First Fruits

I picked my first sugar snap pea pod today. I gave it to my husband to eat, and he did. He said it was good. I did not get a picture of it- this is a blossom from last year, in a different part of the garden. They're growing well in the sheltered nook where I planted some, and in the more exposed area where I planted others. 2 plants that got eaten down to nubs by the slugs are coming back, as are some of the carrots I had given up on. Good News! God is merciful to us, even when we do plant carrots in clay.

Slugfest Update

6,098. That's how many slugs have come out of our tiny backyard in the past 6 weeks. 1,000 slugs per week, hand picked and drowned in soapy water by me! EEK!

Most are European three-banded garden slugs, great gray slugs, gray field slugs, and marsh slugs. They're all invasive species, so I feel no guilt about trying to eliminate them entirely, though that would be a truly impossible task without poison. I do not want to poison the animals out there who might see a bit of dying protein and think, "free lunch!", so I keep picking. This land originally had very few slugs, or earthworms. To see them now, that is really hard to believe. We've really changed things. Maybe some have changed for the better (earthworms are good for soil, especially for aerating our thick clay-based stuff), but some (like the proliferation of these nasty excrement-eating slugs) for the worse. I hope I can leave the backyard in better condition than I found it.

Preparing for Summer Food Preservation

How to do it if you are a novice? The USDA and the state/county agricultural extension offices offer the newest, scientifically-based information on how to can, dry, or freeze food. DO NOT go with the 100-year-old books here. They did not know about all the germs we know about now, or how hard some of them are to kill. Here are some trustworthy Internet sites:

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/ is the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia. They even offer a free, self-paced online course about food preservation. Good stuff.

http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_e/ is another good one. New Mexico State University has a more Southwestern flair, with information about canning green chilies and salsas.

http://foodsafety.cas.psu.edu/lets_preserve.html has information about snap beans, sweet corn, and fruit from Penn State.

Even the canner companies, Presto and Mirro, and the jar companies (Ball has the Famous Blue Book) offer information on their websites. You might want to buy the blue book or another NEW book to guide you, but these free resources really have all the information you need. 

Then you need the appropriate canner(s), jars (recycling those mayo jars will NOT do, especially for pressure canning- keep your couscous away from the bugs in those jars by all means, but don't try to form a vacuum seal except on the thick-walled home canning jars), and new lids with clean rings. Cooling racks and jar tongs and a wide-mouth funnel are also nice.

For freezing, you need containers (freezer bags are fine for a few months, bowls with the appropriate head space for longer). For everything, you need good knives, a cutting board, and ways to wash and sterilize things. I haven't dried anything yet, so I don't know about that- though I may be drying some herbs this summer. Have fun!

Interplanting

This is the combination of green onions, beets, and cabbage I planted early in the season. A borage plant to the right and a mint plant to the left were added later to try to fend off the bugs. You can see the outline of the cold frame around the plants, and my foot for reference (it is approximately 1 foot long, in this shoe). Interplanting seems to be working well so far, though it is not perfect. I suspect that to get healthier plants, I would need more sun and better soil that did not put a foundation of solid clay under the plants. Someday, maybe I'll have the time to fully rehabilitate soil, and see what we can get.

Mending

I have let the mending pile up so that I really NEED to spend an hour or so reattaching straps, patching skirts, re-elasticizing waistbands, etc. Maybe a day instead of an hour. But I'll give it an hour and see what I can do.

I stopped by a store here in Memphis a few years ago that is no longer in business. It sold very pretty clothes, unfortunately shoddily made. They were not designed to last a year. The poor souls condemned to make those clothes must have been paid by the piece, and that poorly. Hems were ragged, embroidery was not knotted off (dangling threads), and seams ripped out when the garments were washed. I'm grimly forcing the sturdier of the two skirts to last by stitching up the holes as they occur and re-elasticizing the waist with some more lasting elastic. One beautiful skirt will go ragbagging, simply because large amounts of seam ripped out badly this time. Lesson learned: unless you want to be a good little consumer and buy a new, uglier, more expensive, more shoddily made wardrobe every year, buy sturdy stuff or make your own. I have a collection of older patterns to which I'm turning more and more; even the new patterns fit poorly, have awful necklines, and look nothing like they do on the package when finished.

We all need to tell the fashion designers out there what we want: T-shirts you can't see through (yes, even white ones!! PLEASE!), jeans that actually fit (I'll "distress" them myself by years of wear), shirts that button all the way up, seams that do not rip out, buttons that stay on, and lines that do not make me look like I'm wearing a recyclable bag (on one hand)or lingerie (on the other) in public. Until then I'll be wearing my 20-year old skirts and jumpers and stitching up my newer stuff. Aargh.

Strawberry Season

Today I am slicing and freezing strawberries. It is really easy. You can wash, drain, and freeze the slices (whole small ones can be frozen, but large ones should really be sliced so the freezing is uniform, and you can get them into bags or boxes fast afterward). You can also sugar-pack them in 2/3 or 3/4 cup of sugar for every quart of strawberries. That creates a nice, self-generated sauce for ice cream or shortcake... YUM! The orchard people were selling 8 quarts in a flat for $20. Considering that the quarts are very full, which means roughly 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 pounds of berries per quart, it was cheaper to buy a flat than to go to the U-pick-em site at $1.89/lb. 

No pictures today, but you can download a Powerpoint presentation from www.uga.edu/nchfp/multimedia/slide_shows/freezing_strawberries.ppt . Educational institutions and the USDA are the go-to points for learning how to preserve food safely. 

I hope to take out some of the sugar-packed ones later, for use in preserves when the appropriate eye of my stove is repaired. Woo hoo!

Back from New Orleans

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, but I was speaking and presenting a poster at a large meeting in New Orleans, and the hotel charged for Internet access. Indeed! I'm glad to be home in a place where the neighborhood sidewalks do not have to be powerwashed to remove the body fluids and beer residue. A place where I know people who can comprehend a value system that simply says "no" to self-destructive behavior, no matter how pleasurable at the time. I was so saddened by the city- outskirts in overt desolation and decay, bright downtown highlighted by a casino reeking of dead fish (from the ventilation ducts we passed every day going to the Convention Center), and package liquor stores on every corner. It had its good points- the convention center was huge; the hotels were ample; restaurants with good food were available for a variety of incomes; but the beads for sale in almost every store along with obscene T-shirts, the leering Mardi Gras figures, the 24-hour bars and streets full of lingerie-clad women, spoke of a city dedicated to the pursuit of the sensual, even to its own destruction. It has been the place to go to get drunk, get robbed, and get diseased since before my ancestors came to Tennessee, and as far as I can see it hasn't changed much. Sad, really, for a city so obviously proud of its cathedrals. If your belief in God does not result in intense relationship, complete with the tough personal change of which the submission in marriage is a pale shadow, what good is it? All your "plenary indulgences" for venerating an icon matter not one whit if you do not know the One for Whom the icon is a miserable substitution. And knowing Him is such joy that a drunken night on the town seems a horror rather than a pleasure by comparison. Even if it were above sea level and out of the hurricane zone, I could not live in that vile city. The city I'm in now is bad enough. Give me clean country air, a plot of ground to grow my food, a good cosy house, a small college professorship, and a small country church with a Bible-obsessed preacher on fire for God, and I will weep for joy after these city experiences.

Finding GW Carver's Bulletin

I got a request for help finding George Washington Carver's series of bulletins for the One Horse Farmer. They are not filed under his name! The author is "Alabama". To get to it quickly, go to Google books. Type in the following words: Bulletin Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station Tuskegee. The first hit should be what you want. Good Stuff. If you're wondering, I was at a large biology conference over the past few days. Oy. I do not like big cities, or taxis, or hotel-canyons where you never see starlight. I like grass and trees. But I have to go to these conferences to build a professional reputation, so off I go. Also- traveling by train should be the wave of the future. It is efficient, and inexpensive (to New Orleans and back from Memphis for $100!!)and you get more room in COACH than you do in first class on a plane. The food is better and less expensive. I hope they open some east-west routes from Memphis soon. I would visit relatives back home a LOT more if they did so.

Fat of the Land, Continued

This book is starting to get a bit discouraging. Even in 1904, this person had to invest over $100,000 to get his farm going, with income running about $4000 per year in the first few years. Of course he had a large country house, with servants, and money was no object to him (built a forge for his daughter on the place), so he could do that. 

The question is, at manageable scales, can farming be practical and profitable enough for a person to live who is not already independently wealthy? I know that if you grow your own food, and just enough of a niche crop (fresh greens for fancy restaurants, fashionable veggies or value added stuff for the "farmer's market" in an upscale neighborhood of carbon-guilty urbanites, etc.) to pay taxes and insurance, you can survive, but even then initial inputs will be necessary to optimize soil, improve drainage, build house and outbuildings, etc. A lot of "modern heroes" of the back to the land/organic movement (Helen and Scott Nearing being the example that comes to mind) were actually independently wealthy people. My ancestors left the land because they could not survive and keep it (property taxes went too high and farm product values went too low), and my Dad was not interested in a hardscrabble existence tilling the soil. He actually became a maintenance electrician, still getting plenty dirty every day, but getting a dependable paycheck-until the factory shut down. Then he had to search for (and found) a new job.

I guess this book has me thinking, for all its good points, about how farming has become a big business. Streeter's "factory farm" vision has turned into a nightmare, and we cannot fix things with fairy dust and gourmet restaurants.

Fat of the Land, Continued

The man in the book did not set out to become a regular farmer of his day. He wanted to set up a "factory farm" complete with animal confinement, but his confinement practices were pretty liberal in terms of space per animal compared to today's CAFOs. His 55 dairy cows were free to wander a 20-acre field during good weather, in addition to their barn and 3 meals a day. He did not raise more animals than he could feed from grains and hay grown on his own property, supplemented only with specific items to increase dairy yields and egg quality. He wanted to hire good men and specialists in hens or cows or pigs to do the work, and that makes sense if you want profits. I guess I like the soil itself too much to be satisfied paying someone else to grow my garden. 

While we were out walking today, we saw some subsoil in a deep hole in the road MLGW dug for work on the gas lines. It was like modeling clay! It was amazing. In some places, the topsoil is only a few inches thick, with feet of the clay underneath. It would take a lot of work and time to build really good, deep soil here, but with proper tillage and addition of amendments, garden soil can become more fruitful and productive every year. I'm learning about this.

No Horse and Buggy Men On This Farm

I have started reading a book called "The Fat of the Land: the Story of an American Farm" by John Williams Streeter, copyrighted 1904. A physician was dismissed from his job after his skills became obsolete (sound familiar in modern times?). He decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of owning land and creating a valuable farm. I'm reading a very interesting section about the hiring of field hands. In a chapter called, "The Horse and Buggy Man", a young man insists that all the young men in the community need horses and buggies for week-end fun, and "horse keep" is expected as part of their pay. Translate this into modern times with a car or truck, and multiply the liabilities several times over, and add the worker expecting to siphon off gasoline from the farm tank, as you read the following quote:
"See here young man, this is another specimen of farm economics, and the worst in the lot. Let me do a small example in mental arithmetic for you. The interest on $280 [cost of horse and buggy] is $14; the yearly depreciation of your property, without accidents, is at least $40; horse-shoeing and repairs, $20; loss of wages (for no man will keep your horse for less than $4 a month), $48. In addition to this, you will be tempted to spend at least $5 a month more with a horse than without one; that is $60 more. You are throwing away $182 a year without adding $1 to your value as an employee, one ounce to the dignity of your employment, or one foot of gain in your social position, no matter from what point you view it.
Taking it for granted that you receive $25 a month for every month of the year (and this is admitting too much), you waste more than half on that blessed rig, and you can make no provision for the future, for sickness, or for old age...Recreation is all right, but find it in ways less expensive. Read, study, cultivate the best of your kind, plan for the future and save for it, and you will not lack fr recreation. Sell your horse and buggy for $200, if you cannot get more, put that money at interest, save $200 out of your wages, and by the end of the year you will be worth over $400 in hard cash and much more in self-respect. You can easily add $200 a year to your savings, without missing out on anything worthwhile; and it will not be long before you can buy a farm, marry a wife, and make an independent position. I'll have no horse and buggy men on my farm."
Now that's how we ought to teach young people. 

"Devil Horse"

Have you ever learned that you had a relative or an ancestor named in a book? This is one of mine. His name was Nathaniel Green Rieves, or "Green". He fought in the Civil War. He was permanently crippled by a shot to the hip, but fought from horseback until the end of the war sent him home to sharecrop for the rest of his life. He is mentioned in "Co. Aytch: A Confederate Memoir of the Civil War" by Sam Watkins. He was called "Devil Horse". The book confirms some old family stories, exactly as they were told to me by my grandmother. He was eating with a group of men in camp one time, and a cannon ball bouncing through the group shattered a man's skull, killing him instantly. While other men sat in shock, spattered with blood and tissue, my great-great-grandfather quietly threw a blanket over the body, wrapped it, and took it away for burial. Brave man.

His family was interesting, if nothing else but in names. His father was Thomas Jefferson Rieves. His brother was Elijah Napoleon Bonaparte (or ENB) Rieves. I guess there were hopes for greatness in the family.

What they got was a lifetime of hard work. They lived on the Duck River, which is some absolutely gorgeous Middle Tennessee land- rolling hills, forests, river bottom land, good climate. I can see a bit of inherited stubborn tenacity coming from these hard-working people. I hope my work can be an extension and fulfillment of the aspirations their parents put into their names. 

Bones of My Ancestors

This is the Oliver family. William James Oliver, seated in front, was a veteran of the Civil War. Nancy Jane Thurman was his wife. Granny's mother is standing in the back row behind William. You can see that tall-and-skinny goes back in our family a long way on this side.

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I am a Keeper of Memories for my branch of my family. That means that I keep old pictures, interviews, and stories, and try to expand what is known about my ancestral lines as I get time. Previous generations have been generous enough to share their wealth of stories and precious photographs (please, please, please label those for the future, in hard copies, archival quality- you never know what great-grand-cendents of yours will want to know about that wacky summer in France), so I try to save what I can for my brother's children. Looking through the old photos and postcards and newspaper clippings, I can step back in time to a different world. It was a world of much less material wealth, but much closer interpersonal relationships. A world where agricultural time ruled (milking, planting, harvesting, hog-killing, etc.), but everyone knew everyone, and neighbors were there to help if anything went wrong.

I live a few hours away from their stomping grounds now, and miss the hills of home pretty severely sometimes. It helps a bit to go back through the old stories, and stare into the eyes of the stern old men in the photographs, to remedy the lies told in revisionist histories ("they only lived to be 40 years old in the days before modern medicine..." "the Civil War was a regimented affair- we've never seen roving mobs in America..." " we are so much more intelligent/evolved than our ancestors were... the tests tell us so...") with the truth of the actual records in newspaper and copied microfilm and photograph and old family tale. 

If you have no Memory Keeper, and your elder members are aging, start now before it is too late! Interview! Get copies of pictures and newspaper clippings! Collect the arcane memorabilia of the past! You'll cherish it when they are on the other side. 

Growing Gardens in The City

It is very possible. A friend in an apartment has several pots, taking advantage of every bit of sunlight entering her little abode. We have a tiny backyard with formal bricked flower beds, but those beds can grow food, too. Why do it, when there are several grocery stores, including ethnic ones, within easy driving distance, and the food is cheap in season? Why continue to battle the slugs (I have picked 4,798 as of last night), and the cold, and the heat, and rain storms and drought?

It is fun. It is a way to get out in the sunshine and get a little dirty after a long day in front of a computer or an experimental bench at work. The exercise does not require a gym or expensive equipment. You don't have to endure MTV or ESPN while exercising- the birds overhead in the flowering trees are far better entertainment. The quietness and stillness seep into your mind to calm the fretting of a difficult day. Gardening can be an inexpensive hobby (without the "eco-friendly"gear and endless gadgets) that actually results in short-term gratification, after a few months: food. Good stuff.

Planting Day

Today was one of my big planting days. I put in 2 cucumber plants, 4 mint, 1 borage, 4 okra, 5 sunflower, 5 amaranth, and 36 corn (seeds of corn, seedlings for everything else). Four pepper plants (we'll see what they are later- a jalapeno plant and a banana plant were in the same pot last year, and the saved pepper was a small one from the banana pepper plant) went in individual pots. I spent much of an ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS day outside, happily getting very dirty. Wonderful day.

When Maximum Photosynthesis Happens

Surprisingly enough, it is not on those cloudless, sunny days. Plants actually do best (and take up the most carbon for you carbon-o-philes out there) on bright cloudy days or hazy days, when the sunlight is diffuse instead of concentrated on just a few leaves, leaving the rest in shadow. That's one of the reasons they grow great roses in Seattle, and the rain forests are so productive. Here's a reference for this, and for the unexpected result of a volcanic eruption (more carbon uptake): Roderick M, Farquhar G, Berry S, and Noble I, On The Direct Effect of Clouds and Atmospheric Particles on the Productivity and Structure of Vegetation, Oecologia, 129(1), September 2001. There are a LOT more references than this, but the abstract of this one is pretty understandable, and viewable free at the Springerlink site. So plant out your seedlings on these bright cloudy days with confidence, knowing that their little leaves will be working hard to build new plant growth.

Planting Tomatoes

Oh, rejoice with me! The tomato plants went in the ground yesterday, 2 per cage: 2 Sungold, 2 Arkansas Traveler, and 2 Black Japanese Trifiele. They look vigorous and good. I just read that the "Sungold" is a hybrid, though, and I planted collected seed, so they may not come true to type. Oh, well. We will see. The plants are vigorous, anyway. I may have to thin to one plant per cage if they get too big, but right now they look like they have plenty of room to grow. The cages have an area of about 32 square feet around them, with some borage plants toward the front (and some basil going in a few weeks from now. Must Start Seeds!!

Bean Planting Time

We eat a lot of green beans. They are a vegetable side dish or part of a vegetable blend or in the soup at least 3 times a week, often more. I decided to maximize our bean production this year by planting them along the entire length of a wooden fence we share with neighbors.

That meant germinating a lot of seeds. I started them in cardboard or newsprint tubes full of potting soil. They were big enough to plant last Friday, but it got too cold Monday night to think about it. It is hard to protect climbing plants, and these are pole beans. Kentucky Wonder pole beans truly live up to their name- flavorful, fast-growing in this climate, and producing for a long season if you keep them picked. The flowers drop in the heat of late July and August, but they'll get their second wind when the heat breaks and keep right on going. I did make the mistake last year of planting them in front of a South-facing brick wall. Do not do this. The vines got cooked and did not recover well.

Here are the plants in the ground. Some of the roots were already penetrating the tubes, so I buried the entire tube with the roots. It gives you a way to hold the plant conveniently while planting, and judge the proper depth for the roots, and protects the tender roots from injury while you refill the hole. Works for me.

Dogwood Winter and Spring Returning

Tomorrow we're supposed to be back to 70 again for a daytime high. THE BEANS WILL GO IN THE GROUND! On days like tomorrow, my little nose is pressed against the glass at work (mentally, anyway), longing for the first moment I can get away to freedom and dogwood petals and birds rejoicing overhead while a silent cat sneaks up behind me through the clover and blooming violets. I will rejoice, as all creation does in the springtime of the year, looking forward to that Spring to come.

Dogwood Winter and Cloches

Covering plants is an important thing to do when the freeze warnings go out, but how? If you throw a sheet over the plants, your cat or another animal might lie down on the soft surface, crushing the tender plants below. Cloches are a solution to the problem. You can buy elegant, expensive, bell-shaped jars, or you can recycle available materials. We use cut half-gallon milk jugs and juice cartons to make inexpensive, temporary cloches. Cut 2- or 3-liter soda bottles work really well in climates where you leave the cloche on during the day, and a transparent bottle lets light through. You can even unscrew the top for air circulation. Here we'll only need protection tonight (and maybe tomorrow night), with a high of 54 tomorrow, so I'll remove the cloches tomorrow morning before work, and keep a close eye on the weather through the day. Hopefully I can plant Wednesday, because the beans and tomatoes need to go into the ground. We will see.

Dogwood Winter and Climate Change

I got up early due to an alarm-clock malfunction, so here is a pre-church post. We are due for a possible freeze Monday night. Yes it is April. Yes, our last average frost date is in March. Yes, that date is fairly meaningless around here. Our grandparents had knowledge of the weather that had to be carefully discounted by our educators for us to be re-educated in matters of "scientific" ecology, so that money can be extracted from us out of guilt for our existence, a.k.a. "excessive use of carbon". We are carbon-based life forms, after all. They knew that there would be many close calls and a few freezes between the blooming of the daffodils and safe planting time for sensitive plants. My grandfather finally got so frustrated with early spring warming causing his peach trees to bloom, then late frosts destroying the crop, that he bulldozed the orchard when I was a very young child. That's the risk of perennials. I remember peaches from a good year that seemed almost as big as my head. And I remember a grassy field at the back of the hill afterward.

They knew about blackberry winter, and dogwood winter, and other cold snaps when other things were blooming, that put crops at risk but could not be stopped. Farming terms and rainfall totals stopped being reported in local weather broadcasts when I was in my teens or early 20s. Now every drought, every flood, every snowstorm or heat wave or  "unseasonable" frost is "evidence" of "climate change". Perception of chaos in the weather is drilled into people who never go outside, except to get in a vehicle. Flooding in areas where people have traditionally grown 18-foot-tall varieties of rice is portrayed as unusual. Drought on a continent where many of the Caucasian explorers and initial settlers died of hunger and thirst if not assisted by the Aborigines according to the old stories (Australia- it was a penal colony for a reason) is seen as dreadful evidence that we are tipping the world into chaos. Umm, yeah. We had to be taught to disrespect old stories and people and ignore old books (after all, we're not taught good enough English to read pre-television sentence structures anymore) in order to believe what we are now told is "scientific fact-the debate is settled-DON'T LOOK OUT YOUR WINDOW!- DON'T ask the retired farmer in the nursing home down the street what's going on! just give us money for carbon trading and all will be forgiven!"

Yeah, they have some correct talking points. We may run out of easily accessible oil. We do use ridiculous amounts of energy for a lot of things. We have indiscriminately used horrible chemicals to do bad things to ourselves for the sake of convenience. Our grandparents were not stupid, and we have not "evolved" to be better and smarter than they, but rather have been culturally impoverished and rendered ignorant, cut off from their knowledge by a sense of technological superiority. I like to check some of the "doomer" sites sometimes, because they are collecting information about canning and homesteading that is quite informative. But their carte blanche acceptance of "global warming-oops, it is colder-climate change" gets really old. Sorry for the rant. Just amazed when otherwise seemingly sensible people accept political extortion as gospel.

Craving Beans and Rice

Years ago, I was a single teacher on a tight budget. That AFT 50,000+/year average salary does NOT apply to rural Southern counties. That's close to the maximum, with a Ph.D. and 20 years of experience, in one county in which I worked. Anyway... money was tight. I was paying for orthodontic services out of pocket, and other debts, and wearing the braces, so I could not eat hard, chewy, or sticky foods. Broke with teeth in braces, I did beans and rice in a very limited way: plain rice, canned beans, frozen mixed vegetables, and enough turkey ham cut in tiny, swallowable pieces to make it "edible".

Now I know how limited that approach was. I have two shelves of spices, vinegars, and oils in the pantry. I'm learning to grow my own herbs. I'll try drying them this year. You can do so much with beans! There seem to be endless variations on the rice 'n' bean theme- Caribbean, Mediterranean (Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern), Indian (and they have almost infinite local and regional variations), Asian (Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean...), African (seasoned with peanut butter and spices, full of nutritious greens), and even Native American (substituting cornmeal pudding or corn pone or potatoes for the rice). You can add a bit of highly seasoned meat for flavor, or not. Herbs and spices vary, vegetables or fruit added vary, cooking oil varies. You can have a lot of fun with it. Try it sometime on Google. If your money is tight, you may even find recipes including items you can forage from the wild in your area- just don't forage for mushrooms without an experienced, preferably elderly guide who knows what's what. Cooking from scratch with new recipes can be a relatively cheap way to treat yourself well without breaking the bank, using ingredients in season and dried beans and unprocessed rice (no precooked stuff in pouches. YOU CAN  BOIL WATER!). Try it!

The Night Life of Slugs

I have caught over 3,800 slugs in my tiny backyard in the past few weeks. In the process, I'm beginning to learn their habits. They are not vegetarian; they eat leaves and decaying plant material, but they also eat dead earthworms and bird feces. They like to crawl on cool, moist( but not soaking wet), smooth surfaces like hoses and bricks. They like to crawl up to the top of our brick wall on cool nights and lie there like miniature beached whales. Who knows why?

On rainy nights when the ground is saturated, things get really interesting. They look for dry shelter by crawling up walls. I have found them all the way up under the eaves of our detached garage. I caught 367 last night, mostly on the walls of the garage and the brick wall. I do not have to crouch and bend as much on rainy nights. They must really fear drowning. Tonight, after a sunny but cool day, I caught 270, many of them on the ground or in leaves. Most of that number are very tiny; maybe 10-30 a night are more than an inch long, with maybe 2 longer than 2 inches when stretched out. It is not as gross catching the tiny ones.

They are hermaphrodites, so Fred is Wilma, too. Some of those slime trails on your back porch at night are from their amorous adventures. EEEW! They can lay 50-200 eggs at a time, so I guess the thousands in my backyard should not be surprising. Hope these forays into the dark reduce their numbers soon.

More Spring Planting Preparation

Today was very rainy, with some severe storms mid-day. Half an inch of rain fell, with a bit more due tonight. If tomorrow is sunny, that will mean the soil will be wet for Saturday's planting, but that's OK. In the pre-dug beds, when the ground is wet, I can shove the stakes in the ground to support tomato cages and bean fencing without a mallet. I usually tamp them in a bit anyway for safety (2 stakes per tomato cage, several inches down, and bamboo stakes spaced as needed on the bean fencing, which is there to guide the plants up to the wooden fence). I'll have pictures when it is all set up. 

These are my okra and sunflower plants. They may not be ready for Saturday, but the beans definitely will. The cucumbers are questionable-we shall see.

Planting Time is Here

These green bean plants will have to go in the ground by Saturday. They are growing very, very fast. The tubes make planting them convenient, and provide a bit of protection from cutworms, or so I have read. I actually have not had any cutworm problems. Wow! Maybe soon we can eat our own green beans again! Maybe I'll have enough to freeze as well. Lord willing. We will see.