Brrrr

Like a lot of people, we're in the teens (F) with snow coming down. It's a good day for hot brandy and writing with a dog curled up close by. Not so good for going out and covering roses that should have been covered all along (oops) but my DH and I did that too.

This is how mean I am. I make my DH smoke outside, even in this weather.

I hope everyone is warm and safe and well-fed. Keep your pets close, and don't forget ... in about ten days you can start some veggies from seed, provided that you have a plant light combined with a sunny window or sliding door area (the combination really helps) and that you're willing to pot your plants up at least twice. Herbs, tomatoes, eggplants and peppers are all worthwhile starting right now. And if you like hanging baskets, if you start them in March they should be huge by the time it's warm enough to put them outside! Just remember about that light requirement. They need a lot of light, and a good spectrum. I like using 4' aquarium lights in a shop fixture next to a window. I have my lights on a timer. Right now they're over my orange trees. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I start my veggies, aside from make my annual mess when I rearrange everything.

Also next month, if you took your fuschias and geraniums into the garage, find a spot to hang them in the house where they'll get some light, start watering them, and prune them. The warmth, moisture and light will stimulate growth, and they should be in peak form by Mother's Day.

Weird things Kamis do

Kamis are notorious for doing weird things.

This morning, this Kami got up at 6am so she could take down the hummingbird feeder (which she forgot to take in last night), thaw it, and fill it with fresh, warm nectar. She was very happy when the hummingbird showed up about an hour later to tank up.

Then she decided to take a look at her African violet seed pod. It was ripe! She danced a little happy dance, picked it, and then took a picture of it. This is what they look like:

African violet seed pod

 She's really looking forward to planting the seeds and raising them up to be new african violets. She has a bunch. This one was probably fertilized by a fly. Since then, she's hand-fertilized several other blooms, and once again her plants are pregnant. It takes months for the pods to develop and ripen.

This may not seem all that weird until you realize that this Kami already has lots and lots of African violets. Yet she wants to make more. She will probably have to start giving some away.

Kamis have also been known to go out in their robe and slippers into the snow to take pictures of their cats:

Wizard in the snow with cute paw prints

Kamis also take delight when their chickens do weird things, like lay miniature eggs:

Tiny chicken egg, laid 2/2/2014

They'll even take pictures of said weird eggs early in the morning for a blog post. It's a good thing when Kamis have others, especially Rorys, take care of them because they may be too silly and weird to survive on their own.

Weeds, Tea and Soup

The garden is growing really, really well.  Too well, in some cases.  Can you have too much bok choi? Apparently so.  Sadly, the goats don't like it, which I find weird, but useful in that the deer haven't bothered it at all.  I guess I have to eat faster.  Something to think about--bok choi, when cooked, forms a nice, not-too-thick gel.  It might be a good ingredient for soups.  If an experiment comes out all right along those lines, I'll post about it.

Anyway, I noticed something that produced a duh moment for me.

I have areas in my garden where not just the plants, but the weeds are positively huge.  It made me realize that the places that have small weeds are under-fertilized.  Sooo ... when I put the beds to sleep (heh) in the fall, when I put down my homemade fertilizer and cover things over, I can put extra in the places where the weeds are really pitiful, and less where they're gargantuan.

Not that I'll have weeds, of course.  Everything will be perfectly manicured and weeded by then.

But if I did have weeds, I could totally use them as a gauge for how much fertilizer to put down.  Aaaand, the beauty part, if I overdo it in the fall, its not going to burn my veggies because I won't have any in the ground at the time.  It'll have time to mellow for many months before I plant again.  Remember, though, if you add amendments in the fall, if they're super water soluble, they'll just wash away into the soil too deep for the plants to reach them in spring, so either protect against rain or just wait until after your seedlings sprout in the spring.  Don't fertilize when you plant seeds.  It messes them up when they germinate.  If you must, scratch the fertilizer in at least six inches, preferably farther, away from your seed line.

Speaking of fertilizer, I have a scary bucket of chicken poo waiting by.  I haven't decided what to do with it.  It's super hot, and only partially composted.  I'm tempted to spread it between the smallest of my zucchini plants and maybe make tea with some of it to water with around the fruit trees.  Chicken poo is awesome fertilizer, but you have to be careful.  It burns, baby, burns!  There's really no way to measure how hot it is, so I'll have to guess.  In cases like that, it's good to remember that you can always add, but you can't take away the damage from too much once it's done.  It's not like too much salt in your soup, where you can stick in a couple of celery stalks or add potatoes to fix it.

Soup again.  I must be craving it.  I think I'll make soup for dinner tonight.

Watch out for the weather.  Stay hydrated in hot spots, and look out for lightning.  We had an incredible lightning storm just east of us.  It sounded like fireworks show off in the distance, and for a while I thought that's exactly what it was, a post-4rth show, until I looked out the window.  Often there were multiple flashes at once.  We don't usually get that kind of weather around here.  I was very, very glad I could appreciate it at a distance instead of being directly under it.  It must have been terrifying.  Here's the weather report for it.  Photos here.  BTW, it takes three to four hours for me to drive from my home to the worst-hit areas of the storm, but I saw the closest edge of it quite well from our deck.

Blood, Sweat and Seeds

When I got home I had two M&Ms cookies with a cone of whipped cream on top, and then I went to work.  You'd think after a full day at the day job I'd want to put my feet up, or maybe at least cook some dinner and watch a movie or something.

That would be far too sensible.

We had rain in the local forecast, and I remembered I had all these old seeds I hadn't gotten around to planting.  Bags and bags of them.  And I thought, I'll just scatter them around and the rain will soak them in and what comes up, comes up.

But of course it's never that simple.

First I planted some ancient marigold seeds out in the veggie garden, and then I checked out the area I had planned for my mass old seed dumping ground.  It's about sixty feet long and ten to twenty feet wide, depending on the section.  The kids had, as instructed, dug out the majority of the blackberry roots, so I figured I'd just toss the seeds on the bare ground and go inside and have dinner.  I grabbed a rake (big mistake) and went to break the crust on the soil.

Hard as a rock.  Seriously.  I felt so betrayed!  Normally the soil under blackberries is quite soft.  They form their own sort of (evil) duff that keeps the soil moist and suppresses weeds.  And a few of the areas were like that, but way too much of it felt like baked clay so hard that I understood why even the grass hadn't started to take root there (yet.)  First I debated attacking the areas with a hoe.  Couldn't find one.  Then I considered  a shovel.  Mind you, this is after work, and I knew it would get dark soon, and breaking up rock hard dirt with a shovel is no light, quick task.

The impending darkness settled it for me.  I would get the big rototiller.

One sweaty, sore, throat-sore-from-suppressed-cussing half-hour later I had the whole section tilled.  I scattered the seeds, keeping particular kinds more or less together, raked the now (mostly) soft dirt to roughly cover at least some of the seeds in case they needed to be covered to sprout, and went home.  I had just enough time to gather eggs from the coup and close the chickens in for the night before the dark swooped in.  I had to turn on lights when I came in so that I could find my way around the house.

So now I'm thinking (I'm crazy that way) that I'd just put a whole lot of work into seeding an area that may or may not have viable seeds scattered on it.  So sometime this week I'm going to do yet another ridiculous thing.  I'm going to get a bunch of fresh seeds of something tall, bomb-proof and pretty, like cosmos or baby's breath or bachelor buttons (or maybe all of the above), and mix it with a big bag of potting soil and scatter that around the area as well.

That should fix it up real nice.

And then I'll be done.

Except for putting in the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other stuff.

Oh, and I have a few more discounted bulbs to put in.

But then I'll be done.

Really.

Mostly done, anyway.

Seeds and Armor

Two seed trays, three bags of seedling mix, and a bunch of seeds rubberbanded together. I guess that normal people have potting benches out back or do this in their garage. I'm not normal.

I open the seedling mix bag and discover that it's essentially peat moss with a little vermiculite mixed in. Oh well, I'll know better next year. I got myself a soup spoon for a scoop, but that's for later. First, you gotta dump as much dirt into the middle of the tray as you can and then start spreading it out toward the edges. My favorite part is when I lift the tray three times and smack it (gently!) on the dining table to 'pack' the soil down. After I fiddle around with topping off the low cells, I fill the water-catcher tray with about a half inch of lukewarm water and let the cells soak it up. Ideally the cells will be nice and moist with almost no water left in the bottom.

Ah, nice, dark earth (well, peat moss and vermiculite mix--no dirt here) ready for seeds. Some seeds go one to a cell, some of them two. With the more spendy seeds I put in just one and hope for the best. With the less expensive ones I double or sometimes triple up, with the plan of snipping off all but the nicest one in each cell.

Poor things.

And then I put on the tray's 'greenhouse' cover.

I don't like the things, actually. They promote mold, which then has to be combatted with anti-fungals. But I had this worse problem than mold last year ....

And sure enough, after a trip into town, my daughter rats him out.

"Wizard stepped on your seed trays. Sorry, I couldn't stop him."

I lift the greenhouse lid. Victory! With the soil level slightly below the tops of the trays, and the smaller cell size I selected, plus the tough plastic of the clear lid ....

No kitteh footprints here. Yay!

I felt a little bad for starting my tomato and pepper seeds so late, but you know what? It snowed all day, non-stop. I might still be late-ish, but considering the weather, hedging my bets for a later plant-out might not be such a bad thing. I just hope that my indigo rose tomatoes have enough time and heat to ripen. They look soooo kewl!

I Can't Shake Him!

The whistling, buzzing sound zipped by me like a vengeful alien mutant giant wasp favored by the Old Ones.  

Yay, a hummingbird!  Rufous, to be exact.  First of the season.  (Some hummingbirds stick around all year but generally they do that in the valley--not here in the hills.)  I go inside and fix up the first batch of hummingbird food of the year, one part cane sugar, four parts water, absolutely and never anything else like honey (kills them) or fruit juice (spoils rapidly) or food coloring (totally unnecessary.)  This year I have organic cane sugar, which came out looking like flat, weak beer but the hummingbird didn't mind.  He buzzed me as I put it up, and then came in to feed.  

Only to be chased by another hummingbird.  

Good grief.  The feeder is up all of five minutes and we already have hummingbird wars?  Really?

These two have been dogfighting ever since I put the thing up.  Once toward evening yesterday they both settled to feed at the same time--I think they were low on energy to begin with and tired each other out.  Not today.  Today they are high on sugar and it's non-stop hummingbird action.  One has found a favored perch within a few feet of the feeder, on my white akebia vine, which is about ready to explode with blossoms.

If I'm going to attract any Anna's hummingbirds this year I'll have to hide a second feeder and possibly a third.  Between the late spring tube flowers that will provide natural fodder and multiple feeders, some of the more shy hummingbirds may be able to stake out a small claim if they don't give up with disgust before the plant leaf-out provides them with some cover.  But I suspect it'll be rufous hummers and not much else around here.

Chaos and Sunshine

I heard the dogs whining.  When the dogs whine, it's usually the goats or the dobies across the way.  I was in the middle of a phone call, so I dawdled, until finally I got my butt upstairs.  

Goats.  Goats everywhere.  Well, near the barn, anyway.  Gah.

I apologized to my DH and headed out in mud boots.  The so-called cunning plan was to get one dog on a leash, head out there, and herd the herd back into their enclosure, followed by an investigation to try to figure out how they got out.  Finn sat tidily and calmly, so he got the coveted leash.  Now, normally, I can squeeze through the fence and through a combination of mild expletives, snarls, barks, shouts, shoves and admonitions, I can get me and just one dog out the gate.

Not today.  

Beast rammed past me with surprising force.  The goats scattered.

Great.

I shouted at him, but the airedale is strong in this one.  Goats climbed onto the stack of straw we have on our archery range.  Goats circled and faced him off with horns.  Scooter disappeared into the barn, and Beast went after him.  A second later Scooter came out, Beast appeared to bound onto him, and Scooter went down.  And lay still.

My heart leapt into my throat, just like in the cliche'.  I managed to snag Beast.  It was like a fight, but luckily he didn't use his teeth on me.  I knew if I scared him enough, he might panic and bite.  My throat was raw and I couldn't get enough air to fuel the effort of getting a very powerful dog so he can't slip away while simultaneously getting the chain collar off another dog that's trying to help and get that collar on him.  I think it took about four minutes.  

For the record, four minutes of giving it your all sucks.  

I finally succeeded.  Finn is good with the goats, so he was fine off leash around them.  He trotted into the pasture and started a perimeter patrol.  I couldn't take Beast over to what was left of Scooter--I had to get him back to the dog run.  I couldn't get the thought out of my head.  I have to shoot my dog.

No, I'll adopt him out.  Can I do that?  I don't think so.  What if he hurt a cat, a dog ... maybe an owner with no animals, maybe if I put out a plea--

Negotiations of a desperate mind.  I got him in and started back toward the barn.

And Scooter, the little butthead, stood up.  He was fine.

Fainting goat.  He must have fainting goat in him.  He overloaded and collapsed.  He was down, oh, I don't know how long.  Four minutes?  Another long four minutes, the kind where you have death in your hands and you don't want it.

So relieved on so many levels I was on the verge of tears, I looked Scooter over.  He didn't have so much as a scratch.  He wasn't limping.  He was fine.  Beast didn't hurt him.  He didn't hurt him.  He just scared him.  It still wasn't good, but it wasn't a death sentence.

I got the goats in, still relieved by my near miss.  Next time, the good dog gets to go in through the house.  It'll be like an air lock.  If one or both get by me, they might trash the upstairs, but they won't get out to the goats.  Brian would be fine, but Beast ... Beast was born and bred to chase deer, and goats are the next best thing.

Exhausted, I gasped my way back to the house, tasting blood in my throat, trembling from adrenaline.  It took fifteen minutes or more for me to feel like I might not pass out.  My DH called back and we talked while I sipped a shot of Navan to soothe my throat, and then I went back out.

I found what I thought was the hole, plugged it, dealt with another weak area for good measure, and thought that was that.  I was filthy, smelled like wet dog, mud under my fingernails--and it was sunny and gorgeously warm, beautiful in only the way a day can be after a near miss.  Time to garden.  I planted a tree (not the Christmas tree--I'll need help to get it off the deck) and some bulbs I'd left out in the weather just before the storm (all of them except a few anemones looked good, and I bet even the really pathetic anemones will be fine too,) did some weeding, placed a couple of edging boulders, leveled a couple sections of path.  About that time the goats got out again.  This time I had help from the kids.  I managed to notice that the truck gate was leaning.  Aha!  Andrea and I got it tied back in place.  No more goat escapes.

Chaos and sunshine.  It was a very good day, but I'll be sore tomorrow.  I feel it coming on already.

A Gardening Day

I've got dirt around my wrists.  You know what that means.

I've had my gardening gloves on.

After what seems like forever we had some actual sunshine around here.  The dry (if cloudy) weather preceding it helped drain the sludge (aka garden soil) so that today it was workable.  I planted my quaking grass, holy mole peppers, anchusa, and love lies bleeding seedlings.  I also managed to transplant my pampas grass starts into gallon containers.  

I'm still a dizzy muffin but I'm feeling much, much better today.  Just in time to go to work tomorrow.  Ugh.  Went to the doctor and the doctor said, no more monkeys--actually, she looked confident that the treatment I'm signed up for will work.  So, come July, I'll have to suffer for another week and then voila!  Things should get better.  Not instantly, but over the course of the following months.

I wrote a weird story (probably too weird to be publishable) and worked some on Signet while I reclined on the couch last night.  I know, I know, again with the rewarding being sick thing.  But it felt good to play in the Masks universe again without (shudder) having to edit the manuscript.  I much prefer first draft writing over editing, at least for now.  Maybe I'll change my mind after the master's course.

Speaking of rewards for being infirm, apparently we get punished for getting better.  Not only do I get to go back to work (um, yay?) but the girl is out of her cast and is now in a brace, which means she gets to do all the non-fun parts of PE, like running, again.  Well, I enjoy running but I suspect, gauging by her expression yesterday, that she was less than thrilled.  She prefers team sports, which will be off limits until that brace is off.

I've had my rest and some water.  Time to go plant a few more things.  Tomorrow's forecast--covered by store ceiling followed by cloudy skies.  

Staring out the window, wishing

Looks like Kat is going to be fine.  She's had an allergic reaction to something, possibly a penicillin shot or a pain killer shot from when she was messing with her incision.  She's on mild, low-dose steroids and should recover nicely.  Partly thanks to the meds and partly thanks to a draw of fluids from the lump to check the contents, her lump is a little smaller already.

I'm feeling better too.  My voice is almost back to normal and I had enough energy to go out in the rain and put nets over some plants the deer decided needed pruning.  The plants are fine, so far, mostly, but another hit and they'd be pretty sad and might not even recover.

I get weather reports twice a day--once in the morning, once in the evening--a forecast that looks at the weather every few hours out a couple of days.  It looks like the rain will trail away but I don't see any sun as of the latest forecast.  Ugh.  My question is, will we ever warm up enough to make planting the tomatoes and peppers in the ground worthwhile?  Maybe they'll just be in containers in the greenhouse until July.  I've got grasses and herbs to put out and the ground is like sludge--it's better to wait to plant until the soil drains and becomes friable again.  The slugs are rampant.  They love this weather.  They can be out all day and night.  The birds are miserable.  They've got to be having a tough time raising hatchlings in this.  The goats are annoyed.  The dogs are sullen.  We haven't had a river walk in ages.

The second year after we moved here we didn't have good enough weather for me to plant a veggie garden until June.  Back then I didn't have very many perennials and so the garden was a wash except for some strawberries and zucchini.  Thinking about that makes me feel better about the conditions this year.  No matter what happens we'll have a great perennial ornamental garden, heaps of herbs, grapes, elderberries, blueberries, currants, rhubarb, and even if they're just stuck in containers all season, peppers and tomatoes.  I bet I'll even get some nice zucchinis again.  They always produce, even in a short growing season.  Looks like the peach trees, unless the rain makes them mold and mildew to pieces, will have fruit and we always get some apples and pears no matter how bad the year is.  I guess I don't have that much to whine about.  Besides, the weather is a godsend for some people.

So here's me looking at the bright side of things.  I'll try not to be too much of a little kid, forehead braced against the window, staring into the rain and wishing.    

Beautiful Day

Another beautiful day.

It's a funny kind of mom's day.  Mourning Nikita's loss, mimosas, chocolate covered donut holes, a beautiful letter from my daughter, transplanting plant acquisitions from the Mother's Day sale in downtown Camas, reading critiques of my opening for Masks on Flogging the Quill, going on a mad photographical spree when the sun peeked out for about ten minutes.  It's a good day, but in constant flux.  The washing machine of my life is in the agitation cycle.  The pics, in order, starting with the upper left, akebia vine growing through our deck upstairs, honeybush bought at the Mom's Day market, black-headed grosbeak (safety first grosbeak) and mourning dove.

Also today, got a nice rejection from an agent.  Haven't found a mean one yet.  Denied!  It's encouraging, though, since they're all so encouraging.