The dirty little ditty on the card read:
Hurray, Hurray The First of May Outdoor (fill in the blank) Begins today
howdy everybody!
I went back through last week’s thread and my freepmail and I think I got everyone added to the list that requested on it.
I did manage to get 13 varieties of hot peppers seeds started this week, although I have been slightly hampered with having a sick child at home...........the fun never ends!!!
Since I never had a “normal” TV station on (stuck with Animal Plannet and Disney) on Monday it was not until I got to the Moose Lodge around 6pm that I found out we were under a tornado watch and parts of the Hampton Roads area of Virginia had been devastted by tornados.
Suffolk, the hardest hit spot is where my husband used to frequently work. If he were still working for IBM he would have been right there Monday afternoon/evening when it happened. I received an email message from the church secretary about the relief fund that has been set up by the diocese, as we are a part of the Souther Virginia diocese.
I’m not in a position to help out financially, but I am keeping all those people in my prayers.
LOL!
Husband rolled over and whispered that in my ear just this morning! (Great minds...)
Humpf.
It’s snowing here outside of Denver.
And probably will snow tomorrow, as well.
The ONLY “gardening” I’ve been able to do, aside from starting flats of seedlings, has been to pot up the big planters outside of the back door.
They were lovely; mixed leaf lettuces, alyssum, red pansies...they lasted TWO days until the chickens found them and that was the end of that!
So, the chickens are on “lock down” now and that’s the end of THAT!
I got four FREE bags of slightly leaking potting soil from work, so I’ll have little expense re-doing the planters again, but I’m going to wait until next week until the coming rain (three days worth they’re saying) passes. I also got four FREE bags of cocoa bean mulch (smells like chocolate!) and put that on the ‘Murphy Nyberg Memorial Flower Garden’ planted in honor of my late Lab, Murphy. It’s filled with yellow daffs and a Yellow Twig DOGwood. If she were still here, she’d be rolling around in it and digging up the bulbs planted in her honor, LOL!
This afternoon I plan on trimming bottom branches from my White Pine, which took a hit due to the amount of snow piled around it’s bottom this winter, and I think I’ll clean up the rock/herb garden, after I do a Grocery Run.
(My ONE day off each week is filled mainly with foraging for foodstuffs, LOL!)
Hey, Gabz. Hope you had a better week this time. Ours has been better too. I spray very few bugs - the sawfly larvae with insecticidal soap and the peach tree scale with horticultural oil. Otherwise it’s pretty much strip them off, squish or stomp.
The deer now - I would spray them in a jiffy. My homemade repellent keeps clogging my sprayer even when I leave the eggs out. But the idea of paying something like $14 a quart for a bottle at Home Depot that has less than 1% capascin (cayenne), mint oil and rotten egg solids - forget it. I’m thinking of extracting the cayenne in oil, and mixing that, mint oil and a little detergent with Wilt-Pruf so it won’t wash off in the rain.
Everything is beautiful now but I’m still in a gripy mood. You read about getting rid of your lawn to save time and energy. Replace it with groundcover and shrubs. Well, I did that where the grass wasn’t growing too well, and now I’m trying to weed out several thousand maple, crabapple, multiflora rose and poison ivy seedlings out of my groundcover. In theory once the pachysandra and the hellebore get thick enough, they’ll shade out the seedlings. But the deer eat pachysandra, yes they do, and the hellebore are young little things needing help.
I am going to go out now and smell the lilacs, and look at the Virginia bluebells, the hosta, the bleeding heart, the delicate Green Pearl and Hawera narcissus and the new leaves pushing up, and enjoy the freshness and life of it all.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
I managed to get most of my spring stuff in. Now working on the herbs. Can’t believe it’s almost time for the summer stuff to go in already being that we got down to 32 degrees yesterday morning!
And no mushrooms here so far either, but the blooms on the trees are OK so we’ll get fruit for the first time in 2 years.
My zucchini and cucumbers are flowering and producing and my tomato plants are flowering again after removing the first buds. My Cherry tomato has 2 fruits about the size of a large pea and many more flowers blooming. And my Sugar Baby watermelon plants are thriving. No runners off them yet but they are leafing out well.
I have already picked a first crop of radishes (20 or so). There is another crop sprouting.
Concerning Monday's tornado in Suffolk, was watching the weather reporters with a bit of trepidation. Didn't know where that storm was heading. Suffolk is not far from the Beach. I now have a better understanding of what it must be like in tornado alley. My prayers are with them.
Bookmark for me for after final Suday