stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

these pictures were taken this morning less than four minutes apart:

if you can't sleep some night you can try to count the birdies...

i was really hoping they would stay until it was brighter, but no luck there, but they were around for about a half hour over in the field to the north where they'd harvested the corn a few days ago. so they were picking it over.

 

[flowerbug]

@Cosmo spring garden this picture is for you. weeds! perhaps for @ninnymary too just to give her some inspiration and how to encourage weeds in her gardens...

this is one of the projects i just started working on (i always have something going on here to keep me moving when the weather cooperates) where i need to get those lilies and weeds out of there for a few seasons. those grasses are also spread into the neighboring thyme but i'm not going to dig that entire area up.

 

[ninnymary]

Horror of horrors! How do you grow weeds? Asking for a friend.

Mary

 

[flowerbug]

Horror of horrors! How do you grow weeds? Asking for a friend.

Mary

it is really easy here. just turn your back and walk away for a few weeks. either something will sprout from the ground or a bird will bring in some seeds or the wind will blow them in. it really helps to grow things like irises or lilies which sometimes don't crowd out and protect every bit of ground and then once the weed gets going it can be very hard to remove in trying to track down the runners underground.

you get extra bonus points for having gardens around farm fields and ditches that are poorly managed. all the sow thistles and other thistles come from edges of fields or ditches that have been disturbed and then the weeds come in and from then on it is a source for spreading more to the surrounding areas.

we have both maple and poplar trees in the neighborhood that provide all sorts of seedlings each season for your weeding pleasure.

 

[ninnymary]

Do they need full sun?

Mary

 

[flowerbug]

Do they need full sun?

Mary

LOL thank you so much for the laugh.

not at all, some are very tricksy in that they'll happily sprout under other plants and get going and even flower and drop seeds before you even know they are there... want some? i have a few real doozies...

 

[flowerbug]

i managed to get some work done on that weedy patch this week, but there is a long ways to go yet. my first day out i could get the pathway cleared off and that area dug up so i could move an edging slab out of the way and track down all the roots underneath everything from those lilies. that was day one and i rested.

day two, being this morning was cold but no wind so i was hoping that just by going out and doing some digging i would be warm enough, but my hands were too cold and i couldn't use warmer gloves because i needed to pick the roots apart and get the dirt out of them and such. so i was out for about an hour and a half and then my hands said enough. i did get some other weeding done so i can say again and without any doubt that yes there are weeds around.

tomorrow the weather is looking to be rather cold and icky so it will be a day of bean sorting/organising and whatever other mischief i can get into.

at the rate i'm going it will probably be next May before i get that garden taken care of...

 

[flowerbug]

a good day for taking a few pictures of the bulk beans and getting the pictures edited and posted to the website.

this one shows the difference in color between the Purple Dove beans grown in various locations. the lighter beans were grown in poorer soil (with very little or no organic matter, clay and in some spots very poorly drained). the darker beans were grown in the North Garden which has actual loamy topsoil put down over the clay subsoil and that area has had a lot of organic matter added and plenty more weeds buried that grew there over the years. the two other pictures are just closer shots of the lighter and darker ones. though if you look closely you might notice that the darker beans are somewhat different from each other too (by a little bit ).

these are three other bulk beans Red Ryder, Fordhook Lima and Huey which is a cross i've been working on to get it stable. this was the first year i grew out enough to see how they did in multiple locations and soil conditions but also testing how they did when interplanted with Purple Dove.

and a closer shot of Huey, notice the pinker color background when compared to my other Tan Goats Eye bean that i normally grow instead (i did grow some Tan Goats Eye beans too this year to make sure it wasn't a soil or conditions variation). i'll put the link to the TGE beans here just as an obvious comparison.


Huey is likely to become my main bulk small striped bean that i like to use for making chili because it is firm and stands up to being cooked a long time and it doesn't fall apart easily, plus i like how it looks and grows (semi-runner) and it finishes pretty early and will work ok as a shelly too (i think i'll have to verify this next year for sure). since it is a cross from Red Ryder it has the characteristics i really like from that plant (easy shelling, beans fall out of the pod easy for dry and shelly stage, early, does well anyplace i plant it, etc). this year i planted Huey alternating with Purple Dove and even in spite of that it was pretty productive. i think next year i'll be block planting it and should get double the harvest in the same area as i got this season. note that while i'm not solely focussed on productivity of a bean (i don't want to draw too many nutrients out of a garden at one time) i do like it when a plant is moderately productive enough so that i'm also not wasting the space and my efforts.

 

[flowerbug]

it's not a time when you want your phone to go out of commission, but welcome to this morning. Mom picks up the phone to call someone and there's all sorts of noise on the line and it isn't working right. so she starts banging it on the counter (like that's going to help?!) *sigh* i try a few things and switch out another phone to see if it is the phone or the line, but now it could be either as what could have been a working phone is damaged. thanks Mom for making things more complicated unneccesarily...

so we're going to be shopping for a cell phone. not that i want one, but that is just how it has been heading with our landline getting more worse and needing more service calls and after a service call it may last for a few weeks or a few months or half a year, but now it only lasted a few weeks and Mom is fed up. i'd have chucked the whole thing years ago.

since she's been opposed to this for eons and i don't care i haven't spent any time researching anything but now it all comes up at once and must be dealt with immediately (as usual ).

i was able to get a note to my sister and brother about the phone being out but i don't know if my other brother saw the message or not. we'll see him tomorrow anyways and i'll talk to my Dad at some point too.

a few people have somehow managed to call us and leave messages on the answering machine but they are so garbled i can't tell what they are saying or call them back, but i know who they were. sent an e-mail to one of them since i knew that but i don't know if they'll see the message. the other we'll have to call back somehow eventually.

in sad news we lost Grandma last week. the person we've called Grandma for many years. the older couple who were neighbors to my brother when they first moved that ways. my niece and nephew were both close to them along with my brother and my sister in law. Grandma did not die of the virus. at 96 i think she wasn't really expecting to live a lot longer, but her husband of the same age had passed away a few months ago (we considered him Grandpa too) and you know that is a hard thing to survive. both of them are going to be missed by all of us. i was told by her to take care of Mom which i've been doing as best i can all along. i'm glad my brother and SIL were able to see her and talk to her before she died. i only saw her recently on TG day when we dropped a bag of baked goodies off at her place and she was sitting in her chair and talking to a few people so i said hello and hoped they'd have a nice TG and was back out the door. i had my mask on and did not want to linger anyways. a few weeks later she had issues that put her in the hospital and they said there wasn't much to do about it - they sent her home so she was able get her family together and to say good bye. RIP Grandma, already miss you.

 

[ninnymary]

I’m so sorry she is gone Flowerbug. I’m glad you got to love her and her you. Happy that you at least got to see her at Thanksgiving however briefly.

Mary