getting there

finally seeing the light at the end of the planting tunnel. two more gardens to go and i'll be done. the two that are left are outside of the fenced area so they are always left until last.

we've had plenty of rain recently (and i see that George is getting another round from the hurricane down there in Texas) with three inches of rain in the past several days. the ground is pretty soggy, the ditches are getting full and some areas along the rivers are flooding. we had a nice sunny day, a good breeze to keep the biting flies off and mid 70s temperatures and not too bad of humidity. compared to yesterday (hotter and much more humid and not as much of a breeze) it was beautiful.

more chances of rain yet this week, but that is ok, as it's nice to have rain instead of using the well water.

in other news we've been using buckets, ramps and sunflower seeds to reduce the chipmunk population. the semi-feral cats have not been around very much at all and the chipmunks have been running all over the place. we've captured

18 in six days and there's still plenty more. in other critter news i thought i'd chased the groundhogs off last fall but they returned a few days ago - a whole pile of kits... i've captured one of them and been using the air rifle to chase the rest of them off. so far it seems to be improving (if i want much of a bean crop i have to fight for it). the rabbits too are very thick.

i should take all of these critters being around as a good sign and i do as it means the system is capable of supporting a diversity of life. today i saw the first large toad i've seen in a long time and we have a good snake population too (the toad probably got flooded out of their home in the rocks).

the strawberries came in nice enough this year and i've been putting up jam and berries in the freezer. had some folks over to pick Sunday and they had about 30 quarts when they left. more to pick yet, but i'm tired today - perhaps tomorrow. it's about half the crop as compared to last year.

everything else is growing pretty well, having some sunshine today has helped.

that's the news for this day the middle of June, hope everyone else is doing well? :)

songbird

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songbird
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We had almost three inches today Bird, but actually welcome. Managed to sit out on the front porch awhile at oh dark thirty and it was nice and cool. I need to get the "magic" screens up on the front and back doors and let the nice breezes pass through. the ground

I've not eaten chipmunk because we don't have any here but wild squirrels and rabbits are in season year around in Texas with large limits or no limits depending upon which county you're in. All those critters are very edible and easy to clean, cook, and/or freeze for later. My father-in-law had a war on with groundhogs back on his old place. Wife, kids, and I came for a two week visit once and I cleaned the groundhogs out with his old Stevens .25 caliber falling block rifle. Being young with good vision and a lifetime of hunting critters helped. We ate one of them and it was right tasty and traded the rest to a neighbor for other foods they liked. Growing up in the country people used to drop their no longer wanted dogs and cats near our house. We couldn't feed all of them and there was no Humane Society around there then so we just put them down and buried them. We always had a few barn cats and a couple of hound dogs just to keep the varmints down.

We were sitting on the front porch about two weeks ago, just after another heavy rain and we heard something singing in the front flower bed. I poked around and there was a huge toad singing his heart out. Reckon he was looking for a mate as the water had pooled in the garden and all the clay bowls we had set out to attract the toads. Every spring we get hundreds of baby toads hopping around and we're very careful around them. Useful critters that they are.

We've been meaning to go out to one of the berry farms but it has been to wet to get in there these past weeks. Maybe this week we can get a break. Sounds like you've got it all set up the way you want it. If I were even thirty years younger I would still be living in the boonies as we did when young.

George

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George Shirley

more on the way by the looks of things. i'm glad you're on top of the heap there. :)

we used to have semi-feral cats going through on a regular basis, but i've seen them only once so far this year so either they have passed away or their owners are keeping them closer to home or ... well, i dunno why, as we always had good hunting around here for them. it was rare i'd see one walking away empty handed.

if it were just me, i'd leave them all alone and get better fencing for the areas i really wanted to protect.

i've never really been much of a hunter other than fishing and even then it was mostly catch-and-release. so killing and cleaning animals hasn't been something i've done a lot of. i could do it if i were starving and that was all i could find to eat. all these critters are being buried out back next to the mound that the roadkill wild turkey made (where the strawberries will be roaming in the next few years).

for a while there people were abandoning animals near us too and most of them would be dead within a short period of time as the country life isn't easy on them. one kitten i took to the animal shelter and lucky for it i was just starting to fill out the paperwork when a lady came in looking for her missing cat, but i told her i had a very nice kitten in my car so we walked out to look at it and she took it.

we used to have a lot more toads, but the mosquito control people have been treating any standing water and there is no place for them to reproduce. same with the frogs... i see and hear a lot more frogs and really like the tree frogs we have showing up on the windows at times (going after bugs).

between the two of us chipping at things it's coming along ok.

i hope you can get out to pick, but i think for the short term things are going to be soggy down there!

songbird

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songbird

You said it, overnight we got another three inches of rain and just got hit by a large thunderstorm that dropped another inch on us. Bill is still hanging around and some areas are getting hammered. We're about to venture out to the library, our church, and maybe a wee bit of shopping, seems to be clearing out here in the boonies (if you can call an area with a hundred thousand people in it the boonies). At least we don't have any highrises yet.

Reply to
George Shirley

...

for many people i think a highrise is a much better use of the land than the loss of wild spaces overrun with sprawl.

yesterday i had to change my gardening plans as i went to work on one garden that was overrun with good weeds -- with all the recent rains it's too wet to dig down very deep. the soil is excellent compared to how it used to be but it will still stick to the shovel when it gets soggy. i switched over to the garden that had only a light layer of weeds on it that i could just scrape and then get it planted. that leaves me the other garden to do when i can get back out there and then i'll be on to more easy tasks (spot weeding, filling in edges of gardens or scattering seeds around to get some more ground cover going in the empty spots, etc.)

had a large deer wander through the yard a few nights ago. didn't see it, but it left some rather huge prints behind. doesn't look like it ate anything.

songbird

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songbird

one last garden project to finish before i can plant the area. turned out to be a much larger project when Ma decided to remove the irises i put in the back half of the area.

i was able to pace and space everything yesterday to where i could get some digging done, got the seeds and sprouts watered (wasn't sure it was actually going to rain), picked some berries and could take breaks to give my back a rest in between all of that so i could get it all done right on time for when the rains did finally come through.

today looks perfect for digging and leveling what is left to get done and if that goes quickly i'll get it planted too. if my back is too pissy then i'll plant tomorrow.

overall the strawberries are winding down, can't complain even if it was about half the crop compared to last season. still plenty for us and a few others who've come to pick. have jam in the freezer and froze some crushed berries too -- we'll see how well they work for a mid-winter shortcake sometime.

with the groundhogs around i'm trying to patrol more often in the early morning and in the evening to make sure they aren't getting an easy feast from all of those fresh bean and other sprouts. we'll see how that goes...

songbird

Reply to
songbird

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