Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

   Yesterday I pulled the beets, preparatory to pickling them, but it did not happen due to unforeseeable circumstances.  Yesterday was a very long day.  I'm trying to make a note of what happened yesterday so I will remember what it was when I look back on this entry, without telling too much about someone else's business.  Ha.  Let's just say it was a procedure that went awry.  But things are improving. So today I had to process the beets.  There was a couple of fun looking beets in this batch.  I'd  never seen them have two stems like this:   I wonder if it was two that fused.  I dunno. Anyway.  I got 6 pints of pickled beets done this morning. Ellen was home from work with a virus of some sort.   In the middle of my trying to can the beets the AC was destroyed.  We will not talk about who did it or why.  Let's just say it was on the fritz and the person got a bit too enthusiastic in attempting to f...

  Princess is my sister-in-law's cat.  She is about 4 years old.    The past few years here locally, and in fact all over the Southeast and Midwest, bobcat fever has been on the rise.  It is officially known as  "Cytauxzoonosis." Here is the blurb that popped up when I entered "bobcat fever" into the search bar: "Cytauxzoonosis The first signs are lethargy, depression, not wanting to eat and a high fever , hence the term Bobcat Fever. It can cause anemia, jaundice, difficulty breathing and enlarged lymph nodes. Unfortunately, most cats will die within a few days to a week after signs start." The statistics are grim.  There is a 1% survival rate without treatment; death comes in just 2-3 days.  With aggressive treatment there's like a 60% survival rate, maybe.  There is no vaccine. And from all that I have researched and from what the vet told Gail, there probably won't be one any time soon; even though this horror started in Florida, or i...

 The rain has dried up for now and I am back to watering the garden nightly.  Or sometimes in the early morning. But while it was wet the weeds had a party in the garden, trying to drown out the vegetables. It just looked awful.  As you can see I grubbed out around the vegetable plants as best as I could, but I just didn't have the energy in the high humidity to shovel up the weeds between the rows. But it finally dried up enough that Gary and I got both tillers out and had a session working things down. This was the next day after tilling where you can see the sun dried things up a bit and the garden actually looks salvageable. With God's great blessings, I will have beans to can and beets to pickle next week.  

 This was supposed to have posted 2 days ago, on Friday morning.  But we have been having trouble with our internet service going up and down.  So apparently this didn't even post.     Mercy me.  We got another half inch of rain last night.  So much for the garden drying out to be able to till it. I had figured on that happening.  So what with the weeds well above my knees in some areas I just hauled out the weed eater and whacked them down yesterday.  The ground sure wouldn't dry out with that tangle of greenery over it.  About halfway through the strings on the weed eater broke off flush inside You can see I got one side untangled, but was still working on the other.  I had to bring it in the house and get the box cutter involved. Then I we t back out and went after it again.  Before I was finished it was gone again, so I just quit, but I eliminated most of the weeds. You can see there is still a small patch there on the righ...

The one above is the one I grew from a seed given to me by Betty from church; about 3 years ago now, I believe.  I wonder what variety it is; it grows so tall.  You can barely see the hibiscus I mentioned yesterday; the one that is about to bloom there at the top of the group of plants.  She is much shorter and the leaves are smooth and shiny.   Below is the Mother's Day Hibiscus:   She is in my flower bed where this year I have planted a whole packet of zinnias.  I just threw them in there randomly.  I am sure it is way overcrowded and some will get smothered out.  I have transplanted a few of them, and learned that they do not take well to transplanting; some survived, some did not.  The transplanted ones that survived are about a quarter of the height of these.  So anyway, I have just left the rest of them grow and make the best of it.  I keep the weeds out and am anticipating their blooms. I am also anxious to see how large...

 June 9th, 2024 was a wet day.  So wet in fact that they closed down church because it was inaccessible to the majority of the congregation.  The K Community Church down the road pooh-poohed the situation and a few of the members who attended got cut off from returning home their normal route.  I think to get back home they had to do like a 20 mile round trip.   The above photo was taken by our neighbor, Carla.  This flood really damaged the pavement; there were massive chunks of trees and debris all over it.  The road department had to do repairs on it.   My garden is not faring well either, in all the rain.  These were my peppers Sunday morning:   I've not been able to till the weeds down due to the amount of rain, and so much water is turning the green beans yellow.  I hope they make it.  If they don't I will have to do a fall crop.   The tomato plants are also suffering from the rain; blight is setting i...

 At the moment; 5:45 AM on this date, we are under a system that is dumping yet more rain on us.  I expect my draggled garden is out there attempting to learn to swim.   However, if it survives I will have green beans in a couple of weeks.  This seems to be an earlier crop than the Top Crop variety; I believe this is the variety called "Contender."   The tomato and pepper plants are doing pretty well, as is the row of okra.  Out in the big garden I planted the cucumber, cantaloupe and pumpkin plants on either hills or a long raised ridge, maybe they won't be drowned too badly.  I call that a small victory as well.    At least I I haven't had to water any of the garden for the past couple of weeks; maybe a month.  That is surely saving on the water bill. 

Permit me to talk about the muddy garden again. Yesterday I decided I just couldn't let the mud win, and aside from letting it all "go to thunder" as Gary would say, or changing the garden into a rice paddy, I knew I had to salvage what I could. So I headed out into the mud to attempt a rescue operation.   This wasn't even the deepest part... I took the shovel with me and attacked the weeds between the rows. As I went I would pluck the weeds from between the vegetable plants.  I used the shovel to "skin off" the top inch or two and then flip it over.   The bigger weeds will regrow from the roots, but I think it will at least keep them from blooming and going to seed; not to mention prevent them from shading out the vegetables.  I forgot to take a pic of the row when I was finished. We are hoping for a few days grace from rain so the ground can dry enough to till. Here is the expression of the gardener herself, that would be me, not complaining about the rain...

 Yesterday afternoon we had another gully washer blow through.  It dropped about 3/4 inch of rain in just half hour or so.  It was the same system that had pretty much washed out my friend's garden in Kansas that morning.  They got over 3 inches out of it; there was an actual stream flowing through her garden area; all of her mulch and top coating was collected against the back fence.   This morning there is a system south of us in Oklahoma and Arkansas that may or may not head our way; depending on which way the wind blows.  We can hear the thunder from a system that is going north of us. Right now, at 6:30 in the morning, it is overcast and not looking inclined to do any drying up out in the garden, whether or not we get another rain storm. Last week, this being Tues, we got 2 inches and I went out to check on the garden. This is how it was: I had literally sunk down to my ankle.  As you can see; the weeds are taking over.  I keep grubbing ...

  The emergence of the cicadas is pretty much over.  They say they live for 2-4 weeks, so there are still yet many of them yelling loudly every day.  There are also still husks hanging around.  This one was on Gary's aunts little front yard fence.  I don't know how it managed to get up there, crawling on the wire like that.  They are the clumsiest things when they emerge from the ground.  On occasion I'd find one that had fallen into the dog's water in her kennel.  But they are determined.  We didn't have that many here around the immediate vicinity of the house.  I have wondered if it has anything to do with the fact that the trees here around the house keep dying or getting blown down.  Ellen says that down by the river where she works cleaning cabins the cicada husks were so thick that they crunched underfoot.  Maybe they prefer being close to a water source?   There also have been reports of them attacking people ...