stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

with the return of some cooler weather and a break for now between bean pickings and other things it looks like i can sneak some thyme transplanting in today. the edges of the North Garden need to be protected from erosion and the creeping thymes seem to be doing the best of all the plants i've trialed along there.

i have a pretty well established edge already that has spread inwards a bit too far so i can slice along that and move chunks. we also have a lot of other plants growing in the pathways and other places that i can move.

the nice thing about the creeping thyme is that once it gets going i can build up the area by adding some topsoil and it doesn't mind at all being buried a little so it can be adjusted to be a very effective filter strip for along the top of an edge or along a slope if you want to add some roughness to catch more water to soak it in. this sort of erosion control on a long slope can catch gobs of water over the course of a season.

oh, and i had thought we were past tomato worm season, but they are late as is much of everything else this year. i had to go out yesterday and pick two of them off the plants. they were big ones...

 

[flowerbug]

in the middle of crazy season i still get time to work on other things. kinda strange but i am more productive the busier and crazier it gets (within reason).

so now that it is getting cooler and i'm mostly caught up on my other projects i want to get back to cleaning up the huge mess.

the previous pictures i've posted of the wooden pallets that are put over the drain for the house, well those are all rotting and falling apart and it is a very ugly hazard so i've wanted to take those out and fill that in.

i originally wanted to just shift the pathway over and so we would not need to buy any new material and i would gain several hundred square feet of garden space back and it would be less work in the end.

Mom says no, she likes the path as it is, so she wants to do this but to have me haul in more limestone to go over it when we're done...

this is a lot more work and expense.

part of the project is limited because i have to wait for a garden to finish up before i can remove some drain tubes i have in there so i can use them for this project, but i thought at least i could start getting ready by moving gravel out of the way. as soon as i pull out any pallets the larger rocks and then neighboring gravel on either side will fall into the trench so i have to shift the rocks and gravel before i can remove the pallets. this i can do now in some spare time as i get it.

i don't expect to get this project done this year, but whatever i can get done now means it is more likely i'll have it done sooner rather than later.

right now it mostly still looks like this:

except the garden to the left is now overgrown and being mowed regularly. my injury from last summer is mostly recovered now so i am keeping up with the North Garden just fine.

it will take a few years for Mom to accept that i can actually keep things up now and could use some new garden space, but that will come inside the fence when i pull out the drain tubes and reshape that garden (flatten it out and expand it to fit within the edge i already have there) - which was the original plan when i first set it up years ago - i ran out of topsoil and $ so it has been waiting for me to get back to it - well that project will be a secondary part of this project so it works together ...

we'll see how it goes...

 

[flowerbug]

almost half way done with just a few sessions in one subpart of the bigger project so that is going faster than expected. i know the next part is going to be a big mess and i can't get to that until the beans are done in the large tulip garden so that may be a few weeks away yet... still will be nice to have it ready to go when that times comes.

gardens getting harvested/checked as needed, some rains recently so today will be checking/picking tomatoes and cucumbers and maybe getting the onions out too so they can cure.

from our cucumber patch i'm guesstimating that we've harvested about 800lbs of cucumbers and i'm being very conservative on that guess.

some beans are finishing up now that we've had cooler nights. the pods are probably still too wet to pick but i'll keep an eye on what i can pick and bring in.

pretty much the normal routine here for this time of the year...

 

[flowerbug]

ugh, so sick of rain.

had a too quick morning yesterday trying to get all the bean pods fed to the worm buckets and so i put some on top of the last few until i could get back to them. today is all rain again. Mom's making onion soup. so with those scraps, nanner peels, lettuce cores, avacodo skins/seeds and a few others i got back to those last few buckets and mixed in the bean pods and scraps so the worms can get to work on them. that will hold them for a month or so. was good to see some active worms in there. yesterday when i did one of the worm buckets i realized i must have not put any worms in there at all because i couldn't find any at all so i had to do a quick transplant of a few hundred worms in there while i was at it. sometimes a worm population will take a break in a bucket if conditions aren't what they like and then return to being more active later. stirring things up and mixing in food scraps can also perk things up.

did something funny and dumb trying to get the pit out of the avocado, holding onto the half and smacking the seed with the knife edge to twist the seed out but missed and hit my thumb. small cut. we got a good laugh out of that, me being so dumb, but i guess that is morning, never my strong suit...

 

[Trish Stretton]

Ouch!

I've had enough of rain too!
Yesterday was a typical fickle Spring day- hot, still, cold n windy, warm again, now its raining, but oh wait it just stopped....nope started again...all day. Really hard to get anything meaningful done.
I did manage to site the new hive between rain though which was good.

 

[flowerbug]

ok, finally, got the gravel pulled back from along both sides of the pallets. so the first part of the project is done.

next part is taking off the pallets and seeing which ones i can get the nails out of easily enough that the wood can be reused for something. the parts that can't be easily dealt with will be reserved for burying once i get the whole trench cleared and then some more drain tubes put in there (basically because i have them in another garden right now and they're not doing anything useful so i can put them in this trench to take up space because i don't have a lot of fill available to go back in there and i wouldn't mind it anyways if those tubes fill up with water and then can slowly drain as the bottom drain (which is already in there) empties out.

the whole area might be useful as a water catch anyways.

i have a lot more work to go yet on this project so it may not get done this fall or even get much further than it has depending upon the weather and what else is going on.

in other news. the early beans are mostly picked through so i'm now waiting for the longer going beans to finish. some of those won't finish until we get a good frost.

weeding, and trying to get other things done in between rains - looks like we have another storm that might clip us in a bit.

 

[flowerbug]

storms and rains was the theme of last week. a line of storms coming out of the southwest kept coming through here for days and days. we probably picked up another 10-15 inches of rain on top of an already very wet season. i can't say exactly how much because we took in the rain guages getting ready for the colder weather. the other day everything finally got so saturated that they had flood watches out. the rivers are all running high.

yesterday because we'd been stuck inside a bit too much we took a walk down to the park which is just down the road from us to check out how high the river flood plain had gotten and it was about 6ft below the first bridge and falling but you could see where it had been several feet higher. there have been times when the water is over that bridge so not as high as it has been before.

as we were walking down to the bridge it is a paved road which is blocked off so there is no traffic and it has tree cover over it and some detritus from the trees on it. as we are walking down there is a very large mouse in the middle of the road just sitting there. i was surprised that it did not move as i approached. it just sniffed my shoe and that was it. i said hello and we walked along. on the way back it was nowhere to be seen.

after the walk we pulled some of the top layer of pallets off the ditch i'm working on cleaning up (see pic above). the second layer (or in a few spots third layer) are all pretty rotten and it will be a mess to get them out of there, but at least now we can see the extent of the mess. can see where some rabbits or groundhogs have burrowed through and so i'll have to get that out of the way too eventually.

Mom was asking why we couldn't fix up the end i'd already started but i said because i didn't want that to fall into the empty space next to it if i begin to pull stuff out of there without having new chunks of drain tube ready to go in there for stuff to fall on... that end is partially done so we can walk through, but we've been tossing all sorts of stuff in that hole so it looks pretty horrible now for sure. maybe i can fix some of that up next week to make the boss a little happier... she did help me with moving pallets so she can see what i'm dealing with.

right now i'm watching the sun gradually turn a cloud from very dark grey to purple red as the sun comes up. the sun has been rare to see around here...

checking the weather, no rain today but a good chance of some tonight and then no rain in the forecast until next Friday. we'll see if that holds. would be nice for things to dry out a bit - looks like a good week to get stuff done if it does. low to mid-60s for most of it and SUNSHINE! also, no frost in the forecast for another week. we'll see...

 

[Trish Stretton]

And I thought I had rain. I'm not going to complain about it again...we dont get anything like what you have, but I am looking forward to complaining about the summer heat.

 

[flowerbug]

And I thought I had rain. I'm not going to complain about it again...we dont get anything like what you have, but I am looking forward to complaining about the summer heat.

haha! i'm looking forwards to hearing about it! and all the fruits of your labors of all these years.

we are getting close to frosts now. tonight is forecast within 1C of frost and we are in a low spot so it might happen.

it didn't rain much yesterday so i have a pretty good chance of picking some beans today and getting a few other things done outside. cold and windy.

 

[Trish Stretton]

lol, at the moment, I feel like I am still spending too much time running around in circles. I did get the first lot of seeds sown- doing the planting by the moon, or trying to.
that was last week, so far 4 different things have already sprouted, so maybe it does work.