Category Archives: garden

I could tell something had been chewing up the strawberries but when I saw the hoof prints, everywhere!, I knew they’d been through. I only had time to watch a few clips and they chewed up both plum trees, the apple tree. The big one got INSIDE THE RAISED BED.

Last year I bookmarked a bunch of stuff to help discourage them but, if you are a regular reader you already know, I don’t have a whole lot of time or energy to deal with yard stuff. I’m glad they have a nice buffet here to enjoy.

I think squirrels are also into the strawberries because I keep finding them strewn about the yard.

The everbearing raspberries have popped awake and I’m picking ever growing bowls of those every day.

I should have a good update next weekend.

The yellow is roughly the edge of the garden bed. The left is the part I already did. You can hardly tell. Clover is tougher than advertised.

I borrowed a rototiller from a friend a couple of weekends ago and then it seemed like I either had time and no weather or weather and no time.

Or time and no energy.

But he needs the rototiller back which lit a fire under me to get this going.

The top picture is the main bed. I have been growing clover as a cover crop and I thought it was going to be a breeze but instead the stems are kinda ropey and they just get wound up in the blades like when you get hair or long strings of your disintegrating carpet wound around the vacuum floor brush roller.

After every row I would have to unplug it and then sit in the dirt and cut the stems off. Going more slowly or trying to break up the clover clumps in advance didn’t help.

I ran out of time because I had another situation to deal with so the main bed is only half done. I’m going to try to do it on Thursday after work.

This is the lower bed which did not have clover and was a breeze to do.

Using a rototiller is like wrestling a wild boar. It’s not like you smoothly drive it across the dirt. It’s bucking and pulling and jumping around.

Between prepping the beds for the rototiller and doing the job, I was exhausted. My arms were like noodles. But I slept like the dead.

Here are some views of the garden and one of the raised beds on a frosty February morning.

We had unseasonably warm and dry weather last weekend so I ran out to try to get some clean up done. I didn’t get too far before there was a Dad situation and I had to run over to the retirement home.

He’s fine! He’s 95 — which is the first thing he will tell you. “I’m old.”

If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of trying to navigate medicare, and all the related accounts and services, for your aging parent, or for yourself– count yourself blessed.

I had to set up something for Dad and now I’m trying to figure out if we paid this month and all evidence of the account I set up is gone. I keep getting sent to new dashboards that want me to create an account and are ominously run by giant investment companies. How did we get here?

I have not solved the problem and I don’t have any more brain juice to keep looking at it.

I think I say this every year but I am considering really cutting back on the garden this year. Just to make things easier on me in terms of watering and keeping up. We’ll see.

Today is giant football game. I don’t care but it’s a fun thing to do with Dad so we be eating pizza and watching the show.

I have been wanting to plant more native plants in my yard.

I should say I have been actively working on planting more native plants in my yard. (But not this bed. This bed still has a bazillion bulbs but I dug a lot during this project.)

I cleared this bed and then never dealt with finding plants. I have always wanted to plant huckleberries but I thought they wouldn’t work here. We were on a walk and there is someone on my block has 2 huckleberries and they were loaded. (Why wasn’t she picking them?!?!?!)

I had an appointment that was arguably on the way to the nursery so I drove over and wandered around in the rain. (Had the place to myself!)

I grabbed the three huckleberries they had.

On my way out I saw this: Arctic Fire!

It’s a something something dogwood with red sticks in the winter! Pretty white flowers in spring, green leaves during the year that turn during the fall. So pretty! Doesn’t it look like it’s always belonged in my yard?

I planted all these in the rain. My clothes, all my tools, my buckets: everything is muddy. I put it in the shop and I still haven’t dealt with it.

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a work in progress counter. I’m aiming for 15k in the month of November. This is a re-envisioned project of forever. This goal is for a first draft. My chatgpt helped me and it doesn’t look quite right but I don’t want to get derailed trying to fix it right now.

Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Rijksmuseum

In my heart I think I am going to do a post a day in November but the reality is that I can barely do a post a week right now. I was up early this morning and tried to complete one little computer project which, of course, had a problem and 1.5 hours later I still haven’t solved it and now I’m frustrated and frazzled and I have to hurry now and move to the next thing.

I don’t want to elaborate but there are extra responsibilities going on right now and I just can’t get on top of things.

At some point earlier in the summer I decided I wanted to try planting garlic. I think it was a combination of people talking about the garlic they grew and I probably saw an article. I did the research and bought Early Red Italian and Inchelium Red. Fortunately, I knew it was on the way and I prepped the bed where I planned to put it.

It arrived on Thursday and we were forecast to get about 10 feet of rain over several days and most days in the forecast were rain.

Meanwhile, I have another yard project going and my results have been super embarrassing and by looking in my archive I guess I never wrote about it before. I’m trying to convert my lawn into other plants but it’s slow going because I have a job and my aging body is like a shriveled piece of jerky that shrieks at too much outdoor labor and the season ends about the time I get around to it. I did a quick half-assed hour on that and then rushed to get some garlic in before it was too dark.

Then Friday morning I ran out and finished planting it. So I got that done. I hope the results are rewarding. I also did an afternoon planting but I will save that story for later.

In other news, last week I saw my first Christmas ad. Let’s mark it as October 22. Insert sad face. And I have received 2 emails from the same organization already begging me for my end of the year donation.

If you ever wondered what happens when a cucumber gets lost in the vines, here’s a great example. See that big orange thing?

When I was in Atlanta, Bob was in charge of the garden and the yard is not his thing. He freely admits he hates yard work. “It’s boring,” he says.

He did find some of the cucumbers but they do hide and this one got away and is now happily composting elsewhere.

I haven’t been able to spend as much time in the yard as I’d like and the weather will be leaving me soon. I have a bed I want to yank all the stuff I have and put in native plants and not sure I’m going to make it in time. Maybe next weekend.

I am still getting the orange-ish ever-bearing raspberries. That’s about it. I’m going to pick the last of the apples and make a little pot of applesauce for us to eat this week.

The trailcam is alive and well. No brilliant clips lately. Lots of raccoons scampering around the bucket of water. I caught Skunky running through the other night. The opossum is a regular. Lots of cat clips. I haven’t seen bunny in a while but I’m sure he’s out there.

I bought one of those consumer “wellness” glucose monitors to see what’s going on with me since my previous doctor made me scared about my blood sugar being in the pre-diabetes range. I am just barely into that range and it coincides with me becoming a crone. It’s been stable since then and I only have a few days worth of data but I think I’m pretty normal for my age. As long as I pay attention to protein and get regular activity, I don’t think diabetes is going to kill me.

I’m trying a new fitness app. I like workout circuits even though I do the easiest iterations. I could probably make money filming myself doing these because I am so uncoordinated and it helps me if I talk through it. So I’ll be grunting and huffing and puffing and then: reach! reach! punch! punch! tap! tap! left! right!

I think it’s fun but it reminds of when I used to take step-aerobic classes taught by my cousin Jennifer. She was a really good teacher but as she built to longer sequences, I was hopeless. Is step aerobics even a thing anymore? It probably is but has a new name like the kids today invented it.

I had to look up whether it’s praying mantis or preying mantis. In wikipedia it’s just Mantis.

I’m not sure if this is a big year for mantises or maybe I’m just better at seeing them?

I have seen a bunch in the front and the back. Some were tiny. I thought I had more pictures but I guess it’s hard to get a good mantis photo when you’re in the middle of yard work and pull your phone out of your pocket for a quick shot. I probably deleted them. Actually probably hard to get any good photos since they blend so well.

In my memory I thought they were good luck or something. The wiki says in some early cultures they were considered to have supernatural powers. I think maybe they are considered good for the garden.

Earlier in the summer when it was hot I opened the front door early one morning to get a little more air flow. There was a big praying mantis on the screen. I told it hello and was glad to see it. Not long later I heard the bluejays bickering back and forth around the house. The next time I looked the mantis was gone and there was a green wing on the porch.

Not so lucky, I guess.