…when the daffodils start blooming. This clump is just across the driveway from the front yard.
A good reminder that winter doesn’t last forever. Better days are coming, and more rain for Sector 706 in the short term. At least we’ve had a week and a half to dry out after the last deluge.
I got Mason to get up all the stuff he’s strewn around the back yard, and got all of the outdoor toys in the garage or under the gazebo. The boys are off for “winter break” until Tuesday; I never did think to take a day or two off work, but that won’t stop them from coming upstairs (still, it’s not as distracting as co-workers yapping on phones all around me in the office).
It has been warm enough to get the grill out. Sizzle has one of those pellet-feed smokers with the phone app, and it has eliminated the “not quite done” issues in his BBQ game. Me, I just go with the dual-chamber (gas on the left, charcoal on the right) grills. I did a couple of sirloins from the pasture last week, and it was some of the best steak I’ve had in ages. I didn’t sear it, but Sizzle handed me an 11" cast iron griddle he had left out on the deck to rust up. I took a wire cone brush on a drill to it, to get most of the rust, then followed it up with soaking in Coke overnight. That left the ultra-fine rust residue, and I got that off with a Brillo pad. A couple rounds in the oven with a thin coat of Crisco, and it looks a lot better than it did when I brought it home.
So I can toss it on the gas side of the grill to get it good and hot, and put pretty sear marks on the next meat I grill, or maybe cook bacon and/or sausage on it. I’ll probably take it with next time we go camping, too.
Are you seeing signs of spring? Or getting neglected stuff ready to use again? Comments are open!
Gardening in Georgia is always a crapshoot. One can usually deploy plants that don’t handle frost well once mid-April rolls around… but not always.
As I mentioned earlier, I bought new tomato plants after a late frost whacked the first set. But winter wasn’t done dicking around with us—another frost was on the way. I’d put the first set of plants in the ground, and they had started to revive. Since the bottom set of shoots (that had been covered in mulch) still looked healthy after the frostbite, I decided to cover the in-ground plants in mulch and put plastic over them.
The containers, I hoisted onto a pickup truck and put them in the garage for the night. Why take chances if some of your garden is semi-mobile?
This worked pretty well, in the end. The mulch-covered plants endured the freeze without (further) damage, and started growing better soon after. The container plants had no problem spending a night in the garage, either.
All the plants, even the in-ground ones, are sporting blooms now. A couple of the container plants have small greenies on them. I’m looking forward to the first harvest!
Mason was out of school, this last week, and I’ve decided to try taking days off when he’s off—just in case we get the chance to do something together. But I had a week, and there was no rain forecast for the first half of it, so I decided to try getting as much stuff done outdoors as possible. I had seriously considered taking the Starflyer down to the pond for the first half of the week, but realized it would clash hard with all the stuff I wanted to deal with.
First, this year I wanted to have a container garden (mostly). The farm has plenty of plastic tubs laying around, the containers for minerals given to the moofers. There are several places in the back yard where dirt piled up against trees, and much of it is loamy stuff with some clay deposits. I dug out enough to fill four tubs, drilled drain holes in the tubs, and stuck container-friendly tomato plants in them. A late frost whacked them pretty hard (despite our covering them with plastic sheets and leaving buckets of water underneath as heat sources), so I got replacements and stuck the frostbit ones in the ground… along with two jalapeño plants. The bottom shoots, that were covered in mulch, survived the frost. Maybe if this happens again, I’ll just pile mulch over the plants as well. Or, I’ll just wait for that first April frost next year.
Buried treasure
Next, I tackled The Boy’s old car (a black Integra, which inspired the name for the Blackuras, a street racing gang that draws Blink’s attention). The left rear brake caliper was stuck, and the car had sat in its spot for several months. When I put it there, the stuck tire picked up a piece of gravel, and you can still see the arcing “chalk” mark it left behind. So I bled some brake fluid out of the caliper, and tried prying it apart with heavy-duty screwdrivers and a prybar, without luck. What worked was smacking the moving part of the caliper with a hammer until it loosened up. After cleaning it out, and finding some interesting stuff (including a portable charger) I moved it to the new equipment yard and made a mental note to replace that caliper. Like my old Civic, the floor of the trunk is rusted through, so some Dremel and pop-rivet work is in my future. I hope I can get Mason interested in fixing it up a bit, then when he’s old enough to drive I’ll give him the car. (Although he’ll probably want my Miata instead.)
Good as new!
With the car out of the way, there was plenty of room to roll out the worn out washer and dryer that we replaced earlier this year. But first, the landscaping trailer the wife had bought some years back needed some serious electrical work. The plug was gone completely, both taillights were smashed, and so were two of the four marker lights. Fortunately, Tractor Supply had me covered. A $25 kit included taillights, two marker lights, a license plate mount, and the entire wiring harness—in other words, everything I needed for the electrical part. The marker lights were stud-mount, which meant I had to drill a 1/4" hole in between the old mounting holes. Since I live in the South, I learned that WD-40 works quite well as a cutting oil. I spent much of Monday afternoon hacking on the trailer. Once I finished the road (driver’s) side, the curb (passenger) side went pretty quickly. I plugged it into the farm truck, and realized the reason I wasn’t getting taillights was because the truck had a broken wire. The kit included some splices, and I didn’t need two of them, so I used one to fix that.
Tuesday, we loaded the washer and dryer onto the trailer, plus the furnace we replaced last year and a lawn mower with a bent crankshaft (I hit a small stump… it’s FAR Manor, why are you surprised?), plus the aluminum cans we’d let pile up for years, and took it all to the scrapyard. Mason and Dizzle rode along, and had great fun launching the lawn mower off the edge of the concrete. The only snag we hit was when they went to cut the check—it turns out that The Boy (who shared my first name, although he mostly went by his first middle name) had brought loads to the scrapyard. When they said, “Lawrence?” I assumed the wife had used my name for whatever reason. But she had been there as well, so I had them re-cut the check in her name. It all goes into the same accounts, after all. So we returned to the Manor, $41 richer (and more importantly, less crap laying around). They promised to set me up with my own account, next time.
But the trailer was not quite finished. It has a mesh ramp, that doubles as a parachute when towing it. When it was new, it had spring-loaded pins that would hold the ramp up for traveling, but they broke. Bobcat just flopped the ramp onto the trailer when empty, and used rope to hold it up when loaded. I used ratchet straps, but I really wanted it to be properly functional. Back to Tractor Supply… I found some long 1/2" pins that would do the job. To get everything back into alignment, I used a four-pound maul (the flat end) to bang things into place. Yes, percussive maintenance is a valid way of fixing certain issues, and quite satisfying. It was even more satisfying to have two such opportunities in one week. “This is how we fix problems at FAR Manor!” (Or as one of my college friends was fond of saying, “Don’t force it, get a bigger hammer.”)
By Wednesday, I was pretty stiff. Monday had included soccer practice, even though Mason’s team had two weekends off, and the head coach (I'm the asst. coach this season) knows exactly what motivates his players: a scrimmage. Last season, we did a series of scrimmages against the parents, and the parents pwn3d them because they weren’t passing. Something must have clicked between last season and this one, because they’re mostly holding their own now. They’re passing better, and are 1-1 vs. the parents and 2-1 vs. the real teams. (They were like 1-7-1 last season, and never beat the parents, so this is already a huge improvement.) To toot my own horn, I took the assistant-coach position so I could advocate (guilt-free) for more passing drills… I’ve observed that, at least at this level, the team with the better passing game wins at least 85% of the time. The head coach came up with some drills that emphasize passing, and it has helped a lot.
Mason’s team has practice on Mondays and Thursdays, and we were planning a parent-team scrimmage. I was slightly less stiff, but there was still a lingering muscle pull in my right leg (just under my butt). Monday, I pulled the left side, but slightly less. I joked about needing a butt replacement, but mostly held up my end. Of the three who played goalie on our side, I was the only one who didn’t let a ball get past (OK, that was mostly luck). Now the rain was supposed to come in by Thursday, but retreated to Friday except for an occasional sprinkle.
But when Friday came around, the rain retreated again. Now I have to admit, Charlie thought this was wonderful. It meant he could spend more time outside, and we did some “throw disc” long after I figured it would be far too wet. I didn't do much, but that helped a lot with the stiffness issues.
Yesterday morning, our friends came by with more chicken. Last time, we got six. We gave two to Daughter Dearest and Sizzle, two more to the preacher (who returned one smoked, yum), and the others went into the freezer. This time, they brought about two dozen. Since this was a freebie, and there was no way we could deal with that much, the wife started making phone calls while we broke out the vacuum sealer. She hit upon a great idea, to stuff a couple of them in the Instant Pot and then de-bone them. I found some suggestions online, and we bagged up the rest for both us and several others. We had chicken casserole for supper, and at least two more chicken-based meals bagged and frozen. Meanwhile, I have to figure out where I put my beer-can chicken stand. I used it once, and it turned out very well.
The rain finally arrived, and pretty much went all day. I had planned for more rain days, and a few improvements to the homemade worker’s paradise, but there was one I knew I could tackle: I wanted a shelf above the coffee station, to keep things that didn't need to be on the table all the time. I’d found some shelf brackets a few weeks prior, and a wrecked bookshelf provided the actual shelving. A nail head poking out of the paint told me where one stud was, and I measured to find the others. I had to run across to the detached garage, during (of course) one of the heavier rain periods, to grab a pack of wood screws. I had to reposition brackets a couple of times—I think the studs weren’t placed evenly—but eventually all the screws found something to bite. I only had to take off and flip one bracket, that I’d put on the wrong way.
A little yard work today wrapped things up. I went after the smaller (diameter) stumps that dot the back yard; I focused on those because they’re not so easy to see. Some I sawed out, some we dug up, several got the loppers. There are a couple dozen larger stumps, but they’re easy to spot and shouldn’t give a lawn mower a fatal surprise. If next weekend cooperates, I’ll rent a stump grinder and have at 'em.
So, back to work tomorrow. I’ll probably spend most of Monday weeding emails.
Soon after lunch last Sunday, Daughter Dearest caught me in the kitchen. “Can you take these and toss 'em in the woods?” she asked, handing me a bowl of peelings and similar.
“Sure, I’ll dump it in the composter.” I hadn’t been out there in a while, and judging by the overgrowth between the driveway and the composter box, neither had anyone else. Oh well. I stomped down some weeds, keeping a wary eye on the briars, and so I was almost at the composter before I saw what was next to it:
Quoth 3 year old Mason: “Too heavy!”
A peach tree, bent to the ground under the weight of its own produce. The peaches are a reasonable size, but still pretty hard, so I figure they were taking their time ripening in the deep shade around the composter.
As far as I can guess, a peach pit must have been tossed in (or near) it at some time—the trunk is not two inches from the base of the composter. I was delighted, as you might guess, nearly as much as when we started getting persimmons from the tree near the road.
Wife is all, “They probably won’t get ripe. There’s too much shade.”
“All I’m saying,” I replied, “is give peach a chance!”
Wall to wall and 10 feet tall
One life lesson I learned from playing D&D: always keep a 50-foot length of rope handy. What I have these days is clothesline, but I knew it was in the deck box with the inflatables. I grabbed it, and the hatchet, and got to work. Some trimmed branches piled nearby became stakes, and I enlisted a nearby oak. It has held up for over a week, now, during which we had a pretty substantial gust front ahead of some rain.
We’re already plotting a transplant operation come winter. There’s a gigantic white pine across the driveway from the front door, that seems to be dying from the top down after a lightning strike, and a couple of trash pines next to that. Those will meet the chainsaw (and become firewood for campsites and other outdoor fires), we’ll pull or dig the stumps out, and hope for the best with the transplanting.
So, on occasion, we do get a pleasant surprise at FAR Manor.
Thanks to the wonderful collection of wisdom that is the Internet, I now know what a couple of our mystery plants are.
Call it “Carolina Kudzu.”
Like most of the rest of the introduced landscaping, this is an aggressively invasive piece of work. I thought it might be a wisteria, and rejected the thought of it being a honeysuckle. But thanks to my buddy Powell (and you need to blog more, Powell!), I now know it’s a Yellow Jessamine, aka Carolina Jasmine.
Powell tells me it’s the South Carolina state flower, and it’s illegal (in SC) to transplant from the wild. I don’t know why; it’s not like you can kill this thing without a thermonuclear strike. I cut the whole thing down last year, and it came right back. The wife is talking about chemical warfare (Roundup). Me, I’m thinking more along the lines of wrapping a stout rope around it and pulling it out with a tractor. Either way, it has got to go. It is busily trying to strangle every other plant within reach, and its reach gets a little longer each day. I thought butterfly bushes were obnoxious… at least they just get taller.
The wife called them “Japanese Holly.” I called them “some weird-ass holly variety I’ve never seen outside FAR Manor.” But they have a real name, and the name is… Oregon Grape. I posted a pic on Twitter, and Vandamir (an Oregon resident, which makes sense) was there with the ID.
The leaves are very holly-like, although its growth pattern is unlike any true holly—they get about three feet high, and put out an umbrella-like set of leaves at the top. And it’s classified as (are you seeing a pattern here?) a “noxious weed” outside Oregon. I only noticed it starting to spread from the four or five planted plants we had, when we first moved to FAR Manor, in the last couple years. I dug up five of them and put them in pots, and they’re all surviving quite well. Before I knew what they were, I’d planned to sell them in a yard sale, but that would be like selling a butterfly bush—laughable, but people (or nurseries, rather) do it. There might be laws about distributing invasive plants; it certainly isn’t horribly moral in any case. I wonder if the non-nutty sister in law kept the two I gave her, though…
Unlike a true holly, Oregon Grape is supposed to be edible. But “edible” doesn’t exactly mean “tasty.” They are very pretty, nice and green through the winter. They put out yellow fruits that turn purple in spring.
And I learned that the wild violets in our yard are also edible, like just about all the other weeds around here. It makes me wonder why we bother going to the grocery store.
As I’ve mentioned before, the landscaping around FAR Manor is largely invasive, and aggressively so. But it’s not limited to the plants that were planted by former occupants; the native flora is pretty enthusiastic as well.
So, native or exotic, the plants start springing up in places where they’re not wanted. Left alone long enough, they’ll take over completely. Since Saturday was the first really nice weekend day in a long time, I spent the morning cutting firewood from a big deadfall. Then, I spent a pleasant afternoon outside, laying waste to holly and pine trees that were growing where they didn’t need to grow. Those about as big around as my thumb (or smaller), I yanked out of the ground. Up to quarter-size or so, the loppers did for them. Beyond that, it was up to the handsaw. (The chainsaw I reserved for trees roughly 3 inches across or more. A handsaw is actually more convenient for smaller stuff.)
The photo shows a partially-cleared stand near the back corner of the house. I laid waste to all the little pines here, then moved along the side of the house and cleared the path from the driveway to the propane tank. There was also much activity on the opposite corner, where trees were growing right up next to the detached garage, and there are several very tall trees (two cypresses and a holly) that needed lower branches trimmed back. And pines. Pines everywhere. After a timber company cleared them out about six years ago, they tried to spring right back up. Actually, they have, everywhere we haven’t kept them cleared out.
I can hope that next weekend will be equally pleasant. I’m actually taking today off, but only because Daughter Dearest is going in for gall bladder removal. Someone has to watch Mason.
Speaking of Mason, I need to post more of his ad hoc photography soon.
Same thing happens every year, at least since we routed the kitchen/laundry drains to the back yard: tomato seeds get washed down the drain, they find their way into the yard, they sprout. This year’s a little different: they got started early enough that we might actually get some tomatoes off them this year. I don’t see any frost in the extended forecast — these days, first frost ends up being in November often as not — so that helps too.
As you can see, I’ve put some cages up for support. What you don’t see is the few shovels of compost I’ve thrown around the roots. Funny how the directions with potted tomatoes say “bury ’em deep!” when they have no trouble at all putting down roots from the surface.
I guess I really need to put a bed out here for next year, and see what happens when drain water gets to work with a planned garden bed for a change.
If a picture’s worth a thousand words, this would be a looooong blog post.
We keep getting cool snaps, and I keep thinking “this one must be Blackberry Winter,” but they just keep coming. It warms up, then we get a line of thunderstorms, and it cools off, lather rinse repeat. Well, rinse anyway.
The blooms look pretty good this year, and I’ve noticed several stands in a nearby pasture. We still have plenty of jelly and jam though, so I’m sure sure I’ll do much picking come Fourth of July or not.
Upsize the vines, the thorns, and especially the flowers… and this is what you get. The vining roses are really kicking this year — much better than last. We have a dogwood that blooms twice, since there’s one of these vines crawling all through it.
But seriously, I need to get the shears a hold of the rose vines — they’re doing a fair imitation of kudzu, but with teeth!
I was going to say something like “moving from flowers to weeds,” but Big V isn’t here to defend herself. Oh well, I’m still gonna talk about her, that’s the price she pays for dragging me out of bed last weekend and driving her to Tractor Supply. She has her “permanent” prosthetic, the one that’s custom-fit for her, and she can get around on it reasonably well now. That day, she was still working on her balance, and was doing fine pushing the cart around. That is, until she had them drop about 350 pounds of horse and dog feed on it.
She gave the laden cart a push, and said, “I can’t get that going. You’ll have to push.” Then she climbed on top of it. I was a little worried about the cart’s rated maximum load, but it didn’t come apart on us. Of course, that meant I had to push her and the feed up to the cash registers and then out to the car. She hopped down and got in the seat before I had a chance to tell the guy to throw her in the trunk with the rest of it. ;-)
Of course, what would one of these photo-posts be without the World’s Cutest Grandkid? This pretty much sums things up for Mason these days. He’s crawling all over the place, pulling himself up on anything that will stand still long enough to support him, trying to free-stand, and chewing on things.
We started giving him teething biscuits this week — they’re a really hard cookie-like thing that is supposed to be hard to bite through. Mason’s beaver-chompers make pretty quick work of them, though; they don’t last more than a few minutes before he’s bit the end off and working on the loose piece. He likes some regular (i.e. not-baby) food, but definitely not fish or guacamole. He made the most hilarious face after Mrs. Fetched gave him a little home-made guacamole last night… then ejected it quick. I think he was expecting peas, which he does like. Next time, I’ll have the camera at hand and on speed-shoot mode.
Stupid gout is running at a low level at the moment. I’ve temporarily stopped drinking… when the foot is good for an entire week, I’ll resume the occasional nip at the rum bottle.
Last Sunday was Easter, and that’s the day when the kids get christened. Mason was right up there to get his head wet and he didn’t mind the attention either. Left to right: our paster (he sounds like Ricardo Montalban), Mason, and Ashley (a girl who fills in where needed, most of the time).
The reason I didn’t have this up earlier: the drawback to DSLRs is that the RAW photos gobble up disk space pretty quick. I got a 1TB outboard drive Thursday evening and moved all the photos to it — MUCH better. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that the new drive should be good for like 50,000 photos. One of its nice features is a button on the front that can be assigned to launch any application, so I have it launch EOS Utility to pull the pictures off the camera.
Meanwhile, Mason is now crawling pretty well — he crawled right off the edge of the bed last night. Fortunately I was anticipating that and caught him, and it didn’t faze him a bit. He’s also beginning to babble-talk. He’s started this ah dyah dah dah dahhhh noise which means “pick me up!”
Spring has definitely arrived on Planet Georgia: the pollen count is somewhere between Ridiculous and F%#@!ing Insane, and the wild violets are running riot in the yard. I mowed over the violets last weekend, and they just ducked under the blades. I’m going to try digging some up and potting them — seems that the only way to kill a weed is to make it a not-weed.
The flowering cherry outside my window is doing much better than the dogwoods so far. The dogwoods are running a little late this year, they just now opened up and they’re still a little yellow. I’ll get some shots of them when they get a little more up and at ’em. Meanwhile, enjoy the pinkitude; you don’t see too much of it on this blog.
Sometime in the last week, I hosed up my foot. I think I stepped on a rock at the chicken houses and it retaliated. The only good thing about it is that I get to stay out of the chicken houses this week… I’d rather have a less painful reason for that though.
Some longer-time readers may remember when the developers got too close, about a month before I posted the first episode of FAR Future. What a difference 2-½ years and a housing crash makes, right? Then and now…
The developer put up a sign, mowed down some trees, cut a few roads into the land… and went Tango Uniform. The banks are trying to get their money — all their money — from a prospective buyer. I got two words: Fat. Chance. I suppose if they hold on long enough, they’ll get it… but in the meantime, they’ll be on the hook for the property taxes. Meanwhile, it’s an attractive nuisance of sorts: people hunt the place, and I’ve been sorely tempted to ride the motorcycle in and spin a few doughnuts. Last year, the cops busted some Gwinnett County folks who had started farming the former farmland… unfortunately, their crop was “a green leafy substance” aka The Evil Weed. Seems like most of the drug and gang issues we have here involve a Gwinnett County connection, although that didn’t cross my mind at all when I set the action (at least the early action) of White Pickups there.
Speaking of plants and weeds, the fall wildflowers/weeds are doing their thing now:
I took these during a walk yesterday afternoon, as well as the overgrown sign, using the new 100-300mm lens. A couple little girls bouncing on a trampoline in the front yard stopped to talk to me and ask me what I was doing. I figured a parental type would be shortly outside, wondering what strange man was talking to their kids, but I was spared a potential grilling and went on my way.
Mason had his first-month checkup yesterday. He’s gained nearly 3 pounds, and is pretty healthy beyond the usual infantile afflictions. He has thrush, which looks like some milk got stuck to his tongue, but it’s already responding to the medication and right now his biggest problem is constipation. That’s pretty miserable for everyone within earshot, but fortunately it’s starting to (ahem) pass. He’s one of the most enthusiastic babies I’ve ever fed… I recorded some of the noises he makes when he’s chowing on the bottle. Have a listen…
And right now, he’s “sound” asleep. I hope he forgives me for this when he’s older.
The road out front of the manor is lined with all sorts of stuff this time of year. Some of it blooms, some doesn’t, and the economy sucks enough to keep the county from mowing everything down…
Queen Anne ’s Lace:
They caught my eye because they look like giant snowflakes. Seeing as it ’s mid-July on Planet Georgia, I found the notion highly entertaining. I described them to my dad over the phone, and he nailed the ID for me (thanks Dad!). It’s actually a wild carrot, a European invasive, and the ancestor of our domestic carrots. According to Gardening When It Counts, we’ve only been breeding carrots for a few centuries so they’ll readily cross-pollinate with their wild ancestors. I’ll dig up a couple tomorrow for pictorial purposes.
Clover:
The clover is actually a couple weeks past its prime, like the blackberries. But there are still the occasional displays to add color to the roadside.
Most of the rest of these are just flower-weeds to me… if anyone wants to ID them, feel free!
This sort of resembles a butterfly bush, but no butterfly bush stays below 2 feet high and is flame red like this:
I’ve never seen this before; I figure the drought is keeping the grass low enough to let it show off.
I happened to catch a glimpse of this WTFlower, tucked behind a bush, about four feet off the ground and about three inches across. I had my iPhone with me at the time; by the time I got back with the Big Gun (aka Canon), it had closed up:
It’s funky enough that I wouldn’t mind having a few around the manor.
We actually got a little rain today, so I didn’t have to worry about watering anything. The kudzu was already washed and waxed:
Another invasive that thinks Planet Georgia is just, um, peachy.
Shortly afterwards, I started getting rained on myself, so I tucked the Big Gun in my shirt and stepped it up back toward the manor. Am I complaining about getting wet? No way! (Well, I would have been happier without having to worry about the camera, but whatever.) An interesting way to start a two-week vacation…
The blueberries peaked and dried up the week I was suffering from cramps in my back muscles, so I didn’t get too many. Even more unfortunate, the blackberry harvest has been a little disappointing this year. I found a stand near the manor that looked good, but the month of drought has really taken its toll this year — most of the berries are small and were a bit dry-looking. But we had a little rain Sunday night though (hallelujah!!!), and they reconstituted on the vine.
I’ve picked a little over a gallon so far, a good ways behind my “3 gallons in one afternoon” pace from last year. I’d like to get another gallon, which should make about 8 pints of jelly. There are couple of spots where the berries are big like they were last year, so I’ll focus on those first.
Meanwhile… a trio of Smooth Sumac trees came up in front of the manor this year. I originally mis-identified these as Staghorn Sumac, but those have hairy branches and these are… well, smooth. The third pic features a somewhat concerned bugly (click on any of the pix for a closeup, of course). The berries smell abso-freeking-lutely heavenly.
I (not knowing what they were) have pulled up many of them in previous years, but these three looked good where they were so we left them to see what they turned into. Now they’re fruiting, three big bunches on each tree. Dang, I got lucky. I'll keep pulling 'em up, but more carefully now as to give them some room. The fruit is good for jelly and a drink often called “Indian lemonade” as the natives introduced it to the white folks. There’s a pretty good stand near the office, on the little street that goes behind the fast-food joints, so I’ll grab them when the time comes too.
Anyone interested in foraging for wild food should keep up with Wide-Eyed Lib’s diaries on DailyKos. He runs a pretty good series of foraging diaries. I still think a field guide is an essential; I got one at the local indie bookstore last night. I’m no stranger to foraging; we used to hunt for morels in Michigan in springtime (my dad still does it) & I know where the good stands of blackberries are around the manor, even if the berries were a bit small this year.
That’s a start to my forest garden, anyway… wild fruit & planted herbs scattered around the manor. I might scatter some of those sumac berries around the edge of the “garden spot” behind the manor, which I won’t ever tend as a regular garden unless I lose my job. Maybe some will come up & I’ll have a crop. (Their roots are shallow so I can always pull them up if I change my mind later.)
Tomorrow, I will relate the tale of an urgent move.
…west? This is Planet Georgia. The sun sets wherever the pod people say it sets. Just ask them!
The three-day weekend is about 1/3 over. Some rain is in the forecast for tomorrow night through Monday… maybe we’ll get some. God knows we need it. I’m not sure what possessed Mrs. Fetched to get more flowers, but we planted them this evening. With any luck, the forecast will hold up and we’ll get more than a spit.
Earlier this week, I found the (unfortunately inedible) SOBs that ate my jalapeño plants: tomato hornworms, which were starting on the tomato plants themselves. I found four of them, pulled them off with pliers, and stomped them flat. So much for the stewpot. I got some Bt (an organic pesticide) today and sprayed the plants that have been attacked so far. For whatever reason, they didn’t bother the yellow pear tomato plants, perhaps because their leaves are too small. The yellow pear vines are already producing; we’ve made a couple of pasta salads & I’ve got enough for another one. The instructions say you can spray right up to the day of harvest, so I probably could have sprayed them too. If I see them taking any damage, I’ll pick ripe ones then spray. The denuded jalapeño stalks are starting to shoot new leaves, so I sprayed them as well. Maybe they’ll come back & I’ll get some late-season peppers.
This is also blackberry harvest weekend on Planet Georgia, but the berries are a bit small this year. I’ve gotten just over a gallon so far; maybe I’ll get some more tomorrow. We can make some jelly/jam with Splenda™ and share with The Boy.
I’m planning a vacation up north. Since I somehow ended up with SIX weeks of vacation this year, I might do two weeks; Mrs. Fetched is already making noises about not going and that would let me stay longer. With any luck, I’ll be able to spend a little time with some of my blog-family — in particular, AndiF, Stormy, and Yooper — as well as my bio-family. That would leave me a minimum of two more weeks of vacation to burn; I can grab a week at the hideout then another week (maybe two) at Christmas.
Hoping for a long and enjoyable weekend for all readers, both commenters & lurkers… with fireworks of whatever kind you enjoy most!
Summer is hitting Planet Georgia with both barrels… as I’ve said before, the weather here has attitude. But it’s not stopping the flowers…
A tall pink rose in front of the manor, across the driveway.
A little ways behind it, among the trees, a hydrangea alerts us to its presence with a big bright splash of blue.
I presume both of these plants have deep roots; we’ve had no more than a couple spits of rain in the last couple of weeks, despite 40%–60% chances of rain on several occasions. Smaller trees are starting to show signs of stress, but these flowers (and my tomato plants) are doing well.
The daylilies are gone, but the tiger lilies are out now:
A couple of them near this pair may have cross-pollinated with the daylilies; they’re yellow and slightly larger than the others, but still the same shape as the tiger lilies and maybe just slightly over half the size of the daylilies.
Oh, and the allium is a little bigger now, and looks like it might open up soon. There were bees on it when I didn’t have a camera handy (grumble)… onion-flavored honey, anyone?
A fitting name for this guy; it shoots straight up about 5 feet:
The sheer height, plus the poofy looking ball on the end, means that you really can’t do this plant justice with a single photo. The one I had last year did some really weird loops with its long stalk before heading straight up. The ball smells like an onion and is a bit smaller than a baseball this time.
Sage adds a little spice to the music. She's pretty strong, and likes to spread out. She’s been around for a while.
Then there's the wild child of the band, "Mountain" Laurel:
Laurel’s a big girl, which is how she got her nickname. But she sure dresses up nice…
Then there’s Rose:
Rose is a thorny one, and has an attitude. She pretty much takes over wherever she’s planted. Pull her up and she comes right back.
Finally, there’s Iris:
Iris is a thin, shy girl. But she’s pretty and all the fans wish they could be her.
Meanwhile, in real life, The Boy and his band were here playing their own music today. Mrs. Fetched is cooking sausage for a breakfast casserole tomorrow, and the aroma is somewhat distracting…
Well. Now that the thunderstorms have passed through — and God knows we needed the rain here — I can say hello once again.
It has been a week. Actually, it has been a month. In terms of time sinks, April was almost as bad as August usually is, although it (mostly) didn’t involve chicken houses. I’m less than 3,000 words short of completing FAR Future, which is maybe 1,000 words less than where I was at the beginning of the month. But at a post a week, I could sit on my hands all the way through July before I really have to start worrying. Next week will have (for the first time in quite a while) a double feature of FAR Future, because it’s really a single (long) episode split into two pieces. They’ll come out on Monday and Tuesday mornings, respectively. What I’m saying is, I want to get it done so I can start in on the next project… but there’s no pressure otherwise.
I’ve finally gotten started in earnest on a little garden here at the manor. I bought some yellow pear and Rutgers tomatoes last week, along with some jalapeños (my cash crop) and various herbs. The tomatoes, peppers, and lemon balm are now planted (the latter two just before the rain). The lemon balm was starting to wilt, so I knew that had to be addressed pronto; I picked one of the areas where the butterfly bushes were uprooted, then got rid of the violet-weeds. I'm trying to figure out where to put the two oregano plants; the one I have now is turning invasive, so they need to be out of the way but close enough to harvest. Wherever I decide to put the mint and rosemary, it won’t be anywhere near the oregano.
A couple of news articles caught my eye, besides the whole swine flu thing. One was about Congress starting to put a leash on credit card companies (especially since they’re taking bailout money). It doesn’t go nearly as far as I’d like, but it’s a good start. Another was about how an open-source programmer cussed out Adobe over the Photoshop PSD format. Personally, I think Adobe needs to be cussed out (and more) on a daily basis, but that’s just me.
Moving on to the poll gone by… here’s the final tally.
Most of you guys are efficient tax-filing machines… January and February indeed! Those of you who filed in April — the last two weeks before the deadline — I can relate, that’s where I landed too. I really wanted to file right away, joining that Jan/Feb majority, but one thing led to another and next thing I knew it was April. The latest poll is more of a fun little guessing game… let’s all try to guess where gas prices are going to go.
Daughter Dearest is nominally done with college — her last final was Tuesday — but she had to go back this evening to sing at the baccalaureate, and I have to take her tomorrow morning to sing at the graduation. She’s going to be nice enough to give me her network password so I can get some surfing done tomorrow (I don’t have a ticket to the ceremony)… if I really get inspired, I might finish FAR Future right there in the performing arts center.
But first: happy b-day to both my parental units, Mom yesterday and Dad today!
Despite the drought, the plant life has managed to hold up reasonably well through the summer. Maybe the rainy spring gave them enough of a start.
Back in February, I mentioned diverting the kitchen and laundry drains into the back yard. We must have had a few seeds go down the drain — literally — because now there’s a clump of tomato plants springing up.
Mrs. Fetched was like, “Do you really want to let them grow?” Heck yes — I want to see what kind they are, if nothing else. I can’t blame her for moaning about it — the tomatoes have done very well this year and Mrs. Fetched’s mom is ready to yank her plants out of the ground so she doesn’t have to pick any more. It’s not just the tomatoes… her scupperdine vine got so laden it pulled down the tree she’d used for a trellis; I found a persimmon tree at the bottom of the driveway that’s weighed down pretty heavily; her fruit trees are doing very well too. Only one of my yellow pear plants survived, but it has done quite well despite not being staked… it just sprawls everywhere. But if these particular plants do well, and the frost holds off long enough, they'll be ripe around late October.
Out for a walk on Thursday, I saw some wildflowers managing to grow among the kudzu.
The kudzu itself blooms, a pretty purple pyramid with a grape-y smell. But the blue blooms here were not of the kudzu; it was some other plant trying its luck among the tangle.
This kind of thing gives me a little hope. We’ve only begun to see how much our climate change is going to screw things up… but once we get out of the way, nature will adjust and fix things.
