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Is it just me, or does morning coffee taste even BETTER when it starts to get cold outside? 44 degrees this morning! Refreshing! Bracing! Warmer weather (70's) starting on Tuesday. Yesterday's high was only 57!

Plans for the day are to tackle the greenhouse and/or mow - not sure which will win until it warms up some and the light frost is off the kitchen storm door. Mom's 88th Birthday is this month, so I am ordering flowers. I love that her birthday is in the Fall because the Fall arrangements are so pretty and are the style and colors we both like.

Have a Good and Productive Day, FRiends!

It’s gonna be “new cell phone day” for us. Mine has a badly worn / unreliable charge port, wifey’s a cracked screen, and our daughter’s has apparently died / just won’t boot now, tho’ it takes a charge.

By mid-week we go back to summer for a good while, though dew points stay below 65° F, so, it shouldn’t be TOO uncomfortable, and hopefully I can open up the windows at night to cool the house down / not use the AC ($$$$$$$). Hopefully also all these garden plants that are suddenly doing so well will be ok. No rain, so, the well pump will continue getting a workout.

Coffee does taste better on chilly morning, for sure!

My outdoor chores are mostly weeding, watering, and transplanting the things I want to keep, in preparation for the garden pathway and seating area that should start in a couple of weeks. I was hoping it would be next week, but apparently not.

Other than that, I am keeping a watchful eye on the Monarch caterpillars. Right now I have 10 in one habitat, 3 have turned into their chrysalis forms. The most recent one was yesterday and I got good closeup photos of that.

There are 15 more that aren’t in a man-made butterfly habitat. I ordered a larger one several days ago, and it should get here in a few hours. Several of those 15 are caterpillars that I “rescued”, meaning I moved them from the dead end stalks they were on, to healthier plants so they could keep munching. There were lots of aphids on those stalks, so I figured if I could coax them to healthier plants, they would have a better shot at surviving.

The temperatures the next few nights will be in the mid 40’s, so I know I’ll need to bring my most vulnerable potted plants indoors for a few days. Definitely will bring in my Grandma’s Gloriosa. It hasn’t bloomed, but it looks healthy.

I’m thinking to bring the monarchs up on to our deck where it’s pretty sunny. I *might* bring them into our sunroom for overnights only. I haven’t researched yet how they do in the cooler temps, but they’ve been lethargic in the mornings, and seem to “wake up” once it warms up a bit.

I also had a chance to catch one Monarch emerging from its chrysalis earlier in the week. It took several hours for her wings to dry out and fly off. That was cool!

Interesting story that may help a fellow gardener someday.

I’ve had these tiny blisters on my hands for some time now and I couldn’t for the life of my figure out what was causing them. They were bad only my palms, and some on the bottom of my feet (I’m barefoot a lot). I had concluded they were chiggers, but the steps I took to protect myself from the chiggers revealed the real issue. It was so bad I decided to wear nitrile gloves under my gardening gloves with different herbs and spices slathered all over me to prevent the chiggers. I kept on getting the “bites”. I put rubber bands on my wrist so no bugs could crawl in, and more blisters showed up. Mind you these nitrile gloves would be filled with sweat. It is very hot and humid here. It turns out excessive sweating inside of gloves (not just nitrile) can cause small blisters that resemble ant or chigger bites, primarily due to a condition known as prickly heat.

Prickly Heat (Miliaria Rubra) results from the clogging of sweat ducts. When sweat ducts become blocked, the trapped sweat triggers an inflammatory response. This response causes a stinging or prickling sensation, itching, and a papular or vesicular rash. A “vesicular rash” consists of small, fluid-filled blisters. This condition is most common in hot and humid weather or after exercise.

Highs in the mid to upper 80’s here. Humidity still stifling. Come on October! But it has been below 80 in the morning. That’s our first peek of “fall”.

Two weeks ago on the new moon is was a bonanza of planting melons, papaya, tomatoes, and even some flowers.

Melons:
Yellow watermelon
Orangelo watermelon
Sugar Baby watermelon
Kajari Melon
Tigger Melon
‘Ambrosia’ Cantaloupe (seeds saved from store bought)

Papaya:
Dwarf Maradol Red
Dwarf Hawaiian “Solo”
Red Kack Rahm
Maradol Caribbean Red

Tomatoes (in starter pots);
4th of July
Cherokee Black
Both are supposed to be able to grow in a salty environment. We shall see.

Flowers:
Zinnia
Cosmos

Today and tomorrow’s full moon is a perfect time for planting seeds. Today I put in Honey Select corn, Thai peppers, and direct sow of 4th of July and Cherokee Purple tomatoes. I threw in more melon and papaya where some babies got trampled. We also transferred some baby Barbados Cherries, Star Cherries and “Southern Home” Grape Plant (muscadine hybrid) to medium containers to mature until Spring.

Tomorrow
Sunflowers

Happy gardening!

Cool and dry over the weekend here in the Middle of Misery.

Retrieving #1 Marine Daughter's golf cart from the crash house then turning around and going to the racetrack used up most of Saturday so I had to chore extra hard yesterday to make up for it.

I finished the batch of apple butter that I started last week. Canned 11 pints. The not-quite-full 12th jar went straight to the kitchen. I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I didn't really follow a recipe - seasoned it to taste and cooked it down until I was happy with the consistency. Pops is a Grade-A jelly snob and he gave it two thumbs up so I'll call it not bad for my first time making it.

After I cleaned up the mess left from making the apple butter I picked another five-gallon bucket of HoneyCrisp apples. Sliced up and froze enough to make three pies. A quart ziplock holds enough slices for one pie if you pack it fairly tight. Three apple pies isn't enough to get us through a winter so I'm thinking I'll repeat that exercise after work one evening this week.

I got one of the raised beds topped up with composted horse poo, turned that in, and watered it down. I'll re-fluff that this evening and toss some kale seed in for a fall/winter crop. I haven't decided what I'm going to plant in the 2nd raised bed, but I need to yank the basil plants and get the soil amended/turned before it can be replanted.

Mrs. Augie has been nurturing a Catalpa seedling in a pot all summer. We finally picked a spot to plant it. The ground is so dry that digging a hole is almost impossible so I soaked the spot it's going with hose water half a dozen times yesterday in hopes of making the digging easier. That was enough to remove the sod and leave a depression that I can continue to water until the ground is soft enough to finish a proper planting hole. I expect that it will take a day or three to get that done.

It's a little late in the season for it, but I'm thinking I might put some turnip and rutabaga seed in the ground and see if it will make something before winter gets here.

With me being gone Mrs. Augie got to spend most of Saturday supervising Howard. In spite of her best efforts to the contrary, she's falling in love with him. She even mentioned that I should clean up the big dog crate and bring it inside to see if it's possible to crate train a half-grown hound. I guess we'll find out soon enough. lol

Good Morning!