happy heart but sore hands and back

Checked the rain gauge Thursday morning and we got 4” of rain last Wednesday but Thursday the sun was shining and the wind was howling and the ground was littered with pecans, this after I thought the harvest was dwindling. I might have some to sell after all. I still haven't picked them all up.

I finished filling the anole with 10 petal anemone mold, all the tedious noodling of crushed glass into tiny spaces building it up and shoring it up is done and it and the second hummingbird mold are in the kiln. I have one more mold waiting, the 3^rd of the large Drowned Feathers, but it can wait. I started on the finish work yesterday and got the edge work done on the two pieces I want stands made for if Chuck will ever work me in. Time is getting short before our holiday open house weekends with the glass blowers. This will be the 20^th year and maybe the last. It's a lot of work and age is catching up with one half of their team.

I think I'll work out in the yard today continuing to clear the daylily flower bed. I have two large plants that need to go in the ground because they have outgrown their pots and I'd like to get them settled in before the cold weather stays. Of course, if we have a hard winter they will both freeze to the ground but hopefully will come back.

Many hours later...

The ground is still too wet at the shadier end of this particular flower bed for the digging up of dewberry, evening primrose, and other assorted unwanted stuff after our 4” of rain last Wednesday but I got the pink angel trumpet planted in there anyway. 

Before I could plant the porterweed at the other end where it was perhaps not the perfect dryness but good enough, I had to dig out about 16 square feet of black and blue salvia which is invasive and forms big nodules on it's roots and is just taking over that end of the flowerbed. 

Minnie helped me dig, just not in the right spot

It's all got to come out but today I just took out enough to accomplish my goal. But even before I did all that, I went around with my Dawn dish detergent orange oil soapy water and liberally doused all the fire ants, including the ones that had taken up residence in the porterweed pot. After I got the two plants in the ground and gathered up all the plant trash and trundled it over to the burn pile at the shop in the wheelbarrow, I made a half hearted attempt to get the rest of the pecans and then I took the dog for her (very short) walk and then took a shower. Needless to say, I'm bushed but it was a beautiful day and I enjoyed being outside.

Tomorrow I'll be back over at the shop continuing the finish work on the four castings as it's supposed to be another rainy day.

one woman, one shovel, two yards of dirt

My stab at model making lasted one day. I finally got my yard of the 'magic' caney soil on Sunday and I've been shoveling dirt every day since then.

I drove to the pit and watched as the guy scraped it off the surface, the 'surface' being 8' to 10' below the actual surface. This dirt is reddish blond unlike the expensive vegetable mix from last year, and has no organic material in it at all. Even so, the guy said I shouldn't have to add anything to it. I'm a bit skeptical though. When I got back and started shoveling it out into the raised bed I found that his idea of 'fluffy' is not the same as mine. While it most of it was crumbly, it was also very cloddy and had clay in it. So while I was shoveling I would toss out the clods if I couldn't crumble them and the clay and then when I finally emptied the truck I used the heavy rake to comb out more clods from the raised bed.

I dumped the clods and clay in a sinkhole by the fence that's been developing for the last year or so.

I finally got it all shoveled out Tuesday and it wasn't enough to fill the bed, barely 2/3s, which I knew because I had calculated I would need 1.6 yards and being the skeptic that I am, I decided to go get another yard of the expensive vegetable mix that burned everything I planted last spring. So that's what I did Tuesday afternoon. I figure if it's as hot as last year (though the lady said this was a little different mix and no they didn't have any complaints last year), mixing it in with the caney soil should make it OK.

Back to square one.

A little more than half the second yard and the new bed is finally ready to plant. I mixed the two dirts together and then topped it off with the new dirt as it had settled some during the turning. The rest will go in the big raised bed to top it off and in the other around the potatoes which are coming up but not even a fourth of what I planted.

hands in the dirt

I like to dig. It's one of my favorite parts of gardening. I like to get my hands in the dirt, get out the weeds and crumble the clods, mix in mulch. There's nothing more satisfying than preparing a flower or garden bed, just the pristine dirt at the end waiting to sustain. It's not just plants the dirt sustains. When we get our hands in the dirt we boost our immune system, we breathe in those happy making microbes, we commune with nature, we connect with our roots so to speak.

The dirt was perfect for digging. Not too wet, not too dry, crumbled easily. The day was perfect for digging. Cool, warm in the sun, low humidity with intermittent clouds. So that's what I did. It was my one Saturday a month off, my wild card day so I decided the wait was over and I tackled the end of the little garden in the Big Backyard that had poppies and evening primrose last spring and has been basically abandoned since then. Some of that, a lot of that, was due to, you know, summer. I'd been watching the nut grass slowly take over until one day it had completely colonized that end. So I've been waiting for the weather to cool down enough and Saturday was the day and Sunday as well.

I got all the nut grass out, rousted this spider out. She scurried off and buried herself in the dirt again. 

Shooed away many a toad,

and then reset the concrete blocks that line it which, having been set originally at different times, were not uniform. Now they are which added several inches to the width. Except for the end which I didn't get to. The day ran out and my hands had had enough as well. I'll just square it off next weekend and get it filled with dirt so I can get lettuce and arugula and spinach planted for the fall and winter. Carrots may go over in one of the raised beds. Eventually, hopefully, this fall, I'll get the end rounded out to match what I did this spring on the other end and then foolishly planted the three little banana trees about two feet away which have thrived on the edge of the drain field and the full sun and are now only inches away from the border. You might remember I started this bed as a 4' x 4' for strawberries back in 2011. It's grown considerably since then.

I'd spend the next several days outside if I could but alas, it's Monday and I have to get to work. I'm on the last stencil. Once I get that done, my work on the job is done besides consulting as it gets etched and then cleaning and sealing the finished panels but the bulk of my time will be freed up to work on other things like...yard work and flower beds or new waxes or cold work on the finished castings or housework.

Well, maybe not housework.

two tests

I've always said I was about as white as it gets (something I take no particular pride in) and now it seems I was right. My sister sent away for one of those DNA tests to see where we originated. The results came back 100% northern and western European.

57% England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland

32% Germany, France

8% Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden)

2% European Jewish (Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Israel)

1% Finland

So, boring, and no great surprise as all the family lines that my sister, who is into genealogy, has pushed back (as far back as the 900s in Denmark in one line) have been from those very countries (with the exception of the last 3%). So the few family uncorroborated stories of some Native American in the mix are just that, stories, and my guess is that the European Jewish is from the German heritage and the Scandinavia is from Vikings that settled in England et al. Interesting that they separated Finland from the rest of Scandinavia.

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The second test is for the soil that I bought. I spent $140 on 4 yards of vegetable mix dirt from a reputable dirt yard and everything I plant in those raised beds, dies, or if it doesn't outright die, it turns yellow and does not grow and drops it's leaves. I thought the tomatoes and peppers and squash and japanese eggplant were nipped and stunted by the late frost we had soon after I planted but the new tomatoes and squash are faring no better. So I went down to the extension office yesterday and picked up some soil sample bags and will send them off to A&M for analysis. I expect that it will show that the dirt is too 'hot' and that the compost hasn't cured properly yet. Hopefully it will mellow out for the fall garden.