Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

It’s been hot here for ages. And no rain… I had to water the blackberries and I’ve not had to do that before. Dry and cool is weird tho. It’s been doing this off and on super low temps… Hey, sorry, I need a sweater if it gets much below 80.

These last few days… whoa! I need a sweater on! We are having record lows. It’s July, and the low tonight is supposed to get to 55!!!! Normal July temps don’t drop below 70.

Today we finally got rain along with the low temps. Thank goodness. I think we got about an inch of rain, looking into all the things that can collect rain outside. Sweet! Now if it would just do this again say on Friday morning, next Tuesday, and keep repeating until we catch up… I might be able to skip watering my plants.

The giant green june bugs that show up in July are eating the blackberries. We filled 1/4 of the chest freezer with bags of berries and then I went around to neighbors asking if they wanted to pick any. Kids across the street picked a good gallon or so…. Brent with the nice veggies didn’t show up as far as I know. I told him (and his parents) to just come over and pick em, no need to knock on door or anything. And that they’d better be quick, because the bugs were about to get all the berries.

I’m not picking any more. Let the bugs have them. When those giant green july bugs get in there, they are worse than the little japanese beetles… those suckers fly into you and almost knock you down.

But since our berries did so well this year… even tho they did have to be watered…. Ron and I talked about having a blackberry farm. With what we have now, we could expand greatly. We’d have to take over some of the hay/pasture field, but it could be done.

Then I remember how much work it is to pick the berries… and they have to be picked if you don’t get customers. And I’m not an early riser these days, altho I guess I could trrain myself to be again. Maybe we could do thornless blackberries, some blueberries… and some fall bearing raspberries.

What I want are seedless berries. If there are such a thing. I love the flavor of a ripe raspberry, or blueberry or strawberry or blackberry… and I hate seeds. Even the tiny seeds of strawberries… well, I can’t stand em. I hate those seeds crunching when I expect to be eating something soft and soothing.

With our luck, the people that cut our hay/pasture field down for hay would miss our fencing and just brushhog our new berry plants and run over the fence. People that drive tractors around here aren’t paying a whole lot of attention to what they are running over. The fence now has been there for years… if we put up new fence they might not notice it.

Pipe dream anyhow. But seeing how much people were charging for fresh blackberries at the farmers market in Fayetteville… I could have been making big bucks. $4 or $5 a pint, which is still way better than the small grocery store price of $4 a half pint… and I picked gallons, dang it.

I will be doing something with the berries I picked…. Ron doesn’t care if they’ve been frozen or not. Cooking em amounts to the same thing anyhow. And my Mother owns a really nice food mill that I’ve used to take the seeds out of raspberries…. just gotta borrow it from her. I love that thing. I used it the last time I picked and froze lots of raspberries…. and gave everyone jars of seedless jam. I need to do the same with the blackberries!

I think I’m finally getting tired…

g’night for tonight!

Tonights (non) adventure with Armadillos

Just like last night, we built a small fire in our small bonfire ring which is set on the hump left after the old barn burned down. It’s out in the yard, and next to where I usually will see the armadillos walking by. (We’ve had them come sniff around our legs out there when we were quiet and still and the fire was burning down to coals)

Last night we had our backs to the house. We kept checking every so often around us with lights, but never saw an armadillo.

Tonight, because the wind was in a different direction, we had to sit on the other side. Guess what I spotted out by my car? Yep, an armadillo. So I get the light, Ron gets his gun… and we can’t scare the armadillo out from under my car! Then when it does get out, it is basically standing between Ron’s feet. Seriously, armadillos are sort of immune to their surroundings unless it seems threatening. That almost on Ron’s feet was the best shot he had… all of a sudden the cats decided to help. Armadillo started waddling away, next best shot had too many cats too close. We thought we’d head it off around the storm cellar, but it must have started going at a good clip, because when we got around the cellar there was no armadillo.

Mr Armadillo lives for another day. Ron thinks we may have scared it enough it wouldn’t be back tonight, but I’m not betting on that. We have armadillo burrows all over the place around the property. The one that is braving the cats is NOT the only one. It’s just the one we have been seeing.

I don’t know how much people know about armadillos… I know quite a bit, because I had to find out. Armadillos have no real teeth… they have stumps of bone that are like molars, that’s it. They have babies, live birth as they are mammals… and the babies are always in 4′s and all the same sex. Oh, and baby armadillos are SOFT, not hard shelled. The shells on armadillos are not a shell like a turtle. The shell is more like hair that turns hard, not a true shell. Their bellies stay furry. And there are lots of different kinds of armadillos, but we only really see one kind in the USA… which have been moving steadily north for the last 100 years.

Sometime last year I figured out that the burrow under the blackberries had armadillos… and babies. I’d read that strong smells would make them leave the burrow. I SO wanted to see armadillo babies. I had some ammonia water from cleaning and I had Ron carry the bucket down and pour it down. Nothing happened. They may have had another exit… Armadillo burrows can go as deep as 7 feet underground. And I don’t know how long, or if they are like rabbits with an escape exit. What clued me to the babies was… hundreds of little digging holes right around that burrow. When food is plenty, armadillos just dig a hole here and there, a small cone shaped hole to get what they want. Babies? Well, it was like walking thru a mini mine field, all these tiny diggings. I was very disappointed when I didn’t get to make them come out to see me. (pay backs, now they are all rooting around the house!)

When food is not so plentiful armadillos dig like crazy. The yard is starting to look like someone is coming in at nights with a small rototiller. All around the foundations of the house, around the water hose area, around where the heat pump spits water out… rototiller work. Oh, and around the tree wher we had a sprinkler going the other day to try it out. We don’t water lawns here… while we appreciate green grass, it’s a lot of work to keep it mowed. Just as well… if we were watering I’m sure the armadillos would just be digging up more of the yard.

Could be worse I guess. They haven’t been getting my flowers that much, just the one flower box. And staying away from veggies, but that is probably because the veggies are surrounded with black plastic. But before I’d moved here with Ron, the only armadillos I’d ever seen were on the road, and usually dead. Now I see em all the time. Heck, even a close up visit the other night, poking that one. (yes, that was a bit crazy, even for me)

Self seeding petunias and a lot of bermuda grass. Sigh.

Not quite thumb sized blackberry. When they get plenty of water, the berries get a lot bigger.

The berry hedge. That’s thornless blackberries.

A fuller view of the hedge. It’s pretty huge after just a few years. We’ve got a freezer full of berries and they aren’t done yet!

My tomato and pepper plants. See the black plastic? It keeps the weeds from growing and also conserves moisture. But I’ll have to cover it with mulch pretty quick to keep the tomatoes and peppers from cooking on the vine.

A different view of the garden, including my shadow. Makes my butt look big, lol!

These are my latest blooming sunflowers. I love them. So do the bumblebees.

One of the maroon and yellow sunflowers that started blooming earlier.

Darker orange yellow sunflower. It’s quite short and mixed in with the cherry rose sunflowers.

Same flower, different view.

A different view of the new bright yellow sunflowers.

And yet another view.

And I swear I’m going to kill someone at WP. This every 2 seconds draft saving is driving me NUTS.

My sunflowers have started blooming. So have my glads. The glads are great, altho the thunderstorms yesterday snapped a few… I broke those off and brought them inside to stick in with the zinnias my daughter bought at the farmers market. (that happened AFTER these photos, btw)

Reddish double sunflower

Still one batch of sunflowers that have yet to start blooming. The odd thing is that I thought I was mixing up seeds while planting, but from the looks of things I didn’t do that. My goal was to go all down the fence line, but I ran out of energy before even planting the sections I did. Was going to also plant cukes along with the sunflowers, but I didn’t do that, either… just as well, as my neighbor is gifting me with giant bags of cukes.

red double with flash in daytime

If I had planted cukes my life would not be my own! I’ve already pickled about 10 lbs of cukes!

a view down the row

As it is, the blackberries are keeping me busy. Have picked, with help, a couple of gallons so far. And they are just starting. Eeek!

maroon and yellow

My red onions are not doing so well, but that’s okay. Tomatoes are doing great, and I’ve got anaheim peppers and ancho peppers… but no bells yet. Those plants are smaller, but bushier… and blooming, but I guess it was too hot to set fruit.

Goldfinches did this trying to get at seeds

The best thing about the glads is that the hummingbirds seem to like them. I don’t know if they are getting anything from them, but it keeps them busy. Busy is good, otherwise they just fight over my feeders. Had to put up a 3rd feeder this weekend. Usually I have to have 3 feeders anyhow, but this year there just haven’t been that many birds. I know I need another feeder when they drain the favorite feeder in ONE DAY. Heh.

I wish I’d got better photos of the glads, but, heck, glads are glads. I’ve got yellow, red, pink with with and yellow centers and salmon colored that are just starting to bloom. I have to remember… don’t buy glad bulbs on clearance, I started out with something like 75 bulbs, but had to toss a lot of them instead of planting as they were no good. No sign of the purple ones, those must’ve been in the worst shape. Glads need a LOT of water… not only when you plant them, but when they start to bloom. A good 1/3 of the ones I planted have either died or are not doing well. I also got elephant ear bulbs on markdown… those sat there forever in the ground before finally emerging and now are thriving.

Also in the photos, altho not very well… volunteer petunias. Last year I had a wonderful batch of petunias in a window box out in the yard…. took watering every day, but did well. I moved the ones I found this year, but the ones in pots are not thriving. The two in the flower bed are doing better. Not sure if they are the same breed as the window box ones, I hope so. If I recall, I collected those seeds from Ron’s Mom’s house back when she still had flowers… hers always did well if they were weeded early enough. Mine are struggling with the grass, but still okay. Can’t even tell I weeded that bed 2 weeks ago. Sigh.

Not pictured: my self seeding four o’clocks. I know they can take over, but they are exactly what I need in the beds in front of the house. What surprised me this year is that the confetti four o’clocks came back. I figured that I’d just have plain ones this year. I love the smell of four o’clocks, wish I didn’t have to go stick my face in them to smell them.

Forgot again that captioning is not what I want to do, the formatting is wrong…. oh well!
Hope everyone had a fun and safe weekend!

Earlier in the summer a toad was living in between the front door and the storm door. We rarely use that door, so it was a pretty safe place.

But then he almost got stepped on and woke up too early. Since then he is living somewhere else. I suspect under the cat house.

This is where he sits every night unless cats scare him off.

He will in fact switch dishes if the cats bother him… there are 2 other water dishes on the porch. That’s gotta be a shock to a cat going to get a drink, lol! Ack, a toad is using my water as a swimmy pool!

An update on the baby birds: they are gone. I suspect Blue Jays raided the nest. Very sad, but it wasn’t a great place for a nest anyhow.

Drove over to Eureka Springs with my daughter this afternoon. Had a nice visit with Sara of Paper Odyssey, and of course bought a few things. I had a gift silk scarf for her, but then wanted to show her some others, and she ended up buying a big purple one from me… my favorite “galaxy” silk.

Tomorrow my daughter Sarah and I will dye a bunch more silk scarves. They are one of my best sellers at the farmers market.

Oh, and our neighbor gifted me with 2 grocery bags full of cukes. Nice slicer cukes. Looks like I’m gonna be making pickles. He also told me to PLEASE come over and pick veggies. He’s got a great big garden, but it’s just him, and there are enough veggies there to feed a small town of people. I told him he went a bit insane… but heck, it looks like I’m going to get all the veggies I can eat… and I’ll take some to the farmers market to sell. Will give Brent the money. I’ll have to get out there in the morning, tho… heat of the day is no time to be trying to pick veggies!

Well, this is all for tonight…. :)