6-4-03: Restless Natives

Wednesday, June 4 2003

June is here but someone forgot to turn on the sun. The Ohio natives are restless with the temperatures being 20 degrees below normal, and various pressure systems keeping it gray & damp. Not every day—on Monday it was quite warm, and the high winds of Sat/Sun were gone.

The last installment of our mail order plants (not counting the “corrections” we’re waiting for) came on Saturday, but since Sunday was crummy weather, nothing doing until Monday. Then, David went all out on creating the front flower bed. We’d already established the outline in the grass, so he used our patented (not) method for sod removal, then tilled in some manure.

After hours of his labor it was my turn. I had researched each of the 10 plant varieties received, to determine height, planting width, etc., and sketched out a site plan. First had to do hard labor digging up the area behind the septic tank cover that was too narrow for David to till. Pretty icky clay soil, so I added humus from the compost bin. I’m a little worried now because I just remembered that I didn’t add compost to the other planting areas—must’ve got too excited about getting the plants in the ground. I’ll have to ponder this and decide if to dig them up and redo with a compost injection. After yesterday’s rains, today would be a good time to gauge the soil drainage.

I’m still laying in bed here at 10:30am because it’s still gray and damp outside. I did the dog thing at 7am then back to bed. Pav & Vince are napping on the bed next to me (Vince is snoring) and David’s reading the newspaper in the living room. Tessa is making her rounds outside, and Tig is being quiet in his room.

His intermittent sickness has continued, sometimes going several days between. Now he’s added the occasional poo-poo accident to the throwup. My cleaning tricks are up to the challenge, but it’s no fun. I feel sorry for Tig—he’s so skinny no matter how much food we give him—but the tests at the vet all said nothing was medically wrong with him. I think I’ll call the vet to have a brief chat.

The veggie garden is looking good, especially since the major weeding I did recently.

Carrots

Lettuce

Potatoes

Yesterday we ran errands during the gray weather (I had my blue winter coat on) and it took 3 stops to find a place with seeds for sale. Apparently the seed companies do ‘buy-backs’ from retailers, but it’s too early for Ohio! We were just looking for pumpkin seeds for the field garden (got corn seed at Tractor Supply) but found a fantastic place—Sandy Hill something or other—that has a huge supply of seeds. Packet and bulk, which is very convenient for a wacky gardener/farmer like me. Ended up with 2 kinds of pumpkin seeds, bush beans, Vidalia sweet onion sets, fresh strawberries, and some Yukon Gold potato starters. Earlier at Tractor Supply, bought corn seed, broccoli, squash & pea seed.

10:46pm Had another Haiku idea yesterday, I’ll try and remember it.

One Journal Entry

So Many Moments In Time

Too Much Forgotten

Today we moved the little red shed from the back yard to the front next to the greenhouse site. David used the tractor to drag it, and the lawn barely had a mark on it! It will make a nice potting shed, and we put cement blocks under it to clear headroom under the slanted roof. Also today David replaced the water spigot in the barn, as the old one sprayed you every time you turned it off.

*See description below

*Description of water pipe project by David: The water spigot in the barn was leaking and needed to be replaced. All water pipes around here are buried at least 3 feet to prevent freezing in the winter. First I had to get through the fine gravel and base gravel that made up the floor of the barn, and then the clay soil, which was quite wet from the leakage and was very heavy to shovel by hand. Laying on my belly on the wet ground, I had to reach in and disconnect a black plastic 1” pipe from the base of the spigot and install the new one. There was also no water shutoff valve in the barn. The main well pump had to be shut off and the water bled off in the house to get rid of the pressure in the pipe.
Lesson learned from this house: don’t build things the easy way just to save a few bucks. Think about how future repairs are going to be done if you didn’t do it right the first time. And keep a map of things underground. Turns out the water line from the barn, which was fed from the well pump and pressure tank in the basement of the house, also ran across the field next door to the barn two lots down (previously owned by the person who built the house to supply water to that barn). Thank goodness when they built a house next door they didn’t accidentally dig up our water pipe. Bad enough when the goats in the neighbor’s barn accidentally turned on the water spigot and we lost all of our water pressure and the pump ran dry.

Despite the weather, I ran Vince & Tessa on agility; Tessa did a new course all with silent commands! Weather forecasts are so-so for tomorrow, but I really do need to resume planting.

Random 6/4/03 photos