Media does tend to over hype things but no doubt there will be problems but to most just an annoyance.
I have not had to water the lawn once this year. Couple of days ago I made slight mistake of washing my car on the lawn when it had rained the night before and now have unsightly tire tracks on the driveway.
Derald wrote: ...
some of the compost worms (that live on or near the surface don't get very large at all) as contrasted to the night crawlers which reach 6-12 inches and are quite fat. these usually like places with some clay in the soil.
:)
did some of that today. big honkin' rocks, probably weigh 300-500lbs each. they were in the way and needed to be moved for the most recent Mom project. not sure where they are going now, but i hope it is downhill (for some measure of hill that we do have here).
in for a break now from weeding and continuing the work on that north garden. i hope in two more days and i can give it a quick once over again to get any weeds that have sprouted and then on to the next project. the strawberries i've transplanted as i've gone along have put on some new leaves. i wish i had enough mulch for the whole area but i have to be content with weed scraps and some leaf mold i dug up that was stuck under there a few years ago.
all this digging in there is good to mix things up a bit but it is also letting me get all the pieces of plastics, metals, glass and shards of pottery that got in there some- how. most of it came from the bad batch of compost i'm sure. and of course, it is always good to be able to say hi to my wormie friends.
songbird
Surely we Texan's are not the only gardeners still gardening! We are still getting warm days here in early November. Today at 0710 the temperature is 72F and expected to rise to 82F.
Some of the spring/summer garden is still growing and producing and our (winter) garden is also growing and producing. We have to mow the grass every two weeks whether or not we want to or the busy bodies start calling about "sloppy" yards. Yes, even Texas has these people, both male and female, most of whom have people come in weekly to mow and trim and fight to get the beloved "Yard of the Month" sign on their front lawn.
We may be getting some days soon in the low sixties but I have yet to see anything on my weather app that says freeze or hard freeze, or even rain at this time.
Mean time we are still on air conditioning most of the time but generally can turn it off at night as we still have some low seventies to enjoy the saving of electricity for a bit.
The Rat Terrier seems to think she will freeze to death at temps below
80F so seeks her blanket a lot of the time. She is getting a bit old, turning ten years in May of this year and her muzzle is getting white too. The great grands pet her occasionally and she likes that plus she's shedding her summer coat so I have to brush her daily. At least the plant on the back porch enjoys the brushing too. The dog hair goes into "Herman's" pot and the hair has a good bit of protein in it so the plant grows as the dog shrinks.Our fairly large family is talking about who does Thanksgiving this year. Luckily, as the senior portion of the family, we only have to bring a couple of lemon meringue pies that Grannie makes and then we get to eat a lot of good food that all of our kids, grands, and even the elder great grands cook up. And, now, the doctor has put me on a diet, need to lose 20 lbs off my 208 and, so far, have lost four lbs without starving to death. The dog misses the leftovers too.
George
Not much gardening going on in the Baltimore area these days. All the citru s trees and begonia pots are in the greenhouse for the coming winter, along with enough coleus cuttings to replenish the flower gardens next year.
I made a few necessary repairs to my wife's "auxiliaries", as she calls her portable cold frames. We'll put them over her late fall crops in the next day or so. I covered the two shade cages with plastic sheeting as an experi ment; seems like they should keep things warm and light, if the wind doesn' t rip off the plastic. Here they are, all lined up on the lawn after repair s:
Paul
Season over and next big job is leaves. Going to wait until they all fall then call my tree man to take out a couple and clean up others. Grass cutting is over although I might use it to help remove leaves.
The kumquat, pear, and fig tree all still have leaves. The kumquat are slowly turning orange so we can pick them. The pears, the second crop after losing the first crop in January, are still small but are ripening anyway. The first really cold day the fig will drop its leaves quickly. The kumquat doesn't lose leaves all at once but does drop a few along as it goes.
Coming from a home in Louisiana that had old growth oaks, etc. we miss the leaves for our composter. Nowadays we just get grass, the kitchen trash that is useful, and, of course, lots and lots of newspaper, etc. going through the shredder. I have four bags full now, waiting for the stuff in the composter to finish and go into the garden.
In a small city lot, 6500 square feet, you have to scramble to get stuff to feed the gardens. I'm awaiting early spring to redo the back fence, which was badly built to start with, not my fault, the former owners. Seems most of the fencing people in Houston area don't like to work in the winter, even if it's still like summer. Or, they may be busy rebuilding the fences eaten by the hurricanes earlier this year. My two eldest grandsons keep telling me they can build the back fence but I haven't seen any movement there. One drives for UPS and the other is an elevator mechanic and often works twelve to sixteen hour days repairing the many elevators in Houston area. I want to do it right this time but have to go through the ~!@##$% HOA group that are particular. This time I'm wanting to put in galvanized steel posts and cedar boards, still six feet tall though. I miss the country where we have mostly lived for the
57 years we've been married. We are close to our grands and great grands and that's somewhat of a good thing.
We are close to our families too, all three sons and families within a
10 mile radius. Nice to have nearby but with all working hard, we do more for them than they do for us.I used to compost a lot but have a mulching mower. I could get free compost from a county yard waste site where you can haul yard waste and Christmas trees and they grind it as mulch. Lot of work to fill a couple bags and find when using it that it was more compost than mulch.
Ball and chain around my leg updating computers.
In the words of Bugs Bunny, "It's a living"
My favorite delivery of that line was in Rocky I where Rocky is confronted by the crusty old trainer in the gym. Quotations approximate but give the gist of the exchange.
Rocky: Why don't you like me?
Trainer: You had talent, you could have been a contender, but now you just beat up people for some cheap hood!
Rocky: It's a living.
Paul
I got my first computer in 1982, and fell in love with them. I used to be a high speed typist before the days of strokes, could get 145 letters a minute. Now, with fingers I can't feel very good I still get 20 or 30 words a minute and sometimes more.
That old Osborne One was a decent machine and then came along all the really fast stuff that was smarter than some of my kin folk. The O1 did good duty overseas working and we got the letters off on company planes back to the states so our get could hear what we were doing. That and two vacations a year kept us close to our kids, and later with our first grands, who are now in their thirties. Time does fly.
Some of the folks I worked with overseas worked on computers bigger than the house I live in. Since I was the top dog in safety I would inspect the computer building. Mostly because it was really air conditioned and learned a lot of stuff about computers, probably more than I needed.
I don't miss the days of walking around in chemical plants and refineries and even offices. I don't miss fighting fires, gas releases, and wearing all that protective gear. I do miss getting to see the latest and greatest stuff like computers, etc. when they first come out.
Heck, when I was a young fellow and learned how to use typewriters that mystified my folks I thought it was great, at least it beat a fountain pen or a pencil. I just wonder what else is coming down the pipe that my grands, and great grands will get wide eyed and want one of them just for me.
Keep working on the electronics T, we're going to need all of them.
I remember when the first back space and erase tape came out. I was in heaven!
I get tired of it every so often. I tell myself that my ability to handle issues and roll with the punches is why folks call me. I always prevail -- I am really, really good at it -- but sometimes I wish things would just go right every so often. But if they always did, no one would call me. It is really annoying when I have to fix my own stuff.
In my next life, I want to be a fishing guide. In this life TROUT FEAR ME! I have been catching a lot of fish lately, take a picture of them, let them go.
Chuckle! It is a living.
There's not much money in being a guide of any kind. You need to love it to like it. I have guided deer and bear hunters plus fishermen on occasion. Grew up in the Piney woods of SE Texas and I started guiding at about fourteen. Just a few jobs a year but money was money where I grew up. Quit that when I went in the Navy at seventeen, never took it up again. Bad memories of some of the people I guided, just a few takes a lot out of the job. If there was a job, or maybe two, I would work for them. Finally worked for myself and liked it best. I couldn't talk to the boss without looking in a mirror and had to behave all the time. Even wrote a few science fiction shorts but those eventually went away. If it looks like I might like it I would do the job. My old folks all worked with their hands and did well. I finally worked with my brain and a lot of fun, met a lot of nice people and a number of the back ends of a horse. At 78 the dog and I sleep a lot, I keep a good bit of the house clean, do the grocery shopping (a bunch of us old geezers shop for our homes on a Friday and all ride the electric carts) as long as we don't race or play bumper cars the store's manager leaves us alone. All of us are US military geezers of one sort or the other and we attend the funerals of those who have gone on. Life is still good, even if I have glasses, a cane, and a handicap plate on my car.
I gave up on the garden. It got overgrown, and the neighbor behind us lets their vines on their side of the fence go wild along with cane that is planted on the back of the fence. It keeps creeping into my garden, and it's almost as tall as the telephone pole it's planted nearby.
After everything dies I'll wait 'til it's all dried up good and begin clearing it out. I'm so disgusted with the neighbors cane and vines that I have to fight with every summer I'm just not sure I even want to try a garden next year.
I'd really love to get me a tool I can just wack it all down with that would work with my 18 volt battery tools. Any suggestions?
That is what it is all about George!
One thing you can do is put a barrier between the neighbors plantings. Something like a steel or aluminum garden barrier, best about six inches wide. Dig a small trench along your fence line to keep the cane, in particular, from sending roots to your side of the fence.
Another thing is to talk to the neighbor and ask them to put in a barrier on their side of the fence to keep his stuff from getting into your stuff. Sometimes the neighbor is the south end of a north bound horse and then you have to do it yourself.
I've had that problem a few times and, mainly, the neighbor does the right thing. Sometimes they are the horse and things can get worse but it is your property and shouldn't have to put up with a neighbor who thinks he or she can do whatever they want on their side of the fence.
If you've already done that then you have to go to "warfare", either put in the barrier yourself, or start pouring plant killer stuff along the line. I prefer gun fire but society doesn't like it to much.
As for the tool, go to your local Lowe's or whatever you might have and ask about it. I bought our latest house because it backs on a pipeline right of way and a detention pond plus the power poles for the subdivision. Makes it much simpler as we can weed whack behind our fence as I put in a gate. Wife and dog walk around the detention pond daily for their exercise and I sit in a lawn chair and watch, just in case.
We lived for years in an area that had wild cane growing every where so I do have experience on that stuff and have carefully avoided it since.
George
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