I’m getting a surprisingly good zucchini harvest with no pest pressure. I’d heard that planting the zucchini late, like in Aug, was the way to go. I found a couple early maturing crops and they’ve worked out well. Now I’ve got enough to grate up and freeze for zucchini bread for the winter and holidays.
Garden is a mess as with out health issues, I’ve not been able to keep up with it. Next year’s garlic crop will be smaller than usual but I’ve got enough frozen up from the past couple years that I’ll be OK for an off year.
You guys are in front of us. It’s still all green in MA.
Pleasantly mild and mostly dry here in Central Missouri this past week. We did see a bit of rainfall - 1.2” spread out over three showers - not even enough to close up the cracks in the ground.
I made a quick trip down to Osage Beach Saturday morning to fetch #1 Marine Daughter’s golf cart from the crash house. After I got home my buddy Nick stopped by with his extensible fruit picker pole/basket thingy. That is a handy tool - no need to fight with the tree while trying not to die from a fall off the ladder. Nick went home with a bushel of apples, half a bushel of pears, close to a bushel of tomatoes, and a couple gallons of peppers.
I worked up a five gallon bucket full of the pears yesterday morning, gave them a good stewing, ran them through the food processor, transferred the mess to the slow cooker, then tossed it in the fridge overnight. I’ll get that cooked down and canned over the next day or three.
Yesterday I got what will probably be the last picking of pole beans for this season. The greens that I planted in the raised beds a couple weeks back are looking good. I was a little late getting that done but they might make something. Still need to sow spinach seed in the greenhouse beds. Maybe after work today.
Lots of ruckus in the house yard today - I’ve got a tree crew on site taking down a few dead ones before they fall on something I care about and while it’s still safe to work on them. Shredding/haul off was going to more than double the cost of the work so Mrs. Augie and I will deal with the clean-up ourselves.
Today is Mrs. Augie’s last day of full-time employment with the VA hospital system. Tomorrow is her out-processing, but it won’t be a FULL out-processing. One of the docs that she worked for in the research office years ago caught wind that she was retiring and offered her 10hrs/week as a study coordinator. She wasn’t really planning on anything but taking a break for awhile, but the offer was too good to pass up and because she’s already a Department of War employee there won’t be any need to do all of the in-processing paperwork that would otherwise be required if she took a break and came back as a what would amount to a new hire. And now she’s not stressed from worrying about whether or not she’ll have enough play money after she retires.
Howard has been steadily improving as a dog. He only got in trouble once last week - chewing the Jacuzzi cover again - I tried the “no-chew” spray - might as well soaked the thing in steak juice for all the good it did. lol
I’m going to buy an “invisible fence” kit and set that up around the spa. Howard doesn’t like getting zapped so I expect he’ll quickly figure out that the spa isn’t a giant doggy chew toy.
Yesterday we had a bit of a “eureka” moment - while Mrs. Augie wasn’t looking I let Howard come in the house - and he behaved himself - no running around crazy knocking stuff down, no stealing/chewing stuff, no jumping on the kitchen counters. So later in the day I let him in again, but this time I did it when the boss was inside. Once again he was on good behavior and she got to see it that time.
I told Howard that if he keeps improving he’ll be sleeping on the bed with the rest of us by Christmas time. lol