I Didn't Ask For That!

I just wanted some rain (which we got enough of to barely wet the surface of the soil), I certainly didn't ask for a tornado! Bah!

Thank goodness it never touched down. My fool husband stood out there watching. Of course, stupid me stood outside and watched the one heading for town last year (June 30) while he was busy running to the cellar with the kids from the one that actually hit us from behind. Still haven't gotten the damage from that one fully fixed, much less do we need another :(

This weather is just crazy this year. I don't think I've ever seen such extremes. Wicked snowstorms and thunder boomers, sure, but tornadoes around here used to be a phenomenon. I think I have pics from the one that hit us back in 84, since it was so rare we were all out snapping damage pics. Not so much anymore. Seems we see funnel clouds 2 or 3 times a year now.

My WS'd flowers are humming along at a very, very slow pace. I'm starting to wonder if they'll even get big enough to bloom before fall. I have had to resist the urge to water them mid-day.

We have a very tiny pepper coming! Yay! I can't wait to start cramming those in the freezer. I better not count my chickens just yet. ~crossing fingers~

Oh! And the redheaded woodpecker has build a nest in the snag on our front lawn! YES!!!

The Veg Garden Is IN

Whew! Yay!

I can't say it's done because, well, it's never done. There are always those mundane tasks of watering, weeding and bug picking.

I was a bit sad that no one took the tomato and brussel sprouts that I put out for free, but a friend of D's had never tried growing them before, so figured he'd give it a try. He hadn't purchased his toms yet either, so he got a two-fer. :) There are some down sides to living in the middle of nowhere. The selling extra veg for WSing soil might be out after all.

All my WS sprouts are in, except for the few I'm still going to give more 'wait and see' time.

I ended up giving my SIL some buddleia and toms. She just found out she has cancer, so I'm not sure how much time she'll have to mess with them - or even if she'll feel up to it. God, I hope everything works out well. I don't know what I'd do without her. She's one of those people that's just really good - inside and out.

We got really small heads on the broccoli this year. Of course, the seedling were probably pretty stressed out with the house going from a nice comfy 65 down to freezing and then back up again. The humans weren't too fond of the temps bottoming out either.

My eldest son works at a construction supply place that gets 'less than perfect' merchandise and sells it really cheap. He brought me some leaf stepping stones that are broken, but I might be able to salvage a few for a walkway. Anyone have ideas on what I can do with broken and chipped stepping stones? Some are pretty bad. They feel kind of soft, like they're made from plaster of paris. I know they aren't, but that's how they feel. Strange.

We haven't made any progress on the foundation winter barrier/flowerbeds. We need to find some way to get the logs here. Ya know, I refuse to have a truck because of the gas guzzling, but it sure would be nice to have one! Especially since we found a beautiful glass door someone was throwing away after a remodel. Hey, we TRIED to force it into the little Neon! lol. D kept telling me it wasn't going to fit and I kept telling him we could make it fit. Ok, ok, so I was way wrong. Points to D for visual dimensional math. Pfft! At least I got another blind to make labels, so yay!

My WSed petunias took off like crazy. Once they had heat and water, look out! No blooms yet, but they're working on it.

I wish we'd get some rain. We're so deep in drought that it'll take all summer or more to get the water table back to anywhere near normal. Hope everyone is having a wonderful gardening season!

Excellent Idea

I hope they get the funds to keep doing this yearly. These people really get it...

Garden in a Bucket

Kudos to the person that starts all those seeds :)

Well, Make Up Your Mind

6/7/07 = record low of 37

6/8/07 = record high of 93

It was the second driest May ever.
~Sigh~

At least the storms that rolled through last night were no where near as intense as to the west.

It is so not a decent gardening year. Every day a different plant is either happier than a plant in ... well, you-know-what ... or moping.

My Aunt called to commiserate. We ended up having a pretty interesting discussion on the 'playing' of gardening.

Playing. We've decided that is exactly what the majority of people do, but then again, it's suppose to be a fun thing, right?

Neither her, nor I, get to play, however. For us it's pretty much work, not so much of a hobby. If there's a year like this with crappy weather and we get a low harvest, well, we get to put less in the freezers. Period. There is no 'just running to the nursery to replace' whatever plant the wind, temps or hail took out.

We've come to the conclusion there is a pretty hard line between the playing of gardening and the necessities of it. Maybe dabblers would be a better word.

Hmmm...besides her and I, I don't really know many people that garden specifically to preserve for winter. I think the biggest difference is that if we don't harvest, we don't eat vs. they don't harvest, they just buy. As far as the flowers, we absolutely adore them all, but if we get wiped out it isn't something we depend on.

With all that said, we still get an unbelievable amount of joy from gardening, even when things go wrong. Here's to hoping both her and I both end up with a grand veg harvest.

Rain, Beautiful Rain

Finally!
The bog is full again. Second driest May on record. Pretty pitiful that I've actually had to water a bog for the last month, but everything seems to have made it through the dryness trials. And the water iris are showing their pretty blooms.

The birds are very happy about the sky dumping. The robin that shows herself daily to dig through the leaf litter at the bog bottom, used it for a bath instead this morning.

On Tuesdays, they have a call-in on the news for gardening questions for the local gardening expert. (I wouldn't exactly call her that, but she's better than nothing, and has one heck of a good personality - I like her). I had to chuckle when somone called asking about the population explosion this year of squirrel and chipmunks digging up their plants and what to do about them. Because I refuse to kill anything living (mice and rats exuberantly excluded from that list!) we finally resorted to using a Havahart trap and giving them a brand new zip code. 10 chips so far! Unreal! The lady where hubs bought the trap said you have to take the little boogers at least 2 miles away or they'd be back. Every time I start grumbling about how much it's starting to cost in gas to cart those suckers away, the hubs simply asks how many flowers and veg we'd like to actually have left by fall and I immediately clamp my lips shut.

I'm debating whether to chop the blooms from the yellow iris. The brutal wind over the last 2 days has broken every single one and layed them right to the ground. The poppies opened and the petals were promptly blown off. Sigh.

The peas are loaded with blossoms, as are the peppers. We forgot the epsom salts to stop the blossom drop. Unlikely that we'll get away without using it (haven't figured out why this happens every single freaking year!) but we'll do the wait-and-see again. At least for a while yet, since so far, so good.

I've gotten almost all the winter sown jugs planted out. I ended up at about 50% germination, but with the stupid season we had, I'm calling that pretty darn good! There are a few that I'm still stubbornly hanging on to and hoping for. Another lesson learned this year = don't use yogurt cups, they dry out way too fast.

I sheared back the alyssum, which made me a little sad, but they look so much more thick and green - crossing my fingers for a second bloom.

Everything in the veg garden is doing wonderfully! Of course, as soon as we planted the canteloupe and watermelon seeds, the temp dropped to 40. Doesn't that figure?

I finally gave up on the idea of finding somewhere to put the extra tomato and brussel sprout seedlings. My daughter made a nice free sign last night and we put them out by the roadside. I'm anxiously waiting to see if someone will give them a good home or they'll end up in the compost pile. Geez, I really hate to waste anything!