Sunday, June 27, 2021

Rain every day

We had planned on going to a tractor show at Adrian yesterday (Saturday), but the forecast didn't seem too promising, with rain chances popping up all through the day.  It was the one tractor show I really hate to miss, but as Cliff says, the grounds would have been so muddy from rain that fell the previous days, we would have had to wear our Muck boots to walk around; that would have made for a miserable day.  I had been looking forward to time out of the house doing something different, however, and spent the day mostly moping and watching Netflix, which is a sure road to depression for me, but sometimes one must take time out to feel sorry for her spoiled self.  

I think there are enough green beans in the garden to pick the first ones now.  Yesterday I cooked some beets from the garden and made Harvard beets, a favorite of mine.  Today I might cook some more beets and pickle a few of them for the coming week; I hope to make borscht before long, too.  

No tomatoes have turned ripe, not even the cherry tomatoes, but there is no sign of blight on the plants!  The only things I did differently this year?  Normally I put cages around the tomatoes, then mulch them deeply with straw.  After a comment about blight from fellow blogger Ed, of Riverbend Journal, a while back, I decided to mulch them with straw as soon as I set the plants out in the garden instead of waiting to cage them.  I also decided to forget about the cages and let the plants crawl over the mulched ground, the way my mother and grandmother did theirs.  Maybe it's coincidence, but I've not gone this long without seeing blight on my tomato plants in many years.  Another annual failure of mine is zucchini:  squash bugs usually destroy the plants so quickly, I'm doing well if I harvest two zucchinis before bugs kill the plant.  I only put out one plant this year, but so far, no squash bugs.  Of course, now that I've mentioned these things, I've probably jinxed myself and the plants will all be dead by tomorrow.

There is still some rain in the forecast for every day this week, but the chances of it happening on any given day are much less.  We've received four inches of rain over the past three days, so the garden isn't hurting for moisture.  There was flash-flooding around our area, but nothing that affected our home on this wind-blown river bluff.  

I'll leave you with a picture of my two guardian angels (devils?) this morning.  I had to convince Gabe to lay there awhile with his partner in crime; he doesn't enjoy the cat's presence in his chair nearly as much as the cat enjoys his.  I finally gave him permission to move to his bed on the floor beside my own chair, so everybody is happy now.

Do you see the look I'm getting from Gabe?  "How humiliating," he's thinking.

After I give Gabe permission to leave, Blue  stretches out and gloats:  "This was my plan all the time," he says, grinning.  "That dog needs to be put in his place."


13 comments:

  1. Had to laugh at the cat and dog interaction. Exactly the same with my pair. Minnie the cat is a snuggler, Callie the dog just wants to be left alone unless I am petting her.

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  2. Awwww Donna, you two little "angels" look just that. In these photos anyway. *haha* That is very VERY interesting about the straw and the non-caged tomatoes! I'll be anxious to hear, as the season goes, how all that works out. I have too many trees to grow anything in the ground so I have to use containers and thus I have to use cages. Perhaps one day I'll have a place that affords more sunshine. I don't know though... when the grandgirls overheard me talking about "our next place" last week, they both chimed in: "Nooooooo, Grammie, you CAN'T move!! We want you to stay here foreeeeeeever!!!!!" Then I said agreed and said something about burying me in the backyard here and the littlest one (10yo) started to cry. *haha* Can't win! Our daughter-in-law went to a tractor show with her Dad yesterday and it got rained out too. It was their favorite that they go to each year. I'm sick of all the rain we've had. It seems endless. ~Andrea xoxoxo

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  3. Donna, I got an Amazon Echo. Just the cheap one. Wanted to listen to music like you. Don’t like the music Alexa selects. Do I have to take Amazon music. It’s 3.99 a month. The music she picks when I say play old time gospel is stuff I never heard of….what to do. The echo was only 25 bucks, but so far it’s useless to me.

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    1. I actually use Pandora on the Alexa, mostly because it's what I was used to when I got Alexa. With Pandora, you make your own station, starting out with one song you want to hear... I will say "Play the Gaithers", and from then on you have the Gaither's channel and they'll suggest similar songs as you listen. It it offers a song you hate, you can give it a "thumbs-down" and it will never play that song again. I have a folk channel, a Gospel station, a classic country station... and I've been so long adding and subtracting things that they pretty much play what I like.

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    2. The cheap one doesn't sound as good as the regular Echo, but it isn't too bad.

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  4. I always get a chuckle out of the things that Blue and Gabe do. My favorite one was a while back when Gabe was on the chair sitting on top of Blue.

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  5. I get a huge laugh out of your animals!! They have so much personality.

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  6. I always say "Alexa, play some Kenny Roger's music and I get a huge selection of Kenny Rogers. He died this year.I hate that.

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  7. We attempt to cage our tomatoes but usually they all seem to topple over anyway. I don't think they contribute to blight which is due to some organism in the soil that usually gets splashed up during hard rains. Mulch helps prevent this splashing.

    The secret to squash bugs is crop rotation. Don't plant them in the same place back to back years.

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    1. I rotate my crops on a totally different bit of ground every year. As far as not using cages, that wasn't because I thought it would prevent blight; I was lazy, or I should say lazier than usual. What I did that was different was that when I set the little plants out, I immediately put straw around them. Before, I didn't put straw around them until I put the cages around them. Apparently that did the trick (but I'm knocking on wood as I type that).

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  8. Your Dog and cat are sure funny! :-)
    My brother puts epsom salt under his tomatoes for blight, so I tried it this year. 1 TBS in the hole, cover it with a bit of dirt and plant the tomato. I will see. I am not a good gardener, but I keep trying. LOL
    I think you are to hard on yourself. We can all have a crabby day or down day. Just keep going is all we can do.
    The tractor show would not have been fun with rain and mud. Ick. We received just under 3/10's this morning. I was so thankful. We are soooo dry here in Northern MN. Well, all of Mn. Wendy

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  9. I would love to get rain here; the whole west needs it. At the moment we're getting relief from the scorching temperatures at least...until the next round. Have you read "This Tender Land" by William Kent Krueger? I just started it and am enjoying it a lot so far.

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    1. I checked the book out as soon as I saw this. I've been having trouble finding anything I want to read lately, so maybe this will get me out of my reading slump.

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