Re: June weekend update

Cyndi-your weekends are always so entertaining. :-) Glad you managed to hang on and win the rodeo................ 
A
----- Original Message ----- From: "Johnson Cyndi D Civ 95 CG/SCSRT" <cyndi.johnson@edwards.af.mil> 
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2007 1:18 PM
Subject: [CHAT] June weekend update



It was pretty hot this weekend, must have been in the 90s, but not as
hot as we've had. Plus there was considerable breeze so all in all it
wasn't too bad. I worked only in the vegetable garden although frankly
there were some hours I could have been in the front, but instead I
chose to sit with hubby on the lawn under the trees. Anyway I worked on
clearing out the beds with the peas and the lettuce. The peas were
pretty much done due to heat, but if I had been better at weeding in
there I would have gotten more out of them. After we put the chicken
wire around that area they really did pretty good despite the rabbit
damage, but it was difficult to weed so I just allowed it to degrade. So
I pulled about 4 wheelbarrows full of pea plants and weeds out of there
and gave it to the chickens, they were happy. Same with the lettuce
pretty much but I grew a row of cilantro in there and it is flowering
right now, so I left it to go to seed.
We never did zap anything (that we know of ) with the super hot-wire but
the damage stopped after we hooked it up so from that standpoint it was
successful. Husband also dispatched a couple of rabbits inside the
garden with his pellet gun, and now that there isn't much tender new
growth it appears that most of the problems have stopped. So it's wait
and see now.  I'm definitely going to expand the area covered by the hot
wire and hook it up next spring, it will be annoying but hopefully it
will work.
The zucchini are happily producing, I brought about 10 to work to give
away and we're eating them just about every dinner (and I microwave one
for lunch at work too). Lots of little tomatoes and I've gotten one or
two okra pods, not much you can do with so few though.  Eggplant are
flowering, but no fruit yet. I see lots of soybean pods and am
impatiently waiting for green beans, lots of flowers so I'm just hoping
it doesn't get too hot for them. My sweet corn, what there is of it, is
putting out tassels - it's a very early variety so it's only about 4 ft
tall. The few stalks of the dent corn are growing but I'm looking at it
as an ornamental, so little of it survived I doubt we'll get any ears. I
still have only one melon plant, the seeds I planted a couple weeks ago
did not germinate, and I've decided it's too late to try and start
cucumbers even though I'm kicking myself for not planting any.
Well...next year. I could go to the store and see if they have any in
pots I guess.
I got my pond pump working again too, that was nice. My dry garden is
somewhat faded looking but there are still quite a few flowers. In the
disaster that is the front cottage garden the gaillardia and achillea
look good, there's a few coreopsis, some shasta daisies, the roses are
starting up again, the buddleia is starting to bloom. An awful lot of
grassy weeds in there, sigh. I haven't even looked at the tea garden
closely. We will be at home the whole week of July 4 so plenty of time
for yard work. Oh yes and my lemon grass is not dead! Out of the huge
dead clump are coming about six or seven shoots. So maybe it will
recover after all.
We did go riding Sunday morning, back to Vasquez Rocks where I had my
accident back in April. I am thinking that place might have bad karma,
we got lost again. The horses were scrabbling up this incredibly steep
slope marked "Horse Trail" and I'm thinking, holy #@#%, we better not
have to come back this way because I'll have to get off. So of course we
lost the trail and had to turn around. But it wasn't that bad...until
the very end, when my horse leaped down the last ledge and started
bucking, I have no idea why. I had a death grip on the reins, I'm
yelling at him, and all I could think of was that I was NOT coming off
that horse. And I didn't. But it's sure funny how he's like the best
behaved horse you can have but when we go there, something happens.
Anyway I've decided my heart must be in pretty good shape because the
whole rodeo thing was kind of a rush, and then last night I'm out in the
chicken area and dumping out their water when a snake slides out from
underneath the pan right next to my foot, I mean it touched my shoe. A
little snake, mind you, and a nice non-poisonous gopher snake at that,
but despite instantly recognizing those two mitigating factors I still
screamed loud enough to wake the dead. Fortunately I didn't fall over
while leaping backward but I guess I can't lay claim to being calm cool
and collected. Sheesh.

Cyndi

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