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Well, that previous post about facebook wasn't meant to be public.
The weekend has passed ... oddly. I feel pretty out of joint with time. Part of it, i am sure is the long daylight. The news.
I feel very out of joint.
I realize i haven't gone through action ticklers since mid April.
--== ∞ ==--
Happy things:
*SIBS* Zoom visit with my sister and brother. At this time of year, Singapore is 12 hours ahead of North Carolina. We can meet when it is Saturday night for my sister and i and Sunday morning, before most of my brother's family wakes, for my brother. We had technical challenges but a good visit. I've bought a year's subscription to Zoom as a way to ensure we can have long meetings. And then we ended up using facetime. >_<
*MINT* I adventured with mint preservation today. Spearmint & peppermint in vodka to extract. Spearmint in a salt brine to ferment. Peppermint "massaged" with salt and just a little water for a "dry" ferment. (I've added brine from the spearmint just to make sure everything is oxygen free.) I've no idea what fermented mint will be like. I dehydrated spearmint, peppermint, and lemon balm for an hour -- that might have been too long, but the tea i made from the dried spearmint seems just fine. I was very careful to take the leading tips for the dehydrator, on the theory that -- like with tea -- that was the most intense part of the plant. The larger leaves on the rest of the stems went into the ferment and alcohol. Maybe next time i will make simple syrup.
Some mint went in with yogurt and i took my crop of peas,* cooked by pouring boiling water over them, and spooned them into a divot in the mint yogurt. I don't think i made the mint yogurt right. Probably missing the cucumber. And salt.
* Where "crop" is maybe a quarter cup after being shelled? I would need to plant much much more to get enough to have a real meal for two, i swear. Not sure why the Austrian peas did so well and the English peas, not so much.
--== ∞ ==--
*CATS* Worry about Luigi, one of our older cats, who doesn't do a good job grooming, who has a fine soft undercoat that mats, who screams when i brush his haunches and snaps at us. Every now and then i see tufts of loose hair and sometimes i can just pull them free without him noticing, but generally i get a yelp-y complaint. I wish i knew what discomfort he was feeling. Last night we got some of his mats around his neck where the collar hides them from my fingers. I should note we usually get the mats before they are bad, but we occasionally cut some loose. He doesn't look unkempt, but my fingers easily feel the lumps of more-fur-than-fits.
*HMPH* I observed cardinals swooping to and from the blackberry bushes. And of course the two just black but not quite ripe berries were gone. This leads me to believe i had seen an almost black berry that was liberated. I am hoping a whole bunch of berries comes ripe all at once and i can get some. Also, Carrie and Marlowe *NOW* that i need you to be chasing birds....? Meanwhile the new canes are rising up like monsters from the root crowns. Two of the four bushes are double-crop bearing bushes (Prime-Ark Traveler), and clearly are later than the other bushes for the first crop as their berries are big glistening green jewels. The Arapaho bushes are ruby red, leading me to wonder how attractive a photo of a male cardinal would be with them. Clash or compliment?
Meanwhile the blueberries are covered in fruit, although the plants don't evince the thriving that the blackberries do. I planted borage between them, and the blue star blossoms are blooming, but the plants are rather floppy and unattractive.
We've dried out from the days and days of rain. I watered the garden last night. So far the happiest summer plants are the winter squash i planted in the driveway island and covered with arches of wire fencing. They're now racing out from their protected cage. Deer prune the tender ends, but i think that's just going to force the vines to branch. I'm hopeful the location will be better suited to keep the powdery mildew at bay. I've berries on the ground cherries, sweet tomatillo-like fruits. The bread seed poppies are blooming. It seems late, but a look at the notes indicates it's not dramatically so. Okra and corn are still getting settled in their planted spots.
I'd planted the island caged area with pink buckwheat from Baker rare seeds. The deer love it, but under the wire i've seen the lovely pink flowers. I'd love to grow more in the future, but i'm not sure where i have for buckwheat that isn't deer zone, and the pink is just a little pricey for feeding the deer. The regular buckwheat is blooming elsewhere on smaller plants, a ground cover in my fight with the stilt grass.
There was a plant on the sunny berm that i couldn't identify but it didn't look like my list of learned weeds so i left it: and it's the bright orange butterfly weed. It's a perfect color for the bright berm. So far i've only seen it giving delight to bees, but time will tell. In the rain garden, the plants for the cardinal flower and great blue lobellia look fantastic. I hope for excellent flowering.
I haven't really thought well through planting out some of the remaining flowers and plants started from seed. Part of my sense of being out of sorts is knowing i need to do that but not mentally having the plan for it.
The weekend has passed ... oddly. I feel pretty out of joint with time. Part of it, i am sure is the long daylight. The news.
I feel very out of joint.
I realize i haven't gone through action ticklers since mid April.
--== ∞ ==--
Happy things:
*SIBS* Zoom visit with my sister and brother. At this time of year, Singapore is 12 hours ahead of North Carolina. We can meet when it is Saturday night for my sister and i and Sunday morning, before most of my brother's family wakes, for my brother. We had technical challenges but a good visit. I've bought a year's subscription to Zoom as a way to ensure we can have long meetings. And then we ended up using facetime. >_<
*MINT* I adventured with mint preservation today. Spearmint & peppermint in vodka to extract. Spearmint in a salt brine to ferment. Peppermint "massaged" with salt and just a little water for a "dry" ferment. (I've added brine from the spearmint just to make sure everything is oxygen free.) I've no idea what fermented mint will be like. I dehydrated spearmint, peppermint, and lemon balm for an hour -- that might have been too long, but the tea i made from the dried spearmint seems just fine. I was very careful to take the leading tips for the dehydrator, on the theory that -- like with tea -- that was the most intense part of the plant. The larger leaves on the rest of the stems went into the ferment and alcohol. Maybe next time i will make simple syrup.
Some mint went in with yogurt and i took my crop of peas,* cooked by pouring boiling water over them, and spooned them into a divot in the mint yogurt. I don't think i made the mint yogurt right. Probably missing the cucumber. And salt.
* Where "crop" is maybe a quarter cup after being shelled? I would need to plant much much more to get enough to have a real meal for two, i swear. Not sure why the Austrian peas did so well and the English peas, not so much.
--== ∞ ==--
*CATS* Worry about Luigi, one of our older cats, who doesn't do a good job grooming, who has a fine soft undercoat that mats, who screams when i brush his haunches and snaps at us. Every now and then i see tufts of loose hair and sometimes i can just pull them free without him noticing, but generally i get a yelp-y complaint. I wish i knew what discomfort he was feeling. Last night we got some of his mats around his neck where the collar hides them from my fingers. I should note we usually get the mats before they are bad, but we occasionally cut some loose. He doesn't look unkempt, but my fingers easily feel the lumps of more-fur-than-fits.
*HMPH* I observed cardinals swooping to and from the blackberry bushes. And of course the two just black but not quite ripe berries were gone. This leads me to believe i had seen an almost black berry that was liberated. I am hoping a whole bunch of berries comes ripe all at once and i can get some. Also, Carrie and Marlowe *NOW* that i need you to be chasing birds....? Meanwhile the new canes are rising up like monsters from the root crowns. Two of the four bushes are double-crop bearing bushes (Prime-Ark Traveler), and clearly are later than the other bushes for the first crop as their berries are big glistening green jewels. The Arapaho bushes are ruby red, leading me to wonder how attractive a photo of a male cardinal would be with them. Clash or compliment?
Meanwhile the blueberries are covered in fruit, although the plants don't evince the thriving that the blackberries do. I planted borage between them, and the blue star blossoms are blooming, but the plants are rather floppy and unattractive.
We've dried out from the days and days of rain. I watered the garden last night. So far the happiest summer plants are the winter squash i planted in the driveway island and covered with arches of wire fencing. They're now racing out from their protected cage. Deer prune the tender ends, but i think that's just going to force the vines to branch. I'm hopeful the location will be better suited to keep the powdery mildew at bay. I've berries on the ground cherries, sweet tomatillo-like fruits. The bread seed poppies are blooming. It seems late, but a look at the notes indicates it's not dramatically so. Okra and corn are still getting settled in their planted spots.
I'd planted the island caged area with pink buckwheat from Baker rare seeds. The deer love it, but under the wire i've seen the lovely pink flowers. I'd love to grow more in the future, but i'm not sure where i have for buckwheat that isn't deer zone, and the pink is just a little pricey for feeding the deer. The regular buckwheat is blooming elsewhere on smaller plants, a ground cover in my fight with the stilt grass.
There was a plant on the sunny berm that i couldn't identify but it didn't look like my list of learned weeds so i left it: and it's the bright orange butterfly weed. It's a perfect color for the bright berm. So far i've only seen it giving delight to bees, but time will tell. In the rain garden, the plants for the cardinal flower and great blue lobellia look fantastic. I hope for excellent flowering.
I haven't really thought well through planting out some of the remaining flowers and plants started from seed. Part of my sense of being out of sorts is knowing i need to do that but not mentally having the plan for it.