Drought. And a damned Plantar Wart.

 Blessings darlings!

I have a little time to blog today, since I'm off my feet - well, off one of my feet - due to a plantar wart that is making it very painful to walk.   It's a shock how it went from Nothing to Can't Walk without PAIN in under 7 days!  Urgent Care couldn't treat it (no liquid nitrogen), and getting an appointment with either my doctor or my husband's dermatologist (where I'd be a low-priority 'new patient') can take forEVER.  So I'm doing the OTC treatment the Doc in the Box and I discussed and am off work (where I'm on my feet getting 12000+ steps in a day) today but can't be very useful at home.  Doc in the Box gave me a note for 3 days off of work, but I'm hoping to be able to work tomorrow.  The first three hours back at work will pay for the OTC stuff.  Then I'll need to cover whatever the copay turns out to be - and there WILL be one, tho' I went to the Urgent Care that is part of my plan. 

So I shouldn't go out and water the garden, since doing that hurts.  BUT - we have drought conditions.  So the garden, especially the stuff in pots on the patio, need water.  OTOH, I don't have very much water available for the plants, since the plumbers who replaced the water pump took the hose spigot off the pump head.  All the rest of the water around the house goes thru' the water softener.  I've been going to a friend's house and filling 2.5 gallon jugs every few days and bringing them home to water with.

I could walk over to the cattle barn since that water isn't softened and Chris has okayed it to fill jugs (I sure don't have hoses that are that long, even if they were all attached into one MegaHose) but that, too, is more steps.

It's 'only' a moderate drought here at this time.  My lawn is a mid-August dead brown in color.  The clay soil is dry for inches down, and unwilling to give any of that moisture to plants.  The blueberry bush I planted two years ago seems to have died from it.  IF we get the rain forecast for Sunday and Monday (and we have less than a 50% chance of rain those days) they predict a total of maybe 0.1 inches.  What we need is an average of 0.5 inches a week.

The landlord is going to talk to his plumber next week about connecting the outdoor taps ON the house in a way that routes around the water softener.  He didn't mention anything about my request to add a rain barrel splitter to one of the downspouts, so I can save water when ever it DOES rain.    

This being Monday, I suppose I should do some offerings to the watery Moon for some rain, but weather patterns and global warming are a bit much for a simple one-off working as I know you know.

If you're in the US and want to see if your area is doing okay on rain, check out the Drought Monitor site https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/  It will also give you info on row crops being affected, and grazing/haying area effects.

Frondly,  Fern

Garden Centers are WAY too tempting.

 Blessings, Darlings!

I bought some vegetable plants today. Yes, I started more veggie seeds yesterday, too, but I'm really worried about the food supply, and I do better with bought plants, so I'm doing both.

 

You should have seen me going thru' all the potted tomatoes/peppers/etc at the store, looking for pots where they had screwed up and had TWO plants in the pot!

 

I've planted the four heritage tomato plants in the rolling tomato 'raised garden' planters already. When (if) the basil sprouts, I'll put a basil or two in each of them as well.

 

We ARE due to have some cold nights in the next week, but I have clotches I can put over them those nights. And by 'clotches' I mean empty coffee cans.

 

Frondly, Fern

Living the Vida Boring

Blessings Darlings!

Welp, the grey squash, which I love, is very very very susceptible to bacterial wilt spread by squash bugs. The yellow crookneck squash is both a bit less attractive to squash bugs AND doesn't seem to give much of a care about bacterial wilt.  The one plant I put in is producing very heavily, too.  The volunteer squash (which I suspect is also  yellow crookneck) looks like it will also start producing in a week or so.  Some of the peppers are beginning to bloom, but I fear that the only ones that survived are the cayenne peppers.  They are useful, but ... I just used up the last of the sweet peppers that I froze from last year, and would like to freeze a batch of THEM.  I need to check to see if I have more of them that I dried still available.

Humidity is not my friend today. 

I don't feel like I have much to blog right now.  Not that most of my blogs are particularly wonderful, but blogging how life goes on during relatively awful times is ... pretty mundane and boring itself.  And I'm not blogging about things that are HEADLINES and GOING ON IN MY YARD.  We have small Black Lives Matter protests in our area, and because I'm isolating I don't go to most of them. I don't go to the weekly Rockwool protests.  I'm not about to list groups/amounts/times I give money, or every single other 'good deed'/virtue signalling type thing.  I'm not going to bore you or me with the details on my little exercise program, or how I felt exercising this day, and whine about ... exercising.  Because I do that a lot in my life, and no one else should have THAT imposed on them.

So you get lists of what I got done, and details on the garden.  And some other nature notes about birds and fireflies. And squash bugs.

I can't see some future Ken Burns using this for some amazing documentary on the year 2020, or CoronaVirus: The Mini Series, and no one's going to look to an old white woman's blog for Black Lives Matter stuff. 

Welp, that's it for today.

Frondly. Fern

Midnight Music?

Blessings Darlings! 

I forgot to blog yesterday! 

It WAS a busy day, with eyeglass stuff for the Chubby Hubby, appointment with nurse practitioner for me then I went to the hardware store and the pharmacy (which didn't have the drug I needed), and with doing all the usual stuff in the garden, cleaning, cooking, etc.

We will all survive the fact that I missed a day.

I've been hearing music in the middle of the night.  Hard rock, with an emphasis on electric guitars - I hear them, not any base.  It's soft, not very close ... but I hear it just as loud in the house with the windows closed as I do outside.  I have NOT NOT NOT gone wandering to seek the source of it.  Sure, most likely it's a human neighbor.  But ... sigh ... the Good Neighbors could have some hard rock interests.   It's not at all clear how they'd be powering electric guitars, of course.  What IS clear is that I am NOT following strange music in the middle of the night.

The hot weather, bugs, dry weather, and clay soil is doing a number on my newly planted and transplanted Swiss Chard.  I'm going to have to transplant more, and give all of it special attention.  I'm already giving the summer squash bug egg checks two times a day, I'll have to water and bug check the chard at the same times. 

Now, a lot of us are attending meetings via Zoom now, and have been watching/making podcasts for ... years.  Wouldn't you like transcripts?  You can get them, easily.  And free/cheap.  The Otter App does it.  I just whined about no transcripts for podcasts, and ... realized that we have this tool as part of our business.  I didn't PLAN on posting it here, but I'm about it.  We are not an affiliate of theirs, but I DO think that if a lot of folks get the paid version we get some gift.  That said, we use the free version and have never needed the paid version.
Here's the link :  https://otter.ai/referrals/UL62OMEZ

A free account gives them 600 audio minutes per month. 

If they need a transcript of a video, they can upload the video file, and Otter will extract the audio from that.
If they need a transcript of audio, they need to upload an audio file:

Otter lets you import existing recordings in the following formats:

    audio: mp3, aac, wav, m4a, wma
    video: mp4, avi, mov, wmv, mpg


If they need more info, the Chubby Hubby can help.

 Damn, it's hot and humid today.  I should plant a new batch of green beans, but instead I'm hiding indoors with the air conditioning on.

We bought a little table top portable grill.  The guys have finally put it together.  We finally figured out how to light it.  It is now on the 15 minutes 'burn off toxic shit' stage.  I don't know if this has enough BTU power for my purposes. 
Update - it takes at least 4 minutes per side for yellow crook neck squash slices.
Now I have pans of chicken in it.  Because I didn't have time to marinade the chicken and I want them immersed in flavor.  Maybe tomorrow I'll throw drumsticks on = because I don't think I'll have to worry about burning them using direct heat.  Tonight is boneless chicken.

Tonight was also the first evening I heard the screams of the cicadas.  They were the musical accompaniment to the beginning of the firefly show, but they didn't  scream for very long.

Until tomorrow ...

Frondly, Fern

Morning in the Garden with Fern

Blessings Darlings!

It's a lovely cool sunny morning here today.  I've already been out mashing bug eggs and thinning the Swiss Chard.  No one told me that the Swiss Chard produced two plants for every seed!  Once the seeds I planted in pots are bigger, I'll add a lot of them to the garden bed of chard.  I'm also hoping to keep some going over the winter in a cold frame, for fresh winter greens.  Along with the sweet potato vines that will be going inside the house. 

My parsley isn't doing much of anything.  Just sort of maintaining it's 'barely beyond seedling' status.  That's frustrating.  The Mystery Squash has not started blooming yet.  Not even the male flowers.  Eventually it will become clear what it is.  This week is not that week.  The tomatoes are coming along, especially the larger volunteer plant.  I had to do more bondage on all of them yesterday.

Tomorrow, weather willing, I need to plant more green beans, and work on the sweet potato vines.  I'm beginning to suspect that the unknown squash is going to turn out to be a yellow crookneck, but that's just a guess based on the leaves.

Now that it's 3 in the afternoon, the day has turned cloudy and humid.  We might get rain.  Then again, we might not.  It's been totally spotty lately.
It is now pouring at the south end of the field, where they hayed the other day.  Nothing going on here yet.  Lots of wind, tho'.
Ah, now it's raining pretty well here.  And now it's done.  About 8 minutes of rain.

That's the Sunday that Was.

Frondly, Fern

May tonight be quieter than last night was.

Blessings Darlings!

Dang, there was a lot of fire works action by individuals last night.  For HOURS, like from 8 pm till midnight or beyond.  It's been going on for two weeks now, with last night being the biggest night and June 20 - the celebration of West Virginia statehood - the second biggest.  But there were fireworks every day between the two.  I don't expect that they will come to an almost complete end for another week or so.  Since all the 'official' fireworks displays in the area were cancelled due to Coronavirus, and folks are isolating and bored, I guess it's to be expected.  OTOH, they had to interact with people to buy the fireworks.  As for me, I'd rather watch the fireflies and maybe see a meteor.  But since last night was the full moon (and a lunar eclipse, other the other side of the globe), it wouldn't have been a good night for seeing meteors.

Trump, of course, had fireworks and rallies both of the last two nights.  The first on Native American land (what is now called Mt. Rushmore) and last night in DC.  No masks or distancing Friday night.  Little last night.  Those folks are certainly free to risk their own lives, but they are SO likely to infect others, and likely to max out hospital ICU beds and ventilators.  That bothers me greatly.

We of course continue to self-quarantine as much as possible.  Masks when in public.  Only going in public once or twice a week, for shopping and occasionally for walks in parks and such.  We're spending as little money as possible, because at the end of this month the 'coronavirus stimulus' money added to unemployment ends, and my unemployment checks don't cover our bills.  This is why garden production matters so much, and finding ways to enjoy eating what's easy to grow lots of matters.  Turnips are easy to grow.  They are NOT everybody's favorite to eat.  Tomatoes are so easy to grow that we always have too many of them.  Green beans, again, easy to grow.  Last year we had too many of them, and I couldn't keep up with harvesting them.  Bad combination.  At least the tomatoes I could give to folks at work.  I'm growing half the summer squash and half the tomatoes I grew last year, and diversifying the garden more.  I've added potatoes, dry beans, chard, beets, turnips, radishes. garlic.  Have had NO luck with lettuce and spinach. Have replaced spinach with wild lambsquarters at some meals.
And, yes, I did my part of the garden work for today already - watered, and mashed bugs/bug eggs/pulled thorny hogweed.  Spawn has not gone out and weeded anything yet.  It's now 12:20, it's 93 degrees, and it feels like it's 103 degrees. 
BTW - since Wednesday I harvested 3 grey squash.  Three more will be ready for this coming Wednesday.  I harvested 7 turnips this week, and used the 3 biggest ones.  So I still have 4 to use, and a bunch more in the garden still. 

Oh, wow - 7:00 pm, and the wind just picked way the heck up.  Temperaturee\ currently 95. 

I have dinner to make and things to do. Laters!

Frondly, Fern

F'ing Reflux

Blessings Darlings!

Oh, the humdity and heat were BAD last night when I did the night offerings. 
Then during my sleep I had Revenge of the Fried Chicken, eaten too late and too much - horribly reflux at 5 am. 

Today would have been my mother's 101st birthday.  No coincidentally, it would have been her twin brother's birthday, too.  My moon child mother was not ... um ... a good match for her Sagittarius daughter.  I was never willing to 'suffer to be beautiful', nor to hurt enough to be entitled to love.
And my cousins assure me that she was 'the good parent' in the family.

Harvested 7 turnips and one zuc today.  Will do stir fry for dinner tomorrow featuring the zucs and some cabbage and carrots.  Will roast the turnips with some other roots tomorrow, and use for all sorts of things.

I slept much of today, having lost a bunch of sleep last night.

That's it.

Frondly, Fern

Today Gardening is overwhelming

Blessings Darlings!

Dishes washed, laundry going.  Ground coffee beans for the next week.  Just another quarantine Sunday.  Going to have pancakes for dinner, might also make crepes while doing it, and use them for dinner another night.

It's really cool today, 68 degrees at noon.  I'll be out in the garden working in a few minutes.  It is SO DRY here, tho.  Whoops - that 10% chance of rain is a very cold drizzle that started the damn instant I started out the door.  Just enough to stop my from gardening and prevent hanging the laundry.  I sure hope it passes before the laundry is ready to go on the line.  And the temperature has dropped to 60.

1 hour later ... still very very cool out.  Rain stopped, laundry on line.  An hour later yet ... warmer.  I had my cup of coffee outside, and transplanted all of the herbs into proper enough spaces.  "Proper enough" because I found poison ivy growing where I wanted to put some, and I must put effort into eradicating that before some go into their forever spaces.  But they are all in the ground now, so won't be as susceptible to me forgetting to water them.

All the beans planted so far are sprouting.  Need to plant more for dry beans, but not today, says my back.  Also need to harvest the garlic ... some other day.  Should buy a tomato plant or two ... the ones I planted have died, but two volunteers are going in another part of the garden.  So I only need to replace 2 of the 4.  Oh, need to plant cucs, too.  And still need to try to kill off the zoysia grass.

Holy fuck, there's a shit load of stuff to do.

Frondly, Fern

Alert! More stupid magic coming!

Blessings Darlings!

 They're doing it again.  "They" being the part of the witch/pagan community that always calls for 'let's put on a show to address some issue!"  So now it's a night of  magic for protection and peace and justice ... nothing about racism or police, mind you, because that's 'too small' for them to work on.  Never mind that none of the other 'let's get together and do magic!' shit has worked.  As I keep pointing out here and to them.   Like this post from March https://fernsfronds.blogspot.com/2020/03/witching-away-covid-19.html?spref=tw

Protesters are still being attacked by the police.  In DC, BEFORE curfew, police and national guard tear gassed TOTALLY peaceful protesters to move them out of the way of a Trump photo op in front of a church.  The priest of the church is VERY upset and feels he desecrated the church.



https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/05/30/bad-apples-come-from-rotten-trees-in-policing/?preview_id=812040&fbclid=IwAR3SVHBteLqPf60uwhGaTt9iDR5VluB-sibj500aYyy2DDmz7R6im5TtQps Bad apples come from rotten trees.

 Cloudy today, and had some rain.  But the rain stopped, it's getting warm, and clothes are on the clothesline drying.  I managed to transplant California Wonder and Anaheim peppers and put in seeds for black beans before my back said to stop.  Not as much done as I wanted, but it never is.  Caught up on dishes as well.  I've been working on our guest room - which ended up full of boxes of stuff when we moved, and none of use have even started going thru' them until two days ago.

Tomorrow I need to pick up groceries, probably vote, and I want to at least transplant cayenne peppers and tomatoes.  I'd like to do more, but I doubt it will happen.   I do hope to put together bookshelves for the guest room, and get further along on emptying boxes in there. 

Caturday in the Garden with Sweat.

Blessings Darlings!

Breakfast only had one veggie today, so I had to add a piece of fruit.  There is a new horse, a beautiful brown gelding with a large white blaze, probably a t-bred, in the pasture - the two 'old' horses are working on putting it in its place.   There has been bucking by Reeta, the black mare.  Now they are about 16 feet apart, and Reeta is 'on alert' and stamping her feet and pawing the ground a little.  Of course, that could just be due to the flies.  The horses are all out standing in the noon day sun - the cattle are all more sensible and in the shade under trees.

I'm one week into the feeble beginning of exercising regularly.  So far, while my knees have talked to me about this, no flares of tendonitis anywhere.  Of course, I'm starting slower than slow.  Ultra light weights, a small number of reps per set, only 10 minutes each session on the exercise bike (because my ass needs to get acclimated to the damn seat as much as because my cardiovascular system needs to get acclimated to aerobic work.)  I'm slightly off of zero!  Go me! 

That my knees are talking to me is why I didn't get any plants into the garden yesterday.  I watered everything, both in the ground and still in pots, but that was it.  Today is another day.  I took one Naproxen Friday evening, and am easily able to handle garden work today.

Spent some time doing healing requests at my Healing altar on Friday.

Also on Friday night - for the first time in years, ground out own coffee from beans.  For a while we could only find coffee in whole beans (during the panic buying in March).  So we ended up with some of our reserve coffee in whole bean form.  But the bags of that have 'best use' dates before the coffee in cans.  So of course we're using it first.  It's probably been 6 years since I've ground coffee, so remembering the peculiarities of our grinder took a bit of time.  This morning we brewed it, and apparently I did it all correctly for our tastes.  Yay!

Spent an unusually large amount of time lately talking with the Chubby Hubby.  For some reason, we aren't understanding each other easily.  But we put the work in, as one does.  Also negotiated who gets what leftovers, a vital thing to reach agreement on.

As always, I beat back the attacking dirty dishes this morning, then more magically showed up.  It's sorcery, I tell you - sorcery!  Also transplanted one batch of peppers into the garden, one zucchini, one crookneck summer squash.  And weeded some.  And watered almost everything, sprouting in pots or in the various gardens.  Maybe I'll transplant more in later ... maybe not.  I should at least finish the watering today.  It's now later - I finished the watering, and filled in gaps in the 'root veggies' part of the garden with plants I didn't have room for earlier.  It's sweaty out there now.

What I planted today are NOT things that will produce a lot of calories, and I know that I said in an earlier post that I'm moving more towards higher calorie gardening.  The fact is that no matter what, we LIKE to use peppers for seasoning.  I LOVE squash - summer and winter varieties.  I'm not eliminating low-calorie veggies, I'm just planting half the amount of them I planted last year.  Except for cayenne peppers, I'm going from 1 plant to several, because I use them a lot for cooking and didn't grow enough last year.  I'm still growing onions, and I've added garlic. 

Today was all the digital commencement speeches by various Big Name Folks.  I should listen to some of them sometime.

Frondly, Fern

Unexpected Garden Time!

Blessings, Darlings!

News?  WaPo has a GREAT article on 'excess deaths' since the Corona Virus started.  A base line on the REAL death toll.  Tho' it is probably still somewhat light, since accidental deaths (car accidents, etc) are going to be down with less folks on the road and such.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/covid-19-death-toll-undercounted/?arc404=true

I'm feeling sluggish again today.  I mean, I got up and washed all the pots and pans, and I've got laundry going, but I'm having a really hard time facing washing the kitchen floor.  And a hard time remembering what day of the week it is.  Monday?

Well, kitchen floor is done.  And I'm contemplating possible plot twists in the Dresden Files books coming out.  As one does while washing floors.  Especially when what one SHOULD be doing is contemplating what to make for dinner.  Ooops.

Now I SHOULD vacuum.  Don't think I'm going to do that this afternoon.  Maybe this evening.  First I should work on dinner plans.  Okay - fried chicken, rice, and salad. 

I'm still not vacuuming this afternoon.  The weather cleared up, it's sunny and no rain falling, the temperature is 56 and the wind has dropped.  I transplanted turnips, lettuce, radishes, beets, rutabagas, and turnips instead of vacuuming.  While out I noticed that the red onions I let over winter are now sending up snapes.  Yummy!  In a few days I'll harvest them, marinade them, and roast them. 

Vacuuming has been accomplished.  That's it for the day.

Frondly, Fern

A Garden Day

Blessings, Darlings!

Gardening time. Even tho' my knee is still extremely fucked up with tendonitis (It will need another 4 to 11 weeks before I expect it to be 'mostly better') I worked in the garden today. Not being an idiot, I focused on stuff I could do with minimal knee involvement. I focused on covering the newly mown grass (holy fuck, American Facebook doesn't think that 'mown' is a real word) with flattened cardboard boxes and weighing them down so they won't blow away in the mighty spring winds. This will help smother most of the grass, making it easier to turn it into garden without having to put lots of knee effort into it.

I didn't get a huge amount done, maybe only about 30 square feet covered. But it I do some every week, that's serious progress. The cardboard boxes are empties I took home from work over the past few months. I knew SOMETHING was coming, and was clear about shit being shut down, but didn't know about the virus. So I prepared to increase the garden as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

They are weighed down with bricks that I really want to use for a different purpose, and if I can get my knee or my family to agree to haul manure to put on the cardboard to hold it down, I'll replace the bricks with that. 

 

Now that I'm not working, I will run out of cardboard pretty darn quickly, I'm afraid.  I'll have to look for new sources at that point.  Probably the grocery store.  

 

Meanwhile, I have been starting seeds for the past week and today my radishes are up! Yay! 

 

In the more daily daily - washed dishes, have started bread.  

Tomato Talk

Blessings Darlings!

I've been looking at my tomato planting options today.  I'm not 100% happy with the variety of seeds I bought.  Unless otherwise noted, all these tomatoes are open pollinated, tho' not all are considered 'heritage'.

I bought Beef Steak tomatoes - a GREAT large fresh-eating tomato.  I will happily use them for that.  But they aren't a great variety for canning and drying, as the seeds/goo are spread thru' the tomato and not in a few large, easy-to-emply cavities. 

The selection of cheap seeds also had Mortgage Lifter tomatoes.  I don't want those - they are way too large to can easily, and are low acid tomatoes so they can't be water-bath canned unless you add vinegar. These were developed in southern West Virginia, which has a pretty significantly different climate/growing season than we do here in northern West Virginia.

Often I grow Roma tomatoes, also known as Italian tomatoes.  They are great for canning, drying, and sauces, with thick flesh and easy to remove seeds/goo. They are also a determinant variety, unlike the previously listed tomatoes, which means that all the fruit on the plant ripens at about the same time, rather than continuously producing over the season - this is one of the things that makes them great for canning. OTOH, their flesh is grainy and their taste peaks when cooked, so they aren't great for fresh use. These were developed close to where I used to live - at the Agricultural Research Station in Beltsville, Maryland (same place they developed modern big-breasted turkeys!).

Rutgers is another of my go-to tomatoes.  Developed at, yes, Rutgers University in New Jersey, they were one of the first Wide Spread Industrial Farming tomatoes.  Meaty without being grainy, thick-skinned for their time (thin skinned for our time!) for less problems when shipping, good flavor, easy to can, nice size for canning at about 8 ounces each, and determinant. 

Juliet tomatoes are a variety I'm fond of - but, alas, are a hybid. They are a large grape tomato - I'd call them between grape tomatoes and Roma tomatoes in shape and features.  Nice flavor.  Great for drying. 

Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes - what a great taste!  But how easily they split! And another hybrid.

What I'm going to do is use the Beefsteaks, and also see if I can get my existing (but old) Rutgers seeds to sprout.  If not, I'll see if I can get more of them or some Roma seeds, even if I have to pay Burpee prices for one packet. 

What are your tomato considerations, and favorite types to grow?

Frondly, Fern