Lucille and friends. Remember Lucille? She gives us HUGE brown eggs.
Welsie the proud. She gives us dark brown eggs, second only to Lucille's in size.
Lovely Tawnie gives us pale brown "torpedo" eggs, longer and more slender than the other hens' eggs.This morning the girls were out scratching in the grass clippings Rick spread in their yard after mowing the yard yesterday afternoon. That task culminated the outdoor work we'd labored at all day. First we finished planting our garden, putting in peas, carrots (will plant more in two weeks), purple "green" beans and wax beans, zucchini, Casper pumpkin, Sweet Dumpling squash, and the remaining starts: bell peppers, cucumbers and an eggplant. These joined the tomato, pepper, lettuce, celery, and zucchini starts Rick had planted earlier.
My dear husband is not satisfied growing the things that do so well here, like berries (out of frame on the left). Being the midwestern boy he is, he keeps fighting to grow bumper crops of tomatoes in our shorter, cooler season. This year his scheme is to give each plant its own greenhouse, and to that end he bought those white barrels. When he ran out of barrels, he rigged plastic bags over wire cages for the rest. (The barrels cut length-wise cover the first five pepper plants he planted.) We'll see if his idea works; even if it does, it would probably be cheaper to BUY tomatoes than the plants and barrels!There's still some room left to the right of the barrels; I think I'll check into some seed potatoes today.
After finishing the garden I tackled weeding the badly neglected flowerbeds. I've kept up with a couple of the smaller ones, but the rest have gotten away from me. I made a dent yesterday, but only a dent. I am thinking of hiring someone my friend and neighbor has used to help me catch up; it would be worth the money! After all the bending over, my body was complaining rather loudly last night. But I remembered to take a couple ibuprofen at bedtime, and feel fine (well, as fine as a middle-aged person ever feels :-) this morning.
Once inside I made a batch of bread and a batch of granola. I would love to have sat down with Brian's sock, as my fingers are just itching to start the heel flap, but we were out of bread. Sigh. The only knitting I got to do yesterday was the bind-off row at the bottom of the raglan cabled baby cardigan.
That's it for now at . . .
8 comments:
Egads! You're the second friend today that is in need of "you time." I hope your itchy fingers get what they want soon! :-)
I am trying the purple green beans this year too....only one row though, I didn't want to go too crazy in case they don't do well.
I hope the tomato barrel project works out!
There's a book called the $64 tomato. It's about a mans quest to grow the perfect tomato. Pretty funny. I had to laugh when I read your post it reminded me so much of it.
In his defense though, nothing tastes better than a home grown tomato right off the vine. ;-)
Corinne, the purple beans are an old stand-by for us; they do GREAT here! Produce well, easier to see to pick, and wonderful flavor. The pretty lavender-pink flowers are a plus. :-)
See I get itchy fingers because I never wear gloves when weeding and then end up with rashes:) So I have never heard of Sweet Dumpling Squash.....please expand on this. It sounds like your husband is thinking hard about "his" garden this years:)
We spent the weekend planting and cleaning out the barn, or at least one side. I can totally empathize with you as my body is "bone sore and tired" today. We've had extremely hot weather (for us) so I wilt around mid-day.
You can use Walls-O-Water for your tomatoes as I think they might work better than the barrels. We have a 40 to 50 degree swing between day and night temps here, even in the summer, so many varieties don't work here. Most of my tomatoes are planted in containers this year as corn and beans took up most of the raised beds. :)
And thank heavens for the "stand-buys"...there's nothing like having reliable produce from tried and true plants. :)
One year we put old tires in the garden so the tomato plant was in the middle, it was the best crop we ever had, learned it from an old farmer.
We did scads of yard work this past weekend too. My back and legs were barking quite loudly as well. Getting older is okay if the body would not protest quite so loudly...
I used to say that I needed more hours in the day, but no longer find that statement to be true. I now think that I just need more days for doing my outside duties rather than more hours in a day.
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