I know it's been a minute, but there really hasn't been anything happening that was worth blogging about. Well, maybe there was, but it's been so hot and sticky out at the plant that I haven't really felt like doing anything, much less blogging. I just come home and sit in the air conditioning. So, what's been going on since I last posted?
Let's see, Monday night there was a power outage, and I had brief flashbacks to the ice storm. I caught myself listening to see if I could hear tree limbs breaking, but then I remembered it will be hot and not cold. I went to the Entergy app and saw that the outage had already been reported, so I checked the outage map. There was only one circuit that was affected, so I thought it must have been a wreck that hit a power pole or something. The power was back on in about 3 hours, and my first thought was, "That was fast, especially if they had to re-set a pole." Better still, the A/C was back on.
Don't envy me my exciting life.
Tuesday I had to go get my boobies smashed, and the radiologist must have seen how baggy my jeans had gotten because she asked me if I'd lost weight. "Pre-diabetes," I said. "I've had to start watching what I eat." She said she is diabetic, and we were talking about blood-sugar friendly snacks. I told her about mixing my sugar free pudding with whipping cream, and she suggested I cut back half of the cream and once it's mixed, fold in some cool whip. I bought some cool whip to try it, but also I bought some ice cream because it's a holiday weekend and all. Just a pint, though. Don't want to overdo it on the sugar.
Somewhere in the course of the conversation, I mentioned that I don't like salt. She said to try pickle juice. I don't like pickles either, but I had heard that pickle juice is good for re-hydrating yourself, so I bought some. It's not actually that bad. It's not great, but it's drinkable. I needed some today, too. But I'll get to that in a minute.
Wednesday night, we had some pretty strong thunderstorms blow through and I woke up to the news that the old building on the town square that had exploded a couple of years ago had collapsed onto the building next to it, completely destroying it. As you can imagine, the owner of that building was rightfully upset, because something should have already been done about it. The building that collapsed had been damaged in Hurricane Katrina, and had gotten more dilapidated and run down, but the owner wouldn't fix it up or tear it down. It had really become an eyesore in our little town.
We were talking about it at work yesterday, how it used to be a Stubb's Department Store, then they moved and it became a clothing store called Looking Good. The upper floor was an apartment with little Juliet balconies on the windows, so you could open them and look out on the Square. I don't exactly remember when it was completely abandoned, but it's been unoccupied for several years. You would think there would be some building code violations or something that the city could have enacted to make them do something about it.
I thought about running up there after work to rubberneck a bit, but I didn't. I went straight to Walmart to get that over with before my three day weekend started.
That brings us to today, the first day of said weekend. My first project this morning was to make some sense of the mess that my zinnias had become.
Seriously, I had no idea that they would get this tall. I even dug out the seed packet to see if I had made a mistake, and it says 24" not 6'. I was expecting them to stay small! Well, much smaller than they are, I mean.
The first thing I did was to remove all of the supports I had already put into the bed. Naturally, all the plants fell over right away.
As I've said before, I'm sure this is because the bed has the liner underneath it, and there isn't much room for them to develop a deep root structure. By next year, I'll have that all taken up and the red clay dug out from under that bed, so that won't be a problem. Also next year, I won't plant quite so many in this bed. Right now, I have 15, but again, I never expected them to get so big. The seed packet said 24", after all.
I'd bought some 6' plant stakes at Walmart yesterday, which I had intended to use to stake my tomatoes, but I figured I needed them more for this. Between those and some stakes I already had, using some garden twine, I managed to get them all fairly well supported. I even put the trellis thing back in the front.
I pruned them pretty heavily, but they are still plenty thick, and look, you can almost see my fairy garden now.
Oh well, I consider it a learning experience. Next year, I'll know better.
My next project was to get the first of my 4' x 4' beds lined up and into its permanent location. Once that was done, it was time to start digging the red clay out of it. I got this far before it got too hot to stay outside, even with taking numerous breaks to cool off.
There have already been a couple of heat related deaths this year. One of them was an 82 year old woman who fell while working in her yard and couldn't get back up. Her husband tried to help her up, but then he fell, too and couldn't get back up. They lay there in the bald sun for three hours until a neighbor found them. By that time, the woman had already died. That's one reason I always make sure I have my phone with me when I work outside. You know, in case I try to cut my arm off with a mini-chainsaw or something.
Most of the clay is out, but I'm going to have to wait until late this evening, or even tomorrow morning to finish. Then I'll start filling it, because I think I might need it for that second batch of tomatoes I planted. That will be all I do until it cools off some. After all, the plan was to prep and fill the beds over the fall and winter, then plant next spring.
And finally, my banana peppers are going to be ready to harvest soon, so I went ahead and bought some pint sized canning jars to pickle them in.
I probably ought to check and see how much vinegar and spice I have, too. Just in case.
Now I think I'm going to go get a bite of that ice cream.
Laters...
