A Man and His Dog

Jeff and Fanny playing around the gutter garden. Don't know who's having more fun.

Watermelon

This is one of the 6 melons ...actually one of the smallest about golf ball size...growing in a raised bed on a string trellis. The vine is about 4' wide and over 6' high. We had a lot of flowers but not many bees. You can make out the annual flowers behind the watermelon that we planted to encourage the pollinators. We tried marigolds, begonias and catnip in the different boxes and all the raised beds are doing well. Hopefully they will continue to grow and we will eventually get to eat watermelon!!

Not All Work!

We've been busy working on projects around here. I finally got almost the entire lawn mowed in 1 day and then I hit something... a rock, a root, one of Fanny's sticks...and stopped. It looks good...the part that's not mowed is in the shade and has more ground cover than lawn. Jeff kept busy in the garden. At the first sight of blight he's been clipping and pruning the tomato plants trying to stay ahead of it but.... It would be nice...just once...to have all the tomatoes that form ripen. We have been eating our round zucchini and lemon cucumbers, and Jeff has started to pick peppers. The weather seems to have been against us this year...hot early, then a late frost, the drought and now blight. So far my watermelon are growing...there are 6 on the vines from golf ball to softball size. Hope they make it!

I've kept the knitting needles busy, too, and managed to get several baby sets finished and to the shop, including this Train Set, all size 9mos. This one has 18 buttons and a cap with

a visor. The others were another sheep sweater and a pin-stripe sweater. I even found an autumn set in the

'left over from last year bag' with a pumpkin hat so I did a couple more pumpkin hats...and a couple of baseball hats, and took them all to the shop. I haven't called to see if they have sold coz then I'd have to do more and my fingers hurt!

Jeff took a couple of days to get the utility trailer that came in 2 big boxes from Harbor Freight together, wired with all the lights working and the license plate on right side up before we took it

to be inspected. The only thing wrong was he didn't have the chains crossed...never knew there was a right way to hook up the chains! He doesn't care for the size or location of the lights and is talking about changing them. We stopped at Lowe's on the way home and got the lumber and plywood to finish the trail bed...and dozens of bolts (but not enough)! Once that was finished, Jeff loaded it up with the trash from the garage and we went to the Transfer, Station...another name for the dump...in Utica. Cost $18 for 400+ lbs of trash. Not too bad. We're planning to clean the porch and make another trip next week. We stopped at Jeff's friend Frank's, house and loaded up with wood pallets. It was a whole lot easier putting them in the trailer instead of on top of the car!! Jeff spent the next couple of days taking them apart and pulling nails. He's using the lumber to re-enforce the pvc garden supports.

Fanny's continuing to grow and is into everything! She runs around the house with any thing she finds...an odd sock, washcloth...she steals from the washer (a disadvantage of a front loader)...usually a piece of towel (her security blanket??). She is a constant and persistent chewer...she just chew a button off a shirt hanging on the back of the chair I'm sitting on!!

And she is on-again, off-again about house training. Yesterday and today it's 'off' after 4 days of right 'on'! I don't know how to handle it anymore.

But it hasn't been all work. We've gone fishing a few times. Lock 18 is always a good location and last weekend we tried the Frankfort Marina. It may turn out to be a good place too, but last Friday we ran into an amateur rock festival there. I feel old but... "and they call that music?!?"

Jeff got the rows between the plants tilled in half the garden before the last batch of rains started. Everything is lush and tall but there's not much fruit...we had a lot of flowers but they didn't form any fruit! Managed to get another basket of broccoli for dinner but I didn't eat any. My INR numbers have been all over the board...on both sides out of range...for about a month...since the last time I had fresh broccoli! Finally I'm back in range and I don't want to press my luck.

We're going to get the lumber to finish our new utility trailer today. Got the trailer at Harbor Point Tools and it came in 2 large boxes. Jeff spent a couple of days putting it together. There were directions...'fasten A to B' type...but deciding what was A and B was up to you. Nothing was labeled! It's all together, wired, greased, registered and road tested. Once the deck and sides are on, the car will no longer have to have much tied to the roof!

Half Over

Remember how the end of July meant that summer was half over? It doesn't feel that way when you are retired. The fine, warm...no hot, days and muggy nights seem to go on for ever. If the weatherman says it will rain tomorrow, that's ok. I can wait a day or two to do ...whatever. There doesn't seem to be an urgency to cram as much as I can into the sunny days. In fact, I'm

pretty tired of mosquitoes and mowing the lawn (eventho we had about 3 weeks of burnt brown lawn last week's rain has rallied the grass and it's time to mow again!)

The garden has finally started to produce...thanks to Jeff's faithful work in it! We had broccoli last night and it was the best I've ever eaten...although I may have over cooked it a bit. We had peppers and beans last week. The tomatoes are

getting bigger but none have started to ripen. Last evening Jeff thinned and transplanted carrots and beets. Where he gets the patience to do this I'll never know. I don't care about the beets (Jeff & Mom do) but I am looking forward to the carrots!

The watermelon in one of the corn

er boxes is started to produce fruit. That's a watermelon in the center of this photo (l). I'm hoping to do a photo record of it as it grows. There are several other...smaller...melons growing, too. We picked round zucchini last night too. The small one in front is the size we were suppose to pick it at but the rain boosted

the others past that point before we could. There is

one more on that plant that is even bigger. Hopefully that will be our seeds for next year.

Another good thing about the rain we've been getting is that it gives me plenty of time to knit.

This is a pin-stripe sweater I did for the shop. It's the 2nd time I successfully did the pin-stripes and I hope it lasts in the shop as long as the first one did (3 days.) That's means it will be gone when we stop there after Mom's MD appointment in Cooperstown! (Fingers crossed.) I also

did some cotton sun hats. The colors are bright and they look good. Hope some one will like them, too!

When Fanny and I were out this morning I was noticed how beautiful the Rose of Sharon is this year. My mother's brother-in-law/godfather, Frank Fiala, gave her a slip from the plant in his yard when my parents bought this house. That was 50 years ago! I consider this plant an antique and you can see from the photo why it's called a rose. The bud and the center of the blossom look like a rose. It has never looked better...full of blossoms! Jeff has it on his list of plants to get 'compost tea' and it really seems to like the extra attention.

I'm willing to share a root cutting from this plant if any of my Fiala cousins are interested.

Rain at last!

We finally got some of the rain we need...the TV weather man said we got about 2" in the last 24 hours but were still 4" behind. Jeff's been tilling between the rows and hoeing around the plants so we had no run off at all...all the rain was absorbed into the garden. We had a little damage...a couple of plants had been knocked down but Jeff put in more support poles around them this afternoon and everything looks good now.

Today was spent in the ER at St Luke's Hospital in Utica. Jeff got a phone call this morning that his sister was there after an accident. After checking up on Sherry in the ER, we retrieved her car from the scene and took it to her house. We let her dog Max out while Jeff filled the reservoir for her gutter garden and when we were ready to go back to the ER I scooped up Max and put him in his cage before he even knew what was happening. Sherry had warned me that it would not be an easy task but poor Max never knew what was happening until the cage door shut. Sherry wasn't hurt badly but will be sore for a few days. One of today's highlights was watching 3 huge Air Force planes drop out of the clouds on their way to land at Griffiss. It was so unusual...suddenly there they were, one by one lining up for their final approaches. Awesome. Wish my camera had been handy.

I did manage to get another sweater started while we were cooling our heels in the ER...that's why I never go out w/o a project OTN in my bag.

HOW THE GARDEN LOOKS

These are purple peppers... supposedly very hot! The stems are purple, the underside of the leaves...and the leaf veins and of course, the peppers are all purple. (Those little purple things are the peppers!) The entire plant is

about 12" high and the peppers are the size of your finger nail. There are 6 of these plants in different parts of the garden. I think they have a special name, but to me they are just the 'purple peppers'. Jeff ordered a lot of heirloom seeds by color this year, trying to make the garden look different and inviting to pollinators...but still no bees.

This is a photo of the garden taken through my bedroom window. This year, all our supports are PCV pipe held together with different plumbing joints (elbow's, 45's. T's, 4-ways) and hammered into the ground. (The guys in the plumbing department at Lowe's ask what we're building now every time we go in!) Nothing is glued together. Some of these pipes started out as the frame to the greenhouse we had over the gutter garden and the plastic covering the peas this spring and will be used this fall to extend the season for the peppers and tomatoes. The miniature apple tree(about 10' high) in the middle of the photo...with the hummingbird feeder in it...doesn't have any apples again this year. Last year we got 2 beautiful, perfect apples but the late frost got the blossoms this year. Our neighbor's trees are bare, too.

We're using garden net on most of the trellis's this year and the beans and squash are doing quite well. Jeff saw a video online about using slings with the trellis's and we talked about putting a sling of pantyhose on the fruit as it gets big to take pressure off the stem so I sacrificed what was left of my navy blue pantyhose since I won't be needing them any longer. This butternut squash, one of several and the largest on that trellis,

is about 8" long. Without the sling, the squash hung down and covered the blossom you can see below it. Jeff planted several kinds of melons and squash...including watermelon...and I think using the slings will let them get bigger, and maybe riper, on the vine. It will keep the watermelon off the ground, too.

The hot, dry weather has been a real obstacle this year. We're on a well but Jeff has still been watering at least every other day. He tills between the rows and hoes around the plants...in fact, that's the plan for today. The soil is very fine with all the leaves and compost he's added and holds moisture very well but Jeff's not quite satisfied with the results. We've been harvesting seeds as some of the spring vegetables bolted. I collected broccoli flowers the other night and got too close to the mustard plants, being rewarded with a nice raised rash on my arm...that itches and burns like the dickens...but it got me relieved of my collecting duties. However, I can still knit!! I've got another size 2 pinstripe sweater about half finished and as soon as that's done I want to do a girl's sweater in Red Heart's new With Love in 'bluebell' that I'll use the ladybug buttons I got at JoAnn's on (Some of our old friends from camp drove down for lunch last week and Paula told me that's where I'd find them.) Photos to follow for both those sweaters. Family and friends have been stopping over to see the garden after hearing us talk about it and we're always willing to show them around. I'd say the gate's always open but we don't have a gate but you get the idea, huh?

p.s. got to say something about retirement: It's heaven! Too bad it's wasted on the elderly. There still aren't enough hours in a day to do all that I want to do but I'm doing so much more than just going to work and coming home!