The Care and Keeping of Plants and Animals

Plants
My garden hasn't been doing all that well lately.  Today, we harvested our last shot of snap peas.  They are so delicious.  We followed advice I found online and ripped out the plants, then scoured the plants for the pods.  We got a fair amount for a last harvest.  This is what it looks like sans peas:

Given our recent 100+ temperatures, I don't think the roma tomatoes look too bad.  They're just a little dead around the bottom.  And some have blossom end rot.  And the bugs are eating some.  Okay, maybe they're doing pretty lousy.

My squash is also being killed by cucumber beetles.  Specimen one:

 Specimen two:

I only have one two-inch by half-inch yellow squash growing.  All the people at the farmer's markets have TONS of squash and zucchini.  I'm working on getting these suckers to produce.

I did get one ripe tomato off of the semi-dying plant above.  Isn't she gorgeous? :o)

And so far, I've got one female-palm-sized green pepper.  Of everything still growing right now, the peppers are doing the best.  Each plant has at least one decent pepper on it.  None of the others are quite this big though.

Animals
After the hamster cage fiasco this morning, we needed to shuffle cages.  *B*'s big red-eared slider (a terrapin) has needed a new tank for a long, long time.  But aquariums are very expensive.  He decided, in a moment of brilliance, to buy a $130 150 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank rather than the $400 150 gallon aquarium.  Shamrock looks so happy (when he's not hiding from me).

Because Shamrock got a tank upgrade, my Terpy (same species) got a tank upgrade as well.

My turtle's not camera shy though.  Though he doesn't look very big, he's HUGE!  He's about the size of my hand, fingers included.  He was one of those Myrtle Beach silver dollar turtles.  They said they'd only get to big as big as their tank.  That is true, because if you don't get them a bigger tank, they die.  So he's been through five tanks now in his three years of life.

And as for Sixie, she'll get Terpy's old tank tomorrow.  It has been a looooong day, and she's doing okay for now in the bucket in our closet.  We did, however, find a fair amount of blood on the sock in her bucket.  I can't find a single speck of blood on her, though.  I'm really hoping that it's not an internal trauma.  She's not squeaking in pain, and I was able to handle her just as much as usual.  This hamster may have been named because she was the sixth animal I brought into our house, but I'm beginning to suspect she's got six lives, too.

Simple Pleasure Thursday

My simple pleasure for today is thinking the worst, but having everything turn out okay.

A story: This morning, I lumbered out of bed and dragged myself into the shower. I was sudsing up my hair, thinking deeply about something I've now forgotten, and I heard a crash. Almost immediately, I knew what it was:


Wicket likes to sit on top of the hamster cage. To keep her from doing that, we put it on a bookshelf. So far so good. She had only attempted to get up there one time up to this point, but I caught her. This time, she pulled it over on top of herself.

Awful thoughts were spinning around in my head: that Wicket had pulled over the tank, crushing/cutting herself or Sixie. If not, Sixie was a playtoy that Wicket was smacking around. So I ran out, hair full of suds, dripping from head to toe, just in time to catch the hamster running away. I managed to spirit her away into her ball before a) one of the cats got her or b) she disappeared into the secret passageways of the house that only rodents find.

In the end, it turned out alright:

The only reason she's wet and crazy looking is because I was wet and crazy looking when I picked her up :o)

Looks like we'll be going to PetSmart today...

This Will Not Be Pretty

Last Friday, I started a second job. In the mornings, I've worked at a camp for K-2 kids for the past three weeks. I'm in charge of arts and crafts. We've done God's Eyes, paper plate shakers, finger painting, and coloring activities. Overall, it's not so bad, but the kids tire me out pretty easily. I'm there from 7:30 am to 12:30 pm.

In the evenings now, I also work semi-one-on-one with a large variety of math students. I'm there from 3:30 pm to 7:30 pm. So far, I've tutored 2nd through 10th graders. It's very weird, though, because I can't figure out when I'm supposed to plan and grade. I stayed a little late to grade Saturday, and the manager told me to go home. They open five minutes before I start work, so that doesn't help either. Somehow, while tutoring 3-4 kids at a time, I'm supposed to grade papers that have been submitted and prep papers for the next time I'll see them. There's no real schedule of who's coming in, either. It is one big mess. But I think I'm almost starting to get the hang of it.

This weird schedule of mine means that I can't really get up to my garden anymore. The only time I can get up there is between 1:15 and 2:45 in the afternoon. I would have died if I went out there at that time today. For those of you who have not heard the news in the mid-Atlantic, it was actually 105 degrees F (41 degrees C). It is HOT!!! And given that I am one crispy critter at the moment due to my insistence that sunscreen wasn't necessary on the fourth of July, I wasn't venturing out. Tomorrow morning, I'll have to get up extra early to water the plants.

My Trips North and South

My Trip South

We went on a little mini-trip to the Shenandoah River just outside of Luray, VA. Friday night is always a settling in night, but we're on the river all day Saturday. It was gorgeous!

I was all packed up and ready to go.


I saw this view most of the way - the back of *B*.


And here's the front of him!


Here is one of our little turtle friends jumping off a log.

There were tons of cows having a good time in the river. The downside to the cows in the river was abundant. There is algae covered excrement all down the river.


These rapids. Oh, these rapids. I have a story about them.

They don't look very big, do they? Oh, but they are. Two years ago, *B* and I went tubing down the river. He convinced me that it was okay to float without a life vest on. That was mistake number one. I forgot to put the vest back on before Compton's rapids. I went first down the rapids. Because I couldn't steer an inner-tube, I went into the most dangerous part. The rapids flipped me backward, and I hit my head on a large rock. In my dazed confusion, I decided to stay right where I was until *B* got there. So I wrapped my legs around a snail-encrusted rock until he got there.

Long story short, he got me to one shore (the right side in the picture above) and got me some food (it was past lunch). I thought I was okay, and then I got really dizzy and almost passed out. It turns out I had cut my legs to ribbons and I was losing a lot of blood. *B* heroically ripped the sleeves off his shirt and tied my legs off. It turns out that a group of boy scouts were on the rapids with a local church group. He called them over, and they decided that I needed emergency care. I was treated for shock and ferried across the very fast moving river. The ambulance came, and *B* and I had our first ambulance ride. I had gashes four inches up each of my legs and a contusion on my head. I made it out alive, but I was leery to go back. I will never tube that river again :o) I did it though, and made it through on kayak. I'm glad I did, because this is what the other side looks like:


My Trip North
I am so glad that I was able to make the trip to Landmark College in Vermont this year. Aside from the classes being fascinating, I have never been so in awe of an area of the country. The weather was gorgeous, as was the inn where we stayed.

This is their lobby. Check out the gorgeous ceiling:

This fireplace is just to the right of the above picture:

My room was absolutely lovely:


This is one of the views from my room overlooking the rest of the inn:

Out of my other window, I saw the pond in the front. There were wildflowers, cattails, and bullfrogs:

I had to go on a romp around the grounds. This is the view in their backyard. Isn't it amazing???

This is their laundry house. I would LOVE to live in their laundry house :o)


I cannot wait to take *B* up there. The inn, specifically the Chesterfield Inn, was right over the New Hampshire-Vermont border on the NH side. I'm not sure which I like more, Vermont or New Hampshire, but they're both absolutely wonderful. With any luck (and a fair amount of saving), *B* and I will be there again next year.

Home Resolutions

We did an overhaul on the garden today. The sweet peas were dying and we could really use the space. The nasturtiums had also dominated the whole back side of the raised bed. Who knew they grew so big!?
We also got some great harvests. We dumped all of our potato bins and culled a large harvest of spuds! All of our potatoes came from one potato from the store that had eyes growing.


I had also let the cilantro go to seed, so I harvested the coriander seed that resulted.

We also transplanted the onions and took a look at the shallots. Most of the onions look good, but this one had died back, so we took it. The shallots also died back. Many of them had rotted, but these three were okay.


We have decided next year, we will plant:
- ~20 potato plants
- more sugar snap peas and no sweet peas
- 4-5 nasturtiums in the ground and in hanging baskets
- more sauce tomatoes and less beefsteak tomatoes
- salad greens that are not lettuce
- more strawberries
- one rhubarb plant
- ~20 corn plants
- green beans
- lima beans

In the house, we will soon:
- order a replacement refrigerator drawer
- clean the grill top to bottom
- paint the master bedroom
- caulk the windows
- seal the deck
- reseed the grass

In the house, we will one day:
- renovate the upstairs bathroom (new tub and sink)
- replace the windows
- replace the deck
- renovate the kitchen
- replace the washer and dryer

We will learn to:
- make cheese other than paneer (*B*'s goal)
- make sweet wine (*B*'s goal)
- make soap
- make laundry detergent
- make candles
- knit mittens
- handle situations requiring first aid

Simple Pleasure Thursday

My simple pleasure for today is having time to think. For the last few days, I've been able to think through a bunch of things I've been putting off, specifically when it comes to marriage, religion, and getting my life on track. I'm still trying to figure out how to organize my thoughts in such a way that I can untangle the knots in my mind for good and not have to backtrack each time. I do fear, though, that time to think will be a bygone simple pleasure. Tomorrow, I start my second job. We'll see how it goes!

Phew, I'm Home

I made it home! I've never been so glad to be back. My garden not only survived my absence (with care from *B*), but the hibiscus has exploded into bloom:


I've also got some of the most beautiful hostas blooming:


Our peppers are gorgeous:

And we've got tomatoes out our ears:

Some of our tomatoes, four to be precise, have this ugly rot on the bottom:


They're not overripe, because they're still green and hard. Does anyone know what's wrong with them?

Our snap peas and garden peas are, sadly, at an end. We'll be ripping them up soon to compost them. Our potatoes are also almost dead. When the stalks die, the potatoes are ready to be harvested, but it's kind of like sending a kid off to college. It's what you want, it's for the best, but you're not ready to let them go yet.