stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

I didn't even know that there was such a thing. Probably a real extravagance but especially for a person with poor color vision (😳 like me).

Along your lines of bird baths, FlowerBug, my own extravagant orientation and sympathy for the local sparrows in this extreme weather, I'm thinking of setting an up-ended toilet plunger out with water ...

I will have it mostly hidden in a rose bush that the sparrows are ever so helpful at keeping clean of aphids. Be comfortable knowing that I will NOT be posting a picture of it on your thread.

Steve

go ahead! i'm quite fond of odd yard art. it goes with everything else here really...

i have very good color vision according to the on-line color tests but i was only able to take them after i had my monitor calibrated. before that most of the reds and oranges were too much alike and not much else looked good either. i can at least tolerate what i have now.

 

[flowerbug]

the onion patch is coming along well. i have at least four different projects going on in here apart from the larger sweet onions growing.

the two rows (towards the back of the patch) are the sprouts and small bulbs from the seeds i planted last late summer. a mix of red onion seeds, some seeds that were likely crossed and perhaps some of the large sweet onions too.

the larger onions with more spacing are the crop of the sweet onions planted from starts from the greenhouse and we'll enjoy eating those through the fall and into early winter.

in the foreground are some bunching onions that i hope will work out but first they have to survive the next few months, not a great time for seedlings to get going.

 

[flowerbug]

creeping charlie update. the time i've spent so far has been paying off the past few weeks as i've only spent about 10 minutes each. the super dry weather and me being able to hunt down the runners through the grass (after having it mowed short enough) meant i was able to really get most of it removed entirely. what remains are those bits that i've missed somehow so i just check over the area and pull up whatever i can find and pull the new leaves off any that are trying to resprout that i don't want to take the time to dig out any more (in clumps of grass or down deeper). i suspect i'll have more returning growth for the next few months and then when it cools down in the fall the runners that are down deeper may try to make a try for growing again, but i hope that the worst of this infestation is over with. probably spent about 20hrs total (very enjoyable hours for the most part as i'm sitting in the shady spot in the later afternoon or on cooler days in the sun when i could see things better). it's a pretty amazing plant.

 

[flowerbug]

the theme recently has been hole-y mole-y...

also trying to finish weeding the north garden to get the purselane, wood sorrel, a few grasses and that ground plant which i can usually forget what the name is, if i've identified it properly to begin with. these are some others i just looked up, there are others...
plantains, lambs quarters

Galium aparine : aka Catchweed Bedstraw, Cleavers, Goosegrass - ugh.

Euphorbia prostrata : aka Prostrate Spurge, Prostrate Sandmat

Polygonum aviculare : Common Knotgrass, Common Knodweed, Doorweed, Birdweed, Pigweed

at least the nutsedge has not come back too much and i've gotten it out right away tracking down all the runners and nuts. of course the biggest nut in the garden is me.

 

[digitS']

My belief is that we find them such a bother that we appreciate being able to put weeds out of our collection of thoughts.

Even the memory of their names is unwelcome during the winter months.

We have several euphorbias. The bedstraw isn't in the garden but will show up along the fence line.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

i'm watching the birdies take birdbaths in the puddles. amusing to say the least. also they are choosing the dirtiest water puddles out there to do this in. probably because they are more isolated and away from other things where kitties could be hiding.

 

[flowerbug]

i did get some mud and puddle playing here during the garlic harvest... when i was done i had to change clothes to get dried out... all these from yesterday's garlic lifting and drying. the rest of this is a repeat of the post to the what i did in the garden thread but i like to put something here in this thread too...


garlic drying thyme - i was glad the sun was not out so i left them out to air dry for a while and then later i like how well this worked out when i had to scramble to get the garlic put into buckets so i could move it into the garage when rain threatened - i could just walk along that brick edge in the gravel and reach the stems so i could grab them. i was also happy that i didn't end up having to rinse these off and instead just peeled off the outer tunics. after a few weeks of drying the roots and dirt will get taken off.

the smaller bulbs and rejects that i didn't want kept with the other larger main crop bulbs. the smaller ones are from the green garlic patch that i didn't get used up in time. all of these will get used or given away first. i did rinse these off before letting them dry.

sometimes the old ways of doing things can work, not quite a foot...

and then modern technology has to get a toe in. not quite modern enough as there's no centimeter scale... my pinky fingernail is pretty close to a cm if i ever need to be more precise.

 

[flowerbug]

the seeds i planted last year worked out fairly well (picture from weeks ago upthread). today i was out weeding and lifting up what i want to keep or use. there's plenty more tiny bulbs left in there that will keep growing for this fall and into next year.

most of what i lifted today were the red onions but the seeds i used were not entirely one variety and may have had some crosses in there too so that is one of the reasons i planted them. well, aside from the fact that the seeds were old and i wasn't even sure many of them would grow at all.

it turned out i had several thousand that survived from last year and through this spring and the dry spell we had, but they did get watered since there are other onions in that patch i have to keep going.

they were not thinned, they were weeded, whatever i have harvested now were the ones that grew best around the edges and then in the middle with competition from
all the other seedlings. they also were not mulched at all last winter. the soil is mostly clay, but also fairly good in terms of nutrients.

i had three seedlings from last year and that lived through the winter which were big enough to flower. of the three one of them has both seeds and tiny bulbs on top so it is a walking onion cross from somewhere. i don't grow those here but a few years ago i did have some onions that were very different like that so perhaps some of those seeds were in this batch i had too or they managed to cross. i don't have enough seeds or tops to share around yet, but i'll see if i can get an increase out of these next year because it is interesting and useful to have both seeds and small top bulbs to
work with. the negative part is that the walking onion is a red onion and i was hoping for a cross from the sweet onions (a more round shape to them - the reds are elongated a bit) to show up with some red but also to have it be a walking onion. i guess it will give me something more to work on.

today was the first day in a long time that it was cool enough to work outside from the morning into the afternoon. mid-70s and a bit of a breeze. couldn't ask for a nicer day to putter around in the gardens.

 

[flowerbug]

at last, after nearly 10 years of various attempts at fixing the roof leaks we have the roofing contractor up there replacing the roof vents. while he's up there he'll also inspect it for other things and take care of them. he's almost done. i thought it was going to run us about $500 but he said $300.

we really hope this takes care of the problem. he says that when he removes the existing vents that everything looks ok in there and that it isn't rotting or nasty. for an intermittent leak like what we've been having this is good to hear that it wasn't a continual but tiny leaks.

so knock on wood (including my head) and cross anything you can cross and consult the stars or pray to your favorite diety (or deities) and hope along with me that this finally does take care of it. at times it has been a real trial too because Mom wanted to have the whole roof redone again to take care of this when it wasn't that bad of an issue and then at times both of us have said that we'd just like to blow it all up...

things got vastly better when i made it clear to the contractor and a few others involve who were playing middle-relay communicators that they were not helping and that if they had things to say they needed to talk to me. Mom was sticking her fingers into things and the contractor was taking her statements as informed and they weren't at all so that misled the contractor and it took about six months to get back to where we thought we knew what was going on.

it didn't help that during this time we had an antenna come down and other fun issues besides, but really the whole worst bit of it was that it was so intermittent that we could never really pin it down easily enough to solve the problem.

only this last round when i put up the big tiles weighted down with stepping stones to hold them in place uphill from the vents did we finally get all but one leak to stop. so... like i say. hope with me.

i think the new vents look much nicer, even if they are black instead of brown...

 

[flowerbug]

when the guy was done replacing the vents he had the old ones in the box from the new vents and so i took a quick look at the vents (there were hornets in all of them so it was a very quick look). but you could see where the water had been running over the edge of the vent inside as the rim of the vent was only going up about an inch and a half. clearly not enough height for the hard storms that were causing enough water to run off the fireplace and roof uphill from the vents. so it looks like we finally got the problem solved. we'll know as soon as we get a good heavy rain... but i still won't relax for a few years. sometimes in the past with the weather and shape of the roof and chimney we may have gone eight or more months between times when it would leak and having a hexagon shaped roof means it may take some time before all parts of the roof get a heavy rain.