He's a daft dog

Poor Jupiter managed to tear his side open and had to go to the vet today for stitches. This is what all the stylish dogs are wearing while injured this season.

I don't do confrontations

People who love to stir up trouble and the attention they derive from it find me disappointing because I won't play by their rules. The more they fuss, the less I care. Unfortunately, in a family I sometimes get caught up in side-effects but the older I get the more immune I am to that. My life is enough of an adventure/challenge for me to deal with.

This must be why I love my garden where the worst dramas are caused by white cabbage butterflies and weeds. I escaped today by picking peas. Don't they look delicious?

Green limits

Are there limits to what you're willing to do to be green? I have to admit there are for me.

I will not:
1. give up toilet paper and tissues
2. keep the heat/air set so that I'm shivering or melting
3. stop eating fruit that can't be grown locally
4. stop using all plastics

I will probably someday:
1. try homemade laundry detergent
2. use all natural cleaning products
3. grow/preserve enough vegetables to keep us year long

I would love to:
1. install an underground heat exchange pump
2. install solar water heating
3. go off grid

I already:
1. recycle and compost
2. line dry all laundry
3. garden organically
4. re-use shower/bath water for flushing
5. make my own bread
6. use rainbarrels
7. buy meat locally

Shrooms!

garden update 2

Everything in the small garden looks great. Lots of work today, but it's a good feeling of accomplishment.

A good day's work - garden update 1

The main garden is doing well.

Looks like a bumper crop of peas (yum).

Everything planted this time is coming up. Hooray!

Empty nest foreshadowed

This is new. When my son was in the hospital I didn't feel this; obviously because I was too frantic with worry. Now that he's spending a week fishing with his grandparents, the worry is at minimal levels and I've discovered my house feels too large for one person. Only one year to go before he heads off to university and I'll be alone ALL the time...very strange. My garden is probably too big for one person too!

It occurs to me that I would have been well suited to be a colonist. Why are we still stuck on one planet?

Ah ha!

I thought yesterday was a great day for gardening...but it wasn't a patch on today! Warm, sunny day but with a nice breeze to keep me cool while working. It's fantastic having two nice days on the weekend.

When I was the youngest of four kids on a farm with a huge garden my job was weeding the onions (makes sense to give the easiest job to the least reliable worker). Even today nothing is quite as relaxing for me as sitting down next the onions and pricking out every single weed. I have some of the oddest cues to flashback to my childhood.

I planted out the cabbages I had started inside to fill in empty spaces. The peas are within a few days of being ready so I started a second batch and another row of carrots. I still have a tray of marigolds to plant and I want to put a bale of straw around the potatoes.

A good gardening day

In fact, a good day for anything outside. There was a heavy dew this morning but it dried off while I was hanging the laundry out to dry. I planted out the squashes I had started inside and mulched them with heavy wet straw ( very heavy ). Also planted were the extra tomatoes I got at the store since mine hadn't put on much growth. I filled the hanging planters with annuals in shades of purple. Also, hoeing. Lots of hoeing...an so much still to do!

Migraine

I hate feeling like this. It started at 2:30 a.m. and the headache part didn't fade until late afternoon. I was left feeling worn and feverish. A wasted day.

Garden update -big

Peas on the left, bell peppers and cabbages, this years onions, where the parsnips didn't come up and is now planted with bush beans.

Here are more peas, climbing beans, cucumbers, rather sad looking tomatoes and zucchini in the back.

An overview of the big plot: to the right background are more salad greens coming up in a shaded spot. The center of the back is waiting for the rest of the squashes and the tiny celeriac sprouts I have inside the house still.

Garden update - small

This is my small plot next to the polytunnel. The potatoes on the right have been earthed up. Then are the beets, some volunteer squash and turnips and rutabagas. These are my pre-weeding pictures!

The salad greens in the polytunnel continue to amaze me. Fabulous and yummy.

Onions and garlic from last year.

Rhubarb which I will let grow without harvesting until next year when it is better established.

The big wet

It was dry. Empty rainbarrels and dusty garden. All I asked for was one day of rain and I got it. Everything is wet, watered and filled; so what's wrong now? It stayed cloudy, windy and cold.

It is a good day for baking though. I've got two loaves of zucchini bread in the oven now and I think I'll throw in a hamburger pie later.

My son wasn't paying close enough attention to what he was eating today and got the shakes from low blood sugar. A learning experience since he hated the way it felt.

All good

Today is full of goodness.

My son had a good meeting with the nurse and dietician and has been taken off the sliding scale of doses. Now he has set amounts to inject each time.

It's a beautiful day so I'm getting lots done outside; my next project is fixing the rain barrel where the downspout came off the gutter behind the garage. I've found a local source for hay to feed the guinea pigs! We are going to pick up some bales to keep in the garage later this afternoon (after they're baled up). This will save a fortune in shipping costs for those 50 pound boxes of hay!

The peonies on the south side of the house are blooming. Lovely.

Update

We had the first meeting on an outpatient basis with the nurse and dietician today. It went fairly well; he's putting some of the lost weight back on. The doctor decided to increase the dosages of insulin on the sliding scale to bring the overall levels down.

All my energy seems to be going to dealing with this right now. I feel like I'm being pulled away from what's important when I have to go to work. The lawn needs mowing; the garden needs attention. Yet, I'm so tired.

The peas are blossoming. The promise of food to come. I do wish the cats wouldn't follow me into the garden. They always seem to lie down on something fragile when I turn around.