Caught By Mistake

Visiting the peach trees in the field to see if there were any left, I saw that not a single peach remained. Also, there were no rotten peaches on the ground, but plenty of clean peach pits everywhere. That seemed to be proof that a raccoon platoon had cleaned out the remains of the crop.

When the cat water on the deck got all muddy the other night, I realized a raccoon was visiting for an after-hours snack of cat food.  I don't mind feeding the elusive tan feral cat that I'm trying to tame, or the possums, but draw the line at the raccoons. No possums had been seen on the deck in a long while, so I concluded that they had gotten tired of being carried around by Beau.

Last night, I baited the trap with a banana and sunflower seeds. This morning, I found I'd caught the possum. Even before I had my morning coffee (heroic action in my case)  I propped open the door to the trap and went back inside the house. Some time later, the possum was still in there.  Apparently it was comfortable in the grass lining the cage.

I knew Beau would go berserk when I let him out, so I gently dumped the possum out. Another time, I lured a possum out of the trap with a peach, only to find it had gotten the peach and taken it back into the cage to enjoy.

This time, I shut the trap door to block an unstrategic retreat. An hour later, the crazy critter was still lying by the trap. Even a small bowl of cat food didn't rouse it. It wasn't exactly playing dead, since it was looking at me, but it held so still that it let a yellow-jacket explore its tongue. Talk about nerves of steel.

At last, it moved on and I let Beau out. Too bad he's nearly useless at patrolling for raccoons. In the ten years I've been here, he's only caught one. They are fierce fighters and he isn't, despite being a Coon Hound.
The possums think that's all to the good.

Rain and Weeds

In late June, thunderstorms brought a tornado warning and these mamattus clouds. They always seem to urge me to go down to the fruit cellar and read a book. There was a lot of rain, five inches in my rain gauge and more than six upriver.


The Grand came over the road on the far side of the bridge and flowed unimpeded through the newly-planted bottomland acres, closing the road for two days.

There was another gully-washer last Wednesday night, over six inches here. The road stayed open. The result of all the rains has been rampant weed growth in all my flower and veggie beds. I did manage to pull up lots of chicory and Queen Anne's Lace while the ground was sodden.

I believe the weeds just bide their time, knowing they will soon present a united front, overwhelming my efforts to keep things reasonably tidy. Once again, I realize I can plant lots more than I can keep weeded.
Their ally in the campaign is the extreme humidity that has descended upon the land like a clammy blanket. Coupled with daily temperatures over ninety and blazing sunshine, I have retreated into the cool, eighty-degree house during the heat of the day.

Molly was here for a few days and dyed some yarn, started knitting a hat and knitted some washcloths. Fortunately, I had lots of good geology and astronomy videos checked out from the library. We also worked two puzzles and baked brownies in the Sun Oven. A couple of nights were clear enough for stargazing until the moon rose. All the while, I knew the weeds were out there gaining strength.

In the mornings and evenings, I give it my best shot, reclaiming small bits of ground. One evening, I pulled five big tubs before surrendering, sweat drenching my clothes and dripping down my glasses.

Even if weeding was all I had to do, I couldn't keep up. Now, the field peach trees, which have never had more than a few miserable peaches, suddenly are producing bushels of the good stuff. Here is last night's harvest, just the start of peach processing season. Molly has gone home, but Lis may come next weekend to help me with them.

Chris fixed my car the other day, but gardening is a supposed fun thing I do because I love growing things. If I even asked for help weeding, I would find everyone had other plans. Serves me right. If all else fails in keeping ahead of the weeds, there is always frost at the end.

In Love with Daylilies

What a happy time it is for me when the daylilies are in bloom! In the mornings, I wander from plant to plant, dead-heading yesterday's faded blooms and exclaiming over today's bouquets. Fabulous.

It's so easy to propagate them, it's easy to see why people wind up with daylily gardens.

All these gorgeous clear yellow blooms are from one plant I dug up, hacked apart mercilessly with a shovel and replanted years ago. I've bragged about them before. Were it not for special fencing, the cows would  have loved to gobble them up. Yesterday, I saw one calf with her tongue poking through in an effort to have just one taste. She almost succeeded, poor thing.

These beauties are in the front lily bed, fenced both from the cows and chickens. I'm so enraptured by daylilies, I almost want to join the American Homerocallis Society.

 

Tiger Lilies have been planted on the weedy hillside with orders to take over and advance steadily downhill..

These Ebb Tide daylilies are my biggest and brightest, but I love them all. My admiration knows no bounds.
 

Hanging Out with the Pansies

When it's this hot and sticky, I'm glad that the plants can carry on in the daytime without me. I prefer to never work in the direct sunshine. After seven in the evening, the trees on the west give lovely shade so I can weed, deadhead and do a little light gardening.

Shade and breeze are wonderful things, just meant for a lawn chair and a good book and/or knitting. Even though it is humid, it's a great improvement over the dusty last few weeks. Trucks with cattle carriers were speeding by, creating as much dust as if they had driven an entire herd down the road.

                Whoop-ee-ti-yi-o get along little doggies.

The strong wind, always from the direction of the gravel road, rose up over my house and rained down in sheets on the back side. Not a good time for me to be resting on the chaise on the back deck. It's so hard to sip iced coffee while wearing a dust mask.

My late afternoons were spent watering from the rainwater collection in the cistern.

At last, the longed-for rains came the last two nights. They did bring heat advisories, but one can't complain.

Reading outdoors reminds me of when I was a teen. We had no air conditioning, so the coolest place on a hot summer afternoon was lying on a blanket in the grass under a shady tree. I read Zane Grey, Agatha Christie, Daphne Du Maurier, Jane Austen and countless others.  I saved Dickens for Christmas.

I know, reading books is So Last Century. Come to think of it, it was last century.

Working for Food

The rewards for gardening and raising chickens are not commensurate with the efforts, but even so!  For dinner I had stir-fried snow peas, freshly dug new potatoes and beets and deviled eggs with chives. From the beverages list I selected iced tea with honey. Anyone who regularly is lucky enough to taste fresh food will understand why I don't really like to eat out.



The West Border gets morning and afternoon shade. I pulled up a chair under the flowering plum and feasted my eyes on pinks, Sweet William and Siberian Iris. The latter tended to flop over, so I brought them in to enjoy.

These beauties are food for the spirit. I am well fed. Everyone can see that.

Everything's Comin' Up Peonies

It's Showtime!


These peonies are special because I rescued them from bloom-less obscurity in shady locations. They are like Dog Pound neglected mutts that turn out to be prize-winning purebred show winners.
These ones out front grew surprisingly large. The the irises in the background, perfectly showy in their own right, are vainly trying to peek over them. Also, there is a favorite deep blue iris next to it that didn't even have the heart to bloom at all.  I have promised to move it to center stage elsewhere.

Here are some irises that have been given their own space. I love these nearly silver white enormous beauties with ruffled edges.

The cow fence peonies, just popping into bloom, are the May highlight of this almost-formal bed near the road. They had their own featured story in my blog last spring. All but the dark red one, Red Magic, were snatched from a dismal existence down by the outbuildings.

These enormous peonies are next to the cistern. I am currently painting the milk can blue for this season's petunia pot for the front porch. Peonies grow from nothing in early spring to three feet tall and five feet wide.

Blood-red splotches adorn these jumbo blooms on Festiva Maxima. The other white one is Shirley Temple, also fabulous. They like for me to brag about them, especially their exquisite fragrance.

Looking Like a Garden

Things are coming up, looking promising and resembling a real garden. Some early veggies like the usually easy radishes didn't do well on account of perhaps starting to sprout and then not getting enough water. It was all my fault for being insensitive to what was going on underground.

At any rate, the BSS are thriving. That's what my family always calls Black-Seeded Simpson lettuces.

They are a seasonal treat in wilted lettuce salad, with fresh onions. Like morels, some years they aren't available. They are gorgeous.

The potatoes have been hilled and mulched. The broccoli are getting tiny heads. The chives are in bloom. It hurts their feelings if I don't let them blossom, and they are cheery.

The Early Round Dutch Cabbages are heading up, but the Bravos from Harris want to get bigger and it will take them quite a while to get there. The other two are savoys, with their crinkly leaves. Notice how I gave them plenty of room. They also got a feeding of fish fertilizer not long ago. We had good rains last week but I'll give them some cistern water soon. Growing cabbages from seed never fails to amaze me. All that growth from only one seed; it's a miracle.

At last, I got a good-sized chunk of rhubarb root to propagate. I have high hopes it will provide me with many pies next year. It's put on two new leaves since I planted it in compost in the top tier.

The late frost danger will soon be over and I can get the tomato and pepper plants in the ground. Today. I'll get the Long Season Beets planted, a bit late but I was waiting on the seed to arrive, then I had to wait while the ground dried out a bit.

Most of the compost boards have been put up. I have put enough weeds and chicken poop in here to fill it several times, but the nature of compost is it keeps squashing down, making room for more. Even a two-fisted weeder like me can't fill it up.

Gardening is the best entertainment ever, and promotes deep sleep when the sun finally sets.

Exploring the Great Outdoors

At last, there is enough greenery to let the hens out. Apparently, they feel at home on the range. That's good, because that frees me from picking clover and other greens for them. The apple tree's fallen blossoms get their attention but must not be very filling.

They have wandered through the barbed wire fence into the unoccupied cow pasture. I draw the line at letting them into the garden.

I mulched the entire daylily bed and put up the little fences that I hope will keep the hens from scratching all the mulch away.

Having had my last three remaining hens mysteriously vanish one day while I was away, I only let them out in the late afternoon while I can keep an eye on them. They love their greens but will follow me anywhere for a slice of white bread.

The girls sometimes keep me company while I am kneeling to weed the flower borders. The weather forecast was for rain today, so I was in a weeding frenzy for several days. Even though I can barely straighten up, I consider it a worthwhile energy investment.

They can't be beat for ornamental additions to the landscape. So lifelike.

Back to the Undisclosed Location

When I said, "Let's go look for morels," Lissa corrected me, saying, "Let's go FIND morels."

The river had been out of its banks recently. My one attempt to check out the area ended with my rubber boots sinking in mud. I turned back, lest I become a permanent fixture on the path.

At the morel enclave, Lis found the first few mushrooms. I couldn't seem to see any, because what I was looking for was not what was there. When I finally changed my sights to silt-covered morels, I started to catch up in the race to capture the elusive fungi.

The river was out of its banks on April 6. The morels must have come up in the last couple of days, and pushed up through the silt the receding river left behind. The mesh bags are to let the spores fall out and make more morels.

We never know if we will find the woodland goodies in April or May. Once, I found some in early May in snow. They are tricky.

Driven by extreme greed, we wandered all over, getting snagged on wild rose thorns. Lis found this dear little bird nest on a bit of brush. Only thirst made us give up the search. It was a humid 82 degrees.

Once they had a bath in salt water and several changes of rinse water, they were ready for the skillet. This was our biggest haul, two pounds and three ounces.

Morels are simply more mushroomy than any other mushroom. The flavor is exquisite. I think it's Mother Nature's way of luring us out into the woods in springtime, to enjoy the wonderful wildflowers.

Down on the "bottoms" the phlox are everywhere, in artistically placed nosegays. Like morels, they are not visible from a speeding car.

Adequate Daffodils

Finally, I have enough daffodils.

How many are enough?  Some existing daffodils down by the woodland garden were crowded and scarcely bloomed. Given their own spot, they are happy and make my eyes glad. Behind them are Surprise Lilies.

Then there are some that I missed when I dug up entire daffodil plantings to replant. Unaware that they were hiding deep in the dirt, I moved some overgrown irises here, seen at lower right.

This is the peony and  daylily bed. The daffodils are the opening act for them. Surprise lilies are by the old wagon wheel. Those guys have bulbs the size of hard balls and probably not worth the effort it took to dig them up and replant them a foot deep. Like daffodils, they multiply like rabbits.

This is the hillside where I transplanted daffodils and daylilies last fall. I've left plenty of room for them to multiply. The cages are to let Beau know I did not create a spot for him to stretch out in the sunshine.

At last, we are getting lovely rain. The broccoli and cabbages are ready to transplant now. They weren't hardened off, due to the high  winds, for weeks. Now all is calm. Fortunately, during the dry spring I was able to till the spots where these will go; all I have to do is dig round holes in the wet soil and pop them in.

To answer the question of how many daffodils are enough, I would say seven separate beds and roughly two hundred bulbs. This bouquet is shown with the Bradford Pear, which is just as beautiful in bloom and a lot less work. Seen near the propane tank are old plantings of, surprise, Surprise Lilies.