Onward and Upward

I like the looks of baby bok choi plants. They are so very green, at a time when all the summer produce plants are starting to fade! That living green is a deeply cheering thing for me, especially on a hard or painful day. Today was a bit of both. I can grow stuff out back, but not at work. Oy.

100 pounds!

We just passed the hundred pound mark this evening with a small melon and a really nice red tomato! I was hoping to get a hundred pounds out back this year, and it happened. We'll see how much more we get.

Smelly Fridge II

Didn't work. The disgusting smell remains, and it is getting too cool to keep the windows open at night, so it builds in the kitchen. Husband says it smells like rotten onions, but there are no rotten onions in the house. AARGH!

Smelly Fridge

It is raining today, so all gardening except the nightly Slimer Hunt is suspended. We had an extended power outage a few months ago, and I think it is connected to a Rank Odor that has been emitting from the refrigerator for over a week now. I took out everything that was expired. I removed the veggie drawers and cleaned under them. I sniffed every package in the freezer. It is driving me NUTS! Very disgusting rotting-animal-on-the-riverbank smell. Tonight I will do the shelf-at-a-time, top-to-bottom clean with baking soda and water. Hope it helps. I fear some liquid may have gone down into the drainage system of the fridge when it melted down months ago, and has just reached this level of awful ripeness. I even cleaned the truly disgusting drain pan last night (brown, greasy, crusty-dust, anyone?). I know not what else to do. Oy!

Seeing Growth

When you transplant things, especially when you are not very good at it yet, you see variable results. Some plants (like carrots and other root plants) do not do well. Others (the ones for which you harvest above-ground parts) tend to do better. I'm seeing the broccoli and cauliflower starting to grow now. I had to leave them in pots for a month because of the rain, and was surprised that they stayed small in the pots. They are growing at last. I hope they can get big enough to produce before frost.

Dying with Its Boots On

This bee was on one of my lima bean flowers, so I decided to take pictures of it. Then I noticed that it was not moving. The weather was not cool enough outside yet to preclude flight, so the bee must have died on the flower. Many people wish to go this way- doing work they like to do, and going quickly. May God grant us a good death and a Home with Him.

Creepy! Creepy!

We have a planarian invasion in the backyard. No pictures with my camera (they're nocturnal), but you can look at examples here. They're called Bipalium kewense Moseley or the land planarian or arrowhead flatworm. They're becoming common enough for schools in Louisiana to use for those head-splitting experiments (split the head with a razor blade, and the halves regenerate to form two heads). I saw one eating  a living earthworm on a slug hunt last week, and even I got grossed out. EEEEW! It is a long, ribbon-bodied thing with a flat, semicircular "head". No eyes, no mouth in the head. Cut the head off, it gleefully grows another. Cut it in pieces, and each piece becomes a new flatworm. You must kill them in alcohol or soapy water, or by spraying, if you encounter them and you like earthworms. They came here from Southeast Asia in potted plants, and they thrive in the Southern US or in green-houses. Cold winters with frozen soil can kill them, but our soil never really freezes. They like high humidity, so dry climates are safe. But they can devastate the beautiful iridescent earthworms in my garden. I'm collecting the dastardly creatures with a skewer (making sure to get all the body, and not let the tail snap off to get away), and drowning in soapy water as I do the slugs. Hope it works- these are somewhat more primitive than slugs. Creepy.