And months go by..

So life has been going on over the last couple months. Not much worth chattering about, unsurprisingly and happily enough.

The deep snow for the weeks melted off, the extra deep cold went away. Then some more- then a couple weeks ago we got some record flooding around here. Today has a light white blanket and green stuff poking through the snow... should melt off soon enough.

The swans returned to their island a week or two ago, nice to see them back. I didn't do any suet cakes this year, but I did fill the seed feeder for the first time a day or two ago- haven't been eaten much yet, but that will change soon enough, lol.

Gardening has been going on for weeks of course- I started setting up set up in late January. This year is going to be a big pepper year- I'm comparing several varieties from over the years as well as a few new ones added into the mix. Since I had such a nice bumper crop of Aji Limon and Tobagao seasoning peppers last year that I still have a large stock of, I decided not to grow those this year.
So, right now under the lights and growing well..

Peach Habinaro, for 1 plant. I needed to replenish my dehydrated stock on this on this year
Mako Akokasrade, for 1 plant. I've grown this one before, and it made it onto the keeper list
Trinidad Perfume, for 1 plant. I grew it last year, but I think the growing conditions might have jacked it's scoville all weird or it might have been off seed, so I'm trying it again this year to find out.
Fish, for 3 plant. I've grown this one before, made the keeper list. But it wasn't a very heavy producer, so I'm doing extra plants this year.
Urfa Beiber, for 3 plants. Grew it last year, and it was wonderful, needed to grow more.
Bulgarian Carrot, for 1 plant. I've grown this one before, made the keeper list
Fresno, for 1 plant. New to the list this year.
Red Hot Cherry, for 4 plants. Specifically for pickling, the local markets don't always have enough for a good round of pickling.
Farmers Jalapeno, for 1 plant. Tried it last year, but had a seedling failure, so retrying
Feher Ozon Paprika, for 4 plants. New to the list this year, and the only true sweet on the list. For fresh eating and drying.
Black Hungarian, for 1 plant. Grown in previous years, and a keeper
Santa Fe Grande and Costeno Amarillo- 1 plant. I somehow managed to tag 2 pots with Costeno, and don't seem to have a Santa though I have it on my written list. Only 1 of the pots sprouted 1 seedling, so we will see what it actually is when it starts producing fruit. They are very different, so the mix up could have been worse. Haven't grown the Santa before, and have grown the Costeno before.
I will likely pick up a couple weapons grade peppers from a local nursery depending on how it strikes my fancy- I am out of dried peppers for garden use, but didn't feel like growing out a bunch from seed, wanted to concentrate on the seasoning peppers this time around. Finding them fresh in season around here can be kind of hit or miss. The shop usually doesn't have them, but the big nursery almost always does. Too bad the closest nursery turned out to be such a crappy place to work with and finding out about their bad plant management practices causing some problems- it has really crashed badly since that lady manager took over the place.

Anywho.. on to tomatoes :) Keeping it fairly small this year, just like I did last year. Two raised beds- a 6 pack of shorties and a pair of towers, and a snacker on the corner of the porch. This year I'm growing varieties of a bit longer maturity so I started them about 10 days earlier than I did last year- I think part of my Roman Candle crappy was I shorted it on time. The Speckled Romans made it onto the keeper list though. Just started the seeds last week. I decided to completely skip a cherry comparison year- we just don't ever eat cherries on that scale, and just the one snacker a year is plenty. So went to culling off a few of the oddities and final stuff on the list instead.

Wasipinicon Peach- for the snacker tub. It's a large cherry/saladette size, and has a slight fuzz to the skin. New for this year.
Riesentomate- one of the two towers. A weird cluster tomato, growing it for novelty pretty much. Hope it really grows as the cluster tomato and it isn't mislabled and actually the small bracketed tomato.
Coure di Bue- one of the two towers. Big meaty heart- new this year, keeping it in mind against last years Speckled Roman.
And in the 6 pack is a pair each of..
Dwarf Wild Fred- had to source out new seed for this year, but of course Freds are on the list
Moonglow- an orange to see how it faires, going up against the Juane Flame notes of previous years
Inca Jewels- a red plum, picked up a random packet of it last year, but the only kind of interesting shorty I have left on the list that isn't too short.

Kind of have the rest of the garden plans for the year too. This year is another year of trying to control the squash bugs with careful planting and use of the bug spray. And I'd like to start securing the stable and stable yard for future garden action. Get all the potted trees and fruits planted in out back. Planning on taking down the garden-sides of the greenhouse this year to use the walls for trellis action this year- and making the porch nicer for hanging out. Get a couple rolls of mesh to make some new cages and enclose the big lasagna bed.
A bunch of beans- Painted Lady Runner on the kitchen porch for the hummingbirds and us to enjoy the blooms and fresh beans. Sunset Runner for blooms and fresh beans to grow with Marketmore cukes on the greenhouse trellis where I grew morning glories and peppers last year. Yard Long for fresh eating and pickling, and True Red Cranberry for dry use trying out on the back greenhouse wall. And enclosing the large lasagna bed with mesh to try to grow a couple kinds of edamame this year. Want to grow out the asparagus crowns in pots for another year to get bigger and get that bed set up with some fix before planting in 2019. Thinking about growing out some Bumblebee bush beans in the stair corner, but not for sure about that yet.
Needing new mesh for cages and panels- gonna cap the open ends of the kennel this year. And use towers on the posts. Jelly Melon, Eden's Gem Melon Rich Sweetness Melon, Golden Midget Watermelon, and Mexican Sour Gherkins are going to be growing up all that. I trying to be extra hardcore with the melons this year- I've had mostly poor luck over the years, so trying again. To finish out the kennel gardens will be greens, root veggies, nasts, and calendula. I'm doing all calendula instead of regular marigolds this year for medicinal reasons.
Rounding out the list is back at the kitchen garden. A second trellis panel next to the Painted Lady beans to trow Tatume squash- they are a vining squash that has small summer rounds and squash bugs are supposed to not like it. And a container zuke- Astia. Three kinds of winter squash made it onto the bed list- Winter Luxury Pumpkin, Kakai Hulless pumpkin for eating seeds, and Thelma Sanders.
Of course a few herbs and some flowers. I got a LOT of potted bulbs and irises to distribute around the yard this year too. Some of that is going out back around the gardens and trees.

Lovely Autumn

10/9: Got a bit done in the garden today. Cut down the Pink Bumblebee tomato- got about 2 quarts of red and green tomatoes. At the very end of of the process, I found a tomato hornworm on the very top of the plant- and it was heavily infested with braconid wasp cocoons! This is a very good thing, because those little wasps love to kill tomato hornworms. The adults also love to eat dill flowers, which I have in pots right next to that tomato plant. This means my companion planting for pest management works there with zero pesticides needed. When I went and cleaned out the raised bed of Freds I looked to see if there were any more I could feed to the wasps, but no such luck, lol. Got the Freds cages torn down and plants cut back- I still need to go and pull the root masses out of both beds.
Also cleaned out the big lasagna bed of it's brassicas and weeds. It still needs a fork cleaning before I cap it with clear plastic to start solarizing- but that's ok, found out today I was out of clear plastic, heh. So now all three of those beds are cleaned up, the first one completely set, the second one almost set- still need to put in bulbs. Big bed got it's basic cleanup done, needs a good dig and capping.
The kennel beds still need some cleanup, but not much. Right now I'm happy to let the nasturtiums and marigolds grow out, and let those Beer Garden radish seedlings do what they want to do for now. The straw bed capping the area needs some weeding attention though.
The greenhouse is pretty much empty and awaiting some fresh setting up. I need to do a little tending to the walls and pin the top flaps down nicely. Right now plans are to just leave the top open- I can't roof it by myself, and honestly not sure how I want to roof it again at the moment. I also have a lot different overwintering into spring plans this year than I did last year.
Still need to clean up the stair garden. I think it's going to see some different use too. The shadier side is going to start getting planted in with some of those shade loving plants that I've let sit for too long honestly. Those will soften out the mowing edge there. I need to get one of the heavy RR ties down by the pole barn up to the garden to cap off the sidewalk side along the garage.
The cooler I used to trap and drown all those squash bugs showed no signs of life, so I dumped the cooler out. I hope I got them all.
Got the southern edge of the solarium beds cleaned out today- all the grape hyacinth patches are now clear and open, and a goodly outside border  is cleaned out of the grass too. I now have a full walking path again. I'm thinking of getting out the old hexagonal concrete pavers I made a while back, and drop them in as stepping stones in that walkway.  Probably would need to make more to make a full walk, but hey, I can get a start set in. I need to make some more pavers in general too.
Now it's time to be off to make some crispy chicken salads for dinner, then a town hall meeting tonight.

10/10: another round of clearing out the freezers. I happened to have 4 quart packs of ham stock, so that's now reducing down to another pint sized package of ham cubes. A couple random 2 packs of pitas leftover got made into some nice pita chips with a couple different seasonings. Those are now cooling and will get vacuum sealed into quart jars for snacking on. A half dozen various savory flavors bagels got sliced up and toasted dry in a 325 oven for about 25-30 minutes, and then into a couple more jars- those are gonna be used as soup croutons through the winter, yum. Since we still have a few stacks of large flour and small corn tortillas in the freezer, I think those might get baked into crisps too.
The peach pulp is still draining, so since the dehydrator wasn't being used for that- I did up a tray of the fresh ambrosia corn, 2 trays of regular corn, and a tray of peas out of the freezer.
Realized I still had those 2 quart bags of cherries in sweet juice that were canning fails last year, went into the freezer, and got lost. I thawed one of those out to try out a bit of an experiment. Since it was already in sweetened juice, I added in about 1/4 cup each of some cab and pinot, and a steeping ball with a cinnamon stick, couple slices dried lemon, a few hibiscus flowers, a few cloves, and a few slices of fresh ginger. I was out of dried clementines, so I figured the lemon/hibiscus would make that nice tang. That's burbling on high for now, then will get the steeping ball removed and turned down to low overnight to help reduce it all.. then tomorrow I'll do a spice check. Add in some spiced rum, maybe some of the peach juice that has drained off, and really reduce it down- I want to almost gel the stuff if I can. If the reduction works, that will make for some tiny tasty ice cubes- and those will get baked or used in drink goodies through the winter. We shall see how that goes, lol.
I've started tossing some stuff too- old somethings that didn't get labeled, and have enough freezer burn on them that I can't tell either.
I need to do a vacuum sealing of a handful of stuff soon- cubes of concentrated chicken stock, ham cubes, and a bulk of spring chive butter and garlic greens butter. The peach leather and cherry cubes will also need to get frozen. And now that I have got the seed stock sorted out and got the deep freeze pile done- that too needs to get sealed and tucked into the freezer. I need to repack and detail catalog the list to shrink out all the extra packaging, but I think I might have managed to keep within a quart or so space. Got a goodly round of dehydrated stuff in jars to do up too on the shelf.

A bit of Tippy and friends.. and gosh it's been a long time since one of these, right? This spring the McSwanums had their babies.. and amazingly enough, all of them survived to adulthood, including the ugly signet. There was one baby that stayed brown/grey so long after it's siblings had gotten their full white on and were on their flapping runs across the pond I had started to wonder if maybe a goose or heron or something managed to slip an egg into their nest.
Today I'm happy to say that that ugly signet has since then gotten it's full white, done all the strafing runs across the ponds and such.. and this afternoon is the first time I've seen the ponds clear of swans! I know the family is probably just in the next pond over and will come back so long as the weather is good.. but yay for junior.

With the cats.. over the last two years we have lost two of our bubbas to old age- Argent in 2015, and Pooks in 2016. Now the twins are hitting that senior mark and showing it, and I've been adjusting the cats diet for this. Tikki mostly don't care about food, she isn't finicky about dry food, and don't care much for wet food, and can be hit or miss with treats. Nova is my big boy, and will tuck up into pretty much anything I lay down. But Ocelot and Marbles are getting older, and need extra.
Since this spring, I've upgraded the dry food. I used to only use Purina indoors or Meijer brand in the 2 feeders. Now the office feeder has that since the cats still like to eat it. The kitchen feeder now has had Purina Beyond for a few rounds, and all the cats really like that. It's rare to catch a sale or coupon with this stuff, and it's a bit more than twice the price. Been giving out a can of wet food a day in the morning too. They all mostly like beef and poultry more, and can be hit or miss with seafood. But Purina Fiskies and One are their faves.

10/13: ohhhhh, Friday the 13th. Only pretty much not, lol. Today was a south shopping day, had a random handful of oddbits to pick up. Got a new HotShot water heater, ours was screaming to death. And after yesterdays dinner and scrubbing out the large deep 6/7 quart nonstick Calphalon pan.. I finally decided to make a dedicated effort to finding a replacement pan today. Ended up getting a 8 quart stainless steel Calphalon dutch oven. It was a bit pricey at 40 bucks, but it will last for ages since it's stainless, and the cheapest comparison at Target and Meijer was nonstick 5 quart at 40 bucks. It's about the same size and shape as the old one, but a bit deeper with straight sides, and two helper handles instead of one with a long handle. And it came with another 12" lid. I've already chucked the old pan along with the screaming hotshot into the garbage.
Hit Michaels- had a 25% off total coupon, a rarity around here for them. Wasn't much of interest, though the Lemax Christmas collection has one thing that's cool- Sugar Shack Maple Hut. No power, stand alone, pretty neat. I did get to pick up a couple packages of findings on clearance that will make for an excellent stack of pots and plates for mini-food.. I'm finally getting up enough of a collection of this stuff now to start really making stuff.
Hit JoAnns. Had a couple 40% off full price, plus a 25% off total purchase coupons. Got another pair of the 60" 3 pack clear plastic gift wrap for cheap. This is the clear plastic I use for my windows- I've covered this before but.. with the coupons the plastic ends up cheaper than regular window plastics, even when they are on sale- plus it's thicker, comes in rolls instead of trying to unfold compressed squares, works beautifully to fold out and tack into place so long as you understand how static electricity works. I have some 4 mil sheet plastic on hand too- time to start seriously capping off windows and such to prep for winter. And that roll will give me my clear plastic to start solarizing the big lasagna bed.

I'm still not feeling Halloween really. Just a couple weeks out, and Nightvale is still just in some basic setup- and I'm already thinking about tearing some of that out in favor of some more Autumnal theme. Main street is already pretty much spooky free. I think the Alley might be packed back up too. Just feeling slaggy this year.

10/16: Last couple days were dreary and wet- the rain promised late Friday night came in and kept coming in...
On Saturday my love advised me that the siphon somehow got left on suction out, and pretty much drained the big tank. But over the course of the weekend, the big tank was pretty much filled up again. Watering needs on the outdoor gardens are down, so now I need to be bringing water indoors while the weather is dry over the next couple days. Got most of our summer/winter wardrobe swapped out and cleaned up too... It's supposed to be spectacularly sunny, warm, and nice for the next couple days, so a lot of line drying will be going on.
I got around to tinking around a bit with the village... I decided to go ahead and just pack back the alley, and the Orphanage, and most of the backstreet. I got so much other going on right now I just ain't fussing, lol. But Main Street, Scarry's Amusement Haunt, and the Drive In are wired in and getting mostly set up. The lower level of the Amusement Haunt is slow- both because of inspiration of distributing maze, and because Sheriff Nova keeps insisting on raiding the maze, lol. But a lot of the living room is cleaned up now. It was rather an explosion for a while there.
 Today was fine and clear, and even warm in the sunny upper 50's. Did the final crisping off of the peach leather into dryness for peach powder- a few pounds dried down into a nice 8 oz jar. So I pulled off the 3 bags of Jen's Apple Pie Filling from the freezer and tossed them into the fridge to thaw out for trying out for dehydrating next. Why not? I still have a quart of cherries in liquid in the deep freeze too to do something with. I also tossed a bunch of stuff from the deep freeze into the garbage- some various things not really labeled and frosted and it was time anyway, lol. Along with that came a shelf clearing up- and realizing that we have about 6 tubs of ICBINB for mom and sis to pick up- we don't use as much as they do, and we have a full big tub in the fridge already. And a clear shelf on the bottom meant I could do some other cleanup... candles.
I got a lot of jar/crock/ect candles. And some cleanup is due. I got a couple batches of wax built up from previous cleanups, and a lot of glass to clean for anything..

So some greatgrans cleaning tricks..

For soot removal on glass. Take a cleaning cloth and lightly dress it with vegetable oil to quickly swipe away soot. Be sure to take a couple goodly swipes with a clean cloth after the oil and soot removal too to try to get as much out as you can. After that, repeat the same process with a lightly dressed rubbing alcohol cloth to really remove the oil and soot remaims.

Freeze your candle holders for cleaning. Those bits stuck to the bottom and so on. Freezethem and the wax shrinks and will crack apart easier.

10/18: gosh, this entry is getting pretty long, guess I better get my typing done and post this. We are into what is likely to be our last few days of warm and sunny weather- got a lot of linens on the line yesterday. I also got the raised beds dug out of the tomato roots and the roots into the compost, and a nice thick heap of leaves and pine needles for the compost pile- buried the raised beds under pine needles. I also got the little molly alliums planted into the center lasagna bed- just the pink and yellow mix and the white ones. I ended up not using the bag of yellow molly's because I didn't need to :) Got some of the porch furniture down to the pole barn, and some more stuff from the pole barn up to the house. A bit of tinkering on the workbench getting some stuff organized for making some minis finally. Sat down and really figured out how to set up the snow fence for this year- it ended up not happening last year. This winter we are planning on using the pole barn for parking since the other vehicles aren't there anymore- makes keeping the end of the driveway easier than clearing the whole darn thing every time it snows. I can deal with a few hundred feet of sidewalk down to the pole barn, lol. Makes me wonder why we didn't do that years ago before the pole barn had stuff in it.

Today I relaxed for a while this morning- as in some zen stretching stuff. I've lost touch with myself for a while now, with sickness and injury really throwing an extra wrench in there. I want to get back into meditating more, maybe pick up tai chi again. Then I hit the hall to take care of paperwork... then it was time to tackle another round of bulbs- this time the big alliums. I've been working on keeping the side section of the herb garden relatively weed free and buried under leaves for a while now.. and the trample pattern is emerging on that side for how walkway is going to shake out. So today I cleared out the leaves and as much weeds as I could. Popped in the butterfly bush into the middle with 3 lavenders along the walkway side. They are some of the big heldover ones that needed to get into the ground. Then somewhere around 100 various alliums around the whole area. Some from growing out last year- and I have a bunch of tiny baby bulbs to pot up to grow out from those. Purple Rain and Wild About Mixed, which give the large classic balls of purple and white. Christophii, a reddish large start type globe, and Drumstick, a tight budded egg shaped head. I was tempted to put in a few other things too, but figured that was probably plenty to fill in for now and if I got some spots open next year, then I'll fill then.
Still got the solarium bulbs to put in- all those grape muscari, lol. Got 100 of them in the packages. And after cleaning out the current border real well recently, I realized the muscari blocks from 2013 are still very much blocks, and need breaking up more than needing more. So I think instead of putting in more blocks I'm going to dig out the whole border edge and just set in all the muscari at once to re-distribute them nicely. Nice and plush. They will make that whole walkway edge very well filled in very quickly. Then it's time to tackle the space around the little maple tree- and that little maple tree is getting cut down soon while it's still little and not endangering the house yet. It's taken several years of mowing and walking around to really figure out where some of these borders are falling around the house, heh. On the other end of the solarium in the wee folk garden I'm going to be putting in crocuses, snow drops, and eventually more muscari- this time Magic Carpet Mix- it's all the other shades and colors the muscari come in, and I got a bag I can pot up for propagating this winter.
Got some other bulbs for potting up this winter too- mostly fritillaria, including a tiny chocolate and yellow one I'm extra excited bout- weren't cheap since it was Milager's and such- 90 cents a bulb! But they are dear, and I couldn't resist- and till I know where they go outside I'm happy to grow them out in pots for a while.
Still got the front bed to dig up, clean up, and set in with bulbs- and plant markers. Got all the bulbs, but the plants won't be going in till next year. I'm going to use some of the small lavenders that are growing well and will set nicely as second year plants in the spring. The mums suffered a bit this summer, and look shaggy as hell. And what I thought was a bronze last year turned out to be a delightful pink with creamy yellow center instead, so some plans have shifted, lol. With the bronze I picked up this year, I now have mothers of sunny yellow, white, pink, and bronze to grow out- plus a handful of first year whites, yellows, and pinks that survived the summer. All of them are blooming now, so I can re-tag them so I can tell them apart again more reliably than just foliage shapes. Then they will start getting trimmed and such for cuttings and shaping again. By the time they are ready to go in next summer, the bulbs will have died back and the lavenders should be established.

And ugh.. need to tackle the mint hill, seriously. I let it run rampant last year to give the mints more time to establish and crawl- but now it's a bit too rampant and needs serious cutting back. No pulling out anymore- now I want those weedy root masses to stay in place to keep the hill in check while the mints keep stabilizing in. But now the mints are ready. And some of the smaller woody tree weed crap needs it's final killings- not just cutting down this time, but also painting the stumps with kill solution. I'm tired of fighting the damn things, and it's time to move on. I'm going to whack down that weedy thing growing in the bed of Jay's Sky Irises too and give it a kill painting. I got enough chemicals left to do another round of spraying the driveways too- but between all of that, it will use the chemicals up, and that's not a bad thing. I really hate using chemicals, and these have been around for a while now and need using up.

But enough with ramblings, time to publish this entry and go make some dinner- doing breakfast tonight :)

9/14.. moving on with cleanup

9/14: Took a bit of a day off today. Did some chores.. today was the last anything harvest of the tomatoes, and the first deep trimming off of vines to the fall. Still got blossoms opening up that might ripen, and a few fruits that still will ripen.. The toothache plant is in it's first final flush and first weak plant culling.
Started up a pepper mash, will see what happens with this one..

From frozen
About 4- 41-2 cups of hot banana peppers, all red ones.
About 2 cups of green jalapenos
3 fingerlings, about a half cup?
This amount to 7 cups
Added in 1 cup of fresh picked Tobago Seasoning peppers- 36 of them.

For the brine... information is all over the place. I ended up using 1 liter hot water with 196 grams salt. It was supposed to be 189 for 10% solution, but meh. I did have the Himalayan salt on hand, and used it. Filled half gallon and a pint and a half jar. Capped them with coffee filters, then let them sit for a few days...
UPDATE 9/19: The jars were just starting to get a little bit of bubble forming, but nothing forming on the surface yet. Turned out the 2 jars into the blue crockpot and added 2 cups of white vinegar. Let it sit on low covered overnight, from about 4PM till 10 AM. At around 10, I tasted it- hot, the salt has mellowed a lot, needed more vinegar for sure. Added 2 cups cider vinegar and turned the heat up to high to start really burbling while I did some work in the solarium capping a couple windows for the winter. By the time it hit 2PM, the fumes were noticable, and it was burbling good. So I closed the solarium up and left the lid off the crockpot so it can all reduce a bit. Had to set up a ventilation fan to help suck out the fumes it got toxic pretty damn fast.

9/15:
Warm, sunny, and fine. I took the final harvest off the toothache plant and pulled out the bed entirely- kept 3 plants to pot up to see how they fare in the solarium.

9/16: busy garden day. Again sublime late summer weather. Drew off all the milk and litter jugs of water that I could for now, still need to move them into the solarium and to the garden beds that are getting fall watering. Cleaned out all the dead pots around the kennel and cleared the pots off to storage.
Squash bugs, yeah muthafucker. I have been keeping an eye out on the stair bed to see if they would turn up there after I pulled out the whatever squash and sprayed the beejeebers out of the area. And yep, sure enough, they did. Interestingly enough, they were all over the scalloped squash, but the entire cocozelle squash was almost untouched, though it has fresh and dead leaves, and even a couple blooms on it.
I emptied out a silver cooler and dropped the scallop squash plant entire into it- then dumped a couple gallons of water into it then put the lid on. Then I mixed up a 2 gal sprayer full of Neem/Tea Tree/Peppermint/Rosemary mix, and sprayed the entire area.  By the time I had come back out with the sprayer, the inside dry area of the cooler was crawling with bugs- I sprayed the dickens out of the cooler and it's inside before anything else.
Then I went and checked the whatever squash I had pulled out and layed out days ago- and shucks, that one still had bugs on it. So I picked it up and packed it into the cooler too. And then I noticed a few adult squash bugs on the base of the cocozelle. And then sprayed the stair garden heavy, the lasagna bed area that had the whatever squash, and the cage I laid the dead squash on heavily.
While the shade was coming on good and it was hot as hell in the sun anyway.. I dug out several Irises from the solarium bed. It's far past time for those to be transplanted off to other places in the yard more friendly. All of what is there of the specials are now potted up, and what's left is probably just the regulars to be dug up and relocated another time.
I also planted in the Solomon's Seal out back in the wee folk bed. I picked up that plant so darn pot bound I had to cut the pot off the plant, so I'm hoping it will take off well.
After all of that, started in on some re-potting of the porch plants. The botanical tulip got divided up into 2 pots- a big and small one. The two Hot Pokers I picked up and potted a year or two ago got pried and sawed apart into 9 bunches that are now in one big pot to not freak out while I figure out where they will go in the yard.

9/17: Another round in the garden. Unpotted and massaged the Lucifer today- the one plant I got a couple years back yielded up 2 really large, 4 large, 8 medium, and 9 small crom chains, and those are now repotted up into 3 pots- it was a devil of a task, lol. Cut back the coleus real well and left the mothers outside for now- I have 3 ice cream buckets full of the cuttings I now need to decide how I want to handle, lol.
Still a goodly bit to go with the plant cleanup, but not too bad too. I got Parks Candy Lillies I need to drop into the couple squash bins real soon. I think I'm going to take out the whole bed the squash grew on to use as the winter shelter spot again. The two bins are already on the one side, and it shouldn't be too difficult to cobble together the other side. I have 3 flats of small lavender, 2 flats of asparagus, and a few other odds and ends I'd rather mulch in deep to tuck away for the winter rather than bring them into the solarium for overwintering. I still got a goodly handful of fruits and herb pots out by the kennel, I'm going to tuck those onto the kennel porch for the winter- again, the whole front is already capped off, it should be easy to mulch deep there. I'd like to keep the inside of the kennel empty for now in case I get the chance to get a roof on it yet this fall. It was really handy, but who knows.
Still have a few more perennials to plant in the lasagna beds, and a bunch of small mums to put into the ground.
Already planning the next raised bed to the east of the tomatoes, heh. This year earlier on I layed in a thick paper and straw smother bed curving off with the mow line  when I moved the other two raised beds. Now's the time to put it to use, and also recycle the most damaged of the tomato towers into a composting cage. With 1 cage, I can break it down into 2 panels, then link them up and shape them to make a 3'x3'x3' cage. This is perfect to drop into the middle of the next raised beds spot to give me a place to heap up all the good composting greens I got building up right now to get layered in with browns and left to simmer for a while and let cook down till next spring. Then next summer when I'm ready to drop a 6x4' raised bed there, I will already have my base stuff layer built up and just a little bit smaller than the frame to help with taking the cage out and spreading compost stuff around.
The whole yard needs a good mow around too, at least in the areas that the leaves build up in. Time for what is likely to be the final mowing before the leaves start building up enough to be needed for mulch. I want to be raking up leaves off the grass, not trying to detangle the grass to get leaves right now, lol. This year I don't happen to have straw bales on hand, so I'm going to be bagging up leaves for my thermal buffers in the few spots I will need that sort of thing in.
That is a nice thing about starting to switch over the lasagna beds to perennials, some different mulch needs there this year. I'm going to need to heap it deep on the little west bed. I plan on putting in seed garlic in the middle bed to grow out to pull next fall, so it just needs keeping up with cleanup and some mulch. The biggest bed I plan on planting in the asparagus seedlings as it's forever bed next year hopefully if the seedlings do well- so this fall once the cleanup is done, that whole area is getting capped with plastic to solarize, and zero mulch there. So I'll have the "spare" leaves to bag up for other use.
Now that I'm pretty much done with most of the Irises.. mostly, lol. Still got 3 pots of the Watervliet Irises that I don't know what they are really, lol. Gonna pull 2 of them off for me, and give the other one to Sonja.
I need to go in and clean out the bed where Jay's Skies are growing too soon. I'm gonna cull out some of those for Sonja too. The bed needs it anyway, and I know I want to replant the one tagged iris I just pulled out from behind the solarium in that area. I also want to break up one of the bins of lilies to put in there too, but that will wait till next year once I'm sure of which lilly bin it is and get the irises done first, lol.
Also got a darn big heap of bulbs heaped up... now comes the time of year that all those last years buy, potted up over the year, divided, cured, and ready for planting time comes on. And I got plans for them too.

Hmmm, some food... the hot pepper mash has been sitting in it's jars capped off with coffee filters for a couple days now. Tomorrow is time for some reblending and setting up into refining. Pulled out a chicken from the freezer a couple days ago that's roasting up with taters and creamed spinach.

9/18: Tomatoes today, it was time. I have two Freds with a couple of clusters I didn't cut back, because I know those will probably ripen up before the chills hit. That's going to be about a week from now, when overnight temps will be dipping below 50. But all the Romans are gone, the Candles had a lot of babies, but I know those take a long time to mature, and not worth waiting on. The Flames only had about 5 green tomatoes on both plants, so scrapped those too. Tore out the cages, and cut one up into that compost cage, and got all the tomato cuttings and dead toothache plants dumped into the cage. Still have plenty of room to toss on more as the season winds down. A good mow around is next up tomorrow.

8/25....

8/25... time to start really keeping some notes again. The summer has pretty much gone, or at least feels like it... No sweltering nights, the solar eclipse was cool.. and now we are getting down into the 50's overnight here... WTF, right?

So, today I got the first 14 half pints of enchilada sauce canned up- a Mild Garlic one. I was going to start doing up the Lemony Cauliflower too- got the burner and outdoor stuff set up, and started pulling together the indoor mes in place... And discovered I was almost out of white vinegar. Well shit. Had to run to town for a couple gallons of it. By the time I got back it was too late to fire up the outdoor kettle, so I brought in the burner and just prepped up the two big heads- about 6 quarts. And peeled the couple heads of garlic. By the time I was done doing that, it would indeed have been too late to fire up the big kettle.
But while I was prepping the cauliflower, I got the sauce canned up. Tomorrow I'll do up the Smokey Hot sauce while I'm doing up the Lemony Cauliflower outside.
Then I can attend to doing up the double batch of Garlic Salsa. The garlic salsa will be it's own full days cooking up. Last year a single 5 lb batch yielded a dozen half pint jars. This year I plan on doing some half pint jars, and some quarter pint ones for snacking use. So it's going to make for an extra long canning day, lol. Or maybe I'll split it up into two batches like I did with the sauce- I'm rather liking the hold and then process thing I got going on here.

And a great note... Crock Pot bags. They can be sort of pricey, but ooohhhh can be worth it. I start off the sauce in the green crockpot- to get my measurements right, lol. After burbling it up in that crock I whirred it up with a stick blender and poured it off into my blue crockpot- the next quart size up- in one of the bags to do it's overnight low and slow cooking- and it was perfect. All the wet stayed in, and the bag has corners so every last bit of it squeezed out of the bag neat as can be.

Good thing we are down to just a little hefty tray of produce left- whatever don't get eaten in Crispy Chicken Salads tonight is like gonna get used up in something tomorrow, dunno what.. but there's another hefty round of picking that needs to happen Sunday. The toothache plant needs serious picking.. and the Freds and Romans have another full round ready to pick already. I'll probably fire off a round or two of regular enchilada sauce depending on what is ready for fresh cooking- Crockpot round or two of Sloppy Joe mix needs to happen too, but those use skinned tomatoes if I'm recalling right, so I'll be sure to toss some more in the freezer.

When at the farm market where I picked up the cauliflower, I also picked up a generous "quart" of a half dozen HUGE white peaches locally grown. I IQF'd those up, and those will be held with the other bag of peaches for cold weather baking when a delightful fresh peach is a total drool.
Ah freezer action.. With mom and Bear going back to Wi and taking the deep freezes with them.. I've already been saving up my pennies to hopefully get a good deal during the Labor Day sales for a new one. Gonna need to look into another dryer too since I assume they will take theirs with them.

Got a nice good whack at cleaning up the solarium yesterday... then promptly started cluttering it up again, lol. It's always a magic-9-square game out there. We really need to get that old hot tub out of there and clean stuff up. With the cooler and dryer weather it might be more plausible to get the truck up to the back door and load that thing off to the end of the drive with a "free if you can haul it off" sign over the big weekend. Just be done with it if someone else wants to haul it off.

It's getting to be that time of year that I need to clean out the Hardy Hibiscus border in the front, and plant in some of those mums I've been growing out. Give them a bit of time to establish in and want to bloom a bit later on. I think I'm going to be tossing in a couple handfuls of the bulbs I grew out and cured up earlier this year to help flush in spring and early summer blooms too.

The Lasagna beds.. time has come to start some planting shifting. Years ago when we first moved in, I dreamed of a full line of beds of edibles.. and have found over the years our gardening needs are much better served tighter up to the house, and with the shifting of the two raised beds this year, it's confirmed. I figured at some point that a lot of fence area would get to be more dedicated over to permanent stuff over annual stuff.. And I think now the time has come to start with that on a kind of serious planning basis.
I have a nice handful of very good perennials built up now. All beneficial insect goodies. The Bronze Fennel, Blue Borage, and Lemon Balm have all established nicely in the beds. And frankly, I haven't missed the growing space for food, and the beds and nicely fallow and ready for some lovely "other". I've worked hard to establish those beds, time to finish them in. I think perhaps the large bed might be worked up into an asparagus bed. I've got a goodly round of seedlings I can grow out for planting another year- and I do have the wild beds building up back already, it would be nice to have a good close up patch at hand too.
Coming up in the orchard area is also going to be some culling out. The peachish/whatever tree is slated to come down. The Sweet Cherry Trees are going to be thinned out, and the Maple needs trimming too. The green apples might just get scrapped yet- I can plant in a good one out back. Same goes for the red apple out front too. I think with the removal of apple and peach, and thinning of sweet cherry trees.. I'd like to plant in a couple more fruit trees. Another plum or two to cross and grow with our lone Green Gauge that isn't doing much. And another dwarf sour cherry or two to produce with the one we got.

8/26: Another busy day. I got out about a quarter of nine while the shade was still good and the dew still fresh on the plants over the toothache plant bed and did a full harvest- 3 quarts of fresh flowers this time, they are already on the dehydrator. Now that I have a goodly couple gallon bags of the stuff already dried and stashed in the freezer, it's time to pull those out and vacuum seal up the crops for deep storage. I'll still get another flush or two out of the plants before frost hits.
It's also time to start culling out some of the plants themselves to distill/render out with some fats and alcohol pulling. I'd like to produce a couple of topical bits for sore muscle rubs and such. This has been such a good growing year that with some careful storage, I could have a batch to last into 2019.
After I came back in from that, it was time to set up canning. Got the big burner going and the stove, and cranked out a half dozen jars of pickled lemony cauliflower, and a couple rounds to do up the 14 half pints of smokey spicy enchilada sauce. Using the big outdoor burner for the water kettle is wonderful. I was able to use the kitchen table to stuff the cauliflower jars, and used the stove to heat up the sauce and brines. Didn't kill my stove- and was able to keep most of the heat and steam outside, yay!

Tried out a new thing- homemade corn nuts.  Used about 2 cups dried corn. Followed the online recipe with big dried corn, overnight soak- the corn even went into a bag and sat in the fridge for another day before I oven toasted them up today... and tossed them with some soy and wasabi.. They are ok, but not great.. it needs tinkering.
I think the overnight soak is good.. but I think they need a short cooking too to really get a full hydration going on before they get baked. They had some dense chewy inside action that indicated not good enough hydration before baking.
Tossed the bag with about a quarter cup of veggie oil and a goodly shaking of salt. Toasted it off in 5 minute increments, stirring, for about a half hour... at the end they started wanting to pop like popcorn, so I pulled them out... but they really could have used another 5-10 minutes worth of toasting and roasting to get all of them better crispy dried. Not sure if that means I should just use a deeper pan to contain the popping, or finish them off with a goodly stovetop toasting before finishing them off. I might toss this batch back in the oven after I kill the heat after dinner to toast/dry out a bit more honestly.

I poured them hot out of the oven into a big metal bowl, and drizzled they soy over.. it actually sizzled because the corn was so hot. Stirred in a couple spoons at a time about half a can of wasabi powder, and another goodly shake of salt. It took a lot of wasabi for them to have a good hit of it. They do have a nice corn/popcorn flavor to them.. they just need a bit of tinkering to get a nice crunchy baked corn snack. Chick peas are still easier. Gonna use the other half of that can in a bit to make up a nice batch of wasabi peas, yum. I think perhaps with a better cooked up corn batch I want to try coconut oil and some caramelized sugar/spices mix. These kernels are nicely sweet enough on their own I think a good salty caramel version of this would be good.

Dinner tonight is Moms meatloaf. Roasted up four huge golden beets to pair up with that third head of glorious cauliflower I managed to not pickle up and save for dinner tonight, lol. Still got that head of cabbage languishing in the crisper, so going to do up a batch of horseradish and mustard cole slaw. Some tater tots and biscuits... slice up a plate of tomatoes and cukes with some pickles to round it off.. mmmmm.

8/27: kind of a cleanup day. Got the potting table cleaned up and such so I can start stacking other stuff on it. Cleared off and logged up the last of the bulbs finally.. pretty soon it's time to start planting them in again. That's ok.. I've scoped out the lasagna beds. Bed 1 has some nicely established blue borage, and a decent bronze fennel. Bonne plant in the Agastache Foeniculum, yellow and blue baptistias, a rosemary and a lavender, and some allium bulgaricum bulbs. Bed 2 has a great bronze fennel in the back, the lemon balms in the corners are well established and going to seed, and a nice blue borage popped up. Gonna plant in the blue eye grass and a mix of short alliums- molly and neopolitanum- yellow and white upcups of happy. Bed 3 has the best bronze fennel, and two good blue borage in the corners- think I might put in my asparagus babies there next spring.
Then the nice big clear patch around the pole. Needs a bit of cleaning, but meh.
But since I do have the other more shade loving plants too.. time to plan some planning, heh.
Solarium first. Need to dig out a goodly bit of the special irises and throw them into pots to hold up for some 2018 watching. They are the closest to the door, and I want to start keeping that space clear and open more for some spring slab plans. I also want to cull them out to plant elsewhere in the yard once I figure out what their actual blooming is. The whole wee corner could use some serious cleanup in general.. and I also have a lovely Solomons Seal to plant in back there- it prefers some shade and is a very beneficial insect friendly plant. I also have a white bleeding heart to try to get to grow too- I somehow always seem to kill bleeding hearts, sigh.
The counters are open for all the canning stuff to sit for cooling. Tried out a batch of fresh fridge cuke pickles using Milwaukee pickle juice I saved and froze up. Got another crockpot of regular enchilada sauce set up, and will turn around and repeat tomorrow- then do a double batch of pints on the big burner. Now that I've cranked out double the half pints from the 2015 tally, it's time to start working up on those pints.
After that, salsa is on hold again- I've already diced and tossed the peppers in the freezer. But since I do need skinned tomatoes for sloppy joe sauce, the ones in the freezer are going to go to doing up that batch first. I only need to do one double batch to fill the case I want to make of that.

Pulled the beer garden radish roots today, lol.. the little snubs they were, not suitable for any eating. So much for another batch of 1720 relish. They really did expend themselves on seed, which is what I really hoped for from the 7 seeds I planted last year so I can start growing them regularly... and a few seedlings are already self sowing up and need dividing to hopefully get a late fall harvest of some decent roots. Also time to set up another round of the Helios radish- that was damn fine, and we still got time before the frosts get frosty enough that I can grow out another batch.
 Nasturtiums behind the kennel are looking great. So much so I'm seriously reconsidering my idea of building a raised screen for the vines to grow on for some optimal seed harvesting. The two pheonix nasts in containers haven't proven to be particularly spectacular in their blooms- but their seed should be good. The longer vines I think I might need to raise up to be able to catch as much seed goodness as I can- green or ripe for planting, I'm pretty much tapped out on all nast seed!!

8/30: For the last couple days, I've been doing a lot of cleaning and re-arranging of the living room and solarium..  Got the solarium finished cleaned up to get the hot tub out of there. It's been nothing more than a cabinet for years, and it's a huge space eater and it's time to go. I'm looking forward to the extra space to reshuffle shelves again and get some more use out of my workshop. Got a dozen pints worth of enchilada sauce sitting in the fridge to can up tomorrow, and pulled out the edamame for pickling up tomorrow as well.
Picked off another large round of tomatoes, probably another 40 pounds. I think so far I might have picked about 100 pounds total. I've already got another round of Freds cored and in the fridge to set up a crock of HOT enchilada sauce. They are far more prone to cracking than the Romans are. I also have harvested enough of the "perfume" peppers to smoke off a smoker full, those are now cooling to go into the dehydrator overnight to get crispy dry. Got enough of the Roman Candles sitting that I'm going to run a smoker full of those tomorrow and finish with dehydrating. They are such a nice dense paste that they should take to smoking particularly well. And I'm almost out of smoked tomatoes, so it will be nice to have more.
I picked up my first eyeshadow in about 20 years, lol. And it's not even to use as makeup. It's for detailing mini's with. Much like regular paints do go into the "specialty" paints like nail polish does, and I've got a lot of nail polish.. Artists chalks, pastels, and oils only go so far in the color realms- eye shadow fills in the "specialty" dust colors.

8/31... last day of August, and Labor Day weekend on right now. Had a bat in the house this morning, the three of us shooed it off to the solarium and closed it off, and it tucked up cute and tuckered out in a corner. During the day while it snoozed, we got the old hot tub out with the help of Dave and Matt. Sooo much space open now. After the tub was out, I left the inside doors open again while I was cleaning, sorting, and doing up batches of canning. Ocelot of course cried all day long about losing her favorite laying around spot and the kitchen window being closed, poor thing.
Got a dozen pints of enchilada sauce canned up. And did up that 2.5 lb bag of edamame into 9 half pint jars- one didn't seal and went into the fridge. I have to say I'm over the moon happy with having the big water bath kettle outside for this. I'd like to pick up a couple more cinder blocks to help enclose the fire ring better rather than having to shift them, lol. And one of my trivets has proven to be the perfect size to put into the bottom of the canning kettle. Since the new rack I just picked up for 15 bucks was too big, I get to return it anyway, and I'm still good to go.

It's been pretty nice to really pull apart and sort out stuff in the solarium. The hot tub cramped out space that will now be better used. I've already shifted the workbench over those crucial 10 inches to center it under the above lighting and shelving, and have dropped the series of drawers into it's corner niche properly.

9/2: Happy Labor Day weekend... I'm depressed as hell that I didn't get to go to faire this year, not once- first time in 20+ years since that has happened. Too much other going on, too much I just don't blog about here. And this weekend, it does feel like the death of summer is already been upon us, and this is more like the first nice weekend of fall than the last one of summer.
Today, I hurt. The summer is badly catching up on me, the early season malaise, the June food poisoning, the bad fall in early July that barely healed up enough to be functional for the back to back work weeks.. then the catching up on harvesting, processing, cleaning, and autumn setting up ever since then. Yesterday was a blur of doing stuff... Today started out with watering everything, laundry, firing up the smoker and setting up another load of smoked roman candle tomatoes, swapping over the other regular batch of them in the dehydrator to finish up- ended up with a couple trays of not quite done fresh sandwiched between 3 trays of smoked and on low overnight in the solarium... another round of enchilada sauce in the crockpot, this one a Flaming Fred. It's 4 heavy quarts of Freds, topped of with a few roman flames, and done up extra spicy. I've pulled the 10 lb bag of tomatoes from the freezer for making sloppy joe sauce, but they won't be thawed enough to slip till tomorrow, so I'll have to toss them into the fridge overnight.
Then it was nice to sit and relax for a bit in the car to go out to mums to drop off a couple bots and pick up the black audi to bring home. Stopped at Sawyer- got a couple glorious HUGE heads of cauliflower for 3 bucks each for more lemony cauliflower, a nice round of hot banana and sweet banana peppers, and a goodly handful of hot finger peppers- all local grown. Hit Piggotts, and picked up a 5 dollar bag deal of a large amount of hot bananas that were fully ripe and oranging out, and a cram full of a bunch of jalapenos for dehydrating. I've realized I still have a goodly store of smoked hot and mild, mild dehydrated, and smoked flaming hot peppers, but pretty much out of some standard dehydrated hots, lol. All the banana peppers I'm going to pickle up, we are out of pickled peppers of all sorts too.
And kind of a special squee- picked my my first seed packets for next year, lol. a container zuke, some foxgloves, a particularly fragrant sweet pea, and Sungold cherry tomato. With Autumn on the there is already hope for spring. The first harvest has long past, and the second coming up. The uptick is that we are only about 60 days from Halloween!
So now spaghetti sauce is simmering for dinner, and it's time to start some water.. probably well past time to finally post this entry, lol.

Started May 9...

5/9: So, looks like everyone survived the freezes. Yes, freezes- last night hit it like the night before. But today I took off the frost cloths and the stuff down by the greenhouse looked perfect. Since overnight lows are going to be in the 40's now, we are good to go there. The poor Purple Hyacinth Bean- I covered it over days ago, and I fear it may have cooked a wee bit much when it was still sunny out. But it's still almost hanging in there when I took it's cloth out, so we shall see. The dill has loved the extra cover and sprouted great.
Today was another shuffle day- a lot of stuff moved back out of the greenhouse, so a lot of stuff could be moved from the solarium to the greenhouse. The lavender seedlings- there's a total of 84 of those at the moment, lol. Over this year they will be slowly transplanted up as needed to 3x3 then 5" pots to grow in for a year or two. Got 56 chamomiles, 36 zinnias, 18 each of fennel and dill plugs, some cauliflower, a couple more baskets of fuchsias, and all the 3x3 scented geraniums in the greenhouse too. A few days ago I transplanted 13 variegated sages from their 3x3 pots into gallon pots for growing out this year, and those got moved out to the porch. Those will be planted in next year along the front fenceline where I've tried and failed to get other stuff to start.
This year I'm going to pull out the few tulips from that area and lay in a deep smother bed and let it just die for a year before trying again. Next year I will set in the sages up that line. And I now have 16 Candy Lilly seedlings that are going to be grown in pots this year too- those will be nurtured along to plant in with the sage. Candy Lillies have spectacular blooms on 3' stalks that will look spectacular over the sage growth. So some 2018/19 plans there.
I did another good spraying with Neem & oils over the lasagna beds today- almost finished off this batch of mix doing it. Since I had a wee bit left, I started to spray on the corner of the kennel garden where there was the most recent squash bug activity... and noticed some delightful seedlings!! Last year sis and I had capped over the Beer Garden Radish as late in the season as I dared to help along what little blossoms and seed pods I saw at the time.. and when I moved the giant radish corpse today there was a nice handful of tiny radish plants!! I carefully dug them all up, and transplanted the best 21 in the batch- 7 per row, 3 rows. There were littler seedlings I scrapped too, but dang, those are big radishes and I only need so many, even with letting a few go to flower and make seed. And I do hope a few do that so I can collect some seed stock. I put them into half of last years brussels sprouts, on the garlic side. The brussels didn't respring for seed, and those radishes had to move anyway since that's the area the toothache plant is going in.. so hey, good deal. I got one strip left in that garden area, and I think I'm going to plant it in with "weird spinach and greens". Some of the other other plant species that aren't part of the classic plant rotation groups.

Tippy and friends..
The feeder action has become popular! A few weeks ago I started refilling the nyjer sock feeder, and picked up an new tube feeder since all of the old ones were broken. Menards has the sale on nyjer seed, Meijer better on wild seed. Started filling the tube feeder with cheap Meijer feed that had more small seed and less sunflower and corn. The finches, sparrows, tickmouses, chickadees came out. Dumped all the moth ridden bad seed down on the platform feeder- and that seemed to draw off to the greater extent some of the pest birds like grackles, starlings, and some of the red winged blackbirds- the grackles and starlings can't perch at the tube feeder, but the red wing blackbirds can if they are smaller and hunch up well. Then there was a red belly woodpecker that was showing up at the tube feeder and being rather entertaining because he was so huge and could hang in so well to snack at those holes and pegs meant to feed a bit smaller and upright perching feeders.
So I made up a lil batch of suet to try to feed Mr. Woodpecker. I had a lot of suet goodies stacked up that didn't get used so much this winter since it was so mild and birds had a lot of natural goodies. I made two suet cakes, poured into mushroom tubs....

For the fat..
1/2 cup of lard- I use a pound tub, and half of it was used up. I used half of what was left.
Equal amount of generic chunky peanut butter.
Nuked them up enough to make them soft and mixable, but not liquid.
In a 16 oz Daisy sour cream tub... about half fullof freeze dried mealworms, and topped off to about 2/3 full with some moth spoiled quinoa. Topped the tub off to the top with dehydrated apple bits.
Mixed in about 1 1/2 or so of Daisy tub of wild seed to that.. and poured it off to two mushroom tubs...
The woodpecker was last to show over the curiosity of the red wing blackbirds and sparrows.. and then I put out the Baltimore Oriole feed.. just in time too..
Because now every good bird is exploding like a colorful and musical muse into the spring backdrop of the tree blooming..
We have at least 2 females and 4 male Baltimore Orioles. And a nice treat- Rose Breasted Grosbeaks- we usually see a few of them here and there, but this time we have a full Gross! I'm not sure if it's the suet, or other goodies, but it's rare we see so many.
There's flocks of birds.. but then there's names for those flocks.. And how much fun is that?
Chicadees are banditry
Finches are Charm or trembling
Grosbeaks are gross
Sparrows are Host, quarrel, knot, flutter, crew


5/10: lots of indoor outdoor shuffling between the house and the porch... hardening off time has come since today is the last frost date. Transplanted up all the double furled blue columbines- ended up with 63 big, 12 little seedlings. Will be growing those out in the pots this year, or perhaps two depending on how slow they are to show first bloom. I'm hoping the mother plant was isolated enough not to have been cross pollinated with other colors, but only growing out will tell if that happened or not. If they are true, I will plant them in with the original mother. If not, elsewhere as I'm sure they would still be pretty.
Meijer had their mushrooms on sale, so over the last couple days I've dehydrated and picked up a heap of them! Which is nice, because we are always chowing those down, lol.

5/11: The birds are happy- we also have catbirds and cowbirds showing up- just a couple of each. They are new additions we had to take time to look up and identify. Orchard Orioles started showing up today too. Knock on wood, the larger ickier birds are staying away- the grackles, starlings, and bigger blackbirds. The new tube feeder has perches just short enough they can't really get on it, and the birds that are feeding aren't dropping much to make the ground enticing. Filling the platform feeder has helped with it as well.
Another round of shuffle indoors/outdoors for hardening off. Moved the asparagus seedlings and the blown small spring bulbs out to the garden porch. Moved all those transplanted columbines into the greenhouse.
Took the time today to start moving the raised beds. The biggest bed sort of fell apart while I was digging around inside and popping it up- a bit too much rot on one of the bottom side boards and collapse of a corner left me with one solid side and end panel, and some wood, lol. So it isn't being moved up this year obviously. I'm glad I did the dig out on it first, because I cleared that mound off first to start filling the two other beds. The smaller bed I made when I made the big one almost survived intact- it had a bottom end board that rotted out. No problem since I was planning on flipping the frames over so the good side was down anyway. I just put the short end in front and won't deep fill there just yet. The first frame I made held up best- a bit of chunk off on some bottom edges, but not too much- that one made the flip perfect.
Keep in mind I tend to build my beds straight on top of the lawn, I don't dig out the area first. 
So to start off with, I started cutting up that old rug we used to smother the stairs garden and has been sitting folded up for a while. 2 foot wide strips. Made 2 at first, one for the front and one for the fence edge. The front edge lines up perfect between the lasagna beds and the kennel beds, and the fence side tucked in perfect too. One box fit neatly front to back just barely covering the carpet strips. Another couple of 2 foot strips cut in half fit perfectly for the aisles between the boxes. Carpet makes for a darn fine kill blanket.
On the pole side of the beds, I laid in a new cardboard and straw smother layer to even out that curved mowing edge to butt up against the first box. I've let the back and front edges and the aisles sit as just carpet for the moment. I still got carpet to use and still need to smooth that edge for now.
In the beds themselves... laid down a thick layer of saved up MailMax newspapers.. and covered that with the dirt dug out from where the large raised bed was. It sure did make it easier that I had dug it up a lot this morning before I tried moving the box... after that all I had to do was shave that mound down to about ground level to put in my first dirt layer. I sprinkled in dirt as I was laying down paper to help hold it down in the wind.. then went back and filled and tamped down the edges and corners well with dirt, and made sure all newspaper was completely covered.. and that took up pretty much all the "extra" dirt. Raked up the mowed grass from the garden path to put a bit of green over the top- not much, but a nice fine layer of seed free green mulch. And that's as far as I got today, lol. It pooped me out, but felt good to get it done.
Tomorrow I will continue on it... I have three bags of "veggie soil", two bags of manure (both got to sweeten been planting, but I'll get more after this, I need the beds to mature before planting tomatoes), a big bag of used cocoa saved up- it isn't the most satisfying medium I've experimented with, but it will be good to add a big boost of organic fiber to the box. Since I'm breaking up the last of the bagged straw bales, I'll take a good bit of that and break it up for more fiber.. mix that stuff with the bags of stuff, plus the top clearing off of another of the old beds- the oldest one is pretty much crap now for soil removal.. I got a handful of small fertilizers that need using up and will go into the mix... and hopefully at the end of the fill I will be filled enough to plant in tomato goodness.
I should have enough straw to give the rest of the walkways around the beds a fill too. The front of the lasagne beds and it's far corner are sorry as hell, but the aisles there are looking good. This weekend sees the last of our low 40 overnights, so the big patch in the lasagne bed will be getting planted in soon with this years brassicas.
Where the raised bed were I'm going to clean up a bit then just lay it over with clear plastic to solarize for a while. I don't really need to do anything yet to that area other than the bed removal, and I don't want weeds to get in there yet, lol. I already need to work a lot down there, don't need to add to it while other stuff is going on if I have to.
In the kennel bed- the Helios radish is for sure popping up- the questionable on if it was viable or not Little Finger carrot has not popped. I think I'm starting to see the beets starting to sprout, but I'm not sure yet, lol- they are still tiny.
I still need to weed out and clean up the side of the greenhouse where the toothache plant will be planted in. And the Tree bed needs to be addressed and cleaned up before I can start thinking about putting in the beans, winter squash, and cuke seeds.......

But now it's time to get cleaned up for dinner.. pulled pork sandwiches tonight!

Last frost? How about freeze?

Wednesday the 10th is the last frost date- but tonight we have a freeze warning, and tomorrow night is only supposed to be a couple degrees warmer. Good thing I got a nice greenhouse and know how to use frost fabric to cap over my fruit bushes and trees- the potted ones have already gone through blossoming, so I don't want to lose any potential fruiting off them. All the rest of the plants that have been sitting out between the garage and the greenhouse have been pulled into the greenhouse- all the little pot stuff. I even pulled the flat of toothache plant from the greenhouse to the solarium, just to be on the safe side.

The first week of May has been pretty darn nice so far though. Pretty much all my indoor seed starting is over now, I only have a few more pots under plastic for sprouting at this point. Got a LOT of various seedlings spread out between the kitchen, solarium, and greenhouse. It has been outstandingly nice having a greenhouse for so much stuff!!
I have been starting to harden off the tomatoes and peppers a bit with a couple hours a day in the mini-greenhouse on the porch. By next weekend, that will shift along with most of the rest of what's inside right now. Overnight temps will start stabilizing into the upper 40's/lower 50's so I will be able to overnight plants in the greenhouse instead of inside.. and without using a half dozen mini greenhouses and stupid amounts of plant shuffling. So far this year I haven't had to put the one I've been using as a shelf for pots and trays to plant use yet. Two in the kitchen has worked out fine mixed with the solarium. I have one full rack in the greenhouse, and one half rack- that one had a structural fail and the lower section removed, lol. And one on the porch.

Stuff done.. I recently moved the black compost cans and started filling the first one with cleaning out the kitchen herb garden. Over the last couple days I finished filling the bins.. I've cleared out all three lasagna beds. I'm going to give the whole area a hardcore spraydown with homemade garden spray- a mixture of oils. Neem being the biggest component- it seriously effs up a lot of the bad stuff like aphids, mexican bean beetles, squash and stink bugs, tomato hornworm feeding habits- they don't like the smell and emergent worms avoid it, reproductive cycle of japanese beetles.. while still being almost harmless to a lot of the beneficial insects that aren't out yet, and bees that are coming out now. Rain is coming in later in the week, and will wash it in.. then we can turn over those beds and give them another neem and oils shot. The other oils I'm using for this are Tea Tree, Rosemary, Lavender, and Peppermint. A nice side bennie of these oils is a lot of critters don't like the strong scent and start to avoid the gardens early.
I also cleaned out two of the raised beds real well. They were pretty easy to hand clean out since they were mostly loamy sandy and been more cleaned out more recently. The original raised bed is pretty much a contents loss, so I just cleaned it up so the frame can be dug up. These are going to me moved up to the east of the utility pole and west of the kennel garden.

But had to hunker down for freeze alert, lol. Now everything is cleaned up and tucked in.. and time for enchiladas thanks to my sis whupping up yummy dinner. and I'm off to make some refries and guac :)

Seeds, and mousers, and rush time...

4/20- Happy Hemi Day!!!! And of course all the other holiday refrences, lol.

We are at the 3 week mark till last frost. Lots of shuffling of plants- just posted that one, lol, thought I had already posted it and it was still a draft.
All the tomatoes and peppers are repotted from their sproutlings at this point.

1 Pink Bumblebee cherry tomato
2 Speckled Roman tomato
3 Roman Candle tomato
8 Dwarf Wild Fred tomato
6 Urfa Beiber pepper
6 Albino Bullnose pepper
2 Aji Lemon pepper
2 Trinidad Pefume pepper
6 Tobago Seasoning pepper
8 Sweet Pickle pepper

Pricked out a bunch of lavenders and coleus as well. And started up a large round of various herbs and flower seeds. A 72 cell tray of mostly the Pinetree container flowers, cauliflower, and a giant red armanath in 9 cell packs. Another tray of 3x3 pots full of various herbs and a lot of zinnias. And a half tray of 6 cells 50/50 planted with dill and bronze fennel. We will eat the hell out of the dill, but everyone universally loathes fennel here. I use a bit of seed in some seasonings and picklings.. otherwise fennel is an awesome landscaping fern for annual action and is really beloved by beneficial insects. So even if we hate eating it, it's nasty black licorice action is really good for the garden and well worth planting.

And mousers.. my Nova boy. I spotted a wee mouse in the solarium, and called my sis over.. it was cute as hell, and we both said awwwwwww over it's wee cute goodness. Then immediately were saying, "Where's Nova?" Well, he was snoozing in mom's room. Sis scooped him up and we released him where the mouse was.. told him to earn his keep. Within two minutes he was at the kitchen window, meowing around a mouthful of wee mouse :) Of course I gushed and gave him catnip and treats.. and promptly swept up wee mouse and tossed his corpse outside, lol. And now the cats get wet food tonight too.... my good hunter tiggy.

Random house stuff... The power company stopped by yesterday. I went out to see what they were up to and turned out they were replacing the power pole behind the pole barn today, and clearing the line all the way up the fence to the barn in back. The power was out for about three hours this morning, but all is well now.

And though we set up with well guy.. it's kind of falling through. I set up appointment, and yesterday he contacted me and said he would send me email with pricing.. and stop out today or otherwise contact me today.. and nothing. Kind of bummed and unhappy about this. 

4/22: a spectacular Saturday! Upper 50's and sunny- last below 40 night predicted tonight! Got outside and did a bit of a tour of the yard- the power guys left that branch- partly blocking the driveway.. and when they left, they drove around it and extra ganked the ganked spot in the driveway. Sai... Lopped off the branches enough to make the driveway clear, will need to go in with a bigger saw for the rest of it. And look into getting some asphalt patch- that spot is super dipped badly now. The new pole looks good though, lol.
Got the first weeding of the herb garden done- I will seriously need to trim back the Rue this year, it's getting pretty weedy. The oreganos overwintered well, and I got more to put into that area. The Marjoram kind of survived, and I got more of those to plant in as well. Savory is looking good and needs a trim, so do the sages. King Tarragon is already bushy and the thymes are looking nice under their leaf mulch. And cleaned up the kale bed, that didn't require much. I used one of the compost trash cans to dump all the weedy grassy leafy rooty crap in to cook for a bit- it's out by the kale garden for the moment. The other bin is going out to the lasagna bed area. Take in all those weedy scraps from that area. I'm not going to use these bins for food scraps at the moment, just the weedy bits.
Sprayed down the straw beds with a mix of neem oil and a few essential oils. Saw a bug while cleaning up that I wasn't sure if it was a squash or stink bug.. but that means I should start spraying now for a couple weeks while they are emerging.  I'm being a bit pre-emptive about it this year. Neem is safe for food plants, and if I keep doing this every week or with the rains or so for the next few weeks before I start seriously planting in my beans and squashes... it should help. I'm also going to be covering the actual squash and bean bed at first while the bugs are out to help as well.
Made the plans to start moving raised bed frames up closer to the house. Will be starting out with the 4x6 box and move on from there. Need to lay out the smother bed surround for the new bed spot.. and figure out what I want to do with the space I'm vacating by pulling those boxes out....
It's time for another big cleanup of that area. No more compost, that's all cleared out. Since a lot of bulbs are already naturalizing in there.. I think I'm going to just keep continuing down the fence line where the current raised beds are. The area is kind of almost clean enough for it, and I would rather get in a bit more set it and forget action down there.  And I do have several pots of various bulbs that have been overwintering and are flushing out right now
I also need to clean up the front border bed- I got a few pots of daffodils I want to put in down there now that the ones already there are blooming.

April is blooming!

4/7: Lots of growing going on! Seedlings are popping up and getting transplanted on schedule. A lot of peppers, some flowers and herbs. Tomatoes are just starting to really pop. The toothache plants are stunning- I might actually need to do another potting up before they can go outside they are getting so big. And that's a good thing, I want a big healthy crop this year since last years failed and we are now out of it. I'd like to get a double crop actually, and plan another regular seed round in the next seed starting round. And this one is one of the biggies because there's all those bedding flowers and brassicas to start up.
The rounds of garlic sprouts I've been doing since December have been awesome. Every couple weeks I start a bin, and at this point I start a new one when I pull an old one. I really do need to get out on the back 40 and figure out where I'm going to plunk in the mother beds back there. I got a few bushes and trees to move soon too that are still in the greenhouse right now.
And lol, I really need to check on the greenhouse.. herm... Been rather too busy for the last few days with some family stuff. There are some changes going on.
Anywho, it's almost getting warm enough with overnight temps that I can move the asparagus out to the greenhouse- and I still have all 60 of them that I originally seeded. Using the rock wool cubes was rather nice for this, but kind of overkill in a lot of ways. Much more useful for just cuttings. Potted up another 15 yellow mum cuttings today too, just a few more left in their cubes. The mother mum is in the midst of it's current bloom flush, and it is rather lovely. Almost time to start deadheading again. The first round of coral mum cuttings is still chugging along, and almost time to take another round of these and the first round of white cuttings. My one little cutting tip of the glorious huge rust coleus has seemed to survived the cutting and is actually sprouting up a bit! Still no roots sticking out, but hey, I'll take it.
All of the scented pelargonium made it through the winter- and all the spring cuttings I took are doing rather well in the low light levels of Eastern exposure in the office. The lemon and lime trees are getting weirdly grown out, and I think I might need to get some expert pruning advice. The strange Rex Begonia? monster plant is still limping along, poor thing.

On the grow schedule... December is finally closed out- everything has either died back or moved on, like the toothache plant. Still a lot of open January plantings- most of these needed the cold strat in the solarium, and a lot has not popped yet, mostly various berry and some of the heartier flowers. The columbine has really done well- and the double furl blue extra well so far. Super excited about that. February is closed out, all seeds either null or moved on. March is still wide open, and April starts up tomorrow.

In some exciting house news.. finally able to call in a well service and got an appointment set up! After so long of not having the "just in case" amount of funds saved up.. and after last summers attempt to get someone in and getting blown off twice... it's time to move on from trying with the really local guy. I hit a big local company up this time that has all it's license and insurance going on, and early. I had hoped to have that one done last summer and off the list, but I think I started too late in the season. But now we can afford to call in the big guys.. a difference a few months can make in life around here, lol. The well stuff really had to come first- the plumbing guys kind of didn't want to tinker around with much before that was done, understandably enough. After the well stuff is settled, we will be able to get to some other plumbing needs, yay!! We got some other stuff on the slate for this year too.. but with some of the recent news about some of the changes and coming around here.. being cautious with what comes next.

4/16: Was out of town on a conference most of the week. Gov training stuff- it was mind blowing, overwhelming, underwhelming, informative, interesting, boring, educational, chock full of a lot of stuff.. and wow, I was glad to be home, lol. Had an adventure drive on the way home, took a lot of side highways and byways twisting around through the small lakes region, and that was very cool.
Glorious day Friday, did a lot of puttering around and catching up.. stuff sprouted and moved things indoors to greenhouse or solarium, solarium to greenhouse or outside, and greenhouse to outside sorts of things. The greenhouse has been standing up outstandingly well, despite a few nasty weather spells. Had to cut in a few drainage holes in plastic here and there to release water.. but then most of that drip off water has been keeping the greenhouse moist enough that we haven't been needing to water inside the greenhouse except a couple trays of small pots up on racks.
Daffodils, hyacinths, grape hyacinths, some spring blooming trees, forsythias, and the NY-9 plum are in full bloom. The magnolia was in full juicy fuzzy bud when I got home on Thursday afternoon.. today the whole tree is in full popping out, it's open flush will start in a day or two. Mild winter and spring indeed- this flush happened first weekend in May of 2013. Aquilegia, snapdragons, lilac, and lillies are all sprouting up in the FOH garden. Spring chives were flush enough to make 4 pounds of chive butter for the freezer- I snagged on the back and hill segments over the winter, so those were a bit sorrier and older, but the spring flush in the very front yard was plush as hell. 
The Japanese Maple I rescued for a few bucks last summer from work in now a super plush happy tree worth a few times more than what I bought it for. It went from a sad double overseason in a one gallon pot languishing amongst a sea of other "nursery" plants on the back skids. Now it's a healthy 4 gallon pot tree ready to grow till 2018 spring before I need to repot or put into the ground. I gave it grow last summer when I repotted it to it's current pot, and sheltered it from solarium overwinter to greenhouse a few weeks ago. It will be a couple weeks yet till I harden it off from the greenhouse so it can be moved to the front porch area for the summer. It needs a little trimming to bonsai it up a bit to keep it container form. I'm still not sure where it will be going once 2019 comes and I put it into the ground. I know it will go somewhere into the very front yard, just not sure where yet.. Depends on how this years stuff goes, lol.. 
And on that.. The Prince Holly suffered during the winter. On the wrong corner of the greenhouse and not enough water led to a lot of dieback. He's in a bucket on the greenhouse porch now to be a bit more protected and watered for a bit like his Princess is. But both the hollies will be getting planted in down on the easement drive side of the south segment of the far front.  I have pots of daffodil and other bulbs to work into the front border- and been taking tons of mum cuttings. I have enough yellow mums, and probably enough coral. I just started taking white cuttings off those overwintered mothers.

Yay seedlings!!

There's bulbs, trees, and bushes a sprouting in the greenhouse.. and in a few days more plants from the solarium will be shuffled out. Small potted sage, rosemary, oregano, thyme, and marjoram. Gallon pots of lavender, and a handful of landscaping plants- including a couple bergenia starting to put up buds- they look a lot like asparagus tips right now. A few more pots of bulbs ready to go out. I'm still holding back a couple of them because they are still doing quite well and the zinnias planted with them look like they are ready to start budding up for some early spring blooms.


36 asparagus seedlings have been repotted and after a few days for potential transplant shock, have been moved out to the solarium. And nicely enough, I have a bunch of seedlings popping up out there too. Mostly columbines, and some snapdragons, but hey, happy enought about that much. I'm especially pleased that all six pots of the double furled blue have popped up- I've been nurturing that plant along for years to get it to produce a robust seed crop, so I'm extra happy that the seedlings look like they have a good germination rate. I also have enough seed left over to sow in to the row with the plants. I plan on keeping them separate like they are now, and just keep planting them back in outside that office window.
The big hunk of seed of toothache plant has come along enough now that today I transplanted up 72 of them into their own cells and got them on the rack in the kitchen, and started another box of sprouting garlic. At this point I just started box 4 and box 1 that I planted at the end of December is starting to spend itself out and produce less good greens. Starting a box every 3 weeks or so seems to be working well, and looks like 4 box rotation will work out too.
With how nicely and well the garlic greens and the microgreens were, along with a few herbs- I think we probably will try to do some indoor growing of those all summer this year- an indoor kitchen garden, lol.
A couple of the peppers are starting to pop up- Aji Lemon and Tobago Seasoning.

Mums. Last winter I picked up a pair of half gallon pots of coral colored on clearance for a couple bucks each. They were extra bonus because they came in two pots- a plain one inside a nicer decorative one. Those overwintered in the solarium uncut till just a few weeks ago. Then I trimmed off all the dead blooms and old stalks to the new green fuzz. Those came inside today because they are at the 4 inch or so flush. A trio of white mums in 4 inch pots survived the winter and got brought inside today too. I want them to start flushing out to their 6-8" stage so I can start pinching them for cuttings. I picked up a bright and sunny yellow half gallon one randomly at a grocery store in January. It was in full bloom and has now had that flush die back. I've been keeping up on the trimming and now I have a half dozen cuttings started and took another 16 today. I've now fully trimmed down that mum to it's new flush that is just starting to want to peek out with some fresh blooms.

I had one last sad rust coleus struggling along all winter, and I finally had to admit it's original root and stalk were truly dying and I needed to just cut the live tip off and treat it like a cutting too and hope for the best. On the bright side, it is a nice bushy tip that could grow up quite lovely again.

All five poinsettias are alive and starting to do their thing after their die off. It's kind of neat watching them start to pop back. After a bit, those will get cut back to start over again too. And the hardy kiwi vine is starting to flush out with the most adorable rabbit ears of soft green- it's gonna kill me to trim the tops off.

The fuschias. The full whites have done beautifully in their mother pot all winter, and will be ready to start taking cuttings on soon. The cherry and white mother is doing ok, it needed a serious trimback and is just starting to leaf out again. The cherry and purple cuttings tray has done nicely over the winter and will need to be potted up in bigger pots soon. The two cuttings trays of the whites and cherry and whites suffered, and likely will not spring back.

Three large pots of lemon balm are seriously plush and springing. Large pots of rosemary are going well and the thymes are flush enough that I've started taking trimmings for cooking. The lemon verbenas are starting to crack out of their winter die off too.

All the pots of pelargoniums have flourished overwinter in the solarium. I have a lot of cutting to do on the citronella scented, and the rose scented seriously needs some cuttings taken too. I'm thinking there might be some serious yard plantings of these babies this spring. 

And tonight for dinner is homemade flatbread pizzas :)

The new year to begin...

So much has and hasn't happened this year. I can't sum it all up. There have been a few joys, and many sorrows.. and a strange slippage of time.
Christmas was very nice.... there is still quite a bit of Nightvale still up, in the form of winter village. Yes, I've been taking pics, will post them sooner or later.  And who knows? Perhaps Fortunes Turning will roll out of it's sleepy winter colors soon enough :) 2016 has been quite the year in a lot of ways, here at Growbox Hill, in our area, state, nation.. and around the world.

Now comes the new year. And I am ready to get on with that... 

Kind of glad the holidays are over- now I can start screwing up my kitchen with mini greenouses, lol.
The first one went up today, and already has large pots of little gem and gourmet mix lettuces, toothache plant, sprouting garlic, and an herb garden of parsley, dill, and basil.
It's still far too early to start anything for the outdoor gardens other than some seeds that I need to get out for their cold treatment... And pretty much all the other edible plants in the house are in their hiatus except the hardy herbs... By gosh it's nice to be able to start with some fresh edibles indoors again. Within just a few short weeks we will be snacking on nice fresh grown produce again. With the way garlic sprouts usually shoot up, it might be quite soon.. yum.

I do have some interesting seeds that I need to get out for winterizing too. Bearberry, serviceberry,  thimbleberry, and red and white currants. Red and whites are legal here, but black currants are a no-no in my area. However, josta berry is ok, and I have a couple of those in pots overwintering outside. I have a bunch of stuff in that straw bale box actually. A couple goji berries, some latham raspberries, a couple plum trees, an ornamental elderberry and a few random pots of flowers that needed the extra shelter. And I have seven potted Pixwell gooseberries that I saved before they went to the garbage- since they were considered the "purple" kind instead of the preferred "deep blushing green" kind, no one wanted them, and since they had been there a second season, they were going to be tossed when the snow flew this year.
I have a nice array of columbine seed to set up too- I was extra pleased this year that the extra spectacular lone one outside Marcs office yielded up goodly seed. I've been watching and coaxing and keeping that one isolated pretty much since we moved in. I also have heaps of other good flower seeds too. Time has come to shake out the first packet of poppy seeds over Pooks grave. I was told by several gardeners that if I could, wait till after the first snow and melt, and lay in the first round before the second snow. And repeat with the next melt off and snow in if possible. Keep going till I was out of seed or when sprouts looked like they were popping up in the spring. Well, I figured that time would have started weeks ago, lol.

So the new 2017 grow schedule spreadsheet is fully set up and already getting entries. We have a vault of somewhere between 450-500 seeds to start the season with. The tally on the sheet is 498, but I have a lot of spaces between several categories of seeds so..

I have some wind up notes to make with the 2016 preserving tally. That will come out sometime next week. But it was a pretty slim year. The garden yielded little- but then so did our area in general, it was a bad garden year. It wasn't just a lot of personal stuff going on, the weather didn't play nice either.
But important things to note.. boy oh boy do we miss pickled peppers. We are quite spoiled on homegrown and made pickled banana peppers, cherry bombs, pepperonchini, and jalapenos. Tomato stocks are missed too.

Anywho.. yay gardening.

Holloween is FUCKING ON!!!

Friday, August 19. So like always.... lagging around.

Went out an about shopping in SH.. Menards for a propane tank.. and guess what? THEY ARE PUTTING OUT HALLOWEEN!!!! SQUEEEEE!!!!
Guess who picked up a tiny freestanding birdhouse for ghosts, and a creepy monster standing town square clock? This girl! Three bucks each, ouch. But I pretty much totally missed any smalls last year due to putting off to wait till sales, then missing it.
I've hit the amount of buildings point that I really wasn't interested in any buildings at all. I've almost got a couple too many honestly, and might be culling out a "poorer christmas" or two to set aside for next year to give me extra time.
I'll hit Michaels soon to see what they got for village shit this year too.

I'm far more interested in now that I legitimately have Halloween on- hey man, candy in the aisles counts.. anywho. I have a lot of projects that I want to work on.
150 tiny brains I picked up at GenCon to turn into various stuff like farmers brain patches, a brain tree, and some fun jewelry.
A lot of random stuff, like a bunch of presents from Christmas that I now get to bust out with and touch up for evil farming :)
A few buildings.. and other random detail stuff.
And now that I have a bunch of the materials saved up... I want to take a crack at some set building, and start a vertical cavern system for the fireplace corner.

So yeah, Menards, Meijer, Hardings, and Rite Aid.. vape shop, bank and auto store too. Had to get it done before evening cuz sis is borrowing the car to get to work this weekend- her truck is puking oil like mad and needs repair.

Sat, August 20.
Had severe storm action blow in mid-morning, and kind of effectively put a hold on a lot of preserving plans till after one in the afternoon. I wasn't going to start firing up a canning kettle unless I knew darn well I could keep it going till the canning was done. And a dozen pint jars of Brussels sprouts got done, along with two quart jars of fridge zesty lime zucchini spears. Got the two cases of beets and 8jars of jalapeno slices from before GenCon de-ringed, labeled, boxed, and shelved. Sure feels damn good to actually have canned goods back on the shelf again. I have to get into the spare bedroom and really clean up previous stock and take a tally of what we got. I know we still have some jellies and jams, and a bunch of sauces, especially enchilada sauces. And it's a good thing we had such a boom tomato year last year that I felt good with making up two years worth of those products- because this summers tomato crop is pretty much null- been too damn dry to keep up with most of the summer, and some late planting really stunted the shit out of everything.
I do have a couple of volunteer white tomatoes from last year going strong in the kennel beds. I've decided to support them as much as possible so I can at least try to get one good batch of white tomatoes set aside for my brother.
In general, haven't been out in the garden in about two weeks. Got in a couple good days of weeding right after GenCon, on the 9th and 10th- but overpushed it in light of my plauge- and we have had three solid days of good rain in the days between.. just enough that I was only doing up some mandatory and much needed mowing. And stringing up clothesline and getting a lot of wash done.

Heh, we have been without a dryer for a couple weeks now. I managed to break the knob on the dryer- cracked it so it spun out of round. Glued and clamped knob. Then the back panel that has to hold the knob falls out while trying to put knob back on. Well fuck.
We have mom and sisters dryer sitting down in the pole barn, so we can swap out- but sheesh, it's been bloody hell trying to get that done. We need the dolly.. and I finally go to fix the tires, and discover that they are tubeless, and I picked up those innertubes long ago for no reason, and I don't have any tire sealant- need another trip to the auto store.

Anywho.. I picked up a nice package of top round steak slices- not enough to make rouladen, sadly. So I did it up kind of swiss steak style with a pound and a half of fresh mushrooms that were on clearance, some baby carrots, and mashed potatoes. Yum.

Sunday, August 21:

Summer has broken. The earliest of Autumnal cools blew in overnight. I don't think we will see any more summer heat this season honestly. The Dog Days are over. Weather is predicting a particularly hard cold winter this year for us. I can't help but think of last year Labor Day Weekend and Argent passing away and summer broke when he did. I kind of have to wonder if I will always think about the first breaking of summer this way.
But no melancholy like that today.

Got a half dozen pints of sweet and sour pickled red onions done. Three trays of hot banana pepper slices dehydrating- I actually picked those up a couple weeks ago for canning, but other shit happened, and they ripened on the counter in the solarium instead. Now they are past prime for pickling, but perfect for dehydrating. Seven trays of mushrooms on the dehydrator- they too are past their perfection for pickling already from the day I bought them, but perfect for drying. Shucked 8 ears of corn, 4/buck, and drying- made stock from the cobs, as usual. It's still cooling, so I don't know final yield yet.

And hey... been cooking a LOT out in the solarium this summer. Using the nesco as a steam oven, canning and cooking over the electric hotplate and coleman stove.. and I really, really love it.  So much so that I have kind of decided to do this much more year round. In the winter months I can do canning and it would be a welcome help to warm the solarium while still leaving the kitchen free for other cooking.
I'm also now much more comfortable with being not chained to the kitchen directly for use this way. I'm ready for firing up really big burners- AKA the darkstars, in a more outdoor kitchen situation.
I have noted that for outdoor kitchen action, I really need to pick up a few 5 gallon water jugs for potable water. The outdoor spigot on that side still isn't working for sink action. And I just want to use more potable water than the spigot for some of the cooking action.
I'm also much more comfortable now with small batch hotplate canning. When sales hit and it is cold, I will have no problem picking up a few more pounds and cranking out winter goods.

Something tells me that this winter will be buckling down for more than just the cold... I feel kind of instinctively  prompted to extra store up now. It might just be fearful of me.. but I don't think a bit of an extra stock up now to prepare for the coming winter is a bad idea.
Perhaps it's because I've been closely reading over last years preservation tallies and feel the need to catch up too.


Dryer still broken- but the day was cooler and winds were crisply clipping along. So a load of house linens, bed linens washed and line dried. Must fix the line, lol. It's cheap cotton, and even with my poor props, it needs tightening up and I need to cut a couple of those long bits of wood for some proper clothesline props. I strung up a secondary line in another more discreet side yard for more delicate outdoor drying, as well as a three pole rack in the solarium.

I've now dedicated myself to being out at, and working at Bristol for the last two weekends. You know it I'm excited about this. It should be good times, and good friends, and hopefully not too much drama.. cuz, lol, you know there is always at least some drama out at faire. And holy crap, as always, figuring out five days worth of garb is a PITA- especially now that I have an expanded yesteryear collection to choose from.

Cleared off the workbench today while cooking in the solarium.

And LAMO.. it's September 12..
Nightvale county has been waking up since the day after Labor Day. Picked up a shitton of produce to start firing up. Dryer still broken. Bristol was frigging awesome.  Started taking cuttings off the hibiscuses and fuchsias today. Made a couple gallons of ham stock. Taco night for dinner. It's sis's b-day, and I couldn't think of a better dinner request :)