Day 192 - of rain and dogs

Today I procured a free-range chicken and some extra leg quarters.  If only I don't destroy them!

Rain, blessed rain today.  I got home to two soggy dogs and one nice, dry one.  Guess who has the sense to go into a dog house?

It's too wet to go into the garden, but I do have this picture from a few days ago.

Why is a tomato plant growing right in the middle of my rows of Swiss chard?

Day 191 - Dogs who diet

(Accidental) first tomato today.  I was pulling up the branch to see how ripe it was and it fell off.  Ideally, it would have been picked tomorrow or even Saturday.

Izzy is the ideal dieting companion.  She only eats when the house is quiet and I'm outside, and if anything interrupts her while she's eating she'll stop and seldom start back up.  It's as though any interruption lets the "full" signal get to her brain.  Like now--she's laying outside her cage with her face right beside the food bowl and not even thinking of eating.

Work is horrid.  Behind schedule and no hope of making up the time, and then this afternoon a customer had a production stop emergency and it's still not fixed.  I assume he's gotten the things moved to a different port...if not, I'll likely be called at midnight.


See how beauteous!  Why aren't these things prized as potted plants?

I am definitely giving it a bigger pot this summer.

Day 190 - where did the wet spot on the bedroom carpet come from?

See the sweet little baby beans?

Just like kittens, they turn into big, hairy things that take over your life.  I have one paltry bed, 25 feet long, planted with two rows of dainty little Italian-style beans.  Three days ago I took this picture and now I have beans out the whazoodle.

The worst of it is, you can't ignore 'em.  Other legumes like black-eyed peas will get up to their optimal size and stop growing.  They turn yellow and then gray, and hang there until you pick them.

Not these beans.  They're like tapeworms--they won't stop growing.  If I don't pick them small, I end up with big, stringy pods that only a native American could relish.




Re the wet spot on the carpet--when I got home late, the dogs were in the house and the humans were gone to church.  So I guess it's my fault--shouldn't have gotten home so late.

Day 189 - curiosity or just plain nosyness?

Yum!  Swedish meatballs made with grass-fed beef!  It's nothing like the junk I used to cook, in taste or nutritional value--it's yum!

I'm told you can taste the difference between free-range chicken and caged chicken, but last time I bought one I didn't notice it.  Probably the sauce was overpowering--I'll try again on Sunday.  I got the menu worked out while I was walking dogs:  baked chicken with herbs; Swiss chard from the garden; green beans from the garden; roasted corn.

If the garden survives--see the adorable little caterpillar.





See the adorable little caterpillar eat.  See the adorable little caterpillar eat the garden.  Bad caterpillar.  Bad.

Poor Izzy.  Her learned response to big, scary humans is to run away, but her curiosity gets the better of her.  Today when I was in the bedroom, putting on the running shoes, she came to see where I was.  When I looked up and spoke to her she whirled and vanished...and returned two seconds later.

The second time she came up and sniffed me and let me rub her behind the ears.

Dau 188 - Why ain't she eating her supper?

What are all those dratted little flitty bugs in the garden?  Are they the result of the unnaturally hot, dry weather we've had?  Are they some sort of blood-sucking leafhoppers feeding off the sickly, stunted lettuce?

Cat and Cilantro

 Maybe I can hire the cat to walk the garden all day, keeping the bugs stirred up.


Is it just my imagination that most of the seeds I ordered this year are not working out?  Is it because I changed seed companies or just a coincidence?  The beets are doing fine, but I think I bought the seeds at Lowes.  The Swiss Chard, lettuce, purple hulll peas and onions--all of which I ordered--are doing poorly.  The potatoes are okay but I remember complaining that there weren't enough eyes to plant the whole row.

So next year I'm switching back to Gurney's.  The same logic that created most Old Farmer's Planting Rules is rampant and alive in my brain.

Chance of rain tonight.

Day 187 - not much of a dog day but she did get a bone

 Prepare to be impressed.  Starting with a garden out of control--

 Three hours of grueling labor later, yahoo!

I admit it's a little hard to see from a picture but take my word, it's light-years different.  The tomatoes are tied back into their cages; the weeds between the rows are pushed back under their paltry pieces of cardboard; the onions (the few that survived) can breath again; the potatoes are mounded.

I ran out of old cardboard--I could have used another 75' of it.  I'll see what I can scrounge next weekend.


Then, after the usual housecleaning, laundry, and excavating the kitchen, I made a masterpiece. Baked scallops, salmon patties with cheese and fancy stuff, and broccoli with cashews.  Thus!

If only I hadn't made such a mess creating it.

Day 186 weeds grow. So do tomatoes but not so fast.

Now I'm finally facing up to the consequences of a spring weekend spent in Arkansas.

Weeds.

Not to mention dirt-dry soil.  The peppers are wilting; the lettuce is stunted; even the Swiss Chard looks stressed.  I haven't looked closely at the tomatoes yet because they're hard to see--the weeds between the rows are so tall they're starting to shade the plants.  But what I can see, is they need to be tied up to the cages before they sprawl all over the ground and get stuck that way.

I'll try to post a before/after picture tomorrow.

On the Dog front, there are many problems.  (And the cat front--he badly needs combing.  When he grooms himself, he swallows so much hair that I worry about the state of his esophagus.)

The main problem is Small Dog.  He badly needs clipping, especially around his eyes.  And that's the most impossible part to clip.  And I think I missed a heartworming and flea dropping last weekend...yes...I'm sure I did.  No wonder he scratches so much!

Better get to it.