There are projects that you choose to do and projects that
must be done. The latter kind of project
is often one that you weren’t planning on doing. In the space of a week the rains totalled 7
inches by the rain guage, with 4 inches in one night. I don’t think the pond overtopped the levee,
but the heavy rain washed out a gash on the back side, thanks to the lousy
repair job I did after the floods of 2008. Vegetation will eventually grow in that
stone/clay fill that I added and the root system will anchor it, so I
thought. Weeds never even sprouted in
that stuff, and it took this rain to wash it away.
So
now it’s a real job. I know it’s got to
be fixed quickly and vegetation must be established. Six yards of dirt were delivered on
Friday. The same day I cut the wild rose and
blackberries that grew around the gash.
Many of the blackberry vines were cut last fall, thank goodness. Working in a tangle of thorny vines on a steep
slope with a chainsaw is not much fun, to understate a bit. Once the vines were cleared from the gash
concrete blocks were set in to backstop the dirt. So far I’ve put 2 1/2 yards of dirt and even
more blocks into the gash. There’s lots
more to do.
By
this time I expected to have underground feeder wire set in a trench from the
house to the pole barn and be working on wiring that building. Well I bought the wire anyway. I’ve also been building a mobile rabbit pen,
repurposed from the chicken tractor I built years ago. I’ll have to get a welding shop make an axle
holder when I get the time, but for now there is no time. Too many projects, arghhh!
On
a brighter note the Peterson bluebird box that I built last winter has
attracted a pair of bluebirds. Hope they
do well in their new home. I’ll try to
get a picture of them when I get the opportunity. This morning two males had a territorial
dispute near the nestbox. They literally
locked onto each other and fell to the ground in a battle royale.
And
the garden? The soil is still too wet to
plant potatoes, but not too wet to set out another batch of cole crops. I like to set out transplants on cloudy days
like Sunday, as the biggest shock to the seedling seems to be the change from
artificial light to direct sunlight. There's one more set of cole crops under the lights that will go into the beds in about two weeks. I'm hoping that by then some of the kohlrabi will be ready to come out. There's no more room.
Saturday
I bought some peppers at the Bloomington farmers market and transplanted them
into larger pots. I bought one each of
Jalapeno, Lipstick (I think it’s similar to Carmen), Ancho and Corro di Torro
Rossa, a bullhorn type pepper. They join
two Cabernet peppers that I seeded, a hybrid by Burpee’s that is supposed to be
part Marconi. Millionaire and Silver
Queen okra and Lavendar Touch eggplant were seeded on Sunday. Diva and Picolino cucumbers were seeded last
week. Next week I’ll buy some tomato
seedlings and put them in bigger pots.
I picked more lettuce (14 oz) and more spinach (4 oz). The earthbox has yielded nearly two pounds of
lettuce so far. When a large plant is
pulled the small plants in their shadows quickly grow up and take it’s place.
