The third one in the group looks like something stepped on it, and the fourth I found off to the side doesn’t seem to be getting any bigger. I wonder what kind they are?
We are expected to drop to 3C/37F tonight. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to hit 0C/32F, then 2C/36F the night after, before things are supposed to warm up a little bit overnight. The winter squash are covered and should be okay, but I decided not to bother trying to cover the rest. Instead, I did a harvest.
There is our single White Scallop squash that I’ve been allowing to get bigger. No chance it would get big enough and mature enough for viable seeds, but it is at an edible stage right now.
The peppers and Turkish Orange eggplant, on the other hand, are now set up in the living room to ripen. We’ve had a red pepper and an orange one so far. There are also supposed to be yellow ones in there. The one that’s darkening if from a plant we got a red pepper from. I’m curious to see if the lighter green ones will turn yellow, or if they’re just really immature.
Tomorrow is supposed to be a mix of sun and cloud, with a high of 11C/51F. The day after is supposed to reach a high of 8C/46F. After that, we’re supposed to have highs above 15C/59F. The lows are supposed to be all over the place, but still below 10C/50F. It’s also supposed to be sunny until Sunday, when we’re currently expecting to get rain. Of course, the forecast will be changing from day to day, but it does look like we’ll be able to get more progress in the garden, getting the garlic in, and preparing beds for winter sowing. Normally, I’d say we have a good window of pleasant weather to get that done but, considering how many huge roots I’m finding in the main garden beds I’m prepping, it’s likely to take quite a bit longer than it should!
It was a very pleasant morning today. I’m liking the cooler temperatures, even though I’ve also decided it’s been cool enough to keep the winter squash covered by plastic during the day. With the bits of rain we’ve been getting, I had some concern they would dry out, but I can see plenty of condensation inside the plastic, so they’re definitely not drying out.
I’m finding what’s left in the garden to be rather remarkable. The pumpkin vines, for example, aren’t just still blooming after all that frost damage, but are growing healthy looking new leaves. Except the one that has a pumpkin hanging in a sling on the trellis. That one seems completely dead, but the pumpkin is still slowly yellowing, so we’re leaving it for now.
Five vines. One pumpkin. *sigh*
Then there are the sunflowers. Especially that one stalk with all the extra seed heads on it.
There’s the one seed had at the top that has barely any outside petals, but the little ones along the stalk are opening right up! I don’t know how well they’ll do, given how late in the season it is, even if we do end up with a long and mild fall (which I don’t expect). There are hardly any pollinators right now. Between the wildfire smoke all summer, and then the early frosts, followed by a heat wave, and now cooler temperatures again, it’s just not been a good summer for the pollinators are much as for the garden.
The next two photos are of the blooming memorial asters, with more buds developing. I’m hoping the weather holds out long enough that they can develop seeds for me to collect.
The last photo, photo bombed by Sir Robin, is of our very first White Scallop squash female flower.
Yes, I hand pollinated it, though I really don’t know why I bothered. We’re past the middle of September. The chances of any of these squash developing is very, very low!
Morning rounds done, I headed in for breakfast, and was soon back out again. We’re expecting rain this evening, through to tomorrow, and there were a couple of things I wanted to get cleaned up while I could. One was the burn barrel area. We have several recycling bins for aluminum, which we take to the scrap yard once there’s enough to fill the box of the truck, one for stuff for the burn barrel, one for general recycling at the dump and one last one for glass to take to the dump, as glass has it’s own bin there.
The burn barrel bags would get taken out to where we would normally burn them. The barrel itself, which was here when we moved in and already in rough shape, basically fell apart, long ago. Instead, we set up a metal ring I found in the spruce grove, so we have a burn ring, instead.
The problem is, we haven’t been able to actually burn anything for a long time. Usually because there’s too much wind. Lately, it’s been because of burn bans. So the bags have been accumulating to the point that I’ve just started taking a few to the dump after loading up with household garbage and recycling. Most of the bags, however, have gotten torn up. Not from animals; there’s nothing in the bags to attract them. I’d say, mostly from the wind. The rain has also soaked a lot of it. It’s gotten to be a real mess.
To today I headed out with some garbage bag it up. A few bags were still intact, but most of it had to be completely re-bagged. It’s a good thing we’ve got heavy duty garbage bags, because a lot of it was very wet, so it didn’t take long to make the bags quite heavy, for the amount in them. So now, it’s all looking much better, though there’s still quite a few bags out there! They are next to the branch pile that needs to be burned, as that’s where I’ve been tossing diseased branches and garden plants. Unfortunately, my brother didn’t know that, so when he trimmed branches for their trailer to fit through, he put them on the same pile. At that point, I’ve just started to do the same. Plus, there are some sections of maple set near the pile that were too big for my brother to throw on top, and I’ve been making a point of keeping maple wood for the fire pit.
The fire pit we haven’t used this year, at all, yet!
That done, I then started working on the last bags of cans against the garage. We’ve had to stop storing the bags there, as the cats kept tearing them up. Most of our aluminum is from cat food cans, and they can smell it. My daughter and I had cleaned most of it up and we now have all the bags in the basement, taking up space. The only bags left were from a while back that have metal mixed in by mistake.
So today, I got bags set up for the aluminum and the not-aluminum and started sorting. I got through two torn up bags before it started to rain. Just a light rain, but enough that I called it and will work on the last bag another time.
What I did manage to do before heading in was finally deal with the mesh covers on the garden bed against the chain link fence. This is the one that was winter sown with tall and climbing things, mostly, but was a complete failure. The mesh was to protect the bed from the Chinese Elm seeds, which would have worked just fine, except for the cats. They would play on top of the mesh, or get under it, only to not be able to find their way out again, panic, and bounce of the inside of the mesh until the finally reached an opening.
Needless to say, nothing in that bed survives. Except some Jebousek lettuce, which I allowed to go to seed and have already collected their seeds.
I had already pulled the netting with their wire supports up and set them on the stump bench. Today, I got the wires out so that I could fold up the mesh to put away for the winter.
I stretched out and folded one section, turned around and there they were! Eyelet, Grommet and The Grink, claiming the rest of them as beds. 😄
In that picture and the next one, you can see just how bent up the wire supports got. Some might be salvageable, but others might be just too twisted. I wouldn’t use them again for this, anyhow. They would have been fine if all they needed to do was keep the seeds off the garden bed, but they just couldn’t hold the weight of playing kittens! The channels in the mesh that the wire ran through might be large enough for the Pexx pipe hoops I now have. Maybe. It would be a tight fit, but I’d prefer that over loose.
The kittens were not all “helpful” though. Each section of netting has a drawstring at the ends, with a sliding cord lock bead to hold it closed.
The Grink discovered one. Started playing with it. Got startled. Tried to run off with the bead in her mouth.
The next thing I know, she’s running down the patch, a section of netting dragging behind her, catching on the wire supports and dragging them along!
She finally let go at the end of the path, having dragged almost a dozen of the wire supports down the path with her!
Definitely not helping!
While the wire supports may or may not be salvageable, the netting is just fine. For a Dollarama purchase, these are really good. I still have one package, unopened. If I can find something better to slide through the channels to support them, they would work to keep kittens off as well as elm seeds!
Since it was still raining a bit, I headed inside once the mesh and wires were added to the sorting pile at the bench near the garden shed. The rain and stopped and started a few times since I came in. If the weather radar is accurate, it’s going to rain steadily from now on until tomorrow evening, so I guess that’s it for outside stuff. I’d hoped to get a few more small things done before the rain. Ah, well. It won’t go away.
The dump is open tomorrow, so I might make that trip, but we don’t have much of anything to take to the dump right now, unless I want to grab what I bagged up by the burn barrel today. The main thing is that we’ll be taking Eyelet to the new rescue. He’s a bit young to be neutered still, but he’ll be getting that and all the usual vetting before he’s put up for adoption. The main thing is that he will be indoors and at less risk of becoming coyote chow, since he can’t hear.
Some lucky person out there is going to get themselves a stunningly beautiful and sweet little cat!
I’d planted three groups of three seeds of Black Zucchini and White Scallop squash. The zucchini almost all came up – one spot had only two come up – but the white scallop squash saw only two germinate, in one spot.
That left me with two empty spots – and those were being filled with tiny elm seedlings taking over!
So the first thing I had to do, after taking the protecting netting off, was move the mulch aside and get in with the hand cultivator to weed as much as possible.
That took a while.
I really, really hate those elm seeds.
With the white scallop squash, I simply moved the smaller plant into the empty spot beside it. I did the same with the zucchini that had only two plants growing. Then I very carefully removed the extras from the other two spots that had all three zucchini seeds germinate.
I turned out to be wrong. I must have dropped a seed or something, because one of them had four!
I found spaces for them in other beds. Two went into gaps between the three types of winter squash, which are still recovering from getting hit with that one cold night. One went into the end of the bed with the Spoon tomatoes in it. Those all got protective plastic collars. The last one went into an open space in the high raised bed, left from harvesting some radishes and turnips.
Thanks to my SIL using their big zero turn mower on the outer yard, I had a whole lot of grass clippings available. I needed more mulch around the original summer squash bed, plus the one in the high raised bed got a grass clipping mulch, with a final watering to soak the mulch.
Hopefully, the transplants will survive alright. Squash don’t like their roots disturbed, but there was no way I could take them out without using a lot of water and washing the roots off completely. Those ridiculous elm seedlings were wrapping their tap roots around everything!
I had nine transplants, so that worked out with using the trellis posts as spacing guides.
Since I was going to plant bush beans along the edge of the bed, I did things a bit differently from the other half. With the melons, I set out the collars, added a handful of manure into each one and worked that in, in situ, then made narrow trenches around each collar. For this half, I started out by making a shallow, flat trench along the length of the bed I’d be planting into, pushing soil up against the log wall, and towards the trellis line. I added manure into the trench and worked that into the soil before giving it a thorough watering. Then I added the collars, closer to the centre/trellis line, than the melons are. Then I watered it again, filling each collar with water, as well as the trench.
To transplant the tomatoes, I scooped out a hole in each collar, deep enough for the entire root balls, then added it back in after the tomatoes we in place. Even with filling each collar and letting it absorb water before hand, I was still pulling up dry soil! Once the tomatoes were in, I filled the collars with water again.
Each tomato got a pair of bamboo stakes set on either side, placed right against their collars. Later one, once I have the time and the ties, I will be adding cross pieces to make them sturdier, and also secure them to the wire trellis. Growing these before, I’ve been able to just wind their stems around a single bamboo stake but, after a while, it starts to get tippy, so I’ll better secure them this time.
Once done with the tomatoes, I made another long, narrow trench to plant the beans into. That got watered using the jet setting to drill the water deeper into the trench, which also helped level it out and even break up some of the clumps I missed. I didn’t have a full packet of the Royal Burgundy purple beans, but I had just enough to evenly space the seeds from end to end. I don’t expect a 100% germination rate, so we might end up with a few gaps, but these are new seeds, so it shouldn’t be too bad.
Once I spaced the beans out evenly, I pushed them into the soil in their little trench and covered them, then went over the trench with a more gentle flat spray of water to fill it and level out the soil again.
That done, I used the last of the grass clippings left in the wagon to mulch around the tomato collars, and the edge of the bed along the bean’s little trench. I ran out of grass clippings with just one corner left to cover, but I still had some leaves and grass clippings mulch set aside from the winter sown beds I could use.
Then it all got watered again, making sure to soak through the mulch.
With how dry that bed was, it’s really not possible to over water it.
Since this bed had been covered in plastic while we had our recent rainfall, I fully expected it to be so very dry. After working on the next bed, however, it turns out that it really didn’t make much of a difference. It still would have been that dry!
The next bed I worked on was the end of the garlic bed, where I’d winter sown some of the same seed mix of root vegetables that is in the high raised bed. Nothing survived in this bed, though.
I didn’t have time to break out the weed trimmer to clear around the bed, so I used a rake to knock the weeds and dandelion seed heads down and way from the bed. This little section still has netting over it, though the cats have still been lying on top of it! So before I started, I had to pull the netting away, starting at the garlic end, leaving it still tacked down at the other end. The bed then got a weeding, and finally some manure was worked into the soil.
Next, I used some of the small plant support stakes I was no longer needing at another bed, to add more supports for the very loose twine, including adding one in the very middle of the bed, where the twin crossed.
Once the soil was ready and watered, I made three round, shallow “bowls”, which got watered again. Each “bowl” got three squash seeds planted in them. On one side, I planted the White Scallop squash. On the other, Black Zucchini.
Then the “bowls” got watered again.
This garden bed was fully exposed to the rain we got, and yet it was every bit as dry as the bed I’d just worked on, that had been covered in plastic while it was raining! You’d never know we had any rain at all.
This bed had been mulched for the winter with a mixture of leaves and grass clippings, that had been pulled to one side of the bed in the spring. I was able to use that to mulch around the “bowls” the seeds were planted in, with a light scattering of mulch in the bowls, too. Once that was in place, the netting was put back in place. Then it got watered again.
Hopefully, the new supports will help keep the cats off!
By the time the squash is large enough that the netting will need to be removed, they won’t need the extra protection anymore. We shall see how many of the seeds actually germinate. If I end up with extras, I will thin by transplanting. Hopefully, this year, we will actually have a decent amount of summer squash!
So that is now done. In the main garden area, the only bed left is the trellis bed. I won’t work on that again until everything is planted, though.
From the looks of the weather forecast, I should be able to get lots done tomorrow.
Gosh, I’m so enjoying all the progress in the garden! I might be in a lot of pain when I’m done, but it feels so good otherwise, it’s totally worth it.
I was going to say “a morning in the garden” in the title, but no. It’s almost 4pm, and I just got inside!
As I write this, we are at our predicted high of 27C/81F, with the humidex putting us at 29C/84F, and I must say, I’m really feeling that 29C/84F!
We’ve had rain and even thunderstorms. It took a while, but the rain barrel by the old kitchen garden finally got refilled. We’re supposed to get more thunderstorms passing through over the next week, but the amount of rain predicted is under 5mm. That’s only 0.19inches. Barely enough to get things wet.
With the next week or so expected to reach temperatures like today, I wanted to make sure to give the garden a deep watering. In fact, I’ll probably be doing that every morning, if I am able to. The things that need the time to finish ripening also are things that need a lot of water to do so.
Before the watering, though, I wanted to see what needed to be harvested. I even remembered to bring something to carry it, instead of using the bottom of my shirt. 😄
I even spread it out on the bench, so it could all be seen. Much to the entertainment of Syndol, whose paw you can see on the left of the photo. Gouda was following me around and really wanting attention, and kept trying to bite my hands while I was laying things out, because I wasn’t petting him!
So… what we have this morning.
On the left are both Dragonfly and Purple Beauty peppers. There are a few Seychelle beans. Nothing much, but they can be added to the beans that got picked yesterday. The tomatoes are the chocolate cherry tomatoes growing against the chain link fence, and the Magda squash is from the pot in front of the house.
I was able to pick some green G Star patty pans, and they have more developing. We have a first in here, too! I picked one of the two white scallop patty pans we have growing, leaving the second one to get bigger. There are lots of flower buds, but I can’t see any other patty pans developing on those plants.
With the melons, I found the first one on the ground, its stem wound looking at me. 😄 That one had actually been growing fairly high up on the trellis, so it had fallen maybe 3 feet to get where I found it. No damage, though. Then I found two more that were ready to pick! We might almost have enough melon to start freezing some!
After gathering these, I found a small bin to use for the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden.
We have a few San Marzano tomatoes, a pretty good haul of the Black Cherry tomatoes, which look almost identical to the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes. I don’t know why, but they just aren’t getting dark like the variety is supposed to. The rest are the Forme de Couer tomatoes – including a branch that broke while I was tending another vine!
Those done, I set up the soaker hose in the bed the Forme de Couer tomatoes are in, then used the rain barrel to water the old kitchen garden, the potted summer squash, and the other beds on the south side of the house.
While watering the Cholate Cherries at the chain link fence, I found a few I missed, earlier!
The mystery tomato plants I found among the potatoes by the chain link fence, plus the one in the wattle weave bed that showed up among the garlic, are both developing tomatoes now.
The lettuce with the name I never remember to spell will be going to seed soon, and I want to make sure to collect some of those.
The kohl rabi have been attached by flea beetles. This is a surprise, as I didn’t think this was the season for flea beetles! I guess the canola fields are being harvested, and the beetles are finding other things to chomp on. I still see no sign of bulbs forming on the kohl rabi stems.
I had to resist collecting more eggplants. They look so good! I want to get them more time to grow bigger, though.
The Crespo squash got extra water, and I even did the compost ring tomatoes. 😄
We will need to do something about the Crespo squash!
In the first photo above, you can see that the squash that started developing inside the A frame bean trellis is getting pretty big….
… and heavy!
If you look at the second picture in the slideshow, you can see how the bamboo stake across the top is bending quite a lot! It is there to hole the metal posts in position, and keep the netting from sagging. It’s not there to hold weight! We will need to made a large enough squash hammock to put under the squash and attach it to the metal stakes in the A frame. If we can fix the hammock to four points, that will hopefully distribute the weight enough.
By the time the south yard beds were done, a couple of hours had passed, so I headed inside for breakfast, leaving the soaker hose running in the Forme de Couer tomato bed.
When I got back outside and checked the soaker hose, it really didn’t seem to be letting out much water. In fact, I saw more condensation on the garden hose than seepage from the soaker hose! I dug down into the soil under the hose, and it was still pretty dry. So I switched the garden hose back to its regular nozzle and just watered the bed with the hose.
The inside of the catio needed to be painted so, before I went to water the main garden area, I got a bucket and a brush and scrubbed the floating catio shelves as best I could, first, so it would have time to dry.
Then it was off to the main garden.
By this time, it was 26C/79F, according to my phone, and the garden was definitely feeling the stress from both the heat and the lack of rain. According to the current forecast, we are no longer expecting thunderstorms, and the chances of getting any rain at all are below 10%, so I made sure to give them plenty of water. Basically, I have a pattern of watering slowing along one side of the bed, going around to the other side and watering it again, then repeating the process in the next bed. That way, each bed gets done twice, and any spots that get missed due to foliage or whatever gets done on the second pass.
I found a surprise in the Summer of Melons mix bed!
I have no idea where it came from. The soil used to top this bed was from the pile of garden soil we bought a few years back. I don’t remember repurposing soil from a bed we’d grown tomatoes in.
Well, we’ll see how it does.
I also found new onions growing among the ones from previous years we found and transplanted, to go to seed. The seed pods on those are still quite green, so they didn’t come from there – at least not that I can tell!
As for the onions in the actual union bed, I think I’m just going to have to harvest those. The shallots, too. All but one are completely flattened, so they’re not going to get any bigger. If they stay in the ground too long, they’ll start getting mushy.
Note for future reference: must find some way to keep the cats out of the garden beds!
Which reminds me…
The last thing that got watered was the strawberry bed. It is surrounded by a net, which allowed the strawberries to recover quite nicely from being deer eaten.
Well, a deer managed to get at one corner again! It actually made a hole in the net!
They must really like the taste of strawberry plants!
I think we might have to isolate strawberries in the old kitchen garden. The deer have not gone in to eat the tiny variety of strawberries in there, and that garden would be easier to fence off from deer completely, if that were needed.
Oh, speaking of critters eating things…
While watering the winter squash interplanted with corn, I found this.
It looks like the raccoons got at the Yukon Chief corn cobs I was leaving for seed!
They didn’t get all of them, though. I won’t be pulling the corn stalks under after the squash is done for the season. Hopefully, the raccoons have decided they don’t like dry corn and will leave the rest alone! I’m actually seeing a few tiny cobs with fresh silks on them, but the tassels are all dried, so there’s no pollen for kernels to form.
So the watering is finally done for the day, and I’m taking a break. I’d like to get a bit more work done on the cat isolation shelter today, but it’s starting to get late. It might have to wait until tomorrow.
Today is Sunday, though. It’s supposed to be a day of rest from unnecessary work, anyhow!
My daughters took care of the garden this morning, while I headed into town for groceries, so I didn’t get a chance to check things out until this afternoon.
Meanwhile, not counting today, we’ve got only 14 days left before average first frost. Hard to say if we’ll get anything!
I did check on the long range forecast, and it has changed back to saying we’ll have temperatures of 30C/86F for the 10th and 11th – and his 32C/90F on the 12th! In fact, most of that week is now supposed to have highs in the 30s! Even the week after is supposed to be just below 30C/86F! The last time I looked at the September forecasts, we were looking at highs below 20C/68F, and lows dropping down to 2 or 3C/36-37F
What a difference in forecasts!
Me, I’m hoping the heat stays longer. With everything behind by about a month, we need every hot day we can get!
Right now, things have been pleasantly cooler. Overnight, we reached a low of 9C/48F. It got cold enough I actually turns the fans off in my bedroom. It must have been quite a relief for the girls upstairs! They get so much hotter out there.
In other things, I have not had any calls back from the other two septic companies. I’ll be in the city tomorrow, so I’ll give them that one more day, then try calling them again after that. If I still can’t get through to them, then we’ll just have to go with the one company I did connect with. I’ll just have to get confirmation with my mother, in paying for it, and my brother. I was a bit perplexed when he started messaging me, suggesting I track down someone that had done this sort of work for my father in the past, but who may not even live in the area anymore. Heck, for all I know, he might not even be alive anymore. I recognize the name, but have probably never met him in person. I thought my brother had a problem with the companies I’d contacted, but I think maybe he just remembered this guy and started suggesting him to me.
Then he started telling me about how the emergency back up pipe will need to be installed while it’s being worked on, and how he’s got a pipe extension that will drain the effluent into the maple grove (which we may still need) … as if it was going to be done tomorrow, or something!
I’m so anxious about all this, I honestly couldn’t tell if this was his way of telling me what I should be doing, instead of what I am doing. My brother is awesome, but we don’t do things the same way at times. I hadn’t even considered going to somebody who happens to have an excavator, rather than a licensed and insured company that specializes in this kind of work. When I asked him more about it, he just came back with, it’s not a problem, going with a company is fine.
I hate to think I’m doing something he thinks is the wrong way!
So basically, there was a potential diversion, but then it went away.
I did not call the scrap company today. I will do that later, because I did contact the guy that bought scrap cars for parts last year, as I remembered they’d been looking at them. I told him that we were looking into calling the scrap dealer for the threshing machine and several vehicles, including those two, but wanted to know if he was still interested in them.
So those are now sold. Not for as much as before, but still more than we’d likely get from the scrap dealer for them. He won’t be able to pick them up until the end of September, though, as he’d going into surgery tomorrow, and needs the time to recover. There was another vehicle, which basically just the shell of a panel van, he asked about, but my brother and I didn’t talk about any of the vehicles on that side of the outer yard fence. I would hope the scrap company can come earlier than the end of September, but if they do, I hope they can work around the two cars by the threshing machine.
Okay, I’m getting perplexed. As I’m writing this, I keep hearing the septic pump go off, but no one is using any water. It’s shutting itself off as it should, but why is the tank filling so quickly? I’m not hearing the well pump go off more often, which would happen if we had a leak of some kind that was fast enough to trigger the septic pump that often.
I wonder if it’s related to the problems at the expeller end? That’s some 300 feet away, though.
Man, I’ve been paranoid about the pumps since we’ve moved out here. Now, it’s even worse!
Relax, Re-Farmer. Breathe.
Think gardening thoughts. That should calm me down!
Meanwhile, I took advantage of the lovely cooler day and got some lawn mowing done, using the lawn tractor my brother lent us. I was going to try our riding mower, but the battery was dead again. My brother replaced that battery when he repaired it for us, so it shouldn’t be dying so quickly. I didn’t want to take the time to charge it, and just used my brother’s machine, instead. Not all the lawns needed to be done, and one area still has a piece of tree that broke in our recent storm, waiting to be broken down into firewood for the the fire pit. The grass around there doesn’t grow very fast, so it can do without being mowed for a while. I did get to do the outer yard and driveway, though, and will have plenty of clippings to collect and set aside for mulch and for composting.
Well, it’s just hit 9pm right now, and I should be going to bed. I want to start for the city quite early.
Hopefully, I’ll get some decent sleep tonight!
The Re-Farmer
[addendum: okay, this is too funny! After I hit publish, I went ahead and clicked on the AI “Generate Feedback” button. This time, I didn’t get suggestions on breaking up paragraphs or adding pictures. Nope. This time, I got suggestions for regular maintenance on equipment, better communication with my brother, and possibly getting help to deal with my anxiety over the septic issues, and ensuring good self-care. 😄😄😄]
This was our third attempt of sowing these, and I planted two pairs of seeds in the bed with the onions and shallots. There are still none in the pot (sowed them twice in there) and I had been thinking of what I could plant in the empty space where the Magda and White Scallops had failed, only to find these! So far, it’s just the one pair of seeds. No sign where the other pair was planted, but if it took this long for the first ones to show up, there is still hope!
Now, they just need to survive.
Still no Magda here, but a second one germinated in the pot on the steps.
There is also a nice little row of tiny kohlrabi seedlings popping up in the potato bed at the chain link fence.
I got a surprise phone call this morning, too. The scrap guy was going to be in our area. Did we want him to come by?
Today???
Yes, today.
*sigh*
I’m taking my mother to her medical appointment today, so that won’t be an option. We talked a bit about the state of the ground for getting to the barn and stuff. He’s going to be in the area again later – he has to wait for the ground to dry out more, first, so he can’t say exactly when, but he can call us first, if we want.
Yes, please!
We need to re-bag the aluminum, anyhow. Between the cats, racoons and skunks, quite a few bags have been torn up. That’s the down side of having so many cat food cans in there!
Since I’m going to be in the area, anyhow, after I bring my mother home from her appointment, I’m going to head over to my homesteading friend that sells eggs. She’s overwhelmed with eggs again – this has been a good year for eggs for a lot of people! – and is all but giving them away. When she posted about it on FB and someone asked the price, she just said “whatever is reasonable!”
We still had eggs, but the girls cooked some up with their supper, and boiled the rest for egg salad, so there is room in the fridge again. I’ve asked for 4 flats. I remembered to ask if she needed egg trays, and she does, so I’ll be bringing a bunch of those over for her, too.
With all the driving around, plus the likelihood that my mother will be seen late (hard to say; I’ve actually been seen early, at this clinic!), and a trip to pick up eggs, I’ll probably not get home until well into the evening.
Today, we’re supposed to reach a high of 28C/82F, and now the forecast has the same high for the next two days. As I write this, we’re at 23C/73F, but the humidex is already at 31C/88F! Humidity is at 81%, but apparently there’s just a 9% chance of rain this afternoon – or thunderstorms, if I look at a different app!
Next weekend, we’re supposed to reach highs of 30C/86F, and stay there for days.
I do wish we had better forecast regarding rain or storms, so we know whether the garden needs to be watered or not! I probably will anyhow, tomorrow morning, just so the garden can better handle the heat.
The Re-Farmer 