Mid July Weather Mayhem

Before, May 2 2013

Well, not actual mayhem, but pretty far from what I am used to. This week and last we have had rain and rain and rain. Mainland Massachusetts has received crazy amounts of rain and severe storms. Here on Cape Cod we have not had that much, but enough so that I have only watered once for just a little while. I had planted some kale seed and wanted to improve the chances of germination, otherwise I would have let well enough alone. The Oklahoma July I was used to consisted of heat, and more heat, sometimes with no measurable rain at all. It's not nearly so hot here, but the humidity is off the charts. It actually makes my rather straight hair bushy and wavy.

After, July 11, 2013

We have as much lettuce as we and our friends can eat. I have a nice snack of snap peas everyday and plenty still make it into the house. Carrots are making, but we are still a good month out from harvest. Haricots Verts are nearly ready, and purple  bush beans will hit the menu before the weekend is over. So far our herbs are keeping up with our requirements. This is saying a lot because I love parsley.  No tomatoes yet. I am getting some blossom drop on my Beefsteak, so will try a little fertilizer, although there is plenty of compost and cow manure in Tomato Land. It may be the damp conditions and warmish nights are working against me. Lemon Girl has set a few, but they are smallish still, and the cherry tomato plant has one spray of fruit and one of flowers. I know my garden is generally a little behind some others I have seen

around here, so I am being patient. Cucumbers are setting fruit well. All things being equal we should be overrun with cukes in a few weeks. My basil still sucks. I am going to move some from the patio to the garden as soon as we have the second set of leaves to see if they will do better there.  The before and after pictures are May 2 and July 11 of this year. Quite a difference, I'd say!

 We are doing great for pollinators, which I was a little concerned about. I don't see many of Jill's honey bees, but we have loads of bumble bees, solitary bees, and tiny wasps. I think having so many flowers surrounding the bed has helped attract our insects. Oddly enough, the only flower that seems not to be attracting bees like crazy is Monarda (bee balm).

Bumble bee on cucumber blossom waiting for its wings to dry

Tonight we are going to see Melissa Etheridge at the Cape Cod Melody Tent. It's a terrific venue - rotating stage in a tent: a nice smaller venue. I don't care for big concerts at all. The acoustics are seldom good enough to enjoy the music or even make out the lyrics, and I find big crowds tiring. A smaller venue is exponentially better for me. The Melody Tent gets a lot of great acts, but we are limiting ourselves to one per season. We'll be camping in Ossipee New Hampshire the last week of this month, so I think our summer is shaping up to have plenty of entertainment, if not fine weather and beach days.

They are always looking at me hoping for treats

This week I have four dogs.  Mitzi has moved here from my father-in-law's house, as his condition is deteriorating. We still have the Amazing Roxanne, of course, and two dogs visiting for a few days. Peyton Manning the Chihuahua is mixing it up with the rest of the pack, and Sparky is staying in the basement out of the traffic pattern, as befits his elderly (23yrs) state and poor state of health. We call Sparky Keith Richards after his advanced state of decrepitude and the sad state of his hair. I think having the extra dogs here is helping Mitzi settle in, as all the other dogs have stayed here before and know the routine. The best dog teacher is another dog. She is a barker, and coming from a pretty isolated house set far back from a quiet road to one on a rather busy street she needs to adjust to the activity level outside. The other dogs let her know when something is worth barking about. I take the three younger dogs out for a daily walk to get Mitzi used to the neighborhood and prevent squabbling. It's the high point in their day. Little Peyton does not know how to walk on a leash, which is a common failing with tiny dogs, but he is learning to stay on the left and not wrap himself around my legs. His leash is one of the retractable kind, which I find to be less than useless.

A Crafter's Bucket List

Matched set of Fish Hats

As a girl I learned the basics of knitting, crochet, embroidery, cooking (including jam!) and sewing. I also learned to lay asphalt tile (does anyone use it anymore?), "cut-in" paint, and float concrete. I learned some of the basics of gardening, at least the flowery kind. Although both of my grandfathers had big veggie gardens at various times I never learned anything about growing veggies. My paternal grandmother tried to teach me to tat, but I didn't get the hang of it. I learned these things in the 50's and 60's and thought I had a good overview of crafts. My Irish grandmother crocheted with pearl cotton and did needlepoint and I was pretty sure I did not want to do either of those.

Mailbox Garden Year Two Early Spring

Then came the Internet. I started out small. There was a time before Knitty when you could sail around the knitters' webring in one sitting. Bonne Marie Burns and Wendy Johnson were my heros. Now you really have to pick and choose. I don't get around to every crafty blog I like very often, but the inspiration to be found there is astonishing.

Crafts I have not yet tried but want to:

Tatting - maybe I could do it now.
Spinning - probably drop spindle, as a wheel is an investment
Fimo Clay - Buttons are my particular interest
Needle felting - I will try this on a holiday gift this year
Quilting - God help me, I'd like to try a crazy quilt

Laurel Closeup

Things I have done before but want to take up again:

Sewing is starting to look appealing again
Sourdough baking
Embroidery

Things I will never do but love to look at:

Quilling
Furniture building


There are a few little projects that I can't categorize. I made a little sign for my garden, and will be stenciling a line of poetry on a sheet of plywood as a piece of garden art. I have my plywood painted, but have to see if I have any stencils.  I want to make a little fairy door to tuck into the bottom of a tree for whimsey. I am on the lookout for a louvre door or shutter that I can turn into a magazine rack.

Too many possibilities!

No Idle Hands

Bird life at Bournes Pond

This week marks my yearly change from knitting for myself to knitting for gifts. I hate deadline knitting - the only way to avoid the rush is to start early. Last week I finished a baby gift for a member of my knitting group. This week I will finish the last of the "selfish" projects, a nice pair of plain socks for myself. I will not have these socks on my feet until fall, but by the time it is cool enough to wear them I will be deep into holiday knitting. I actually have yarn purchased and patterns chosen for most of my gift knitting. For the ones not yet queued up I will select from stash and my library of books and patterns. In a way, my christmas shopping is largely finished already!

This week I have a few days off in a row, with a couple of non-knitting projects planned. They will be garden decor items for the new veggie and sunny flower garden, and I think maybe Shana will enjoy doing them with me. I had thought to do them outside, but since paint and wood are involved I think maybe the forecast of all rain all the time all week is not going to suit us. We have had thunderstorms every day for a week. The temperatures have been cool, which has made the humidity less oppressive and the lettuce willing to last a little longer (although the basil is less happy about it and may have to be started over once the weather dries up a bit). This will not last. Temperatures are rising.  I am resorting to wearing shorts to work like the men. Jeans are out of the question for the duration, and some days even my khakis are just too hot to be thought of.

Today's project is a simple rhubarb syrup to add to lemonade (about even parts rhubarb, sugar and water, boiled down to a light syrup). I want to plant some rhubarb, but since it is a large and long lived plant I want to be sure we will enjoy using it before I devote a lot of space to it. I know I like rhubarb, having grown up with it, but Shana is not familiar with it. I want to ease her into the rhubarb love gently. I picked up a few stalks at Coonamessett Farm yesterday, just enough for my experiment. I did pop the remaining leaves with a bit of stem into the ground - we are having thunderstorms every day, so it is just possible it will grow for me. I'd love to have some around to add to an apple or pear pie, or to make some rhubarb applesauce.

Swan family life

Canning is in the near future at The Little House. If we get a decent yield from our cucumber plants Shana wants to make some pickles. She made her first batch a few years ago and they were very good. After my last jar of marmalade I think I will be making my own soon. I had not purchased any for many years. The most recent jar surprised me with how little peel and little flavor it had. It was not a bargain brand, and it just was not good enough. I don't think it would be too difficult to freeze up citrus peels until I have enough for a batch of good marmalade. I am also feeling a nostalgic craving for watermelon pickle, which is very easy to make. I am lucky enough to have been exposed to a fair amount of home canning and jam making when I was young. I know it is something we will be able to do, and do well.

All Green All the Time

My garden still occupies most of my free time. Too bad I have deadline knitting to finish, as I am not getting much of that done. Today is rainy, so I am hoping to knock that out - I need it for a baby shower tomorrow! The rainy weather does give a nice luxuriant look to my garden pictures if you are careful to ignore the fact that the lawn is getting shaggy. I am not so interested in grass.

We are harvesting lettuce, edible flowers, and sugar snap peas. I did not plant any shelling peas, as I have no intention of sitting around shelling them. Too much work for the payoff. We have enough growth on most of my herbs to harvest enough for our immediate needs, although the rosemary is not big enough to even think about. There is enough lettuce to share with our friends. I had to order epazote seeds again, in hopes that warmer temperatures may give me better germination. I added some chamomile to the pot where I am growing cucumbers because I heard it would improve the quality of my cukes. Since this is the first time I have grown any I am not sure I will be able to tell if they are improved or not. The beans have gotten over their early season sulk and ruinous chewing by some mystery creature. Both bush and pole beans are getting ready to bloom.

All  the flower plants I have purchased or transplanted are doing well (the Monarda and Four o' Clock maybe too well), but I think ants got most of the flower seeds. Next time I will start them in pots and transplant. I have tried mightily to get money plant to grow in one corner of the garden by transplanting seedlings from the corner where it arrived from my neighbor with discouraging results, but I think it has volunteered in a different corner of the same bed. Apparently it does not care for all day sun. I'll take it wherever it wants to grow. The gladiolas whose return I had not expected are getting monstrous, with lots of little offsets. I can't wait to see if the babies are the same color as the mamas. The flower part of the sunny garden is at the point where it is full, given the mature size of the plants, but looks a little bare at the moment. Some plants are not blooming yet, and all will be much bigger in a year or two. I actually do not have room for any more plants in any existing beds if all of the plants living there now survive.  Next year I will turn my attention to the improvement of the shrub border underplantings. That's a large enough space that it should take me several years to exhaust the possibilities. Then I will enlarge the island bed in the front of the yard. Then I will....who knows? There is no end to it!

The holly seedlings I got from Wanda may not survive. I removed one of the seedlings to replace with a nice variegated hydrangea from Inace's garden that was unhappy where it was growing, and did not see any activity on the roots. One of the  remaining two seedlings has developed a markedly green stem, so I have great hopes for it. If the one on the other end of the bed survives I will be content. Time will tell.


I think my volunteer fern is Onoclea Sensibilis, Sensitive Fern. It is spreading a little (apparently by rhizome, which gives me more evidence for the identification), so I assume it is happy where I planted it.  Shana questioned where I put it, but I let her know that plants will move around a bit to get to a more suitable spot. I planted it in the shadiest spot with the most leaf mold to give it the best chance to take, and it looks like it is moving in the direction of the place I want most to fill. Success! Searching around the Internet has called several ferns to my attention that I wish I had, so naturally I am now imagining where I can squeeze in more ferns. I will probably die of heartbreak of I cannot acquire a Criss-cross Fern.

Song of the Day

Our Wedding, originally uploaded by cinderellenk.

Doma is over. My wife and I can share in the rights, privledges, and protections of the Federal Government.

Our Friends and Neighbors

The borders of my yard are porous. Plants come in to live (or be ruthlessly removed), and animals come and go as they please. For a while a skunk was living under my shed. If he is there now we are keeping such different schedules that we are not disturbing each other. Four squirrels live in my yard against my will. They sit on the railing of my shed waiting for me to fill the bird feeders, and apparently spend the rest of their time burying acorns among my flowers which germinate into stubborn seedlings to pull out. This morning I surprised a chipmunk checking out the veggie patch.

I also have a lot of insect life. Although there is a beehive across the street I usually see wilder pollinators. Bumble bees, smaller bees and wasps, butterflies and helicopter moths visit at will. Insect predators follow: spiders and dragonflies wait for their chance.

I have a lot of birds visiting as well, and since it looks to have been a good reproductive season so far I am hoping to attract even more birds next year. I have seen baby blue jays, robins, cardinals and doves so far this year. I have seen pairs of orioles, house finches and goldfinches, downy and hairy woodpeckers, nuthatches, titmice, red winged blackbirds and a few different sparrows. This morning I saw a single catbird visiting. Of course we have grackles, cowbirds, and crows, fortunately not in huge numbers. These days I generally see the crows being chased away by smaller birds. The crows themselves chase away a red tailed hawk when it comes too close.

A Work in Progress

One of the things I liked most about our house is that the yard is rather large with a variety of exposures. I don't really have space for a number of grand garden "rooms", but within the bounds of a smaller garden I have few limits on what I can grow.

The limit I do have is budget.  Consequently I have had to start several projects with some very small steps. Fortunately as a child I filled my personal garden with cuttings and gifts from my grandparent's gardens. Along with my plans both simple and grandiose for my current spaces I have experience with filling up a garden with free plants.  I want to replicate in one corner a luxurious display of hostas and hydrangeas. Instead of mature shrubs and plants I have started with offsets from my late mother-in-law's garden and divisions from my own hostas supplemented by a very few purchased hostas of rather small sizes. It is in its second summer now, and may look quite nice next year. I actually am planning for the look I want to appear in year five.

My sunny bed  surrounding the veggie patch went in this year with a few small purchases and a selection of divisions from Inace supplemented by a few divisions from my own garden. I am trying to be sure that each bed has its own character and selection of plants, so I really only added a few liatris and some montauk daisies from my existing beds. The liatris is something I have all around the yard, so I am considering it to be something of a theme plant, keeping in mind that as a prairie wildflower it has the ability to carry all before it. The Montauk daisy likewise is repeated around the yard. Neither of these plants seem to be commonly growing in anyone's garden in the neighborhood but they are doing well in mine. With only a few additions next year this area should look full and luxuriant.  I'm planning for some bearded iris, poppies, asiatic lilies and columbine. One thing I do want to add to this area is an ornament of some kind for the back wall of my shed. I may be able to create something during the winter to make the shred wall into a visual asset.

a row of pitiful sticks

The shrub border between my yard and my southernmost neighbor is more problematic, because I am looking at about a hundred feet of no budget. Right now it is a row of assorted sticks. Eventually it will be a mixed border with perennial flowers, hostas and ground covers but even the most ambitious plan must start somewhere. Every plant currently in this row was free. Not all would have been my first choices, but it will be an attractive mix of flowering shrubs and  small trees with interest from early spring to late fall. I can't ask for more than that. The sheer volume of mulch required to put my plans into action is somewhat daunting, given that the quantity I can bring in from the dump on each visit depends on the number of bins I want to fill and unload each time. I may ask for a couple yards of mulch for my birthday next year!