The days are long and the years are short

It's raining, it's pouring. It's been a long time since we have had a long steady rain like this. The pollen is being forced down out of the air and many of the flowers are falling off the bushes. Everything bloomed pretty early this year: the azaleas, and the cherry trees.

All the surviving trees have leaved out. The county planted a large number of trees in the medians of the big roads nearby. Survival rates are correlated with the nearby trees, so you will find one median with all surviving trees and a nearby median with all dead trees (you will not find as often a mixture of living and dead trees in the same median). I suspect that the county will remove the dead trees sometime this year. They may not remove the branches of the ones that are alive low down and dead higher up. It is pretty difficult to work on those trees, just because the roads surrounding them are so busy.

I have planted a mixture of a type of beans, peas and corn. The peas came up first, then the corn is starting to come up fairly well now, and I can just see the beginnings of the beans. I took the easy way out, I spread the seeds and then added more soil on top, instead of digging them in. I also let them be planted fairly close together, so I may (or may not) thin them to get closer to the ideal spacing. I am planning to grow some morning glories around the corn, once it is well established (and I have done any thinning I wish to do).

I haven't mowed my yard yet this year (and it will probably be harder now that the grass is taller). I have weeded out quite a few things. I tend to recognize one type of weed, pull it anywhere I see it, and then move on to another type of weed. One of the weeds that I haven't messed with yet is a very spiky weed. Another one is the poison ivy.

My compost bin/heap is full of decomposable bags of kitchen refuse and weeds. I am completely out of leaves from last year. I've turned the top layers a few times, but I have not dug deep or moved the bin. I can definitely see that the bags from the earliest times are composting fine. I got the bags as a Christmas gift, so they are only 4.5 months old. It is still not enough material for hot composting; in a small house like ours, there will never be enough material for hot composting. I do worry that the weeds will go to seed, even though I try to get them in there early enough that there aren't seeds yet. The heap is very near a pile of sticks from a branch that we had to take down.

We still need to get those sticks out front for yard waste pickup. We also have a tree to take down in the front of the house. It's been leaning at a angle since Snowmegeddon. We need to finish the branch in the back; we were working under a time constraint to get it down before Hurricane Irene came through.

Our fence could use repair or replacement. One of the gates will not close. I don't really know how to fix that myself. The ground has come up under it. On the side of our back yard, we have the ground sloping rapidly away into the fence. It would be nice to add more soil there and flatten it out and use the fence for terracing.

Lovely game of baseball. Emily was out of town with her uncle, so mrmoosie and I got to go on our own to meet up with starstraf and her sweetie.

Some animal is knocking over my corn!!! Anything that got high enough has now been killed. GGRRRR.

Transplanted my tomatoes on Monday (only the most grown of them). I lay them down for maximum root growth. Today, they were looking dehydrated, so I watered vigorously.

 I'd been letting this one plant grow, thinking it was a surviving seed from last year. I'm pretty unsure about that now, so I am pulling it up.

I am done with writing questions for GRE (I hope). I've revised several and that should be that.

Not much work scheduled for the summer so far. That's going to be just fine.

This weekend, we (Mrmoosie, Emily and I) put in a few hours of work clearing leaves from the community pool. I also took a trash bag around for trash between the two fences. Emily was helpful for an hour and whiny for an hour. My legs hurt after all that. It's clear that I've been getting out of shape steadily. There will be another work day next week, but I will be busy.

I still have two more math problems (to edit) and one passage to write for Princeton Review. The timelines are pretty short, given the other constraints in my life. One of the biggest constraints this past week has been Emily being home from school. Another constraint has been actual tutoring and/or teaching. I am hoping not to get any more assignments for writing questions after those are finished.

The lettuces in my garden are growing faster than the ones in the pot. They are ready to harvest a few leaves from. I put some sticks for peas to climb up on in places where I have peas doing well. Only one set has fallen down so far, but I am not optimistic for most of them.

My peppers (indoor) have *finally* sprouted. They are still quite tiny, compared to the tomatoes started at the same time.

I started with a full new round of Jiffy Pots of pepper seeds (on 3/20/11). I started two more tomato seeds at the same time.

The large pot has three growing snow-peas. No lettuces, so far.

I put more snow-pea seeds in the large pot and more lettuces. I also put some in the part of the garden closest to the house, as well as some carrot seeds.

I dug in a few places to see if I could see worms. Nope, not yet.

I planted some snow peas in the garden today (about 6) and some black-seeded Simpson lettuce (about 20 seeds). Two of the carrots in the indoor pot have just come up.  The tomatoes in the Jiffy pots are looking good, but the pepper seeds in the other Jiffy pots haven't germinated.

"Each winter, on average, your risk of frost is from October 21 through April 16.

Almost certainly, however, you will receive frost from November 8 through March 26.

You are almost guaranteed that you will not get frost from May 7 through October 3.

Your frost-free growing season is around 188 days."


That's for my zip code.

I planted 10 Jiffy Pots of tomatoes and 10 Jiffy Pots of sweet peppers today. If they survive, I should be transplanting them outdoors in 8 weeks (April 22, which is in Spring Break week).

My brother took my child with his two out for a weekend+ at the beach. It's the week before school.

mrmoosie and I saw the cold-war-type thriller, SALT, with Angelina Jolie. Man, she makes an attractive man.

Although the prediction is for thunder today and rain tomorrow, I am seeing lots of sunshine here. I was screening my compost today and made a lovely dark pile of dirt. I still see small eggshell bits in there. But my compost tests at about 8 on the pH scale, so I am sure that some Ca++ is becoming available to my plants.

starstraf 's gave mrmoosie many pairs of pants, jeans and shorts on Saturday. I am checking the pockets, washing, and folding them.

I am finding it hard to stay in the house. I mowed the front yard already today. Now I am tempted to cut my neighbor's wisteria, which is poking over the back fence.