Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Cells in this tomato went wild. Even under the watchful eye of The Botanist. Maybe now that the cataract surgeries went so well, the tomatoes will stay on course.
Some of CousinS’s cells went wild. Today, surgeons went in and removed them. We were glad we got to see her, even for the less than two minutes that we shouldered past the closely watching nurse to visit—S was awake, and I felt much better for having seen her and hugged her husband, D, too.
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Three limbs came down—I think the one that’s still attached brought down the two that are on the ground.
Ah, more chores.
And this happened sometime after 4:30PM, when we had little wind and bright sunshine. Perhaps a flock of heavy birds stopped by? Curious.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
We finally bit the bullet, the one that involved figuring out how the mice were getting into the cabinet under the sink. That wouldn’t be so bad, but the cabinet maker (aka The Botanist, who has never much enjoyed involved indoor projects) elected to make the space continuous from there to the major portion of the under-counter space around the corner.
As to the fixing, carefully cut pieces of window screen, paired with a big swath of 1/4″ hardware cloth, all stapled with abandon, and ingress opportunities are…zip-zero-zip.
JCB got the space cleaned, and I will work on swabbing down the rest of the contents tomorrow morning….
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
I love that the camera captured the pollen dotting this bumblebee’s butt.
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
So, the green bean production is slacking off, but not stopping. Meanwhile, the next crop is gathering its energy for the leap into ripeness—the raspberries. Not as much stooping to harvest, but a MUCH larger planting, and faster ripening, so when they get going we’ll need to pick just about twice each day.
But not yet.
Monday, 1 August 2011
Here’s yesterday’s mushroom 11.5 hrs later, that is, about 6:30 this morning.
Today’s big news is that the cataract patient (CP) has permission to drive again!
Does it mean anything that the CP is the Botanist, and he would prefer not to find mushrooms on his dinner plate—and yet this robust sample has unfurled its gills in his yard?
And remains unpicked, mind you….
Sunday, 31 July 2011
I’m sparing you the comparative picture from this morning, but if I were to eat a mushroom I found in the lawn, this one looks perfect. I’ll stick to morels, however, and this is not a morel.
The sour washcloth season continues. We did enjoy our evening ration of ice cream* sitting in the yard as the indoor-outdoor temps once again equalized, this evening at 81°F at 7:50 pm.
Have you tried the Turkey Hill vanilla bean Philadelphia style ice cream? Kroger carries the brand, and it’s like Breyers—lacking in additives of the obnoxious variety, if you can overlook a gum or two—and far cheaper. Go marketplace!
Saturday, 23 July 2011
Before eight, the Botanist and I tackled the garden. He went directly after the weeds over by the strawberries. I picked the beans (ah, the beans…), and then we worked together to expand the newspaper zone around the tomatoes. He routs the weeds (mainly my job), then puts down 2–3 layers of paper, then stacks the freshly extracted weeds atop the paper to hold it in the wind…so the weeds go from growing to a weighty use (without collecting a single cent). At the end of the season, the weed-husks and the newspapers are incorporated into the soil.
It’s all part of the cycle the Botanist created and maintains….
Friday, 22 July 2011
Somehow, with all the weather craziness, perhaps, the Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica) didn’t arrive soon enough to truncate the grape crop along the back fence. The Botanist has three different kinds of grapes trained along the wires, and this is the Concord (dates back to ca. 1850, says WikiPee), so when it gets ripe it will be deep purple.
We have temporarily escaped the bull’s-eye of the heat dome, and both the heat and humidity are now tolerable. In fact, I picked the beans this morning a half-hour later than the last two mornings. The number of beans is steady, however. I also watered the second planting of beans and the green peppers. Yea! for garden produce!
Sunday, 17 July 2011
In these days of drought, we just got enough rain to bead up on these fuzzy leaves.