Early late summer morning
On Thursday I was up at 4:45AM and got my post up. Then I got sort of organized for the day and finally made it out to the Small garden at 7:45AM after a small breakfast of just picked raspberries.
I intended to do a really good job of removing the late blight on the tomatoes in hopes the paste tomatoes will ripen. There are basil plants interspersed and I deadheaded those as I went. I also weeded the area.
Then I got the peppers in the first row weeded and moved onto the Swiss chard.
I cleaned up the small celery row and then the 2nd peppers row. I worked from fence to fence in this area.
I made it to the broccoli area and cleaned that up but didn’t do the rows of celery, nasturtiums, and parsley behind it. I had been standing for 2 hours and that was my limit for Friday.
Walking back and forth across the backyard has become painful in the last week. This is apparently a mast year for the white oak and earlier in the week when we had a lot of wind, it sounded like hail in the backyard as hundreds and hundreds of acorns fell.
I’ve been hit in the head several times and the backyard is rocky with acorns everywhere you step. I will have to rake the backyard this fall. Unfortunately, I still have a lot of things coming along in the Small garden and I can’t put the tarps down to collect the acorns.
White oak acorns sprout the instant they hit the ground and by spring they can have a 12” taproot. So later this autumn, I will have to pick them out of the Small garden.
My mums are another odd thing this year. The one between the steps and the house has always done well as it is very protected there. On the other side of the steps, that mum is pretty small but doing well and has just set a few buds.
I had planted 2 in the thyme on the walkways last fall. The one in front of the steps had been doing very well but has started to get really yellow. Not sure why… But it has also set a few buds.
The one in the south part of the walkway I thought had died, but I found it growing slowly about a month ago. It has also set a couple buds, but is also turning yellow.
It would be nice if they did do well and flowered for autumn. I’m hoping the Howden pumpkins will turn orange and I won’t have to buy anything for autumn decorations outside.
The New East garden was planted very late and then several things were dug up and replanted for the heat pump installation. It’s slowly been recovering from all that.
I was back in the house by 10AM and got a shower and sat and rested for a while. Then I got up and made some lunch and tried to finish getting ready for my #3 helper at 12:30PM.
We went out and harvested the sugar pod peas and the very few green peas that were ready. The sugar pod peas’ pods didn’t look like they should. They really looked like green pea pods. I sure hope they aren’t and don’t see how they could have been mixed up in planting.
We got them ready to blanch and while we waited for the water to boil, my #3 helper ran an errand for me.
Once the peas were done, we tackled the poor parsley that I had brought in 2 days ago. It had recovered some in the water, but most of it wasn’t any good. We got 1 tray for the dehydrator.
Because we only had 1 tray, I decided to dehydrate some Swiss chard to make the pasta dish my husband had liked during the winter. So we went out and got some nice large leaves and filled the dehydrator and ended up with 1 tray in the second dehydrator. Sigh…
She still had time left so she washed up the seedling tray covers until it was time to go.
I just sat and watched videos until supper then watched a movie until bedtime t 8PM. It was to be in the upper 40’s during the night so I got the house closed up.
On Saturday I have to do the mowing as it’s to rain Saturday night into Sunday morning. My older brother and I are supposed to go to the Fair on Sunday. I expect we will still go and just do what we can until the rain stops.
Saturday is to be cool, in the low 70’s and sunny, so it will be pleasant mowing. I don’t know if I have to mow at the barn or not. I’ll see when I get up there.
