stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

Nails!! Yeah, gold as far as I am concerned. I always recycle the ones I have to pull out.
When I was little and liked to play with my grandfathers tools, he set me to straightening all his nails out, I still do this today.
Waste not want not and all that.

these are severely rusted/degraded nails so they can't easily be reused unless they were melted down and remade. many of them had so much rust that they could not be pounded back out and would break off if bent, which was one way i had to go to get them removed (bend them back and forth a few times until they broke leaving enough of a stub that would work to hit to get them to come out a bit so i could pull them the rest of the way). i probably left about 50 heads of nails in the boards, but even while i disliked doing that they aren't nearly as bad as a full length rusty nail sticking out of a board. after the wood rots i'll probably be picking them up if i can find them.

 

[flowerbug]

ok, here's the forecast for the next 7 days:

Tonight
Partly cloudy, with a low around 29. Southwest wind around 5 mph.
Wednesday
Sunny, with a high near 52. West southwest wind 9 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 26 mph.
Wednesday Night
Increasing clouds, with a low around 34. West southwest wind around 6 mph becoming calm in the evening.
Thursday
Mostly cloudy, with a high near 48. North northeast wind 5 to 13 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph.
Thursday Night
Mostly cloudy, with a low around 30. North wind 7 to 11 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph.
Friday
Mostly sunny, with a high near 44.
Friday Night
Mostly clear, with a low around 26.
Saturday
Sunny, with a high near 51.
Saturday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 36.
Sunday
Partly sunny, with a high near 45. Breezy.
Sunday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 28.
Monday
Mostly sunny, with a high near 48.
Monday Night
Mostly clear, with a low around 32.
Tuesday
Sunny, with a high near 54.


no rain. it's been raining enough lately so this will be a nice break if it actually happens. the forecasts have been really unreliable for us this season. i mean to the point that a few hours later it can go from no rain to rain and no mention in the forecast for any chance of rain. etc.

why should i care? well it is nice to be able (it took me three times to spell that word right so this evening is not going that well for typing... anyways...) to have some sort of plan for what i'm doing the next few days. if it is cold and rainy then i can stay in and work on beans or something else, if it is cold at night then i won't need to get outside early and i can do something inside for the morning and then plan on being outside for the afternoon (which is about all the heavy work i can do anyways). if it is going to be cold and windy perhaps we can run errands that day, etc. ... yes, i like to have a plan. ... task oriented me...

in other news, not much going on here other than sorting some beans and getting a few gardens closer to being ready for winter. tomorrow if the sunshine happens then i'll get at least one more garden done (and can cross that off my mental list when it happens).


inside the fenced area, to be done (some larger than others):

new garden (few hours), large tomato garden (half a day), se corner garden (few hours), south garden (an hour), sandy garden (an hour), beans off fences (a few hours).


outside the fenced area, need to have garden debris buried:

bed gardens (two small spots out front where we had squash), and the squash garden in the horseshoe needs to have those vines buried (a few hours for all of these).

all of these are fairly well kept up and clear of most weeds so a quick scrape and bury of any remaining weeds should be all that needs to be done apart from any burying of garden remains.


so yes, i should be able to get these done by the end of this week. depending upon what else comes up... we'll see how it goes...

 

[Trish Stretton]

...your tomato garden takes half a day? OMG!

 

[flowerbug]

...your tomato garden takes half a day? OMG!

note the word large there! it was the garden where we put most of the tomato plants so it will take me digging two or three large holes to get it all buried down deeply enough. still it will only be less than 10% of the garden to dig so that is ok with me. i may try to do it today and we have some people who might stop over so i may not get it all done in one day. and even a quick scrape of that garden is going to take a half hour to 45 minutes.

the garden i was going to start with is still a bit too muddy, i may wait on that one for a few more days. i'm contemplating moving some of the dirt from the small more sandy soil garden into a garden that has more clay just to even out things more and to improve some of the drainage and make it easier for plants to grow. they do ok in the mostly clay but this year the more sandy soil garden just didn't do all that great. it would probably do better with more clay in there. also it would help to lower it a bit so that helps out the other garden too as it could use a bit more dirt in there. it's more work and disturbance but it will probably be worth the effort.

 

[flowerbug]

well it has rained a few times (last night) and snowed a bit this morning, and it's pretty cloudy, so you could say that forecast was pretty far off... it's a good thing i'm not trying to actually plan anything serious this year...

 

[flowerbug]

i wrote this in my SS thread, but dunno who else reads both places so...

i finished up the first sort of the red beans and decided to cook up the rejects as we're both hungry for some beans. about 7lbs total with 26oz of rejects (a lot more that would be usual but that is because of how i grew them - lesson learned... i hope. ). so those are on the stove.

i'm normally a hermit, but this past week has been more busy because of the yearly cleaning/checkup with the dentist and i had to take Mom's car in for a check as it was dripping oil. i suspected the oil plug from the fast oil change place not doing it right, but it was the oil filter itself. so the mechanic tightened that up and hopefully that will take care of the leak. no charge from the mechanic - i tried a few times to give him at least the price of a cup of coffee for the time and using his lift but he wouldn't take it...

it is a new guy who bought the place our previous mechanic sold when he retired so this was the first introduction to him and he seems decent so we'll see how it turns out. a good mechanic is another blessing IMO. he knows where we live and he lives a few miles down the road from us.

note the old mechanic we had was good and he often "forgot" to include things like oil changes and some parts or labor were not on the bills. he'd just shrug when i mentioned them as i think it is important to keep good guys in business... we were worried when he retired that we'd have a tough time finding someone decent who's new so this may work out.

oh and just as a tidbit since i'm nattering along here. when he had the car on the lift and saw the leak he showed it to me and i was looking at the bottom of Mom's car and he was showing his flashlight around at the brakes and stuff to check them quick and i swear i could almost eat off the bottom of Mom's car, it was so clean... other than the bit of oil splattered around from the leaking oil filter... i need to stir the beans i'm cooking so i'll remember to tell Mom this too.

beans are done.

looks like i will get out this afternoon to finish up some gardens and to get some fresh ashes dug into a few areas that can use them. these ashes were just delivered this morning to me and if i can get them emptied and get the buckets back then that will help give me a few more buckets for next year when he drops them back off in the spring. in the past these folks would throw their wood ashes in the trash, but they've been giving them to me to use in the gardens and around the yard. there are enough bits of charcoal in with them that it is appreciated here and the clay soil we have is lightened up and improved by both the ashes and the bits of charcoal. i do need to check the pH eventually but this is still the first round of ashes i've put down in many gardens so i've not bothered to do that yet.

the wood ashes i like to think as a way to build up some more elevation too as we do lose some ground each season to erosion. we're in the middle of surface flows for the area when it gets above flash flood capacity in the ditches. i'd like to eventually build up even more than we have already but there is no easy way to bring in any more fill unless i want to wheelbarrow it one at a time (which i have done, but ran out of time and money back when i did it last)... it's a big four part mess actually, but i hope to start fixing one or two parts of the mess next year (the other two are major issues and i dunno how those will pan out).

 

[flowerbug]

south garden is done, new garden is done and even additional work of burying some ashes in there was also done, got a start on the large tomato garden but that is going to take a few more hours that won't be done until Monday or more likely even later. a lot of the beans have been cleaned off the fences but there is still more to do yet. i'll get to those sometime next week if this forecast actually works out...

i think the weather people just like to tease me:

Tonight
Showers likely, mainly after 5am. Increasing clouds, with a low around 38. South wind 15 to 17 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.
Sunday
Rain showers before 11am, then snow showers likely. Temperature falling to around 37 by noon. Breezy, with a west wind 18 to 23 mph, with gusts as high as 37 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.
Sunday Night
Snow showers likely before 9pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 29. Blustery, with a northwest wind 14 to 22 mph, with gusts as high as 37 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.
Monday
Mostly sunny, with a high near 46. Breezy, with a west wind 8 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph.
Monday Night
Mostly clear, with a low around 33. West wind 8 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.
Tuesday
Sunny, with a high near 52.
Tuesday Night
Clear, with a low around 40.
Wednesday
Sunny, with a high near 63.
Wednesday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 47.
Thursday
Partly sunny, with a high near 63.
Thursday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 46.
Friday
Sunny, with a high near 64.
Friday Night
Mostly clear, with a low around 45.
Saturday
Mostly sunny, with a high near 63.

 

[flowerbug]

i'm putting this here just as a pointer to some fun tinkerers who like to think long term:

Long Now Foundation

The Long Now Foundation is a San Francisco non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking. Our projects include the 10,000 Year Clock, Rosetta Project ...

www.youtube.com

 

[Trish Stretton]

Do you age the ash or put in straight away?

 

[flowerbug]

Do you age the ash or put in straight away?

age? i'm not sure what you mean by that.

normally, by the time i get them the ashes have been in buckets for part or most of the winter and i try to get them mixed in a garden as soon as i have any available to put them in. with all the projects the past few years i had built up to about 15 buckets of ashes that were sitting around waiting for me to put them to use.

the ones i put down yesterday were fresh in that they were from fires burned recently and they were put in the ground.

what i do with them is layer them on the surface and then turn the garden but i don't make a huge effort to break up the clumps of dirt or to mix the ashes in completely. so they are varied through the area. i figure that plant roots can find them if they need to and then over the gardening season next spring i may turn the areas again or not and some might get disturbed and mixed more if i have worms/worm castings to go in that garden or it might all get left alone until i plant right into it. by next spring the rains and snows should have any harshness leached or mellowed out. i've never seen any signs that it bothers anything i plant in there.

but i should do a pH check in any gardens when i get to the point where i'm adding a second layer. so far i've not gotten enough buckets that i've used them in all the gardens and the other areas where i've been putting them (the NE garden) so it will be several more years before that happens at the rate i'm going.

it was funny dumping out the ashes this time as he gave me a partial bucket and when he dropped off the buckets he mentioned he had more but the ashes were too hot so he couldn't put them in the plastic buckets and i joked that yeah, you don't want to melt the bucket or start a fire. he didn't say anything about it, but when i dumped out the partial bucket the bottom was all blistered and melted. i'm not sure he knows it was like that or not, but he'll see it when he gets the buckets back. he does have a metal ash bucket but he must have emptied it without letting those sit very long.

anyways, i don't mind getting ashes from him because he leaves enough charcoal bits in with the ashes that a few % or more is left as carbon black/charcoal and that's good to have in the gardens as eventually it becomes home for a lot of microbes and other creatures. i don't usually take much time to break up any chunks, but over the years between walking on them and doing some scraping and digging a little some of them get broken down, or if i'm really feeling like i want to get them smashed i can get out a few bricks and smash some to get the carbon spread around more, but i've rarely bothered to do that.