picked my first mess of dixielee and purple hull peas this morning. had to fight the fire ants to get them. picked yet some more string beans too. (sorry y'all, these are the blue lake variety!) the crook-neck squash and garden peas have bout played out. cukes are about under the weather too. butter beans looking good, but not ready for picking yet. should be ready in about a week. cut quite a few collards last week, so none of those ready to cut again. no bell peppers either, nice looking plants, but they put out about 6 peppers, no more since. plenty of nice green tomatoes for frying, none have made it to the ripe stage yet.
had a run in with a 4 foot 8 inch (yes, i measured!) cottonmouth this morning too, looked like it had just had breakfast. it's now hanging in the oak tree across the road........
I'd rather put up with a short gardening season than deal with snakes.
My Blue Lake beans are just coming up, in the greenhouse. (Yes, my season is *that* short.) But the 'mater plants are loaded with fruit and the yellow crookneck has both fruit and blooms on it.
I overwintered a Sweet Hungarian Pepper in the kitchen last year. It grew fruit until very late in the winter, looked crappy for awhile, then started cranking out peppers again in about March, when we got daylight again. It's almost 3' tall and looking pretty good.
The daylilies & sweet peas are all in bloom. I'm happy : )
yeah, me too! i know there are some on here who will probably rant on me about killing it.......but to each their own.......i'd rather *get* it, than it *get* me or the kids.........
hadn't tried the hungarian variety. how's it taste and compare to others?
got a few daylilies too, mainly hydrangea, moonflowers, and roses. loved the flowers on the sweet peas, but those have played out here.
I killed every rattlesnake that wandered into my yard, when I lived down yonder. They're delicious.
I also kill porcupines that wander into camp more than once. Been through it with the dog too many times. Porkies are good if you parboil the fat off, then BBQ them. (Porcupines are survival food. You aren't supposed to kill them unless you're in a survival situation, because a starving person can kill one with a stick. But I got *so* tired of pulling quills that I declared my yard to be a "zero tolerance" zone.
A side note: if you ever kill a porkie or find a dead one on the road, throw an old towel or something on it, so the quills will stick to the towel. Then give the quills to your Indian girlfriends. They make earrings and stuff with the quills. (I wear beaded quill earrings for "go to meeting" jewelry.)
They're delicious. Give them a try, if you get a chance. Mild, sweet with a little tang. Very good.
A couple of neighbors just gave me some rugosa roses. They'll make it here, if I can keep my chickens from digging them up. Had to make little chicken-wire doilies to put around the feet of every bush I've planted this summer. The hens are nosy. They like to scratch where I've been digging.
The hens eat so many bugs and so many weeds that it makes more sense to fence them *out* of where I don't want them. My yard is about an acre. The biddies have free run of the place, except the veggie garden, which is moose-fenced.
i'd rather not eat them........snakes give me the shivers. before we moved down here, my mom and i worked at a burger king back at the old home place. i ran the drive-thru...anyway, there was this guy that would come thru the drive-thru at least once a week *with his pet boa*. Ugh, i couldn't stand it. reach out to take his money, and the snake would be wrapping it's way down his arm towards me........it would be all around his neck too.........ugh....gives me the hibbie-jibbies just thinking about it.
never seen a porkie in this neck of the woods, but i'll keep this in mind if i ever do.........got a few friends i could send the quills too.
will keep in mind for next year. maxed out for this season. got a "wish list" started for next years garden.
the only problem i have with my flower beds since the goats have been gone is a mole and the dog. the dog has been digging in the beds (at least it's between the flowers!) to keep cool. makes him a little bed, similar to how the snow dogs dig to keep warm. he's been digging after the mole too.
ha, chickens wouldn't last around here. Timex (the dog) or Romeo (the territorial horse) would be sure to get them. we have around an acre of yard and garden, then there's an acre & half for horse pasture (we only keep Romeo at the house, the other 9 are in another pasture nearby) and about an acre where the old goat pen was. It is currently over run with pig-weed. i hate that stuff. gets to growing and takes over everything.
how did you make out with your bear? it still lurking around?
will be canning string beans and potatoes today, gonna blanche the peas for freezing also.
rae
please excuse typing, as usual, typing while holding the baby. will be so glad when these two teeth come in.........until she bites me of course!
I save quills for a couple of Lakota Sioux girlfriends, and buy bead & quill earrings from them.
I wonder if you could sell quills on ebay...
Porcupines eat trees (okay, the bark), so we try to keep them pushed out of here. I've got fruit trees.
My SO's saddle horse got some quills in his nose once. You could tell that it was a "curiosity sniff" that got the quills stuck in his muzzle. Ruger stood there very quietly and let us pull the quills. We were amazed, because the horse is normally pretty froggy.
Gotta go. We're planting another 1/2 acre of peonies today.
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