Where is everyone?

If you're like us you're gardening at dawn and sunset. We're constantly getting temperatures in the high nineties. Just to hot for us old gardeners.

We are expecting a little rain and perhaps some temps down in the seventies and eighties, we hope. Weather heads here seldom hit the golden bell and, most likely, they're taking wild guesses as we are.

The water bill and the electric bills have gone up double size during the July/August times. Our AC seems to be running constantly this summer. Our HOA lets us only have black roofs, dumbest rule I ever heard. Native Texan and I want a white roof, at least some heat will be pushed away from entering the attic and seeping down into the rest of the house.

We water at sunrise and sunset, just to give the water a chance to be taken up by plants and to soak into the soil for a bit. You can tell it is hot when the St. Augustine grass is starting to turn brown due to heat. St. Augustine will grow on concrete given a little water and some shade.

At any rate, we are still getting a cantaloupe here and there and few puny sweet chilies. Tomatoes have gone to the composter as have many other vegetables. The kumquat tree is full of little fruit, second crop after a January freeze killed all the blooms then. Have one lousy pear on the pear tree and the fig tree has nothing, a freeze split it in half, so we may have to get another fig tree.

I keep track of our old home in Louisiana and I see them getting rain, getting clouds to alleviate the heat and I miss that climate. Moved here to be close to kids, grands, and great grands and, since most of them work, we seldom see them. Can't convince the Boss Lady that we should move back to Louisiana. She has gotten fully entrenched into this community and intends to stay. Oh well, she's getting some paying jobs teaching senior citizens how to draw and paint so I shouldn't complain.

The dog and I don't mind being house bound as we can take a nap when we want to.

George

Reply to
George Shirley
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very busy and very tired when i'm not busy. in other words a normal summer with plenty of projects going.

temps are moderate here today (currently

69F). next three nights are forecast to get down to the mid 40s.

rains regular, but too much clouds. things are not growing well without enough sun.

we picked green peppers today. they were ok. Mom's turning them into stuffed green peppers now.

plenty of red peppers coming along, just starting to get some red on them. i hope we get some sunshine to get them red. rain is not forecast now until next Monday.

we also picked a bucket of tomatoes. i'm not sure if we're gonna can them or if she's going to give them away and/or eat them. plenty more on the plants to ripen.

and she also made german potato salad today from taters she dug up yesterday.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

...

George may need water wings this weekend if the forecast is accurate...

songbird

Reply to
songbird

We're still right here in The Holler ... I've been harvesting some okra and tomatoes about every other day , doing site prep and digging post holes for our new deck , working on my motorcycle (and riding hers) , and cutting/splitting/stacking firewood for the coming cold season . The wife has been working at Walmart and reading when she's off ... she hates the place but feels locked in until February when she can start drawing her SS . We did manage an overnight trip to Branson for dinner and a show (Hughes Brothers) for our (44th) anniversary last week . I've decided to keep her ...

  --   Snag
Reply to
Terry Coombs

My best friend of umpteen years was a weatherman in the Air Farce. He always says forecasting is, at best, a wild ass guess. We've gone through several hurricanes in various parts of the Texas coast in this very long marriage. We've only run twice and came home to a home that wasn't hurt at all. Then, there's always the chance of tornadoes coming out of the hurricane and carrying house and all somewhere else.

We're about forty miles north of Houston proper with very few trees around us. Trees falling on houses due to the tornadoes within the hurricane is fairly common so we don't have many trees here.

I once rode out a hurricane aboard a USN destroyer and it wasn't fun but we made it out okay. That was scary but I've never been afraid of hurricanes one the ground. I guess you get used to bad weather when you live this long and, what the hell, you have to go sometime and I'm tired all the time.

George

Reply to
George Shirley

I seldom shop at Walmart. Mostly because of the sad looking older women I see at the registers. Plus most of their products come from some country I never heard of and I've traveled the world for years. I did recently buy a new office chair and Walmart delivered it by UPS. Nothing was said about Walmart when I bought it. Weird. My old, thirty year old chair, is now a roll around plant carrier. There's always something good in letting good old stuff go. At least the wife's happy.

We will be married 57 years come December 26th and, so far, we're still living and loving. We ain't as purty as we were in 1960 when we married but we get along pretty good, still. She's gone teaching art a lot but the dawg and I get some really good naps in while she is out. Plus she enjoys the teaching and I enjoy the money she brings home. We're some of the better off elders, we own everything we have, have some money in the bank, are close to our kids, grands, and great grands, and, best of all, we don't have to fly home from some weird country to see them. All the travel was a lot of fun and learned a lot from folks in strange countries but being home with your get is a lot better plus we don't have to pack and run when some idiot decides he or she will run the country we were in. I do love my time in the oil patch but love my retirement even more. Oops, the boss is ringing the breakfast bell.

George

Reply to
George Shirley

You and I are contemporaries with similar situations. My gardening today is practically nil due to age issues, shade and deer. Formally large garden has been reduced down to a few tomato plants. Too much rain has been bad for them and they are pooping out early.

In spite of all the rain this summer, my next door neighbors well pooped out and he had to drill a new one. Poor guy's grandfather just died and back in January his wife was severely injured by a tree that fell on her and the house. I've taken down any tree that might threaten the house and tell everyone the same. We sometimes get hurricane remnants here in Northern Delaware and sometimes tornado or tornado force winds and I have seen a lot of houses damaged. I actually saw a tornado take out a nearby school gym maybe 25 years ago.

Reading about the storm threatening Texas I hope you are not in the path.

Reply to
Frank

We lived many years on the old family homestead and had a well, sometimes it didn't work right but was easy to fix. Then we lived in cities and the water never tasted right, the big difference was the chlorine and other chemicals they put in the water. I worked as an operator in a chemical plant for sixteen years, my job was turning river water into water suitable for boilers and drinking and learned a lot about water, which most folks just take for granted. Many years overseas drinking shipped in bottled water, tasteless but healthy. The water here comes from a man made lake and is piped all over the large area here. It's okay but I still break out the chemical set and check the water quality frequently. So far it has been okay. Told one of my great grands that fish peed and pooped in water and he decided he would drink bottled water for a while then he got over it. I hope he does that for his great grands some fifty years after I'm gone.

We hope we are not in the path either, I will be watching it on the computer to give us enough time to batten down the hatches before we run for high ground. Been there, done that. Lost a cabin on Bolivar Peninsula many years ago, also lost the lot so we don't have to pay taxes on a vacant lot. That was a lucky one as family members are still paying land taxes on lots that disappeared years ago.

It's hot as a two dollar pistol here but the sky is getting a little darker. I probably should go on line and see where the storm is now.

George

Reply to
George Shirley

Well water better than city water and when they were still alive my mother and father would often come for water when theirs was tasting like chemicals. Water is abundant here but not cheap and I figure over the years well and septic have saved me a bundle. I'm a retired chemist and have seen wells analysis free from plumber that wanted to put in treatment but calcium was borderline so all I have is a sediment filter.

I have a generator for power outages but wish transfer box included AC. None recently but outages have lasted as long as a week. Lines here run along treed roads and since we are in a small area we are usually last to get back service. I do have a portable AC that I bought a few months ago when home AC was down for 3 days and it was very hot. I could run that off the generator.

Hope storm does not bring problems to you.

Frank

Reply to
Frank

I am cutting over a new server at a business. It is endless acres of fun! mumble, mumble.

Reply to
T

We live right on the verge of The Woodlands of Texas. Pretty far from the Gulf, and a higher elevation (barely) than Houston area. I've been watching hurricanes come ashore since I could read and write and that was age four. Wife and I just had a conversation about this storm, she's from Maryland and we've been through a few hurricanes and tornadoes together over our long married life. She gets nervous and wants to run and lock everything down, I'm not to concerned about this storm. Mostly because of where we live now, how high the area is above sea level, and, I guess, just because I've lived through a great many hurricanes. That doesn't mean we won't stock the SUV with clothing, food, etc. just in case but I don't have that weird feeling I get when hurricanes are coming ashore.

Over the next 48 hours we shall see what happens.

George

Reply to
George Shirley

I'm reminded of a horse owner friend who had a cartoon tacked up in the barn: Grinning horse in stall; sweating woman with steaming wheelbarrow full of poo, muttering "I love horses, I love horses..." You may apply this to digital technology if you wish.

And I'm in garden recovery mode; planting fall things and trying to get the upper hand on the weeds.

Reply to
Gary Woods

Chuckle!

-T

Death to Weeds! Death to Squash Bugs! Death to Earwigs!

Reply to
T

Looks far enough from Houston, probably as far as we were from Sandy when it hit NJ a few years ago but we lost power a half day and a lot of trees were down.

I told my wife the other day when power when out for a couple of hours in the evening that we were spoiled as it was not a threat but just an inconvenience. All the wealth of things we have now like TV, internet, phones, we feel bad when one is lost even for a brief period.

Reply to
Frank

You forgot a lot of things. Most prominent to me are yellow jackets after getting my ankle stung 4 times a couple of weeks ago when I was spraying leaves.

Reply to
Frank

I stand corrected!

Death to Weeds! Death to Squash Bugs! Death to Earwigs! Death to Yellow Jackets!

Reply to
T

I can remember when my folks got a tv in 1953. On Saturday nights all the neighbors would come over to watch the old wrestling matches. The good part is that they brought stuff to eat and drink.

I've never cared much for wrestling and boxing. I would like to have a NRA channel and some good shooting matches. I'm a better shooter than I am a hand fighter.

I started with the internet in 1982 with an Osbourne One. Took forever to get emails going so mostly used it like a typewriter with a tiny screen. Cost a good bit of money back then, now computers are fairly cheap compared to a big screen TV. I keep hoping someone will bring out a big screen with a computer set up. I wouldn't need my glasses to read the screen.

I stayed in my room with my books and kept the door closed. A lot mo

Reply to
George Shirley

I just checked and there are 3 sportsmen channel dealing with out door sports on Comcast cable. One channel is just fishing but Outdoor and Sportsman channel mostly shooting sports. Years ago I got an email from Jim Scouten who had a shooting show on NBC sports that got taken off for rodeo. I had asked him where to go and Dish was his recommendation. Got him back on Comcast cable when we went to HD channel a few years ago. Yesterday evening I watched his show after seeing Jerry Miculek's Shootout Lane show.

Can't remember year we got a TV but an uncle in the neighborhood was first to get on circa 1950 and his living room was crowded every Saturday night watching Milton Berle show on, as I recall, a round 8 inch black and white screen.

Looks like biggest threat from Gulf hurricane is rain. A foot over a couple of days will cause flooding where you normally don't see it. We live up hill but creek below can get flooded as well as stream to it and I've seen neighbors basements get flooded.

Reply to
Frank

Same old me, doin' the same old things, in the same old places. Oh: And feeling "grateful", I s'pose one might say, for the opportunity. Okra and peas bearing with more coming. Hoping they'll carry me 'til October, maybe 'til Hallowe'en. Several varieties of sweet and warm peppers. Not enough of the sweet ones, though. That's an error I continue to repeat. Eggplant. One tomato that appears to be holding on (because it spends its mornings in shade, I suspect) but is not even close to actually making tomatoes. If it survives the remaining hot weather, maybe in September or October it'll resume fruiting. Unfortunately for it, said tomato occupies my favorite onion nursery so its days may be numbered, regardless. Tomatoes are not a priority item around here. Onions get planted in the fall, after the weather cools a bit, to be transplanted in December or January. Trying to figure a way to increase onions by about a third but expanding long?season crops in limited bed space makes for interesting bedfellows and companion planting "experiments"; ha. Almost time for fall green beans: Another week, or so. Delinel, for sure and a tossup between "provider" and "slenderette". Nearly time for garden peas, too. If I get an early start and they don't get frozen in January or February, I can have peas continuously from October or November 'till May or even June (not often June). For examples, those planted in 09 September '16 lasted 'til mid?March, this year, and those planted 12 December, '16, made it to early May. As a rule, if they're planted up 'til early February, they're good 'til May, when the heat finally gets to them. Early mornings have been a bit cooler of late, signalling that my gardening year is about to begin and creating a breath of optimism toward an early start on some "cool weather" stuff this year, specifically carrots, spinach, "English" peas. Didn't happen last year; not unusual. Some years I can; some years I can't. Collards and cabbage did all right but the broccoli was a waste. Of course, turnips and mustards did well. They're moderately heat tolerant and I'll be planting "early" seeds of both as soon as some new okra plants get tall enough to provide part-day shade. The Axe and I are splitting this winter's firewood second thing in the mornings. Fortunately for me, not much is needed by most of NA's standards. I'm told that I'm of an age to be considering saving up for a powered splitter but there's the 40?year relationship to The Axe to consider.... Noticeable upsurge (a late bean threatening upsurge) in adult grasshopper population means more "nolo" in January and/or February (last applied in Feb 2012). Budget permitting, I'll cover a larger area this year. Also noticed root knot in this spring's summer squash and I turned up a couple of "grubs" in a bed this summer. I guess the degree of infestation in the okra when it comes out will help decide whether and when to dump in more predators. The last were applied in Nov 2011. The predatory nematodes take out a couple of troublesome "leaf miner" gnats, beetle larvae, and some other nematodes. Of course they may be the reason I never see any _large_ earthworms in the garden but those things happen. Or maybe those worms just don't get big; who cares? At least the don't seem to molest ground?dwelling instars of wasps. See what happens when you go around turning over rocks and poking at stuff with a stick?

Reply to
Derald

We're hoping for that rain to come here. Haven't had much free water this year and it's a pain watering our plants twice a day to keep them going. I think we're high enough up from the Gulf that we won't flood badly. Some of the smaller roads going here and yon haven't been built up yet so they will flood easily.

Reply to
George Shirley

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