How we winterize on the LLF.

A pictorial post.

We put our garden to bed.

We give our rainbarrel a rinse and dry.

We tuck our strawberries in under a nice, thick straw mulch.

We put light where we'll need it.

We batten down the deck chairs.

We secure our alternate fuel source (and spruce up our bird feeders).

We polish our silver.

Okay, I'm kidding about the silver.  I actually polished it while sitting out Sandy.  When I get very anxious, I need to do something repetitive and mind-numbing.  Ergo, the silver polishing.  You can take the girl out of charm school, but you can't take the charm school out of the girl...



Oooh, Mama!

This has got to be the Mother of ALL tomatoes!  Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!!  Almost all of the tomatoes from my lone Old German plant were this size or a tad smaller.  And were they good!  This is a must-grow for next year.  (Are you listening/reading, Marianne....?)

Old German heritage tomato.

And speaking of mothers, mine gave me quite a start yesterday.  I was sitting in my office, minding my own beeswax, when the main line rang.  Since the receptionist was out to lunch, I cover the phones.  I glanced at the Caller I.D. when I picked up the handset and wondered who would be calling from Vermont.  It was my mother!!!  Some background here - my mother never, NEVER calls us.  We call her.  She will want to hear from us but, instead of picking up the phone and calling, she stares at her phone and wills us to call.  And, since we have been trained from birth, we do her bidding.  Having her call me and call me at work made my heart lurch.  Turns out, she wanted to make sure it was okay that her doctor's appointment (to which I was acting as chauffeur) was on a Monday.  This is one of the appointments that is out of town for them, so I take the day off and drive them to and from the appointment.  My father is not allowed to drive out of town under threat of bodily harm.  Once I recovered from the shock that she called me at work, I assured her that it was fine and hung up.  I am glad to know that my blood pressure, heart rate and emotional resilience are flexible and intact.

Summer's Over!!!

Can I hear a few amens?  I was stumbling across the living room this morning at 4:30 (dog toys, mouse bits, gnawed marrow bones - it's a jungle in there) when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a little green light...blinking at me.  What the?  Once I got a light on and let the dogs go barreling out, I realized it was the 'Icy Conditions' light on my new indoor/outdoor remote thermometer.  I repeat, what the??  Then I looked at the outdoor temperature:  34.1 degrees.  It's September 11, folks. 

So, even though it is forecast to go up to 80 tomorrow, I am declaring Summer officially O.V.E.R.  Just to prove my point, I pulled out the cucumber plants, which were way skeevy anyway.

The Pearlies spent a chilly night outside again.  After noodling it over this morning with my herbal tea and no breakfast (had to fast for 14 hours for a blood test - it's gruesome), I decided that, if the Pearlies were too stoopid stubborn to go inside a nice, warm coop for the night, Mohamed would bring the coop to them. Just call me Mohamed Sweezie Mohamed.  I am going to build an enclosure around their roosting area.  It's just what I need - another project.  On this subject, I had an interesting conversation with my doctor.  She has Guineas and likes them.  But her approach to her limited animal husbandry is, what she calls, the Darwin Approach.  She orders 50 keets from Murray McMurray and, after six weeks, lets them loose.  When they've all been either picked off or took off, she orders more.  I told her that I thought this approach was not a great omen for her patients.  She thinks I'm a riot.  I think I am serious.  My approach seems to be Marshmallow Woman - or, I Am Here For You, Please Make My Life A Living Hell.

Hoops are going up over the Swiss chard, which is healthy and dense.  Like nothing else in my garden.  I am still on a day-to-day watch with Flora, but we seem to be making a tiny bit of headway.  Kay (the Angel in cute acorn jewelry) came over on Sunday morning and we rassled sheep, goats and a camel.  They all got Ivermectin shots and Apria got wormed.  She is definitely a five-man project.  So everyone is done for now.  I just checked my second favorite apple orchard and they have apples, so an apple-picking trip may be in this weekend's forecast.  Everything on the job front is static, so I am taking the stance that no news is good news.

Where's my napalm?

It's WAR, I tell you!  Between the slugs and chipmunks, I will be lucky if I get one goshdarn strawberry.  I opened the front curtains this morning and, lo and behold, there sat a fat-assed chipmunk chewing away on a strawberry.  Right in front of the window.  And he/she was staring at me in a very cheeky manner. 

The Victims.  If you bigify, you will see where their nasty
little rodent teeth chewed little bits off my strawberries.

I immediately went into the laundry/gardening/tool/storage/everything else room and got my bag of organic blood meal.  Looks like I will have to sprinkle the perimeter of the strawberry bed every other day.  They already got every. single. one. of my red currants.  Apparently, they either don't care for the black currants or haven't fastened their beady little eyes on them yet.  I have put up bird netting and now liberally sprinkle blood meal around them.  Next up is the barbed wire and vicious dogs. 

The chicken wire fencing did keep the rabbits out of my cold frame and herb bed and all the raised beds (except the garlic, which they apparently don't care for), and I almost had myself convinced (deluded is more like it) that it was safe to let the chickens out for a free range in front.  Good thing I read Carolyn Renee's post first.  It might have tipped me over the edge.

Enough of the ugliness of gardening!  Let's move on to something more heartening - like flowering things!  It always seems to happen the same way: everything just pokes along and you fret over it, then one morning you come out and everything is in bloom.  Here's some of what's blooming on the Little Lucky Farm:

Cucumbers are flowering.

Taters are flowering.

Love my geraniums!

Martha Washington Geranium.

Curly parsley and nasturtiums.

I take the geraniums inside every winter and then plant them in a big pot outside my front door.  There's nothing like something pretty at the door to perk you up!  The Martha Washington geranium is new to me this year.  Seems like they are the "hot" item locally.  Of course, having almost zero willpower in nurseries (or anywhere else), I bought one - they are pricey, as are all 'hot' things.  I am pretty disappointed.  It will be my first and last.  A friend has a scented geranium that I love - it's Citronella.  I may pester her for a cutting or two.  I am trying edible window boxes this year - I have to check the drainage, however, as the foliage is looking a bit peaky.    I will do a more 'comprehensive' garden post later this week.  That is, if I don't wake up some morning and find everything's been eaten to the ground.

A living wall? I can dig it!!

How fitting it's from Raintree Nursery...

And so I shall, tomorrow.  Rain or shine (and, unfortunately, it looks like rain).  One of my favorite nurseries had a great sale and I bought three more willow bushes with which to buffer the onslaught of the road traffic, dust, noise, ad nauseum.  I did not make this decision lightly, as it means digging a sizable hole for each bush.  There is a good reason that our area is filled with gravel mines.

They look like nice,healthy plants and I am looking forward to my Wall o' Willows.

I also ordered a new variety of Alpine strawberries to complete my little patch.  Thanks to much hovering and covering/uncovering/covering of my new plants during the endless freeze, it looks like they've all survived. 

Alpines in their raincoat.

I have taken a Mental Health Day tomorrow which is almost as fully planned as Chicken Mama's Day Off (hahahahaha - choke, sob - if my day off was that packed with to-do's, I'd never get out of bed!)  Mine is comparatively mundane - cat rassling (the Boyz have their annual check up), digging, digging, schlepping manure, digging and more digging, planting, and dinner prep. 



Three healthy plants!

 I am planting my basil, parsley, lemon balm (in a pot), and a blueberry bush (another damn hole!), after I finish clearing out the herb bed.  I am planning on taking full advantage of this long weekend even though, oddly enough, it is also filled with social-type things.  Another reason I have to plant all these seedlings is that I need to clear out the laundry room space for...my incubator!  Having had no luck finding keets, I successfully bid for a clutch of eggs on eBay.  It was reasonable enough that I won't throw myself in the river if they don't hatch.  Of course, I am also going to the one final poultry tailgate of the spring on Sunday.  This should guarantee that they are up to their elbows in keets.  I look at it like wearing both suspenders and a belt.  A trait I do NOT find attractive in a man, by the way.  Fickle me.



My coldframe is perking away, which always gives me hope when I pass by.  I've already harvested some arugula, the radishes are growing, and the lettuces are just popping up through the soil.  It's hard to think of it as May - even though the days are getting gloriously longer.  With this grey, cold, weather, it just seems weird.


Arugula and row of radishes.

 So, what kind of mischief are you all digging up this weekend?