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| Yellow Garden Spider guarding the shell beans |
I just came in from the garden, totally soaked. This month it’s been a toss-up whether the soaking will be from sweat because it’s too hot and humid, or from rain – but not nearly enough. Whether. Weather. Argh!
No matter what the weather gods are doing, the season marches on, and while it’s a little early this year…ok, quite early – the garden’s slowly getting cleared out. The shell beans are all gone except for the scarlet runners, which I don’t think are going to produce this year – lots and lots of flowers, but almost no bean pods. The same with the lima beans, though I just picked a handful of those.
The chipmunks have eaten all but one bed of beets, which I pulled completely the other day because they’d started on that bed; all the carrots except for one row that’s hidden under the asparagus ferns, and it’s so dry there there may not be much of anything attached to the greenery when I finally pull them. I replanted beets and carrots twice, but neither germinated, it was too dry. I had to pull one full bed of leeks because the little buggers had started on those, and they’ve also sampled the onions, Egyptian onions, and garlic – critters aren’t supposed to like aliums, so I don’t know what that’s all about.
Tomato hornworm - big as my middle finger
Tomatoes are finally ripening, but they’re all lumpy and bumpy and scarred, ok for freezing because I cut them up, but almost impossible to slice and just eat. Fortunately the cherry tomatoes are ok, but you can’t make a sandwich with them unless you turn them into a spread, which isn’t a bad thing, really. For two months now my kitchen pegs have been covered with garlic and onion bunches that are drying; garlic’s all dried, and the onions are still thinking about it. My potato bags were full of lovely purple and red and a few white fingerling potatoes; those are in covered baskets and boxes under the table, curing, before I can pile them together into one big basket in the pantry. My shallots, which matured early, are taking forever to dry in a basket on the kitchen counter. And lumpy tomatoes are also taking up basket space on the kitchen counters, ripening until I can freeze them. Oh, yes, and I’ve so far found, and removed, 3 honkin’ gigantic tomato hornworms which munched on, and ruined, 6 unripe tomatoes besides eating the leaves off one plant.
All my winter squash and pumpkin plants died from causes unknown, and something – not sure what – actually dug up the two promising ones and moved them aside, so they “desisicated,” as the Tall Guy put it, before I found them. No claw marks, no little piles of dirt, no paw prints or hoof marks – the site of the murder looked just like a human would do with a trowel, and it was done several days apart. It’s very weird, as strange as the unknown thing that dug a trench to get at the fava beans last spring, and then didn’t eat all of them. Dried fava beans that one plants are huge – much larger than a seed or bean most birds could handle. I have theories about what’s causing this damage – swamp monsters, aliens, evil garden gnomes, zombies, very peculiar bears, ostriches… The green peppers this year are growing on plants that never got taller than 14 inches, and the fruits are rotting as soon as they start to ripen. The zucchini plant has produced dozens and dozens of squashes, in spite of squash borers killing half of it; but the summer squash, which is a beautiful huge plant with lots of flowers and no squash borers, has produced exactly 5 squashes. Go figure.
The hardy hibiscus are finally in bloom. And they’re gorgeous. Everyone in the North should have a hardy hibiscus!
It's nice to have a clothesline, finally, after 40 years!
Most years the dining table gets covered with baskets of
ripening tomatoes, but I’ve been using the table to spread out the paperwork
and folders and 3-ring binders I need to research assisted living places and
Medicaid for the elderly in Florida, for my dear friend in Florida. All I have
to say about that is, don’t move to Florida – they don’t use the same language
everyone else does, they don’t have the same programs, and then they change it
and do, and then they change it again and don’t, they don’t make it easy to
find information, you almost have to
get an elder law attorney involved, and god help you if you don’t have endless
funds. And a paralegal degree (which I do but I still need legal help down
there because it’s so --- purposely difficult), and an incredible amount of
time and patience.
The assisted living places, however, are much nicer, in a way, than the ones I’ve seen in NH – even the small studios have kitchenettes, and the rooms seem to be slightly larger. The assisted living people are all very nice and very helpful, and they should be, because they want your money.
Hydrangea and Coral Bells
Anyway, progress is slow and on hot and humid days my brain
doesn’t really function all that well. In fact, on the worst weekend we had, I’m
pretty sure it melted and drained out through the soles of my feet along with
my life force, and I’m not certain it’s all back in place again yet.
Lynxie had a run-in with a very pissed off raccoon, and has just rejoined us after a ten-day vacation in quarantine at the vet’s. He was vaccinated for rabies, and is now boostered for rabies, and I don’t think the raccoon was rabid – she was beautiful and disappeared not to be seen again after I scared her off and snatched Lynx indoors (she’d chased him onto our wart and the fat boy just barely managed to pull himself onto the rail when I heard the commotion and went out, but she did bite him). I suspect he stumbled into her nest and she was protecting her kits; but we don’t know. It’s a little late in the season for that, but the season has been strange, and kits do stay with their parents for several months once they’re mostly grown. None of the neighbors have seen her, either, though the one next door says a raccoon goes up on her deck every night and drinks the hummingbird food.
Green Echinacea and nasturtiums
At work – still hearing weekly from patients who have either
caught Covid or whose family members have. This is what you need to know about
the latest variant: The symptoms look like a cold or an allergy. Because this
mutation has changed the virus a lot, the home tests often produce a false
negative if you don’t have symptoms, or if you have symptoms but haven’t had
them for a few days. If you know you’ve been exposed, and you keep getting a
negative home test result, it’s worth going to get a PCR test, which are still
more accurate, but even those aren’t as accurate with this variant.
So if you know you’ve been exposed but have no symptoms, wear a mask in public for at least a week and keep your hands clean. If you have symptoms but test negative, wear a mask in public and keep your hands clean until the symptoms are gone, because this variant is extremely infectious. And if you don’t want to risk catching it, wear a mask in public and keep your hands clean, even if you’re outdoors, if there are people nearby. This variant spreads quickly and easily – all it takes is someone coughing or sneezing, and if the breeze is right, even if you aren’t right next to the infected person, the virus can easily float through the air to you. Outdoor theater productions this summer have turned into super-spreader events because everyone assumed that outdoors no one needed to wear a mask. Surprise!
Yeah, yeah, the symptoms are mostly like a cold or flu in most people. But in some people they’re much worse; people are still being hospitalized with it; and you won’t know ‘til you catch it how bad it is for you. AND, even if it’s mild it can last for weeks; some people you might infect will not be able to work for weeks after catching it because of the kind of work they do (like me!); and you can’t tell by looking at someone if they have immune system issues and could get deadly ill if they catch it. Yes, those people should be wearing masks, but if they’re surrounded by people not wearing masks spewing virus at them, it’s often not enough.
Wearing a mask is a small sacrifice to improve everyone’s health and protect the vulnerable. And toss your masks when you’ve been somewhere surrounded by people – the outside could be covered in active virus. Hygiene, people, hygiene!
For the blog, 23 August 2022: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com
All photos Deb Marshall
My garden earlier in the summer - Daisies and California Poppies, compost bin and Lady's Mantle, and a few Lunaria
