Tree Removal

My back yard is semi-wild.  I like it that way.  I hate removing trees, though I have removed a lot of them over the years.  When I moved here 29 years ago, the backyard was mostly filled with too many junk trees, too closely spaced for their own health.  I thinned out the smaller junkiest ones (especially a type of locust tree with thorns like needles all around the trunk).

At the same time, I looked at the drainage easement along the property line.  For those of you not familiar with a "drainage easement", it is an artificial rainfall control channel that leads to a natural body of water (in my case a swamp across the street).  But the drainage easement wasn't the natural drainage.  There is a 3' deep ravine that cuts across the neighbor's back yard and used to cut across the side of my front yard.  The county-mandated artificial drainage easement that goes between our property lines cut my part off.

So I first just wanted to fill in my ravine, and I did so with a full dump trick load of average fill soil.  I spread it all out myself.  It was some bit of work, all with rake and shovel.  But there were 2 fully mature oak trees right next to the new drainage easement, and I realized that the roots had been entirely sheared away on one side.  I had them removed so they wouldn't fall over on the house.  I left the 3rd oak tree standing because it was farther from the drainage easement and I wanted the shade on the roof (passive cooling was a big idea at the time). 

Then I thinned out some that were just too shaded by larger trees to ever thrive.  That still left a complete deep shade canopy across most of the back yard.

But even the larger trees were still "youngish", and didn't stop growing.  10 years later, I had about half of them professionally removed.  Later, one of the larger trees leaned over enough to fall in a windstorm and the top half of another snapped off and a 3rd one was starting to lean, so they had to go.

But lately, I've become obsessed with the idea that the remaining massive oak will fall on the house.  The past 5 years, it has been dropping 6" diameter branches and I doubt its health. It's only 20' from the house, and the prevailing winds would push it in that direction.  Given the estimated weight of the tree is at least 3,000 lbs (6,600 kilos), it would pretty much crush the entire house (and likely myself as well).  I can imagine the newspaper headlines.  "Local man has tree fall on house, drowns in his own waterbed"...

I'm having it removed tomorrow along with a large sweetgum tree that has been leaning over slightly.  I talked to my home insurance agent about it.  He admitted that should the tree fall onto the house, I was 100% replacement-covered, but it could take months of reconstruction and I would probably need to move out during the reconstruction.

It seemed like a great property when I chose it 29 years ago.  But having lots of mature trees near your house is over-rated.

It will be an adventure watching this oak removed.  I wasn't at home to see it's 2 siblings removed ( I was supposed to, but they arrived a day early and when I got home from work that day, they were just GONE!  The other trees I've had removed have been nowhere near as large as this one.

The tree guy says that the upper branches will be removed first by a combination of a crane and tree-climbers, and lowered by rope for eliminating collateral damage to other trees (and the house and deck).  The massive trunk itself will be cut off (lowered) 8-10' at a time and will be carried off by some sort of "grabber" to a flatbed truck.  I hope that's not "hype".  I will be taking pictures all the way and will post them.

The good news is that they will be taking down the sweetgum tree first.  It's small than the oak, and I will see how carefully they do that job.  If they seem careless or find that tree difficult, I can tell them to stop before they start on the much larger oak tree.  They have a "A" rating on Angie's List, but not a LOT of reviews.  It's possible they got their "A" rating from smaller simpler jobs.  I'm being careful.

There is some deconstruction work involved at getting at the massive oak tree, too.  At the least, 2 sections of my 6' shadowbox wood fence have to be removed (the tree is just inside my fence), and it is possible a gate and a concrete-set fence post will have to be removed (they suspect not, but if so, their "grabber" can just pull the 6"x6" fence post right up out of the ground without even damaging it and it can be set back down into the hole afterwards as sturdy as before.

I actually believe that last part.  I've set enough posts into the ground without concrete myself to know how well clay soil hardens around any bare post in plain clay.  One with an 12" cylinder of concrete around it should settle in better.  And it might be an improvement.  That post leaned slightly after being installed 25 years ago and the connections to the fence sections are loose anyway.

For generally useful information for anyone considering this kind of work themselves, the quote is $5,500.  As I understand it in very general terms, $500 is just for bringing all their equipment (a crane, a "grabber", and 2 flatbed trucks) and crew from 15 miles away to the worksite, $4000 is for the massive oak tree, and $1000 is for the sweetgum tree.  The cost includes detailed cleaning of all debris, removal and replacement of fence, and grinding both stumps 2' below ground level.  It seems worth it...

So anyway, tomorrow is going to be VERY interesting.

I will be watching them through the entire process of course.  Partly for knowing what happened if there is some accident, partly just out of fascination for a process I can hardly imagine, and partly because it is a rare opportunity to take some really interesting pictures (for my scrapbook and for blogging - one never wants to miss a chance at great pictures to blog about, LOL!).

But one can't spend the entire day taking pictures and hoping no one falls out of the trees.  So I have saved some yardwork for myself to do while the tree guys are doing their thing.  It is all stuff I can do while keeping an eye of the tree-work while being safely out of the way.  I have the garden to water, some trellises and screen door supports to install in the garden enclosure, and if that takes less time than I expect, part of the far backyard is getting overgrown with blackberries, thistles, and  and I have a gas-powered weed-whacker with a steel blade I need to start using.

And after that is done, I have excavation work to be done in the backyard!  The ridge in the middle of the backyard is going away and the sunken area of the front yard (that gets flooded every thunderstorm) will be raised 18"!  That's to be scheduled after the trees are gone.

Been Busy, Part 3

Getting rid of old pressure-treated lumber and boxes...

When I busted up the 25 year old garden beds last Fall, I collected them in a corner of the yard.  And there they sat.  Meanwhile, thinking I might move, I was collecting boxes that were of same shape.

This past week, I decided the old lumber had to go, and I wasn't going to move.  It was time to bring stuff to the landfill and the recycling center...

I did the old lumber debris first.  I was surprised at how much I had.  480 pounds of the stuff according to the landfill scale.  1/4 ton almost...  It took some work.  First, I had to haul all the 480# from the far backyard to the front yard.  Then into the hauling trailer.

Then drive it all 10 miles to the landfill.  Then drag it all out of trailer into the landfill disposal area (with dinosaur-sized bulldozers screaming around me barely 2 meters away).  And it cost $16 just to get rid of it.

And THEN I had a basement nearly full of identical boxes in 2 sixes.  One group of 4 dozen wine boxes and a group of 10 chewy.com boxes.  I was going to store them all in my attic, but decided "why".  So I packed those all into the back of the Highlander SUV.

They never would have fit by themselves into the car.  So I got inventive.  The chewy.com boxes could hold 3-4 wine boxes.  But there were still wine boxes left over.

I am spatially creative.  I looked at the leftover wineboxes and thought for like 2 minutes.  It hit me that a little reshaping of the wineboxes might fit them into the existingly-packed ones.

I crushed the narrow sides like paper grocery bags fold, and darn if they didn't fit right down into the other boxes!  Two boxes in the space of one and 2-3 pairs of boxes inside the larger ones

I filled up the back of the SUV and drove to the recycling center.  Free riddance of reusable materials!  There were even guys there so bored that hey emptied my car for me...

Getting rid of 480 lbs (1,056 kilos) of old lumber debris at a reasonable cost and 58 boxes for free is a good day!

Been Busy, Part 2

Part B) of the projects this past week...  The PVC pipe frames for the concrete 6" mesh wire...

It was an adventure cutting, drilling, and marking the 1" PVC pipe for the trelises.  The cucumbers and pole beans are wandering around the garden surface looking for something to climb.  I thought the pole beans would climb the cornstalks happily, but the corn is a short bicolor variety  and the pole beans need higher supports.

So I'm late in adding the trellises to the enclosed garden.  But maybe not TOO late.  I tested a pole bean and it can be unwound from the corn stalks.  I'm barely getting to the trellises in time!

My delay was due to the difficulty in getting at the concrete mesh.  I stacked in against the fence last Fall to get it out of the way, and the Evil Vines from the neighbor's yard have entirely taken them over. 

It took several hours to rip the D*** vines loose from the wire mesh 2 days ago.  And things are so tight between the new garden enclosure and the fence that I cant just pull out the 30' of concrete mesh to cut it apart on the open lawn.  I'll have to do it where it is.

Fortunately, I have a saws-all.  The metal blade cuts through even concrete mesh like a hot knife through butter.  But I have to construct the PVC frames the comcrete mesh will be attched to first so that I know exactly what sizes to cut.

And that means making the PVC frames first.  I have them in pieces.  Tomorrow, I'll attach them to the framed garden beds.  When the PVC frames are attached solidly, I'll cut the 30' of old trellis concrete remesh to size. 

Pictures will follow...

Been Busy, Part 1

Well, OK, I always TRY to stay busy doing something useful around the house each day, but some things aren't worth reporting on.  I'm pretty sure no one cares that I mopped the floors, did laundry, paid bills, weeded gardens, cleaned litter boxes, etc.  Not that those things don't take time and have to be done, but they aren't generally things I bother to post about. 

So, having been busy with such routine things, I haven't posted for a week.

I am pleased to say that the last 3 days have been at least a bit more busy on interesting things.  They fall into 3 categories:  Garden, Clutter, and "Other Stuff".  And because each part gets a bit long, I'm going to address one of the 3 parts in separate posts.

First (today) is the garden, and there are several parts to that work over the past week. 

A) While I was pleased to announce that the free-standing screen door to the new garden enclosure was finally completed previously, it apparently wasn't quite.  The posts have settled slightly, and even with metal corner braces, the door rubs on the top of the frame, and I can see that heavy rains will always make it a little bit loose.  So I designed some support structures of PVC pipe braces that should help.

B) The climbing plants need trellises to, well, climb.  Pole beans and cucumbers mostly.  So I designed some basic PVC pipe frame that can support concrete mesh wire.

C) The vining crops like melons spread out in all directions and need to be constrained to their own framed beds.

D) Raising one side of the frame 1/4".  That doesn't sound like much, but it is the difference between the door sticking and not.

So, a week ago, for part A) I went shopping at the Big D-I-Y stores looking for the parts that would brace the free-standing screen door.  I don't want to get overly detailed, but the idea was to attach 2 PVC pipes from the door frame to the nearest upright PVC post on each side of the door, and 2 from the horizontal post above down to the top of the door frame.  It was just a best guess of holding the free-standing door frame in place. 

The D-I-Y stores didn't have the right attachments, so I improvised.  That didn't work.  Part involved cutting the upright posts to add a "tee", and I realized that the upright posts were so locked in place by the chicken wire enclosure that I couldn't get that tee installed.  There is something called a "snap tee" that doesn't involve cutting the upright posts.  Literally, you just cement and push the snap tee onto a pipe. 

But that part that sticks up in the picture has to fit into another pipe, and somehow it just wont.  I suppose it is designed for some other purpose.  Then it struck me that a connector fitting (intended to attach 2 PVC pipes together) might work.

 It wasn't tight as if designed for the purpose, but close enough to cement after several applications.  And if the cement doesn't hold, I can put a bolt though it to get the same holding effect.

The trellis frames, part B) were a lot easier.  They are just an upside-down "U" of PVC pipe with the bottoms attached to the outsides of the framed beds in the back of the garden (so as to not shade the other lower-growing plants).

"Easier" doesn't mean "easy" though.  I still had problems.  I wanted the PVC pipe uprights to be solidly attached to the framed beds so I could then attach 6" grid concrete mesh wire to them.  I wanted them to be level up and sideways, and 2' below the top of the enclosure (so the vines wouldn't crawl up through the top). 

So I made a cardboard template that was even to the top and side of the frames.  Repeatability is wonderful.  I used the cardboard template to mark drilling spots in the frames.  I then used the template to mark drilling spots on the PVC upright pipes. 

Since the uprights had to be 7' (from a 10" PVC pipe, they had to be cut.  I tried clamping the pipes to 2 sawhorses, but the vibration from my saws-all

kept knocking the clamps loose.  I had to bring the 6 pipes inside the clamp them to the sturdier workbench.  Cut to 7' lengths, I then had to mark the spots to drill holes to match the pilot holes in the garden frames.  That's where the cardboard template helped A LOT!  The same holes in the cardboard HAVE to match up to the pilot holes in the garden frames, right?

We'll find out tomorrow...

Part C) was serendipitous.   I needed a whole lot of small bamboo stakes to keep guiding my free-ranging melon vines back into the beds.  Packs of 25 bamboo stakes cost about $7 and I need a few dozen.  But I was shopping at Target today and found 12" kitchen bamboo skewers 80 for $1.27.  That works for me!

One of the most useful discoveries I've made in life is that products meant for a purpose are expensive, but very similar things meant for another purpose can be quite cheap.  My favorite example is a plastic scoop.



Not the exact product, but an example... In a pet store, it was $6.  In a hardware store, it was $3.  Same thing, different customer...  *I* use the scoop to transfer the kitty litter in the 35# buckets into more wieldy smaller containers.

But back to the bamboo skewers...  I want to guide the melon vines in circles to keep them in the beds and out of the paths.  The 12" skewers will work just fine for that!

Part D), raising one side of the door frame 1/4" is a bit trickier.  I've figured out a way to do it.  I'm going to screw a short scrap of 2"x4" board near the bottom of the post I want to raise 1/4".  I will put a brick on the ground and stomp on it hard to make sure it won't settle deeper.  Then I'll use another 2x4 to use as a lever to pry the attached 2x4 1/4" higher.  I'll clamp it temporarily until I can wedge shims between the brick and the screwed 2x4.

That will hold the post up the 1/4" I need.  But it is going to have to stay there for months until routine ground expansion and rain fills in the spot.  Bet it is still there several years from now, LOL!

Despite the 4x4 posts being set 2' deep in the soil, I bet I'll always have to adjust the screen door frame from year to year.  Some things never stop needing attention.

I originally got the idea of building a chicken-wire-covered garden enclosure from a website HERE 

But I found some problems with the design, and fixed them for myself.  Well, I hope everyone improves on construction ideas they find on the internet or elsewhere, mine included.

You would be amazed at the way things travel around the internet.  

Next posts:  "Clutter" and "Other Stuff"...

Banks and Money

I almost hesitate to post about this.  It involves moving money around and, if you don't have it, reading about it is probably awkward and and annoying.

I have an account at a Credit Union from my career days.  And I have an account at a regular commercial bank.  I recently discovered that my Credit Union pays somewhat better interest on savings accounts than my commercial bank does.  So it made sense to transfer money from my commercial bank savings account to my Credit Union savings account.

My point of writing about this is how HARD it is to transfer the savings and it doesn't mter how much is involved. 

These days, you can do almost any financial transfer online.  But apparently not between a commercial bank and a credit union!  There is some barrier between them.

I called the credit union first.  I assumed there was some information about them I needed to enter into the commercial bank website.  They disabused me of that notion real fast.  "Can't be done online", even though I'm online with both the credit union and the commercial bank. 

"Can only be done by 'wire transfer' ".  And by the 10th piece of information, with more to come, I called a halt!  I asked, what if I just gave you a check from my commercial bank?  Couldn't you just deposit it in my credit union account? 

"Sure", they said, "just mail it to us, but we need to look up how to receive a check and we'll call you back".

ARGGGGHHHH!   "Dumber than a bag of sand" comes to mind.

It never occurred to my credit union "helper" to mention that to begin with?

Its not like I'm Donald Trump trying to send them a billion dollar check.  I just would prefer to get .35% on my savings at the credit union as opposed to .01% at the commercial bank.  Its not like the difference is going to get me a world cruise or anything, but why deliberately get less, right?

I'm only going through this because my credit union is an hour away now, and I'm beginning to wish I HAD just driven there and handed them a check.

No wonder that rich people have accountants to tell to do things like this.  If I was Donald Trump, I'd have an specialist bank accountant too.  Its maddening!  You would think I was trying to convert Russian Rubles into Swiss Francs through some fly-by-night African bank. 

And here I sit, waiting for some "expert" at the credit union to call me back with details on how to send them a simple check safely.  Feeling like an idiot for causing a fuss... 

I'm sure glad I didn't spend my working years involved in finances...

Ponderosa Pink Heirloom Tomato

I got my first ripe heirloom tomato today.  It was a Ponderosa Pink.  It wasn't great, well, the first ripe tomatoes of any kind usually aren't the best.  But this one had a special meaning.

You see, my Dad (deceased 2014) loved them.  I think that is what his Dad grew and to him, that was THE tomato.  Dad used to save seeds from them and regrow them each year.  Dad wasn't a very good gardener.  He just planted stuff in bad soil and went full-out chemical on them.  It was a very "modern" 1950s/1960s thing to do. 

We kids hated his garden.  He grew kale, for example, and we had to eat it.  The kale was so "metalic" that a magnet might have stuck to it. The corn was always too startchy.  The beans were OK.

But the tomatoes were pretty good, the few that grew.  Ponderosa Pink.  Dad saved the seeds in a paper bag in the garage.  As the conditions were bad in the garage, I'm surprised that any sprouted at all.  The year Dad and Mom left that house and moved north, the bag of seeds disappeared.  Dad always said he gave me the seeds, but he didn't.  The loss of the family Ponderosa seeds was a deep disappointment to him.  I assume that the bag of seeds on the garage shelf just got left behind and the new occupants tossed them away.

I followed Grandad's gardening practices.  He was organic, and his veggies always tasted good.  I suppose he also had good Ponderosa Pink tomatoes, but I was too young to know about varieties then.

As years passed and I got my own space for gardening, I looked up some of the best heirloom varieties of tomatoes.  I grew Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Prudens Purple, Aunt Gerties Gold, and Cherry tomatoes.  I didn't grow Ponderosa Pink. 

But I got curious about Ponderosa Pink this year and found a place that sold it (It doesn't seem to be very popular).  The shipping was more than the cost of the seeds, but, "well, what the heck".

So the first heirloom tomato I harvested this year was a Ponderosa Pink.

Dad, this one is for you...

A Surprise

Remember the "stick war" that seemed to be starting with a neighbor?  They aren't those original neighbors.  I looked up the property and it was sold 4 years ago to new people.  I got fooled because the guy looked the same (tall, skinny, beard).  The woman was different, but people change spouses, ya know?

They probably don't know they have any responsibility for the drainage easement and storm drain.  So I'm just going to quietly pick up the branches for now.  When I get a chance to meet them, I'll mention it and see how they react. 

I hate being wrong...

Some Details

Yesterday, I referred to being in bed for 10 hours and a "poacher's shovel".  It occurs to me that both could use some explanation...

FIRST, the 10 hours in bed (and sometimes it is more).  As a child, I was an early riser.  In college, I took early morning classes because I was up and ready to go.  My 35 year career had me up at 5 am to leave the house by 6 am to meet a carpool at 6:15 to get to work by 7 am.

When I retired in 2006, I just collapsed and went to late mornings.  At first, I assumed it was just a temporary reaction to all those years of getting up real early and that I would get "back to normal".  I didn't.  I can only get myself out of bed before 10 hours if some contractor just HAS to be here at 9 am.  And I feel wrong the whole day after. 

Well yesterday I read an article about sleep patterns.  I forget which magazine (National Geographic, Scientific American, one of those), that said we modern people are off our traditional sleep schedules.  Basically, we wake up to artificial lights, stay up late with artificial lights, and go suddenly to bed after 16-18 hours of bright lights.  Practically every gadget we own emits some light, and that has some effects.

According to the article, sleep research and historical research suggests that, before artificial illumination, we were awake after dark for a while and we used to have a different pattern of sleeping that involved a period in the middle of the night akin to meditation.  Something like 4 hours of regular sleep, 2 hours of general semiwakeful calmness, and then 4 more hours of regular sleep.

There were writings from less modern era people regarding things like "after my first sleep" and (paraphrasing) "then after some restful thought, I returned to sleep".  And history is full of examples of people who had great insights in that "restful thought time". 

My jobs+commutes used up from 5 am to 6 pm every workday.  Gave me 3 hours to make dinner, clean house, play with cats, do yardwork, etc, and then it was back to bed again to get 8 hours maximum sleep (even if I fell asleep at once, which seldom happened).

And it struck me that that's what I've been doing ever since I was freed from the requirements of regular job hours!  I've been going to bed after an hour of low light, sleeping about 4 hours, laying in bed lightly awake and contemplating things as I lay there, and then drifting off again for another 4 hours or so.

I think I have been getting into that pattern because I have the bedroom completely blacked out.  I put acoustical tile in the bedroom window years ago because the *%#@ Spring Peepers used to keep me awake at night.  But it also blocks out the morning sun.  And I keep the door nearly closed.  It stays dark in my bedroom.

I think they may be on to something that we have lost.  And that I have fallen into by fortunate happenstance.

SECOND, I referred to a "poacher's shovel".  It's a narrow shovel.

Apparently, it was originally designed to be assembled from pieces (blade and handle that could fit unobtrusively in a backpack) onto a shaft that looked like a simple walking stick, it was used for digging valuable plants out from rich folks' gardens at night and leaving a small hole that could be easily filled in with surrounding soil.

Today (hopefully), it is more a convenient "foot-powered trowel" for getting at deep-rooted weeds among flowerbeds.   I love mine!  Brambles are hard to dig up among my flowers and against the garden stone borders.  This can get into the tighter spots, and it cuts fewer flower roots.

I just thought that was worth explaining...

Busy Day

It was unusually nice weather today (partly cloudy, dry, 30% humidity and 80F).  I won't see many of those again until September.  So I was up early, for me;  10:30 AM.  I know many of you cringe to think of that as "early",   but an advantage of being single and retired is setting your own hours.

So I started the day with an English Muffin and a cheese/bacon/bell pepper omelet, a glass of green tea, and a glass of V8.  I've been cooking for so long now that all my cast iron pans are utterly non-stick.  They are wonderful!

Fed The Mews first, of course.  AND after.  When they haven't eaten for 10 hours (because I've been in bed), they need a 2nd breakfast.  I'd just give them more at first, but Iza can't keep it down all at once.  And normally, I would let them out afterwards, but it was lawn-mowing day.

So I went out and mowed the lawn.  Takes about an hour for mowing and 30 minutes trimming with the new string-trimmer.  There are a lot of places I just can't mow closely, so I finally bought one of those new 18 volt lithium battery trimmers and it works GREAT!  When they say "it's like a gas one", they are darn close!  I need to get a shoulder strap though; its not one of those little 2 lb jobs...

I let The Mews out after the mowing was done and the fence gates were shut...

After that, I decided to attack some of the brambles that have been invading the more civilized part of by back yard.  My "poacher's shovel" is great for that (think of an industrial-strength 18" trowel on a shovel handle).  I need the narrow blade because the brambles are among plantings.  I got about a dozen dug up.

Then I needed to do some watering.  All you sufferring from drought, forgive me, but we have had unusually frequent rain here and I almost didn't notice we had finally gone a week without any rain.  I started the watering because the annuals I still have in pots looked a bit wilted.  And once I get a hose in my hand, EVERYTHING gets watered, LOL!

Not that I water everything by hand.  I have a tripod with a fan-nozzle attached that I build a few years ago.

This original had a shower spray nozzle, I replaced it with one that spreads more sideways.  I use the shower head nozzle for hand-watering now.

And then I had to water the enclosed veggie garden.  I'm not used to the tight spaces yet, so it is a bit awkward.  I'll get the tricks for worked out this year.  Watering the 6 new raised beds takes a good 30 minutes.

And THEN I had to water all the deck containers.  I tried just filling and re-filling a watering can to water them, but that got pretty tedious.  I thought I would try either one of those super limp hoses that collapse back into a small container, or one of those coiled types that stretch out and fit back in a metal holder.  You've seen them on ads. 

But I was at a D-I-Y store and I noticed they were using the coiled type themselves.  So I figured they probably have some experience with their products, and bought the Melnor green coiled one.

So far, it is working very nicely and sure doesn't take up much space.  I screwed the wire frame to a piece of exterior plywood and attached the plywood to the side of the deck.  A short hose reaches to the multi-outlet water outlet.

For the record, I use one outlet for the hose to the deck, one for the hose to the nearby lawn, one to an industrial strength hose that goes 150' to the back veggie garden, and one for a jet nozzle right at the spigot that is useful for many things (cleaning buckets, hands, boots,  etc).  Dragging hoses all around the yard is both difficult and damaging to plants (I have the entire area around the spigot planted).

So I came back in at 6 PM and decided about dinner.  I decided I'd earned a steak.  I buy them in bulk from the local meat store, cut them in half, and freeze them in sandwich bags (wrapped in a bigger bag, wrapped in a heavier bag - no freezer burn).  So I stuck one bag in a pan of hot water (gentle thawing), made a nice home-grown tomato salad (with some minced onion, chopped cucumber, and shaved carrot), sauted some wedges of red and green bell pepper, M/Vd a potatoe, and poured a glass of wine while I sauteed the steak (its more stovetop-roasting in the covered cast iron pan). 

Dessert was cut-up fresh fruits (cantalope, green grapes, a plum, a navel orange, and some prunes).

Life is good...

Now I need to consult with The Mews about what they want to post for tomorrow. 

The Garden Inside

I have been planting while I built.  I risked losing plants to the Evil Squirrels or Groundhogs, but I've managed to avoid them this year.  I may have reduced the local population down to where they don't like getting into my space.

Which is good, because there are still gaps between the rolls of chicken wire I need to patch. 

They great news is that my garden, while incomplete, is growing well.

First, I have my first main season tomato.  It is a Big Beef, which is a hybrid and not my favorite, but it is still better than the store-bought ones.  The heirlooms are just now fruiting and will take a couple weeks to ripen.

I'm trying somehing in one bed based of the Three Sisters of Native America plantings.  Thats growing corn, letting pole beans climb the cornstalks, and growing melons below to shade out weeds. 

I may have planted the corn late; the beans are growing faster.  But I'll see what happens for this year.  I can stick 8' posts in the ground between the corn plants to let the pole beans climb (and the pole beans are the flat italian kind which taste better than standard ones to my mind).  The melons are honeydew.

The heirloom tomatoes are growing unusually tall.  New soil with good compost, I guess.  But most have blossoms now.  Below them are 2 green squash and 1 yellow squash.

This bed has cantalope melons.  I'm planting Fall crops around it.  I'm off-schedule with most plantings this year because of the enclosure construction work.  I should be back on schedule next year.  But it is a rare opportunity for Fall crops that I usually don't get around to.

This cherry tomato was planted late.  It sat in a tiny 6-pack cell for months and I had about given it up for dead and/or stunted.  But after being in ground for only 2 weeks, it went from a 8" sprig to this.  Talk about GROWTH!  I may harvest cherry tomatoes yet...

This is more late plantings.  Broccoli, Leeks, Cabbage, and Celery.  All I can get from Celery around here is leaves, but they sure are strong-tasting!  Which is exactly what I want in my salads.

And I have Brussels Sprouts, Radishes, Carrots,