Just beachy

For ten years I've  past a house coming and going to my parents. On one trip  I saw they were setting up for a wedding. The next time I took notice, they had put in a wheel chair ramp. Today when I past by there was a sign advertising an estate sale next weekend. 

Anyway. I went to the beach.

Friday Cat Blogging

Hot

I came home form work, checked out my plants - Discovered that the blooms on pumpkins have no shelf life whatsoever. They budded, bloomed and wilted in about twelve hours. Kind of romantic, I guess, if you think of things that die young as romantic. I hope this doesn't speak badly for their ability to produce and support strong fruits, I don't know. I don't know anything about them and all the literature says "plant them, water them, weed them, pick pests off them, harvest them" . Nothing about time lines or case studies or anything useful. I want instructions!

Have I mentioned its hot? I have lived here too long. I used to be able to take all the heat and ask for more. Now? Now I am much better at being cold. Take Dogger for a walk in the dark and the bitter cold? Three times a day? I am so up for it! Ride the exerbike? I am there! Everything is so much easier. Now? I'm hot and I don't want to do anything.

After I visited with my plants, I took Dogger to pee, fed her and let her have a cookie and fed myself an appetizer/ left overs.  I thought about what else I could eat for dinner. I checked out my larder and realized that everything I had to eat needed to be exposed to heat, which is not what I'm looking for, I do not want to be exposed to heat. You can gnaw on a frozen chicken breast all you want, it is not going to morph into something you want to eat so I thought it would be a good idea to think about it a bit. I thought about it while  I watched some TV. I was so deep in thought I heard  not one but two sirens peter out close by. I was too hot to even get up and look out the window to see if anyone I knew had fallen out.

I finally looked at the clock and decided I needed to get serious about feeding myself and to be not sleeping in front of the TV. It was not cooler. I also knew it was time to take Dogger for her walk. She had been very patient. Fortunately, Dogger does not love the heat either and she happily took care of business as quickly as possible. I thought about what food I could get that would keep me out of the heat. I ended up driving across the street for some chicken. You let someone else cook chicken  and its magically food you want to eat.

Working for the weekend.

Nothing says "I'm going away for the weekend" like mowing your yard on a Wednesday.  I got a wild hair and decided that the yard needed to be taken care of now instead of later. I could have done it Thursday night but that didn't work for me. I could have done it Friday night but I'm going to be busy.

IN reality, if I had time to think about mowing the yard I would psych myself out of by the time it got time to do it. I would find something that would stand between me and the job - maybe it would  end up being "too hot" or maybe "too humid" or too "Law and Order rerun" .  There would be something a lot more important than getting the lawn mowed.

So, I did it. I hauled the mower up from the basement and hit the yard work as soon as I got back from walking Dogger. I almost talked myself out of the job because the walk was a lot longer than we have been doing for our second walk, they have been a lot shorted lately because its too damn hot and I worry for Doggers tender paws on the street. Poor dog,  her health is paramount and I can't put myself before her, so  we've only been walking for short distances to spare her feet.

So I had a long walk  ( in the heat) and a lawn mow!  (in the heat) so I'm intentionally skipping the bike ride because I don't want to kill myself. Its too hot and its later than usual and I don't want to wind myself up too much before bed. I also picked tonight to correct my hair color - another chore I have to spring on myself so I don't have time to come up with an excuse not to.

Oh, and because I know you are following the saga of my pumpkins as breathlessly as I am - there are a lot of blooms on the vines! Woo!

Study Time

I've never grown watermelons or pumpkins. My garden guru, Alphagal, who can plant a bare stick and have it bloom, has tried to grow pumpkins and not seen success, so I have some learning to do.

I learned that with both varieties not unlike my not-at-all-successful  tries with zucchini and  squash experiments back in '09, that the male flowers will bloom first followed up my the female flowers, I also learned that on the pumpkin plants at least, that each vine can produce a number of fruits - which is great, I see a lot of the male flowers and no mature female pre-flowers at all. There are some little very undeveloped bud things here and there that might be female blooms but I'm not seeing the tell-tail ovary. I have been down this male dominated road before with the squash. But, these pumpkin plants are much happier plants then the squash plants ever were-and are hopefully more in touch with their feminine side.

In the pumpkins and my favor, they grow very well in NC soil and they don't suffer much from predation from bugs or animals and they are fairly disease resistant as well. In my reading I saw that I of course did not plant the pumpkins in the way the literature says I should have. Nowhere did it advise to dump your pumpkins over the wall and then dump dirt on them and then after a while break them up with a shovel and dump more dirt on them. This is not how I was supposed to do it. I was supposed to plant them in rows no less then six feet apart and then they should be mounded. In my favor, the dirt was mounded, on the downside the sprouts were at most about six inches apart. The fact that they are as pretty and green and lush as they are is probably a miracle and there still is not promise that they will produce anything other than lush foliage. Thinking positive thoughts, I read that they can cross pollinate so I could end up with  tortie pumpkins.

Any pumpkins at all would make me joyful.

On the watermelon side, they are so young that there isn't much going on with them yet.

 I've shifted this plant and its vines too keep them from attacking the peas and beans. I'm not that this was an all together wise move. But why can't it grow to the other side? The side where it won't attack anything?!

unshifted, not in attack mode.

really far behind the others.

 My reading taught me that transplanting seedlings as "old" as the  specimens that  I removed from the pumpkin patch, is not wise move that does not end well in most cases and clearly these plants are much, much smaller than the plants that started out here. I still have hope though.

I do need to keep a close watch on bugs because unlike the pumpkins, the watermelons  are a  nummy treat. There was also a lot of column inches dedicated to keeping them weeded - not a problem for me as I use weed barrier but since it don't mention WB at all, should I not use it? so far it doesn't seem to be bothering the plants any and they are growing and maturing. I have some fears that they may grow and develop into the tomatoes and there is a very good chance they will take over the beans and peas.

Again, upside, peas and beans have a shortish season and I don't think that there will be a lot of negative over lap.  I do fear that even with only three plants in a space that could support  six peppers or tomatoes, that I'm not going to have the space that they need. The plant in the satellite garden space is doing okay

napalmed.

 ...but there is something in that bed that is a voracious and brutal eater and I am really worried about how anything I have planted there is going to fair. This is depressing because I had some  hopes for that area taking on a lot more active role as a garden space in the future. In that future maybe I need to use weed barrier the space to block both weeds and pests ,as thus far, I have no such problems ( knock wood, please Jesus!) in the main garden.

Pumpkins Progress

I know you are about tired of hearing about the garden. And I sympathize, truly. Its like having to hear about contestants when you would rather eat glass. Did you know one of the cast members this season comes from here? Yes. FAUX is spreading the marketing cash around here big time.

And then I go right back to posting pictures of greenery!

My how they've grown! They are going to take over the yard. I'm a little concerned about that, I'm  pretty sure the yard won't be the same healthy environment that they have gotten used to. The grass is, I imagine,. full of things that I don't want coming in contact with my vines.  The largest part of the vines belong to the orange variety and they seem to be the most vigorous of the plants. They are also the first plant to

Flower!

Or as it is, start to get ready to flower. The first to be fixin' to flower. I know its not clear from the picture but it is clearly yellow. So, I may get a pumpkin out of this after all. Wouldn't that be awesome? I had thought I was going to need to put up a little fence to protect my plants from the world. but now I wonder if I should put up a fence to protect the world from my plants.

Weekend Photoblogging, again.

Busy picture taking weekend. First off

Victory over the forces of chaos! Problem solved. I could have just waited for it some how magically solve it self or just hope to Gawd that the neighbors crane did the work, whenever that happens. Or. Or a back ho could just appear, and then get talked into doing the job for less then they wanted - but more than I wanted. But still. Problem  solved.

The first raspberry of the season. Yum.

The complete lamp.  I think it looks lovely and it throws nice light.


Oh, and on Saturday, after Artsplosure,  where I scored a very nice print and a sweet stained glass bird and I got my first sunburn of the season. The shirt this year was dull as dishwater and I had to walk away. That made me sad. I got over it.

On Sunday, I was looking for something to do and after some sitting around and laundry doing, I was casting about for something to do and I decided to go see this trail I've been seeing on the way to Knightdale for shopping. Its not easy to access which is a drag, but it was a nice walk. I turned it into a hike when I left the road. Sometimes you have to throw away the map and just let your heart lead you where you want to go.

I wanted to go  and I did. I followed the river - not easy, had to go bushwhacking and cross country and frankly, this is snake country, I was not entirely thrilled about all of this. It took me a long time but I got there and shockingly, There was a there, there.  I was a little annoyed that while I went through some rough  country to get there, other people drove. I will have to figure out how they got there because the river is really nice and the river bank is very pretty and I saw deer and lots of water birds and of course, snakes. It would be a  killer place to kayak - if you didn't have to go through what I did to get there.

Friday Cat Blogging

WooHoo!!!

 Then - Guess whats coming to myyyy houuusseee Saturday morning??
 Now - Guess what came to my house this evening?

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Give up? Come on! Guuuuesssseeee!!! Come on! Be imaginative! What would I be very excited about coming to my house? What is going on in my life that needs to be out of my life? What do I have that needs a "what" to deal with? Gawd!

I wrangled a  BACKHO AND A DUMP TRUNK!!!!!  And they are going to taaaaaakkkkkkeeeeee aawwwwwwyyyyy the massive ROOTBALL and  they filled the giant hole with the mmuuuuulllcccchhhhhh!! Squeeeeeeeee!

What is left of the stump

And even better? I talked the guy down from his original estimate!! WoooooHooooo!!!

And  before that, I replanted the watermelons from under the pumpkins. One went in the garden and one in the plot next to the satellite green beans.

A BACKHO AND A DUMP TRUCK!!!!!  Sqeeeee!!!!

Summer Fun

I found my next food challenge - Home Made Baked Beans! Did you know that  that was something that you could make from scratch? That there are recipes for it that do not include the words "Can Opener" and "Microwave on High for Two Minutes" I thought they came in cans and that was just how baked beans were formed.

In reality, real baked beans are beans that are baked and not in a factory. I will have to get  my own Dutch Oven Yay! new kitchen gizmo! Yay another thing to store!, which is delightful  and why they invented Marshalls/TJ Maxx/Tuesday Morning. It will also involve Navy Beans, which I am going to have to hope are sold in grocery stores. I have never looked. I am thinking that they are not actually navy blue, but rather were favored once upon a time by that branch of  the armed service -  but I don't want to ask, least I appear dim.

I would also ask if it would possible to forgo the expensive and difficult to store Dutch oven  step of the recipe and go directly to "existing slow cooker" , unless of course this is just not done and in which case I will bow down before the recipe and furnish it with its own oven.

I may go recipe shopping as "my" recipe came from a sniff  mass market ladies magazine and it might be a good idea to compare and contrast - which is such a drag as I just hate looking through my cookbooks! Such a bummer. I have a lovely antique cookbook from the mists of time that I suspect will have a very naughty recipe involving lard and  pounds of sugar and archaic pig parts. In  the  magazine recipe though, in its favor it does lean heavily on ingredients that I can actually find and perhaps even use again, although I do have my doubts about the cider vinegar and how necessary to the plot the Kosher salt would be in the long run.

After checking out my cookbooks and being rather disappointed in what I found - either the almost exact same recipe or the inclusion of  canned baked beans - I'm looking at you, "Crock Pot Cooking" - I might just have to go with what I have, and in the interests of  total transparency,  I did not check my Joy of Cooking and my really neat old cook book isn't here. It is not lost it is not here. There is a difference. I think however that I will need to amend t whatever recipe I use to include at least a hint of orange juice and a sprinkle of garlic as not a single recipe I looked at included any of either and I need both.

Update

Okay. I got on the propping up project. I lucked out at Poverty Barn and found what I was looking for after only three or four false starts - which is fine on a Saturday but over lunch hour is a little bit more of a time killer than I was hopeing for. They tried to make me believe that it was too late in the season for garden fences but I persevered.


It was not as easy as I thought it would be to get the fences in place. I needed more than anything was a wire cutter. DO you know how many things in your average tool chest look like wire cutters? Just about everything, do you know what works like wire cutters? Just about nothing. Pliers are not wire cutters - they look like wire cutters, they feel like wire cutters but they aren't wire cutters.

Do you know which pliers you need for a given job? All of them. If you have five of them you will have to put your hands on all of them and do you know which of them will do the job? The wire cutters.

Okay. After I wanted to strangle myself with the fence-lings, I went to look on baby pictures.

We went from

On March 2, there are four seed potatoes in each barrel,  to

On May 16. The white arrows point to the fence-lings. I'm not completely sold that this was the best solution but I think its better than letting them collapse under their own weight. The best possible solution would be to add more dirt to support the stalks and at the same time make more room for more potaotos. I have no more room for more dirt.

 I could try to figure out a way to do that but I'm not sure it would be worth the out lay of energy. I'll know more about how to weigh that after I see how many potaotos I get this time. If I get a lot, I can say "Okay, I got XXX amount of spuds this year, next year I'm willing to do this much more amount more work and investment". At the same time, if I get diddly spuds, I can say "Yeah. Diddly. This was fun, but... Next year maybe I'll do something different with the spuds, maybe get another barrel and not cut it in two." I can  keep experimenting to where I can get a good harvest. I can plant them twice a year, I have time to learn how to do it right.

Holding Up

I have a garden question.

I have these very healthy, very happy, very well developed potato plants in containers. They are hail and hearty.

But.

They are very tall and in the garden world, tallness begets  failure.  I want to support the plants but I don't want to fence them off from contact with me They all ready take up quite a bit of space as it is and I'm afraid that supports would make them even more unwieldy. I would shift the one plant but its only slightly less heavy than the tree trunks that I can only manage to rock back and forth. I need to do more than rock it back and forth, and when I tried, it refused to budge much less rock I think I need to turn it around so the tall parts can be supported by the neighboring wall.

Or

Or I could construct a system of braces around the plant, like a very big, very fat, tomaoto cage - I would use bamboo poles and bird mesh to hold up and back the branches, or instead of the hated mesh, I could use simple garden tape and just belt them up or make a girdle if the belt wasn't  offering enough support - because it might be too sharp and not offer the right kind of support.

But how am I going to make a girdle for a plant? Does spanks have some here to for unpublicized garden product line I don't know about? Spanks, tightness, control, width, elastic... How about pantie hose! Gentle yet, supportive, wide enough, long enough, soft enough! Cheap!

I could put the pantie part in the back - I don't want to cut them because that way leads to runners and weakness and I need them whole and strong... But how to turn them into a fenceing solution? This may prove to be too involved and  the less elegant choices would not be pretty, and even a certifiably elegant solution could end up bordering on the artsy. I like artsy garden solutions, usually but this is the Front Yard and perhaps artsy solutions are not the right choice for the surroundings

While I was (over) thinking my fencing/support choices, I started to think about actual fencing. They sell lots of smallish, shortish, easily malleable, garden fenceing products. They sell them at the dollar stores as border fences! Cheap, plastic-y little fence-lings that could be what I am thinking about. They stand maybe six inches tall and are suitable bendy -  and I could make them work in the  given situation. They are cheap, easy to get, easy to put into service, reasonably pliable, gentle enough and even better, attractive enough for the surroundings. Ta da!

Garden Update 14 2011

And we're back! And posting pictures of the garden! I know you were heart broken to miss this on Friday. Imagine how I felt.

Okay. First things first. A group picture.

You will notice a few of the tomatoes needed to be braced up. I am still okay with not putting them in cages because I don't think I'm going to need them. I am rethinking the cages the peppers are in, I might be setting them free. I don't think any of the plants are going to get as leggy as they did in the past because the light is be so much better  than it was before
and they shouldn't have to work so hard to get their share of the sunlight.

You will notice that  the peppers do not require bracing. They are still very small and just not growing and developing like I think they should.

The beans and peas are also small, but they are clearly growing and stretching out and climbing up the trellis-i .

Speaking of growing, the watermelon ( circled in white) are starting to get a little beefy-er and spreading out a little. I'm holding out hope that these are going to produce, I have two other plants in the front with the pumpkins, but they are being shaded by those plants and I don't think they are going to be successful.

Speaking of the pumpkins.

And to think I was so happy about the little, anemic vines I had last year! I'm pretty sure that the above is what pumpkin plants are supposed to look like. They are even spreading out a little - see lower left. I also planted a couple of bush beans in there and two watermelon plants but as you can see, they don't have much of a chance. I'm thinking now of taking them out and replanting into the main garden.

While we're in the front yard

on the porch, we have fetal raspberries! On both plants! I didn't think that either plant was going to be productive so soon after being replanted way too late in the season. I also did some very aggressive pruning at the time of the replanting and I was pretty sure that this year I was just going to get greenery, if the plants just didn't die from shock out right. I was wrong. Yay plants!

Back to the front yard, the potatoes look great.

 I kind of wish I had them in deeper containers because the plants are so tall that it would be nice and probably  more productive, if I could keep adding more dirt and giving the plants more room to make me potatoes. On the upside, I know that there are potatoes!

In my reading I learned that flowers mean the new potatoes have "set". The plants are covered with buds. 

The protective bush beans I planted also seem to be doing okay, despite being in such a shady environment. I am going to spray some poison over the canopy of the plants though because I am noticing some chewed leaves.

Speaking of chewed leaves. I had to pull the first pole bean satellite planting out and start over.

This time I'm going to pay attention to them and take care of problems before it gets out of hand again. Speaking of new things, I have some new-to-me iris plants. I'm hopeing they do as well here as they did in their old bed.
 

My other flowers are setting a good example. Although, they do need to be fertilized. Rain is great, a lot of rain leaches the soil of needed nutrients and my soil has been sucked dry by the rain. Strange but true.

Saturday Cat Blogging

Mine all Mine! Let the dog sleep on the floor and drink outta the toilet!

We're Back!

Blogger was unforgivably down for an unforgivably long time.  Today's entry will be now read on Monday and Friday Cat Blogging will played this week by guest entry, Saturday Cat Blogging.

Today

I got a call this morning from my tree guys. Hosanna! I rushed home to find half a  ground stump.

I said Hey. Why is there half a ground stump here?

and they said

"You said back behind the fence line"

and I said

Yes, I said that. Now there is a step to get over my fence? This is not what I wanted. Do all of it

and he said

"Yeah. But..."

and I said

"I don't want scum bags coming over my fence. Scum bags in my yard! My Dad is not going to like this. ( I don't like using the Dad card but I'm a single woman and its always open season on us. Its a weapon I use sparingly. I'm a grown woman after all.)

And he said

"Humph?"

and I said

Yeah. My Dad would be really pissed off. He wouldn't like this at all. See? Its like a step over the fence and into my yard. I can't have this. I said grind the stump. I  didn't say part of the stump.  Grind the stump. All the stump.  ( don't make me call my Dad or your boss...)

And he went and talked with his friend and I stood there. And stood there. He kept chatting and he finally came back.

"So. I'll call you to let you know when we're finished?"

When are you going to call me so I can tell my boss when I'll be leaving again.

"No. Maybe I come back later"

Okay. I'll pay you later.

He called me forty-five minutes later and when I got home the stump was ground. To the ground. I do have about a ton of mulch now, but I can live with that. I have some options.

Lets look back through time.

Doesn't look really huge, but it was. You could sit three around that easily.

Does this look about three feet deep? It is.

Some of it is going to my family and into the garden and some into the front yard  to make it look purty, the rest, I think may go to Craigslist. That should get cleaned up in no time. If its free, its like candy. I have about a ton of candy right now.

What's old and tacky is new and still tacky.

I got my eyes checked after work. So much fun, if I could get my eyes dilated every day... Wow. I would have to chose blindness.

 Hey, if you want to really cause your doctor to stroke, use  this phrase :"Your receptionist is chatting about patients medical records. HIPPA violations abound" . And then if you want to provoke her to have an impromptu Come To Jesus meeting with  said receptionist , when she asks where you work say "I work for the state. The Division of Health Service Regulation".

Problem solved. When I left, the receptionists mouth was literally stapled shut. And I didn't have to call HIPPA myself, which if they had me wait any longer, I most certainly would have. Because I was bored. Make me wait, deal with the blow back.

So. New prescription means new glasses and having a prescription like mine means that I have to wait and I am not a fan. The faster I get the ball rolling the better so I went to take care of that as soon as Dogger and I had eaten.  I walked Dogger quickly and squinting.

On to Lenscrafters!  Yay the mall! Or not, the mall was not yay, but I did park much closer to the part of the mall Lenscrafters is in than I usually do, so it was a win for me. I had been at the mall a few weeks ago and stopped into LC to so a little pre-appointment , pre-dilation look-and-see and I found a frame I kind of liked. I had them give me the details and I said I'd be back. I came back and as it turned out, I still liked them. I had looked at some at the doctors office but they were awful. I do not like where the frame styles are going.

The choices seem to be either Ghetto Fabulous or frames  that Tootsie rejected as being too big and plastic in the eighties. I think I found the same pair I had when I was fourteen. Not pretty.

But. Old faithful was there for me.

They are cuter than they look. Honest. I was looking for something different than I have now and these filled the bill and the bling is both less and more than the picture. Its tasteful bling as opposed to the bling on the other frames which was so tacky I just couldn't stand it. If they weren't blinged out they were huge and plastic and gave me flashbacks. I think I picked the winner.

Garden Update 13

I started to look more closely at my satellite bean tee-pee and I started to notice that the plants look not like the others. I had to start noticing them because they finally came up after somewhat of a lag - which should have been a tip off  that things were not as they should have been as they were planted on the same day.

It also took me a while to figure out how to get them watered on a regular basis as well - which may have been a contributing factor to their rather "special" nature. I have to spend some time doing some rehab work with them, to help them catch up with their garden brothers.

When I noticed the tee-pee beans were not only smaller than the others they were also um, more 2D then the others. The others have leaves, which not a single plant in the satellite garden has achieved. They really should have leaves.

I planted a few bush beans in with the potatoes and even they have leaves and I just planted them and they live essentially in a potato-y rain forest. Apparently, leaves are important to bean plants and they need them .

Which makes me concerned about the those tee-pee bean plants.

I poisoned.

A lot.

While I was napalming the backyard bug population, I decided to hit the traditional garden as well to cut off the bugs from all their food. I have noticed that a couple of leaves on the beans in the main garden had signs of chewing and when I looked closer at some of the other beans along the fence, they were in about the same shape as the tee-pee plants. I blame a lack of weed barrier for this. The plants in the "good" garden are protected from death from below by the barrier fabric, the other plants are not.  But that doesn't explain why the plants along the fence, also in the garden, look like bug scratching posts and the other plants not three feet away have escaped this fate. Thus far.

To that end : Poison, poison, poison.

Another Photo heavy Monday

Lets see. Where to begin? The guys finally came to resolve  the tree trunk problem. Yay. I don't feel as resolved as I should. True, the tree trunk was separated from the tree and the pieces were shoved back into whence they came. Fine. But...

There is this little huge thing called the stump. The stump that thanks to the crews labors is now blocking my fence line. I need it moved. The crew is coming back on Monday to grind the stump - I'm not sure that grinding it is going to make it go back three feet to where it came from.

Do they look big? They are huge. I tried to roll the "smaller" of the two pieces of the trunk and I couldn't do it . In the rubble of the tree I've found a broken plastic camera, a boot, a basketball, a blown soccer ball and a very old forty bottle. In my yard, my poor yard art did not fair well at all.

The tree was put back roughly in the hole it came from but its too far up into my yard, so it blocks my fence line. This isn't good enough, I'm hopeing the grinding will correct this problem to the point I can put my fence back on my fence line. Hope? it has to go back on my property line. Period.

Okay, moving on. I took custody of my rockin' lamp! Now, I need a shade. Here is the lamp:

I want a neat shade! Its such an unusual lamp that I want something that will suit it. I am learning that lamp shades are expensive, but here are some ideas.

This is the right shape. Dull though

 I love this one! I think it would look really nice with the lamp base. I'm not thrilled with the black background because this lamp is meant to throw light.

 I love this shape! This is about as sexy as a lamp shade gets. I think the grey design would also really look nice with the lamp base.

Same idea, no design. I still like the idea of a rectangular shade.

Tube shaped, another newish shade concept that I also kind of like.


When I wasn't shopping for lamp shades, I went shopping for shoes. I scored a nice pair of tan sandles for work and a very lovley pair of  on sale sneakers to replace last years model. They are really good shoes, but for what I paid for them, if in six months I see another high quality pair of on sale sneakers that I might want, I could get them and not feel like I was being wasteful. After shopping, I went to Alphagals garden and  picked a lot of fresh strawberries! I came home and prepped them and then made dog treats for Dogger.

While the treats were crisping up in the oven I went to the store to pick up some whipped cream for my berries. I got the berries and:

Have I mentioned I am a big fan of Snoopy? He was only $9!