the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

it has been rather wild here this season. for about two months i lost half the team here as Mom was sick (she's doing better now thank goodness). add that much more work to my schedule, all the mowing, weeding, etc. well it was hectic.

the gardens have been doing mostly ok. cucumbers we pulled the plants at last as nobody wanted any more and we were tired of having to deal with them - especially as tomato season has taken over any extra time.

also bean season has been keeping me busy checking gardens and getting the early dry beans picked as much as i could get done. some beans are just now starting to flower (those planted weeks later than the first patches).

with 44 different kinds of beans planted it can be fun trying to figure out what is going on and which did ok and others that didn't do much at all and some that are just now setting flowers/pods, so they may not finish in time or not, we'll see...

the melon plants have gone gonzo. six plants and at least 30 melons out there. if they all get ripe at about the same time it is going to be fun trying to eat and find homes for all of them. i sure won't need to plant as many next time around. they are very good too when they get ripe at last. short season enough that they have worked well here. they like to crawl around on the rock piles (and by crawl i mean vines of 20-30ft). definitely a keeper crop for us. my previous tries at growing melons didn't finish very well at all and were largely a waste of space.

the tomato crop has been plenty to keep us going and running out of jars with the shortage of lids we can't find. we have some cases of wide-mouth jars but no lids for them. hope to get some this week or we won't be doing much more canning and not enough room in the freezer for all these tomatoes (from 30 something beefsteak varieties of plants and one cherry tomato).

have had another dry spell but finally this evening we've gotten some rains and it is raining again now to give it a good soaking out there. not what i really wanted for some of the dry beans but that is just how it goes at times. win some - lose some. i think i had most of the dry beans that were ready picked so i shouldn't lose too many to rot from these rains. what i can pick and dry out quickly of critical varieties might help but i think i don't have any super critical ones out there this year. the beans on the fence are largely later beans so they're just getting pods and not ready anyways.

any spare time i get i am happy to be shelling beans.

the pea garden turned out ok too... and the garlic was lifted and the onions are ready and the strawberry harvest happened and i have freezer jam and strawberries in there for the winter months... i planted some onion seeds, peas and buckwheat in that small garden just to see what would come up (the onion seeds were old).

with the tomato harvest and me needing to bury scraps from processing tomatoes and cucumbers too i've been able to start reclaiming one of my gardens from weeds (it's been mowed this season what i couldn't get planted this past spring). as part of the project i'm doing along there it needs to be done anyways so this is all good. i just wish i had more cooler weather to get going on these heavier projects. the rains will help digging as the clay is getting pretty hard.

cosmos starting to flower.

squash doing ok. really glad to see some of my cross-breeds coming back. the cross between kabocha and some orange pumpkin and also a cross between buttercup and an orange pumpkin. both of these we like so i wasn't sure the seeds were too old or not. will be saving seeds from these for sure! baby blue hubbards are not quite as baby as i was expecting, not sure we like them but we'll be finding out. also planted some new buttercup seeds but not sure they did anything yet.

peppers, etc. in the tiny garden we stuck them in. didn't do that great, but some harvest. just not the best of soil in there.

 

[flowerbug]

we did manage to get some more canning jars so that is a big relief, especially since we just picked another 180lbs of tomatoes and half of them need to be put up. i happened to do a wider search on some stores that we don't normally shop at and then i got on the phone right away when the store opened to make sure they had them right there as i wasn't going to drive and then have them say they were out of stock.

so we are set for the next week or so (48 quarts and 24 half gallon jars). i'm still trying to find some wide mouth lids so we can use the four cases of jars we have that don't have lids. i'll call that store today after they open. we have enough rings.

i may need to try out some melon jam/spreads experiments... i have a lot of pint jars - a good rainy day activity...

 

[flowerbug]

this has been the season of the angry bee. weeks ago i was doing some weeding and must have disturbed the nest of a ground nesting solitary bee. it came after me but it didn't actually manage to sting me but wherever it tried to sting it kept attacking that spot. which wasn't any fun when you're trying to get some work done in a garden. thinking i could wash things off and change clothes didn't quite work out so i had to go work in a different part of the yard for a few days.

yesterday, i don't know if it was the same bee but i'm out working and one gets mad at me again and this time it did manage to sting me in the eyebrow. yes it hurt but as far as stings go i've been got by much worse. so i came in and changed clothes and washed and hoped i could go out and pick some dry beans, but whatever that bee has as memory is pretty good because within a few minutes it found me and got me twice in the nose of all places. dang nab it!

well i got beans i need to pick so i suited up. i put on layers and layers and then put a bright yellow raincoat on, then i made my own bee helmet with some mesh i could see through (barely). then to color coordinate the outfit i had some bright green garden gloves. i went out and picked for an hour, no bee bothered me, i was all ready for it to come along and so i could take it out, not that i want to, but i can't avoid working in the gardens here, there's a lot of gardens and all of them need regular working on schedule and we have things to harvest and weeds to get out of the way and ... it's my main form of exercise and it's what i want to do and it's also just now finally back to near perfect garden weather so i'm trying to get projects finished that have been on hold during the too hot weather. so if i had to fight off this one bee i'd do it. sorry bee, but you can't keep me from getting things done...

when i finally got the bucket full of beans picked then i'd also had it and was getting hot and thirsty so that was it for the day. i came in and gave Mom a really good laugh when she saw the outfit i'd put on. duct tape, bright yellow shiny raincoat, bright green gloves, etc. we've been laughing about it since and she had to tell everyone this morning about it, i'm sure my sister will get some digs in about it. free entertainment...

normally i am working in gardens and there are bees all over and they don't bother me and i don't go out of my way to bother them. for years i may get accidentally stung but not often and not repeatedly, except by these kinds of bees. we had a nest in the wall of the garden shed that the bees were doing the same kind of repeated attacks and once they stung something then they'd keep targetting that thing (like my shoe or my glove). eventually i got them out of the wall and then the next spring i finally tiled the entire garden shed walls and ceiling to keep the mice and bees from getting into the walls any more. i'd needed to do that for many years anyways so i was glad to finally get it done...

so in this season i've been stung three times and for me that's going from 5 stings to 8 in over 15 years or so.

well, ok, that's that story, the rest of things are doing well here. melons came on like gangbusters, well worth growing, but we surely didn't need six plants. i have picked around 30 melons so far and given away plenty but also we've really enjoyed eating them as they get ripe. between the two of us we can eat a melon a day and we're not sick of them yet. i have about ten more out there to pick as they come ripe if they finish. i'm not sure what the vines will do with this cooler weather. we'll see, but it has been a fun learning experience. i've not had luck with melons before as they didn't do much and didn't finish. this year these are shorter season melons and they're really good. they do split a little as they get ripe so you have to get them picked but they are well worth growing. i've got tons of seeds from them to give away.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

BOO BEE'S! I'm like you and prefer to live and let live. But, there are some of them that just have an all around bad attitude and deserve to get what's coming to 'em! That's just downright nasty of them to come at you when you haven't done anything to them. But, I'da paid money to see that outfit, lol!!

 

[flowerbug]

BOO BEE'S! I'm like you and prefer to live and let live. But, there are some of them that just have an all around bad attitude and deserve to get what's coming to 'em! That's just downright nasty of them to come at you when you haven't done anything to them. But, I'da paid money to see that outfit, lol!!

i had to go out and move a few heavy things for Mom so i put on a much quicker version today, but the gloves were bright blue instead of bright green this time and the hat was nowhere near as elaborate.

she laughed when she saw me. good times.

 

[Mini Horses]

You KNOW how we love pictures!!! I'm disappointed to not see your runway attire.

 

[flowerbug]

i was out getting dry beans picked all afternoon and not a single bee bothered me. i just had my old hoodie on, in the same garden where the first episode of ground bee attack happened. a few bees were around, but not many and none of them noticed me that i could tell.

the real test will be in a few minutes when i go back into the fenced garden to get the lima beans picked. perhaps it will leave me alone. this was the garden where i got attacked the other day. i'm just going to wear the hoodie and see how that goes.

i have the reinforcement protection if i need it and i WILL use it if i have to as i do have to get those beans picked this evening.

nope, no pictures, i'm way too tired for that...

 

[flowerbug]

my room is full of beans that need shelling, it is my OCD therapy where i can sit and shell and sort beans all fall/winter as i get a chance. i consider it the same kind of tactile and visual kind of task like picking stones from a beach.

yesterday i got back to it (had been very busy getting the gardens picked through as much as i could the past week) at last, first up was a box top of beans that i rescued from the North Garden. they were a few varieties of beans planted the same time as the Purple Dove and they finished a few weeks earlier than i expected. so early that i didn't even think to check them until the other day and then i was like "Oh wow i gotta pick now before it rains again!" so i spent three more hours picking through that garden to get those dry beans pulled and the pods put into three five gallon buckets. the rescue beans were those pods that were half rotted and needed to be shelled out first.

about a cup and a half of red beans and some others in that box top so it wasn't a waste of time, but a lot of other beans went into the worm food bucket that will get buried out in the gardens or used here in the buckets where i keep the worms. some of the rescue beans had a bit of fungus fuzz on them so i planned on later trying to clean them up and see how they do. i have a certain amount of marking and discoloration i will tolerate for beans that i'll cook up for me to eat, but once the seed coat has dark marks or any kind of black fungus on them i won't keep them at all.

after getting those done i had to pick a few melons that were ready. not much flavor to them, pretty watery, but since this is the first year i've actually had melons do anything here and these are also new melons for me to grow so i'm having to learn as we go. one of the melons was a bit rotten on the end so after cutting away what was icky there was about half a smaller melon and i just ate that. the flavor was not bad, but it wasn't much of anything. there's about ten smaller melons out there developing but i'm not sure they'll turn out to much of any in results worth eating. of the three i picked one had enough flavor that it was better than the others, but still not nearly as good as the melons we picked last week or the week before. we'll sure miss these as we've really enjoyed eating them this season. and we're still not sick of them even after eating so many. i've probably put on 5lbs from melon alone... haha...

so after getting those seeds out of the melon and i cleaned those up and got them dried i went to check the container of melon seeds and it smelled a bit funky so i dumped them out to check for fungus. yes, there were signs of fungus on them so i washed the seeds off with some mild soap and then rinsed them well and then used a bit of mild bleach solution. not sure if it will harm the seeds or not, but with nearly an entire quart yogurt container full of seeds i didn't want to just throw them away... i have those now drying and will dry these a lot more than the others. i didn't think about those hollow seeds in there that would store a lot of water in them needing quite some time to dry out well enough before putting the seeds into storage. as i said above, learning by doing...

the angry bee didn't bother me at all in any of the gardens. was nice to get past that.

the pallet/pathway project is getting close to being done and is looking so nice, i need to put a few more hours work into it, some edges need to be put back into place and some gravel moved and smoothed down and then i can get some pictures at last... so nice to be able to walk on the pathways again for a change. with all these rains and me needing to get beans picked (and squash should be checked too now) it's been hard to even take a few hours for that.

then we had to mow because of all the rains we had just a certain time to get it done and that was it.

from all the standing at the counter inside processing tomatoes and all the standing and bending in the gardens picking beans i had a horrible cramp in my leg where i'd pulled my achilles tendon a few years ago. woke me up the other morning and i nearly screamed, but it was over with after a few moments and gladly did not return, but the residual pain was there for the rest of the day and that night. i did massage the leg and calf muscle to give it some help and so far it's not repeated, but wow was that no fun at all...

pretty much the rest of things here are busy too with other things being needed to be done and the microwave oven finally quitting. it had been acting up for months and we expected it to stop working eventually but it managed to do that right when i was cooking up some shelly lima beans (yum!). we've been getting a lot of good laughs from how it had been malfunctioning all during that time so i guess that was the price of the entertainment.

and as part of the garden renovation projects along that pathway/pallet project is to reclaim a weedy garden so i can plant it all again next season. almost done with that too, as we've been processing tomatoes and also with me shelling beans and having to bury the bean pods and melon rinds that i've not been able to use all those in the worm buckets here in my room so i've been able to bury those and weed that garden a few more feet each time. the rains have really softened up the area for digging and that has been going ok.

um, yeah, it's the crazy season, but with the cooler weather that is much easier to cope with than when it was so hot that you could only work for a few hours here or there in the morning or the evening.

and no, i'm not complaining, this is what i love to do and i'm glad and lucky to be here and able to do it.

seeing some new cross breeds in the beans as i shell them out (yes, they're mostly brown) is always fun and i'm looking for some new crosses to come from the Purple Dove beans but haven't seen any yet.

ok, enough rambles here, back to work.

 

[flowerbug]

feels so good to have this mostly done at last...

http://www.anthive.com/project/tasks/

 

[frustratedearthmother]

That looks fantastic - like a park!