Soaking up Summer

One of my favorite outdoor activities at this time of year is knitting on the chaise in the shade on the back deck. I stretch my legs out on the cushy comforter that I use for a pad, with a pillow at my back and iced coffee nearby. From that vantage point, overlooking the garden and lots of flowers, I take time to enjoy it all.

There is some possibility that the next two or three months may turn off really hot, so any moderate day now is precious. I noticed today that the NOAA weather radio only speaks of hot when the forecast is for the upper nineties. Personally, 95 is hot for me.

The trumpet vine, actually a nasty invasive weed everywhere else, is so pretty now. There is a hummingbird who sits atop a branch and guards his personal property. Sometimes, he dive bombs the field of bloom, which must make him dizzy with the repeated pendulum swings. He stops and sips nectar from the many orange blossoms.

Knitting on a sock, I listen for the birds that are still singing their hearts out. There are some wrens in the two houses that twitter practically non-stop. It's a cheery sound.One of the houses is down by the chicken coop. I get a big scolding from them when I go down there.

 After years, I identified the sound of the yellow-billed cuckoo, which is not at all like what one would think. It sounds like chuck chuck chuck and then slower, same thing. They are very elusive, apparently with privacy issues.

The sky is filled with puffy clouds today, against the wild blue yonder.

Over in the garden, the corn has shot up with the recent rains. An enormous Cocozelle Zucchini has tropical-looking leaves and has already given me plenty of dinners. Last night, I had the first ripe tomato stir-fried with zucchini, fresh basil, onion and garlic, served over fettuccine and topped with mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses . I will dream of it in winter.

These are the days that gladden my heart, especially since we are under a heat advisory tomorrow. Sigh.

Working Out vs. A Workout

In the winter, I would often try to get artificial exercise. The problem with that type of insanity is the minute it got tough, I gave up, stepping effortlessly down off the Nordic Track,

Now, it's a different story. Winding up out of pep at the bottom of the big hill offers two alternatives. I can lie down and wait for Search and Rescue to come for me. Or I can stop for small rests and press on and reach my house.

Recently, I had dinner around six. I knew that was a mistake, because I can't do much on a full stomach. However, if I wait until I've put the hens and my garden tools away, it winds up being 9:15 when I get back inside, with dinner at 10.

My plan was to merely shovel some compost and carry it to where I was planting irises I dug up the day before. Compost is lighter than dirt and it was dry, besides.

Here I should mention the fence I pulled up the day before. I wanted to enlarge the whole garden area to include the hillside part. Why I wanted to do that was the soil under the fence was some of the best, going to waste by growing giant clumps of grass. First, I'd unhooked the fencing from the posts. Then I rocked the  fence posts back and forth until I could, with some effort, pull them out of the ground. They didn't want to go. They  had been there since I put that fence in ten years ago. The materials came from the former owners' sloppy fences that I pulled up.

 Apparently, ten years is how long it took me to forget how much work it is to move fences. I  yanked the fencing out of the grass and rolled it up as seen in the illustration above. One day, I would do the job right, I'd told myself, and continue the fence down the hillside. There was a small amount of chain link fencing down behind the chicken coop.

Mulch is the way to keep from endless weeding. I love mulch. The problem with chickens searching for bugs is they scratch up any mulch. So, to keep the chickens out of the hillside plantings, I'd made a little flimsy green plastic-coated chicken wire fence held by bamboo reeds, weak ones.

Beau used to lie on the grassy pathway I kept mowed above that bed. With the 3 ft. fence, I put up another taller bit to discourage him from hopping over it there. Yesterday, when he showed up beside me in the garden, I realized this was going to be a bigger problem than I thought. Strangely, I remembered Elizabeth Taylor in Elephant Walk.

Beau had apparently, through the gateway I'd opened, seen a whole new area of lovely soil to dig up to lie in. He discovered how easily he could push the rickety fence over.

I was confronted with the immediacy of the fence situation. Whining about my full tummy, I went down to where some of the extra fence posts were leaning in a jumble with some sapling trees behind an outbuilding. Using them as ski poles, I came up the hill to the fence site. It was when I fetched the heavy post pounder that I wanted to give up on all that folly. I am a little over five feet tall. The post pounder raised overhead  poses a threat of driving me into the ground like a stake.

After setting a couple of posts, I had to try and figure out the parts of the fencing that had formed new bonds that kept it from unrolling. Sitting in the damp grass,  I was hot and sweaty, not helped by a largish Coon Hound breathing down my neck. That was day three of the Bright Idea.

Of course, this project, already not suited for heat, was destined to get even bigger. I needed more of the shorter fence posts. Although I had plenty of the other old taller rusted ones, I wanted some semblance of uniformity.

I see now that that was the tipping point.

A few weeks ago, while thinning the little green apples on a ladder, I decided the year had arrived to remove the fence surrounding the apple tree. I put it there years ago to keep the stray cows from destroying the young tree.While the ground was dry and hard, I had an excuse to wait. Now, I saw that the shorter fence posts I needed, also the chain link fencing, were at hand.

The next problem was the steep hillside with the apple tree had overgrown with grass and poison ivy. After pruning down some tree seedlings, I got on Rosie the Ride-On and scared myself mowing it.

At that juncture, I came up with a new strategy  for the fence completion. The work would have to be done in very small steps. Camelot Rules were I could not start before eight in the evening. Everything is in shade then and I would only be able to do a limited amount before dark.

Several days of extreme heat, 99 degrees with high humidity, made removing the fence seem like a really foolhardy idea. So when I was in the farm store buying scratch grains, I got three new posts. However, when I got home, I realized I'd gotten taller posts.

"Uniformity be damned," I muttered, not wanting to take them for exchange.

The next morning, after a good rain in the night, I saw I really only needed one of the posts to reach the corner post and some tacky metal temporary fencing leading back uphill. Before breakfast, I went up to the apple tree and easily pulled one post out. As long as I had the fence tool, I got the rest of the posts and pulled up the fence.

Putting the one tall post back in the post pile, I noticed I did have three more of those short posts. Oh well, no harm done, because I really wanted to get rid of that fence.

This time, I avoided those dangerous liaisons the fence was prone to form by not rolling it up.  Also, since I have this much fence and quite enough short poles, I'll go ahead and continue the fence as far as I can. I'll only have to pull up the temporary posts and other fencing and . . . .

The Best Garden Accessory

May was my birthday, quite my favorite holiday. Sometimes it comes on Mother's Day. This year, I turned 75, which sounds a lot older than I feel. Occasionally, I do have a few aches, but they are all from gardening.

My birthday is always an occasion for cake and ice cream and plenty of presents from my three "kids". Even Pauline,  my 98-year-old stepmom sends me a check.

Usually, Chris gives me money and listens patiently while I describe some choices I might make.  Almost all are gardening related. In the past, I bought a weed-eater, little pond liner, specialty tools,  plants and stepping stones. Lis brought me four big walkway stones this year.

With some of my birthday money,  I ordered a pump for the cistern. When I went to the hardware store for furnace filters, I believe that new lawn chair jumped into the back seat of my car.

Izzy brought me bedding plants, most welcome. She and Molly helped me plant impatiens and petunias.



With some of the other money, I got this ultimate gardening gizmo. Molly tried it out first. This is a boon to the overworked digger in the earth. Situated with a big  pine tree and a huge cedar to filter out the road dust, it was easily put up between a medium chokecherry and a maple tree.

The beauty of this hammock is when I lie down in it, I only see beautiful green leaves overhead. I cannot see things that need pruning, weeding, planting, transplanting, mowing or watering. Swaying gently in the shade, I see no reason whatsoever to get up.

It's very peaceful here now that the farm traffic for the planting season is over. Soothing sounds are the many birds singing and the occasional bass accompaniment of  a bullfrog down at the pond. Another feature I discovered was that this blue cocoon is a time portal. It's a gateway whereby an hour vanishes into a strange time warp.

Sorry I Haven't Written

Well, golly, here it is early June. No, I didn't fall off the earth. I've been healthy. My excuse is not that I broke an arm, but I got a new computer. Things went a little crazy after that, on account of not being able to share photos.

Perhaps, I thought, people are tired of me whining about winter never ending. For each missing picture of the bleak landscape, I'd have to write a thousand words. The prospect was daunting. As  a public service, I kept it to myself. Well, I did moan about it to family. They were so glad, they said "Thanks for sharing."

Lissa finally came to my rescue, as she does on many occasions. She fixed the various functions of the computer.Still, it would import but not share the pics.

Finally, I kept pressing keys and one day recently, I was able to share the blessed things.

March:

Some sad things that happened, that I won't dwell on, were the bees didn't make it through the winter. A fox snatched the two Barred Rock hens. The cistern pump gave out, leaving me without all the stored rainwater during an especially hot dry spring.

April:

Eager to start digging in the dirt, I transplanted some lettuce plugs I'd started indoors. It was a lovely sixty-degree day. The next day, we got five inches of snow. The 4-Seasons lettuce survived. They barely show up in this pic. Above them is the remains of last year's lovely compost of all things green plus straw and poop from the chickens. Nicely broken down over the long winter, it was doled out to spring plantings.

After a chilly start, the weather turned off dry and windy, making lots of dust from the road.Next came more winter.   Mother Nature was toying with us. I planted the early veggies.

I put the compost cage up in a different spot, wired the boards to the fencing and began filling it with weeds. It looks tacky but works well. Gardening in Missouri is an assault on jungle growth. There's always plenty of stuff to toss into the cage. My kitchen scraps are limited to coffee grounds and filters plus orange rinds. The four chickens get everything else.

It was so dry that the potatoes and beans that I planted never came up. While I waited for some word from them,  quantities of marigolds and tomato seedlings took over. The grassy weeds were laughing, knowing how the hard ground made it impossible to get them out. The rainfall total for the entire year in late April was two measly inches. Taking a chance that winter was really leaving, I put in three of the tomato plants I'd started in the bottom heat flat. They are now huge.

Unable to resist, I ordered and planted six more daylilies, bringing the total up to 41. I promise these will be the last ones, unless I find some spots in need of them.

May:

The bloom cycle was already later than usual because of a chilly April. It was late but the weeds were not. May was so hot and humid that the spring-flowering shrubs lasted barely long enough for me to bring a few bouquets into the house before they gasped and gave it up as a bad idea.

The peonies were especially pretty for several hours before a much-needed rain smashed their faces into the ground. My delight at having so many peonies was somewhat dampened by the huge dead-heading that came next.

We found a mess of morels down by the river. "Mess" is what they say here, and I never knew if it meant lots or a dinner in the military sense. In any case, they were delicious.

Many days in May were very hot, 96 degrees frequently. I retreated into the air conditioning in the afternoons, leaving the weeds to take over everywhere. The sun was painful on skin. I am a shade tree gardener. There seemed to be plenty of cloud cover at night when I wanted to get out my telescope and see stars.

Radishes and the incredible 4-Seasons lettuces from Pinetree Seeds were great.

Some Toy Choys were tasty one day and overrun by flea beetles the next. They are a problem in a dry year. The chickens gobbled them up.

If I were to chronicle all the weeds I yanked up and all the sweaty hours I worked in the garden, it would strain credulity. Also, it would cause some concern over my mental health. I'm a gardener; that's what we do.