the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

not a deer, another groundhog, i got a sight of it yesterday as it was heading towards the bean patch out back. i did scare it off but i did not get a good enough shot at it. this is about the tenth groundhog of the season. i've buried nine others... i thought it might be a deer but i've not seen tracks out there lately. i also was hoping it was gone for the season whatever it was. nope. going to have to keep a sharper eye out there for a while, maybe try the live trap since i've not seen the semi-feral kitty family around...

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Ugh - groundhogs are not being nice to you this season! Glad we don't have them here.

 

[flowerbug]

i didn't get much done outside today. tomorrow is going to be even hotter and so whatever happens will have to do in the morning before too late. then i do have the afternoon off for a family thing so that is ok anyways. i'm actually glad it worked out this way so that i'm not wasting a nicer afternoon...

 

[flowerbug]

rains redid my schedule for yesterday and today. i need to get some corn cut off the cobs and a melon cut into chunks and then all that debris and a bunch of other stuff needs to get put into the worm buckets. so that's going to be most of my day, but first we have a few friends stopping over for a quick visit.

 

[flowerbug]

storms came through and made a mess of things for people further north of us. we're ok. my brother's place had a few large trees come down and take his power lines out but at least they didn't hit the house. his neighbor is a certified electrician and had the connections to the house replaced that same night (what a guy as he was out there working in the dark!). he's got a generator so they are ok for now. the power company hadn't even sent out a truck yet as there were plenty of other people without power so they had a lot to deal with.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

my brother's place had a few large trees come down and take his power lines out but at least they didn't hit the house. his neighbor is a certified electrician and had the connections to the house replaced that same night (what a guy as he was out there working in the dark!).

OH no! Glad the house, and the people, are ok! Great neighbors are a gift!

 

[flowerbug]

it looks like they still don't have power (the only blip on the outage map for their area), but that the outage was reported at 3am so perhaps they had power for awhile and then something else happened... i don't have the details on that yet, but i'm sure eventually we'll hear all about it... when i was talking on the phone to my brother he was really wired (<- pun intended )...

today's schedule is going out to pick tomatoes this morning so they'll be there waiting for processing this evening and then i'll be out picking as many dry beans as i can bring in.

 

[flowerbug]

the tomatoes did get dunked and chunked and 20 quarts got processed Friday night and then the next morning i heated up the remaining 10 quarts and got those sealed up Saturday morning and finished up picking some beans and sorted through most of those last night (and of course had a hard time not shelling them out but i couldn't spend as much time doing that as i wanted).

last night fell asleep kinda early and was awake at 3:30am when the smoke detector went off. no fire or smoke anywhere, but sometimes fog/moisture coming in from outside when we have the patio door open can set it off. so we figured that was it. later this morning it went off again and i wasn't sure what was going on there, but there's no fire/smoke again. a few hours later it started chirping signaling low battery so i cleaned up the ladder in the garage and brought it in so i could go up and change the battery.

i told Mom that we should probably get two new batteries and change them both soon because i don't think the one i put in was very fresh and i don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night again so we should just replace them... i should put it on the calendar to replace the batteries once every two or three years. my room is easy to do - the other one (which i had to change this morning) needs someone to go up on a ladder and then get up on the ceiling to change that battery. there used to be a third smoke alarm just a few feet from the other one which is also way up and needs a ladder to get to it but when we had to replace the smoke detectors i made a point of not replacing or reconnecting the one that is up there because it is too high and hard to reach for me to get to it and we really don't need yet another one right there like that... so it is a decorative smoke detector.

then i got out and started picking more dry beans and weeding as i go too since i'm there already. beautiful weather so it is a nice time to be outside for a change.

 

[flowerbug]

more bean picking this week up to Thursday afternoon. i should be able to get all the gardens picked through for dry beans by then. next two days are nice temps, then get above mid-70s for Wed and into the mid-80s for Thu. might be the last time we get this warm? we'll see...

 

[flowerbug]

picked tomatoes yesterday morning and then took a bit of a break before going back out and finishing up the last of the dry bean picking. Mom helped so we got them done. hot day in the afternoon, but a nice breeze and some clouds came along and helped moderate the temperatures. saved me for sure in the afternoon when i was trying to finish up.

messed up my foot the day before so it was a challenge that day and it did make it a bit tough the next day too. ibuprofen did work, i'm glad i don't have to take it very often as it does work when i need it.

taking a break now from processing tomatoes. i still have three buckets to get done and then beans to sort through. think this round of tomatoes will be about 65 quarts. i've got boxes all over my room of beans that are drying down and then i also have paper bags of pods that are dry enough to be in bags until i can get them shelled out. not going to be a bumper crop of dry beans this year but it will be something instead of nothing - and that is good enough for me. it is always hard for me to not want to shell them out right away but i don't have that kind of time for today. perhaps tomorrow i can start on some of those.