelet’s chances for survival are pretty low, and we can’t take any more cats in. We already have way too many inside, and we don’t have the space they should have. It’s very stressful for them, and causing problems.
Well, it is what it is, and we do the best we can.
It was a productive day today – and in a good way, if rather expensive. How expensive, we don’t quite know yet!
First up, when doing my morning rounds, I was able to water the trees as well. It’s been a few days, and wow, a lot can happen in a few days, when it comes to growing things!
This is the Royalty raspberry! One has still survived! We got a bundle of three, and they actually fruited in their first year, even though they were first year canes. The next year, only one survived the winter, and really didn’t grow much at all. So it was no surprised when there was no sign of any at all, this spring. Until this morning!
Needless to say, it has been added to my group of trees and bushes that get watered. I’ve included a single silver buffalo berry as well, as it’s the only one that seems to not be doing well. The watering doesn’t seemed to have helped. Makes me wonder if there’s something under it that’s causing a problem. A large rock, perhaps, or meandering poplar roots.
Now that I know what silver buffalo berry bushes look like, I think we actually have some growing wild, just a short distance away! The sign cam is right near the corner of the fence line, and I can see some bushes in the ditch that look like our own silver buffalo berry bushes. If we can confirm that at some point, we might transplant a few to fill in the gaps for the ones we planted that didn’t make it.
After watering all the garden beds, I still had time to water in the outer yard, where the Korean Pine and walnuts are.
Two of them are from seed, one is the year old sapling we got at the same time. Yay!!!
After finishing my rounds and chores, I grabbed a late breakfast, then headed to town early for my first appointment with the truck. The autobody place is not far from a lumber yard and hardware store that I keep forgetting exists, as we don’t usually go to this area of town. I dropped the truck off almost an hour early and had a chance to talk to the lady that’s been in charge of dealing with the insurance company and trying to get our truck done. I told her where I was going after leaving the truck with them, and that I had an appointment for the front tires to be replaced a half hour after my appointment with them was scheduled. She told me that was plenty of time.
We get fliers for this hardware store that I check out, so I did know that they did doors and windows. What I wasn’t completely sure of was if they did pre-hung doors and, more importantly, if they did installations.
I was very happy to find out that they did! My searched for companies that could do it came up with rather useless results, and I was starting to get concerned. The one company I knew of that my brother had hired to install new windows here, the summer before we moved in, disappeared during the illegal lockdowns, as so many other small, independent businesses did.
The guy I spoke to filled out a form and gave me the business card for their installer. In a day or two, we will get a call to book a time for him to come here to take measurements and see what we’ve got now. We’ll then be able to talk about what pre-hung doors we want (or can afford), and things like making sure the arm bar get reinstalled.
That was done so quickly, I decided to look around the store a bit. In the gardening section, of course.
While there, I remembered that we are wanting to add more clothes lines (our posts can support three lines), and went looking for that section. They had the exact same kits that I’d seen at another store, but at a better price.
I decided to get one.
My daughter has been diligent about following her doctor’s instructions to help fight the skin infections she’s getting, and that includes washing her clothing and bedding more often, in hot water, then hanging them on the line so the sun can further disinfect them. We’ve got a long clothes line, but when things like bedding are included, it runs out of space, fast!
Eventually, we’ll have three lines set up again, but just having the second one will be a huge help.
That done, I headed back to the autobody shop. It was still early for my appointment, but I saw the truck was no longer where I’d parked it. They took it in early!
As I waited, I had a chance to chat with both ladies behind the counter. When I told them how things went at the hardware store, they both started telling me how they’ve had them do work for them, too, and how great they are! One of them said she lives in an old farmhouse that she and her family basically rebuilt the old farmhouse they bought (admitting, they probably should have just torn it down and built a new house!), and they did much of the work for them; doors, windows, flooring… She was really happy with them. So that was certainly encouraging!
A little while later, the woman working my file came around to tell me that their guy says there is no need for them to paint more than the top rail part of the box frame, after it’s straightened out, not the entire side of the box, which would include an old dent and the rust around the wheel well. That will save us $140, as the insurance company does not cover rust damage, so we would be charged for that portion of the paint job.
We talked about the tail light as well, and she made the call to find out how much a new one would cost, right then and there.
$350.
!!!!!
Good grief!
What she did do was give me the part number, then did a quick search for it on Amazon.
$135.
What a difference!
If we can get it delivered.
I explained the issues we’ve been having, and how Amazon has simply cancelled orders that would be mailed, due to the threat of a strike. If there is an alternative delivery method available, either to our physical address (which doesn’t exist on any maps) or to the store our post office is in, we could still order it, though.
She has been trying so hard to bring the costs down for us! Talk about awesome.
Towards the end, when I got the keys and was ready to head out, she told me the parts would be ordered right away, and when they came in, we would get a call.
Then she mentioned they would need the truck for a couple of days.
…
I told her, we’ve only got one vehicle. I’d have to make arrangements of some kind. She said that, when we get the call later one, we can talk about that.
??
As far as I know, they don’t offer the loan of a service car, as some places in the city can do.
If nothing else, I might be able to borrow one of my brother’s cars for a couple of days, but I’d really prefer to avoid that. They use both their cars quite a bit.
That done, it was off to the garage to drop off the truck and the keys.
A friend from high school had messaged me a couple of days ago, saying she was in town, and we had arranged to get together after I dropped the truck off. She doesn’t have her own transportation this time, so we walked around for a while, stopping at a couple of places, before sitting down in one of the smaller restaurants for a very late lunch.
I didn’t know how long the truck would take, but by the time we were done lunch, I figured it was time to start heading back. Which turned out to be just right; they finished with the truck maybe 10 or 15 minutes before I got there! My friend was able to join me for most of the way before we said our goodbyes. We’ll be able to get together again, before she heads home.
As for the truck, I was happy to hear they found no other issues while working on it. 😄
In the end, though, it cost over $660 after taxes, including a “new tire enviro tax”.
*sigh*
Tomorrow, I’m supposed to bring it back whenever I have a chance to get the tires torqued. It should be done withing 100km of driving.
That done, I drove across the street to the grocery store.
In that short drive, I could already feel the difference. I had not realized just how much I was feeling something of off about the tires! Not even anything I could specifically pinpoint, but gosh, once it was no longer there, I could sure tell!
One thing I needed to get at the grocery store was more kibble for the outside cats. With the cost of gas jumping 5 cents per liter, and only needing a couple of things, it wasn’t worth it to drive to the nearest Walmart for better prices.
Their shelves for large cat food bags were completely empty!
The only other thing I needed was eggs, so I got those, then headed to the one other grocery store available. With this one, I was able to pick up a couple of bags of their house brand in 8kg sizes, totaling about $45. They had one 7.5kg bag of name brand kibble available, and it cost $45 just on its own!
The outside cats are going to just have to put up with no-name cat food for now.
I did have to pick up a bit of gas before leaving town, feeling rather frustrated with myself for forgetting to get gas the last time I was in town, when it was still $1.299 a liter, instead of $1.349 a liter!
I’ve been getting weather alerts for incoming rain or thunderstorms all day, so after everything was put away and the outside cats were fed, I did my evening rounds to check on things.
I spotted this guy, that I haven’t seen in a while.
I tried zooming in to get a picture of his face. It looks like he’s sporting a rather large new scar on his head!
He is pretty feral, and won’t let me even walk in his general direction without running away. I still haven’t completely figured out if he is one of ours, returned after months away, or a stranger that discovered we are a source of food and relative safety.
There is still no sign of Caramel’s two little ones, though this morning, I think I caught her trying to lure Havarti away. I so wish she would bring her littles back! They need access to solid food, and she’s been hanging out here most of the time, instead of tending to them, or hunting for them.
No sign of Zipper, either.
😢
I checked on all the garden beds, of course, which had me walking past a large currant bush my sister had given to my mother. My mother planted it near the main garden area, right under a chokecherry tree, so it’s completely shaded out almost all day. I almost never find berries on it, though, and it was years before I found one and could confirm it was a black currant bush.
This spring, it bloomed prolifically, so I was hopeful for a grand harvest.
Nope.
Not going to happen.
I think I finally found out why it hasn’t been producing.
The leaves have yellow spot all over them, I just realized, now that I can see them in the photo, that these are egg clusters!!!
As you can see, the forming berries are being killed off. I had thought the spots might have been some sort of fungus that’s also killing the berries, but if the spots are actually eggs, and there are so, so many of them, perhaps it’s whatever is laying the eggs that’s doing it. I haven’t seen anything on the leaves that was laying eggs. Certainly not in such numbers. There’s hundreds of leaves, covered in these spots.
The second picture shows more what the berries should be looking like, at this stage, though it’s got an odd bump on it.
Gotta do some research on this!
My weather apps keep saying we’re supposed to be getting rain or storms, but as I finished my evening rounds, I just got hit by a couple of raindrops, and that’s it.
We could really, really use some rain. It just keeps missing us!
Tomorrow is supposed to be hotter, but the hottest part of the day is not supposed to hit until 4pm. Hopefully, that will give me a chance to finally get back to working on that trellis bed in the morning. I plan to take the truck in to get the new tires torqued in the afternoon.
Must. Get. Sleep!!!!
Well, we’ll see how that goes, when the time comes!
Altogether, though, it has turned out to be a very good and productive day.
It will be a while, though, before we find out how much getting the front door replaced, and the truck done, will end up costing us.
It’s going to be expensive. That’s all I know for sure!
There always seems to be something new to find when I do my rounds!
Some are good, some are not so good, and some are… kind of in between. :-D
Finding holes in the ground from skunks digging for grubs is not unusual. This morning, however, it was VERY unusual! I found probably a hundred off them over by the sweet corn and sunflower blocks! They were in the open areas around them, but also right in among them.
The skunks (I’m assuming there was more than one) seem to have worked their way through two corn blocks and about one and a half sunflower blocks. Only the corn block furthest north was completely untouched. Judging from how many holes there were, I’m guessing it had something to do with very full little bellies!
Before we planted here, and were just mowing, I never saw divots. My guess is that the area was so dry and sun baked, there simply weren’t any grubs in the soil. Now that we’ve started to amend the soil and have been watering regularly, plus all the rain we’ve recently had, it’s now a skunk buffet!
I don’t mind the skunks digging up the grubs. They have no interest in the plants. The only problem was that some of their digging was close enough to our already struggling corn and sunflower plants, that roots were exposed. I worked my way through the rows, pushing the soil back into those holes, at least. The others, I left. There were just too many, and I don’t care if the weeds have their roots exposed!
It took a long time, but we now have our very first vine making its way across the top of the squash tunnel! This luffa had reached the top some time ago, but not gone over.
The winter squash still has a ways to go, but it’s working on it!
Had conditions been more ideal, this structure would at least have had the walls completely covered in vines by now, if not the “roof” as well. Given what a tough year for the garden it has been, I’m quite pleased with what we have!
The girls moved the canopy tent over the picnic table by the fire pit for me this morning, so I dragged a hose over to give the table a bit of a power wash. While there, I checked out the nearby currant bush.
We only rarely watered this bed by the fire pit at all this year, yet the currant actually has a few berries on it! After picking these, I checked on the two currant bushes near the main garden beds and found a few more. Those ones did get watered more often, but are located under trees. They get a lot less sunlight, and even with the rains we’ve been having, they would have gotten less. The one by the fire pit is on the south side of the maple grove and has no overhanging branches, so even with almost no watering, it has more berries. Even so, the berries are a lot smaller and less juicy than they should be. I’m surprised there are any at all, to be honest!
This morning, I fussed around with the potato grow bags. Some of them were falling over, so I secured them to the chain link fence, then straightened the bags out again; the tops of the bags are more to keep critters out than anything else.
In the process, I uncovered this little guy.
So incredibly adorable!!!
Finding one is exciting enough, but then I found this slightly bigger one!
This one wasn’t too impressed with my moving the bags around. :-D
These are probably my favourite type of frog. :-D And we’ve seen so many of them, as well as the more common wood frogs, this year!
As we develop our permanent garden beds, providing shelter and moisture for frogs is on our list of things to include. :-)
Today is supposed to be our last comfortable day before the heat comes back, and no rain is predicted for a few more days, so I will be heading out to apply cayenne pepper to some of our garden beds after this. Especially our purple beans. Checking the garden cam this morning, I caught a young buck in the garden, nibbling on something. The summer squash was blocking the view, but there is only one thing where that buck was standing; our purple beans. I didn’t even notice the damage, this morning! The purple beans are a lot bushier and leafy than the other types, but it likely explains why I’m not seeing as many beans on there. I think the deer are actually avoiding the leaves to eat the beans, instead, judging from what I do see, when I am looking closely to find beans to pick.
We keep our containers from things like sour cream, and had one with a transparent lid. I poked a whole bunch of little holes in the lid, then emptied the bulk packages of cayenne pepper into the 500ml container, to create a shaker. I’m hoping the holes aren’t too small. We shall see how it works!
Yesterday, one of my goals was to start on the lawn. We have yet to mow the lawn this year, but with how little rain we’ve had, it’s not really that overgrown. Other than some straw we still have left, we’re out of organic material to layer and mulch with, so it would be good to have grass clippings again. At the very least, I wanted to get out the weed trimmer and do the edges.
Then I got a phone call.
My mother was letting me know my sister was on her way to visit her, and they were planning to go to the cemetery, which is just a few miles away from us. They were planning to come here, after.
*sigh*
We had talked about this possibility just the day before, so I can’t say it was too unexpected, but I had advised against doing a cemetery trip when we were supposed to get so very hot again. She also knew that I like to have a lot more notice before visits, so we can be prepared. My mother actually sounded apologetic when she was telling me they were coming over, and added that she was good with not going into the house if we didn’t want her to. Which isn’t the problem, but whatever.
So the girls did a quick rush to try and prepare things, like making sure everything was clear from the sun room doors, though the old kitchen, to the bathroom (so my mother wouldn’t have to use the main doors, with all the little sets of stairs), while I quickly used the weed trimmer around the yard, between the main garden beds, and a few other places that I thought my mother might want to get at with her walker. I had thought to move the picnic table to a shady spot in the south yard, but my daughter reminded me that, when we moved it to where it is now, after it was painted, it was pretty rickety, so it probably couldn’t handle being moved so far, again. So she set up some camp chairs in the shade, and we used an overturned bin for a table. :-D My mother and sister had even brought some fried chicken, so we had ourselves a picnic lunch in the shade, before touring the yard and garden beds.
When they arrived, my sister passed me something my mother had for me. At her apartment building, they have garden plots available. My mother doesn’t do much gardening herself anymore, but she does tend the perennials that had been planted by some of her friends and neighbours who have passed on. The caretakers, unfortunately, have a habit of digging everything up at the end of the year, including a bush my mother described as having beautiful yellow flowers, followed by black fruit. She had no idea what it was; it was planted by someone who passed away some years ago. No one ate the berries, but it was lovely, and the caretakers dug it up and got rid of it. This spring, while tending some plants, she noticed that part of the bush had survived. Not wanting the caretakers to kill it off, she dug it up and put it in a pitcher with some soil. She wanted to give it to me to plant somewhere near the house. We have a grocery shopping trip arranged next week, and I was going to get it then, but with my sister coming over, they were able to bring it over early.
I’m pretty sure it’s a currant, though my mother says it’s different than what we have here. My sister, who is the one that gave my mother the currants that are here, thought it might be a gooseberry. Whatever it is, I made sure to transplant it as soon as things started cooling down a bit. I picked a spot right near where we’d had our picnic lunch. There is a flower bed with white lilacs taking up about half of it. After it was cleaned up, a couple of years ago, we were left with an empty spot that I decided to take advantage of.
I scraped away the wood chip mulch we’d put in, first – it was about 3 inches deep – and started digging. I had to shift the hole a few times, after hitting tree roots, but after clearing out a few bigger rocks, I finally had a space I could transplant into. It was bone dry. We don’t water this bed regularly, but I have been trying to water the lilacs and a low growing plant with variegated leaves I like. From how dry the soil was, you’d never know it had been watered recently! So I filled the hole with water, then got a wheelbarrow load of new garden soil.
After transplanting it into the hole with fresh garden soil, I put back some of the mulch and gave it another thorough watering.
So we now have a new, unplanned, fruit bearing bush in the yard. :-) Hopefully, it will survive.
Backtracking a bit; my mother and I had talked about her coming out to see the gardens later in the season, when things were more grown in, but she got a bit of a tour yesterday. I did appreciate her very visible efforts to not say anything negative, which is usually the only thing she’ll say. I think it’s a generational thing, or maybe a cultural thing, but my mother seems to believe in NOT saying positive things. Like it’s somehow bad to compliment people or something. I suspect it has to do with believing it would lead to pride or something along those lines, though I doubt that’s in any way on a conscious level. She did, however, manage a backhanded compliment on how healthy the garlic looked! So that’s progress. :-D
She was not up to taking the walker to the furthest beds, of course, but my sister did, with her ever-present camera, and she got lots of pictures. It was a long day for my mother, so they left almost immediately after touring the yard. Going to the cemetery, then coming here, was probably too much for her. :-(
After I’d taken care of the transplant my mother gave us, I started hearing thunder. We’ve been having thunderstorm warnings for a while, but they kept getting pushed back. We were hoping to at least get some rain! I could see the storm clouds, and the wind was picking up, so I brought our hardening off transplants back into the sun room early, and we even shut down our computers, just in case.
We got nothing. Not even a spit of rain.
By 9:30pm, I finally went back outside to water the garden beds. The rain did finally come, but not until about 5am this morning.
When I headed out to do my morning rounds, it was still raining! A lovely, steady rain. I got completely soaked. :-D So no pictures this morning. ;-)
While checking the garden beds, I had some more unexpected surprises. The sweet corn is coming up already!! New shoots, in all three corn blocks. I also found more Hopi Black Dye sunflower sprouts, but also some Mongolian Giant sunflowers have already sprouted! Clearly, they are loving our heat wave. The bush beans, meanwhile, are coming up like crazy. The purple ones are still a bit slower in coming up than the yellow and green beans, but once they do come up, the sprouts seem to be leafing out faster than the others.
I’m finding it awesome that so many things we direct sowed is sprouting already. We haven’t even finished putting out our transplants, yet! :-D
Of course, while checking the garden beds this morning, I was looking for deer damage. When I’d watered last night, I tied some plastic grocery bags onto a couple of the stakes supporting the Mongolian Giant transplants, as a noisy deterrent. Happily, there was no new damage.
Then I checked the trail cam.
There was one file triggered during the night. Off in the shadows, a single deer could be seen, walking through! It looked like it was going down the path between the corn/sunflower blocks, and the pea/bean beds. It didn’t stop or pause, but kept walking towards the spruce grove.
Today, I’m moving the camera again. I think I know where the deer came in, but there are a couple of places they like to jump the fence, and I want to cover both possibilities, if I can, and see if there are any other areas they might be coming through.
We shall see what the weather does today. Today’s expected high is “only” 25C/77F, with scattered showers. Which means we will probably not be able to use a power drill, with its 300 ft or so of extension cords, to finish assembling the squash tunnel. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the summer squash in, though we might have to prioritize the Montana Morado corn. At least the place they will be planted is right next to what’s left of the pile of garden soil. We might end up having to use soil from the pile in the outer yard to finish transplanting. The good thing is, we actually have that second pile!
My mother’s “living fence” has a row of hawthorns (you can see some of their berries) on one side, and a mix of caragana and oak on the other. I got a picture of a larger oak at the far end of the row of trees, with elms above it. The crab apple tree is one of the ones in the West yard. The apples do not taste very good, but the deer and birds will enjoy them. There is also the linden tree, all yellow, while the currant leaves (which I thought were gooseberry at first) are lovely shades of red.
Everything we started from seed has finally been transplanted.
At least, everything that sprouted…
These are all the pellets that didn’t sprout. The tray in the background was the squashes tray. I’d say most of those empty pellets are the gourds. The ones in the foreground are mostly fennel, with maybe a cucamelon or two.
It’s entirely possible some might eventually sprout, so I’m just leaving them out.
Today, both my daughters were able to help, at the same time! Things went very fast with three people working at once.
The first thing we did was transplant the cucamelons in the chimney block retaining wall. It had been our intention to bring up the remaining blocks from the basement, to use as planters in another location, but there is no safe way to take them out. At least not while the kittens are downstairs. So we planted them here, instead. With the ornamental apple trees growing nearby, they won’t have the full sun they should be getting. There are 3 metal posts I couldn’t take out, when I removed the fence that used to be here, so we will use them to hold a trellis. Hopefully, that will help them get more sunlight as they grow bigger.
The few fennel that sprouted were planted in the soil beside the blocks. All 6 of them. They are so leggy, I don’t know that they’ll even survive, but we’ll see.
That done, we moved on to the squash garden.
We had exactly 11 transplants, so we marked a spot in the middle of the row, then measured and marked out every 2 feet in each direction.
In this photo, each has been transplanted into its “pot” of soil mix, and we were starting to add the mulch. These would mostly be the zucchini mix and pattypans (it’s all a surprise mix now, after the tray got knocked over!), but some of them are the birdhouse gourds. We’ll figure out which is which, as they grow! :-D
I had intended to build some rather heavy duty trellises for the squashes, but things aren’t quite working out to get that done, so I picked up some bamboo poles. We’ll use them and, if I can find some, some plastic mesh instead of the chicken wire. The wire, I want to reserve for when I finally do make something more heavy duty.
After we finished mulching and watering, I set out the poles.
I’ve mentioned a few times, how rocky this area is. Just pushing in those flags typically involves readjusting a few times, to get around rocks we hit, inches into the soil.
When pushing in the bamboo poles, I made a point of pushing the narrower ends into the ground, as they were more pointed. I had to make several attempts on pretty much every pole.
Including this one.
I still managed to hit a rock hard enough to break the end off the pole!
This is how it looks now.
It’s hard to say how many of the frost damaged squash will survive, but I still put poles in to trellis whatever makes it. We’ve got the mixed squash on the far right and far left, three pumpkin hills in the middle, and now a row of mixed squash and gourds along the back.
And it’s all done! No more planting!
While working in the area, we also took the time to water various things, including the gooseberry bushes.
Which are not gooseberry bushes.
While cleaning in the maple grove, two springs ago, I uncovered several gooseberry bushes. They were not doing well, with the lack of space and sunlight from all the overgrowth and closely planted, some dead or dying, trees.
Last year, they started to recover, but with the drought, there were almost no berries. Of the few there were, I noticed they were much smaller and darker than I expected, but with the drought, that was true of many of the berries we had.
It was when I was going through the Vesey’s catalog that I saw photos of gooseberries, right next to currants, and realized these might not be gooseberries at all. The leaves look much the same, but the berries are slightly different.
When I had the chance, I asked my mom if the gooseberry bushes really were gooseberries.
Nope. They weren’t.
So what are they?
She had no idea.
My sister had brought them and planted them, but my mother did not know what they were. Since she didn’t know what they were, she figured they were poisonous (as if my sister would give her poisonous berries for her garden???), so she’d never tried them. I happened to mentioned I’d eaten some of the very few berries we had last year, and she was all “oh… you’re okay, so I guess they’re safe.”
*facepalm*
So I think we actually have currants, not gooseberries.
This year, we’ve been better able to water them, and they are looking much better. There are lots of flowers, so I hope that means that, this year, we’ll have lots of fruit!
It had taken a lot of work, but we found quite a few fruit and berry bushes as we cleaned up many years of neglect. After a couple of years, now that these foundlings have space and sunlight again, they are all looking stronger and healthier. Hopefully, that will mean higher yields, to go along with our first attempt at gardening, since moving out here!
The Re-Farmer 