Work Wednesday « Robin Writes

You might think all we do around here is work. Funny story:

Last Sunday, we decided we’d do “fun stuff.” It took us several hours to come up with something that wasn’t also considered work . . . by most people.

So we went to the café for breakfast, and when we got home there were those pesky chores to deal with. We had to unload trash from the STL house, as well as the wood stove, and I had to water the garden.

Watering the garden requires a few hours and couple of sprinkler moves, so finally, around 11:00, we headed out on the ATVs to explore in the woods.

It’s much easier now that I have a bike that will go in reverse immediately, instead of taking five minutes or so . . .

Anyway, we hadn’t been out there in the southeast quarter for maybe 20 minutes when it started to sprinkle. The kind of rain you can’t actually feel, but can hear in the trees.

And then the thunder started.

I wasn’t too worried—I mean, all the trees were much taller than I, and I was a moving target, right? 😉

So I wiped off the spider webs from my face and glasses, so I could actually see where I was going, and we made our way out of the woods and through the pasture.

My husband stopped to gaze at the pond, and when I realized he wasn’t behind me, I stopped too, on the overlook where we have a firepit.

The rain began in earnest . . .

We flew the rest of the way up to the house, and just as we got on the porch, the sky really opened up! Thunder and lightning and nearly an inch of rain over the next few hours.

So we did the funnest thing we could come up with:

We took a nap.

Some of you have heard how damn excited I am to have grown potatoes—two 20-foot rows. Next year, that will double, at least. You may have also heard about the tomato fiasco: disappearing plants that reappeared a couple months later, and the addition, in the meantime, of a dozen seedlings.

Kinda makes “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” perhaps a new reality . . .

My corn experiment, which was transplanting the thinned stalks in the next row, was a success!

Anyway, I did have some failures:

There is one section of the garden that killed off my pepper plants, Bell and jalapeno, and also killed off the Romaine and Butter Crunch lettuces. Weird, right? I’ll try that section again in the fall, with kale and spinach, now that it’s rested for a couple months.

By the way, weeds grow there just fine. Of course.

And about that corn. It’s short. Very short. I do have some ears growing, and I’m guessing I might get a dozen. Maybe. That’s certainly not enough for two 20-foot rows.

And the cabbage. Good grief. Besides bugs, which can be eliminated, the darn plants never quite grew any heads. Just a lot of spreading leaves.

But!

Since the deer didn’t get inside that seven-and-a-half-foot fence, I had a lot of green beans, as well as kidney and pinto. And the asparagus is doing well—we’ll be eating that next year. I’m getting cukes, and three cute little acorn squashes. Yellow squash and zucchini, well, those are self-explanatory.

The strawberries transplanted from STL are actually producing, and spreading, but I still only got a few blueberries. The domesticating of the blackberries continues, and the orchard trees look good. Grapevines, too!

So now we’re at the point where, besides sweating gallons, we’re planning next year.

Besides expanding the garden, which means the removal of a huge dead tree and a few other live, smaller ones, not to mention a stump or three and a LOT of rocks, we’re going to add a greenhouse.

I’m determined to grow lettuce, one way or another.

We’ll see how it goes, but check back in the late fall to see what’s happening. It could be quite entertaining!