A little this and that.

 Blessings Darlings!

We got heavy rain yesterday!  I fear that most of it ran off the lawn, but I will go out soon and start digging the hole for the elderberry.  At least the ground shouldn't be rock hard, right? 

I'm still being buried in tomatoes and Swiss Chard.  Drying the tomatoes is well underway.  Zucchini should start over producing soon.  Peppers are about perfect right now.

No homes yet for the 7 kittens we are currently fostering.  And the damn barn cat just had more kittens two days ago.  MY spawn has finally heard back and has plans for getting the fuzzy assholes spayed at reasonable cost. 

Music for the start of the day:  Flogging Molly, as backdrop for Sinead O'Connor's funeral.

Frondly, Fern

Weed whacking.

 Blessings Darlings!

Holy Moly, it's amazing what I can get done around here when I actually have time!  The feral garden has been weeded and mulched, except for the area by the big Swiss Chard patch.  And THOSE darlings are feral and able to fight back/block the sun from any weeds that dare try to invade.

Today I started work on enlarging the garden area.  Being lazy . . . err, efficient I went down into the basement, started taking all the damn empty cardboard boxes that the Chubby Hubby has down there and never gotten rid of, flattened them, and am using them to smother lawn.  They are currently being held down by bricks I have that I'd INTENDED to use to make a really great Rocket Stove out of. 

See, witches?  INTENT isn't really worth as much as actually TAKING F'ING ACTION does.  Let this be a lesson to us all.  

Later today I'll be running a hose (well, two or three hoses in series) to the faucet by the barn shed and watering everything well.  Then I'll move the hose away from the gate by the faucet, and away from the gate by the garden, and leave it in place by the fence where it won't get mowed or driven over for all future use. 

Tomorrow . . . sigh . . . the Chubby Hubby wants me to start looking for work, because HE couldn't find work easily.  Mind you, HE was looking for a job in his little high-tech niche.  Once he decided to just get a 'job', it took him little time.   

Oh, yeah - I forgot to mention this.  Over the past week we've taken in 7 feral kittens, from two of the three barn cats.  The barn cats that are nieces of our cat.  They aren't feral any more - it's amazing how much they like getting fed and are willing to cuddle and purr in exchange.  They are of course inbred - I'm sure that their daddy was their moms' brother (he was killed by a car since then.)  

Summer feral fertility, going strong.  

Frondly, Fern

General catching up

Blessings Darlings!

On top of the attention that I've been giving that latest 'list', life has been busy around here.  A lot of extra money came IN for a change, instead of going OUT, which is always nice.    I've been spending lots of time dealing with the garden - I'm being buried in yellow crookneck squash, and the beans are coming in from the first planting.  The second planting is being eaten, probably by voles, so I'm going to have to vole-treat the garden again.  Bacterial wilt has hit the grey zucchini and the volunteer spaghetti squash.  The potatoes are about ready to be harvested.  The Swiss  Chard is now at the point where it can handle all our sandwich 'lettuce' needs, and maybe an occasional salad as well.  Tomatoes are still all green, tho, and I fear that they are all determinant and will all ripen at virtually the same time. 

I need to plant the fall crops of beets, radishes, turnips, and rutabagas.  But it's really hard clearing nasty weeds when it's so hot and humid, and too much of my useful time is spent watering the other veggies. 

At dusk and near midnight (after the nightly offerings) I sit outside as much as I can, discussing things with the various Spirits/Gods/ancestors/etc.  Great stuff, but the pollen I'm exposed to then along with the pollen from the garden work has been killing my eyes.  I might be driven to allergy eye drops, but washing my eyes every few hours seems to at least make it less bad.

I'm seeing odd stuff in the skies.  One was probably just a satellite reflecting sunlight.  The more unusual was a 'fleet' ... well, 6 ... planes, not in formation, but 'in a row' over a few minutes around 11:30 pm, all flying west or west/southwest.  That's not normal, especially now with less air traffic.  It's not like I'm living on a flight path in and out of O'Hare any more.  It's not a normal thing here - and as I said, I'm out there every night watching the skies now. 

Why am I watching the sky?  Because we're in the summer meteor time.  Not peak Perseids yet, but it's time to start watching for them.

Life  in these unusual times keeps going on.  Statistics on cases and deaths from covid 19 are no longer being published by the CDC, and no one trusts where the data is now going to.  States are admitting to new highs in cases and deaths, but HHS (does it stand for the dept of Health and Human Services or Happy Horse Shit?) claims that both are not increasing.  Okay, Boomer.



Most jobs lost due to Coronavirus shut downs are not coming back.  This is the last week when unemployment is being supplemented with Coronavirus stimulus money of $600 a week.  That's been making a huge difference in my financial life, since I only get $170 a week from unemployment.  Since the Chubby Hubby is over 70, he's getting social security retirement money, but that doesn't pay all our bills.  With the 'regular' unemployment, there will be a gap between income and what we have to spend each month.  We have the savings to cover that for rather a while at this time, fortunately.  I really do NOT want to work again until it's actually safe to do so.  That isn't going to happen for ... quite a while, I fear.  I'm sure we don't have that much money saved.

There are still protests daily over the police killings.  The police have responded by calls for them to stop being abusive by increasing their abuse of citizens.  And teaming up with Federal hired hands to dole out even more toxic gasses and 'non lethal' weaponry.  It's a shit show.  Mayors who aren't reforming their police force complaining that the Feds are attacking protesters ... when the feds are doing exactly the same things that their own police have been doing. 

While all this is going on, and I'm writing e-mails and calling congresscritters, I'm still sitting in my back yard, watching the skies.  It's totally surreal.  Wars and rumors of wars, but not where I am.  Mind you, the next city over, Martinsburg WV, has had monthly protests for YEARS now, over the police shooting of a schizophrenic black man there.  So it's not FAR away from me.  Links to the story below - the courts have finally done a little (the ending of qualified immunity is BIG).  But it took over 7 years of protests to get this far.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/family-of-man-fatally-shot-by-police-reaches-35-million-settlement/2020/07/21/da918e9a-cb6c-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/u-s-appeals-court-rejects-qualified-immunity-in-police-shooting-writes-this-has-to-stop/2331918/  

I wish I felt that things would improve soon.  That a safe and effective immunization would be found fast for the pandemic.  That institutionalized racism would be dealt with.  That the police would be reformed and get the KKK out of their ranks.  That we'd get a sane and honorable president.  That people would get science savvy and not be dickheads.  I just don't see an end to this shit show.

Welp. that's it for now.

Frondly, Fern

Bounty

Blessings Darlings!

I haven't planted much stuff this year.  Like, only 2 summer squash plants, one of which is already dead of bacterial wilt.  Less then 1/2 the amount of green beans I usually plant.  I only put in two tomato plants, but a lot of others volunteered and I'm only letting 3 of them grow.

But not only do I still have too many summer squashes (I have NEVER had a yellow crook neck squash produce like this before) but the green beans have gone SNEAKY.  I thought I only had 'new born kitten' sized beans.  Instead, they were hiding some fully ready ones.  A half pound of fully ready ones.  I'm shocked.  And awed.  And overwhelmed at the return in my garden already this year.  Obviously the garden likes that I'm using cow manure to build it up. 

Which is a good thing, given that my old job at the old place probably isn't coming back. 

Rain is staying north of us, at least so far, today. So I removed a lot of Johnson grass.  And I transplanted in more Swiss Chard, finally, and watered it myself to make sure it was cared for.  It's steamy and windy out, but that doesn't mean that the rain will come to visit today.  All the lightning is up at Hagerstown.  UPDATE: We got a sprinkle of rain, not enough to count for rain ... but we got a wonderful rainbow!

Spent most of the last light pulling zoysa grass from the garden, so I can transplant the cucs in tomorrow, Gods willing and if the creek don't rise.

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