elainegrey

Yesterday's research dive was into how the heart works specifically - i knew generally,  - so i could understand Dad's echo report that has found the mitral valve failing (prolapsed) and blood being back washed into the lung.  And i've read up on the surgeries and what could happen if he doesn't opt for treatment. The recovery period is daunting. It seems he'll need people to stay with him, where people are me and my sister perhaps? Although i can hardly care for myself....

I rush ahead though. His next study is on the 29th, his consult (i will join him that day) is on 6 August.

I am off work again, but this time with no health emergency, just a long break over the fourth of July holiday. Rest. And i should go use the weed burner since we had a quarter inch of rain last night. And the mowing that i need to do. Thank heavens there's plenty i can do with the wheeled string trimmer, for which wet grass is not a challenge. I did some mowing last night with the grass mower. Too much of the grassy zones in the orchard have gone over to stilt grass. If i could be confident of rain, i'd scalp everything and hope the fescues would get ahead.

Meanwhile, blueberries are coming in fast; mulberries are ripening, too. Might get enough mulberries to make a dehydrator tray worth while in the next few days. And figs are ripening, to my startlement. The persimmon has dropped lots of fruit, self thinning, still looking loaded. The single remaining Aunt Rachel's apple has fallen from the tree, and i found it with a worm sticking out and wriggling. Fie. One Grimes Golden apple remains: this is mainly due to the late frost, but generally i do not have a good site for apples.

I found one of the Tahitian squash vines had actually set a fruit, as big as a usual mature summer yellow squash already. I picked it to eat now, expecting i will see more fruit to allow to grow to winter keeping sizes. The yellow butter cube squash have had male flowers like mad, but no fruit. The plants have stayed tiny.

The Early Girl tomato has some nice set green fruit; the Better Boy has started as well. A forest of Matt's wild tomato volunteers have come up in the past weeks and i intend to move them to a place with high deer exposure in the hopes that they'll accept some pruning.

One of my new native shrubs, a St John's Wort "Sunburst", was pruned back severely by deer. I think it will be for the best, but i am miffed as it seems they never browse the many wild St John's worts.

A doe has been visible in the yard periodically - somehow i manage to dissociate the sight of the doe from the herbivory in my mind -- and cotton tails have been common disappearing into high growth. Haven't seen the hawk.  Humming birds are visiting the glads and hummingbird mint, clouds of tiger swallowtails on the Joe Pye weed.

I missed seeing my nephew D, niece S, and sister in law M last week as their visit coincided with Christine in the hospital. I had thought S & M  would be here this weekend, but no. They will be with nephew Z in Tampa.  D is in ROTC training and i will get to see him on his return with my brother.

I worry about my siblings' job/financial situations. If i lost my job today, i think Christine and i could limp by with retirement savings. (I don't know how easily i could transfer my experience into something generally employable.) But my siblings are looking for work, more or less, and i don't get the sense it's an easy time to look.

Due to "popular" demand, here's some iris photos, and links to more:

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I'm not sure what to call this cross quarter "day", this time between solstice and equinox when the change of daylight will start accelerating day to day. It's important for me and my experience, but neither Brigid or Candlemas or Imbolc as names speak to me. To observe i pruned the orchard, and i will try to make it an annual observation. I got most of it done this morning.

I feel pretty good about the blueberries. Here's hoping for fewer hard freezes after warming this year. I am delighted that i seem to have started a fourth berry bush from a cutting, just by shoving it in the soil.

The apple trees... i dunno what i am doing. I read, i watch, and then i look at my trees and go -- but what about all this?  (Hands wave at all the whips shooting up into the sky.) I had not completed the pruning of one tree a couple years ago, and then last year i didn't get pruning done (maybe? can't recall). It had a nice tall standard trunk which is NOT the open vase goal. So, i lopped it. I hope the tree forgives me. It's the one that actually gave us an apple last year.

The persimmon also had whips leading off into the sky: they're all lopped away now.

I don't lay a finger on the paw-paws. They look lovely.  I do hope to have flowers on more than one tree this year. The grafted plant has bloomed a couple years in a row, and it's sent up shoot from its roots about a foot away from the trunk. I should probably cut it back, since it will be random genetics. Maybe i'll dig it out some time and start trees outside of the fence. The three seedlings from pawpaws from a local breeder are all looking promising for pollen this year. Similarly, the mulberries are on their own, looking quite nicely shaped. Not that i could do anything --  one is a good sized tree. I'd planted another very close as a pollinator: i'm not sure that was necessary now, but so it goes.

I think this will be the last year i do any pruning to the chestnuts. Both trees wanted to be vases, but in this case i wanted standards. So i've been trying to convince them to have a nice straight trunk: they finally look like trees and not flailing things. I took off some very low branches with the pruning saw, which were the last of the competing trunks. I wonder if our wood turner friend will want these three inch diameter limb sections.

And the fig. I realized if i took off one of the trunks that juts into the yard, i'll be able to put the ladder in the middle of the canopy and do a better harvesting job. I think i want to take off some of the higher whorls of branches -- where i had truncated a growing leader in a previous year and it sprouted out many branches. The jutting trunk, though, makes a big difference.

I also nipped off the very tip of the wild holly growing outside our bedroom window. It's got a lovely shape, but the trees can grow to be 60' tall: don't want that right there. I'll see if i can train it into something manageable. I've a wild spice bush near it that is lovely -- just keep it cut back from the path.  There's two hickory trunks that are now taller than i am. I'm watching them to cut back when they are the diameter of a good walking stick. There's a sassafras i planted near those, which also could become a large tree, except i suspect the shade of the mature tulip poplar will hold it back.

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Christine has apparent gastroenteritis with her fever at 100°F last we checked.

I have now worked in the yard! Sunday afternoon and  -- i took time off -- today. The eastern part of the yard, including the mossy glade is raked, letting the moss and the Dichanthelium species native grass get plenty of light and air as we go through this coming week  and unusually warm weather. I've lots of leaves piled in an area that became too much stilt grass and i intend to nuke from orbit -- i mean flame weed-- when the stilt grass begins sprouting. I'll eventually move these leaves back to where we had many trees cut down. Thickening the mulch will be useful as i suspect stilt grass seeds got spread around whit the work.

Today i cut down autumn olive and some sapling sweet gums. I was thinking we'd have our tree guy come cut down three more large-ish sweet gums, but i think we can wait a few years: i think they are short enough that the pines and tulip poplars will be more of a shade issue -- and those stay,

While i was out, i selected a top of a sweet gum to bring inside and decorate with LED fairy lights. Thanks for the encouragement, tamena https://tamena.dreamwidth.org/! It's mesmerizing to watch the lights change colors in waves . Without knowing, i seem to have gotten the right number of lights per branch to have a single color segment on each branch. I'd not been precise, but i decided the shorter branches should have denser lights, which ended up with each branch having a similar number of bulbs. I don't know how i realized that would look  more balanced, but it does.

One  colleague in Ohio was exposed to COVID this weekend, another colleague in Sheffield England has tested positive. It's his third case?   I suppose Christine could have COVID, too, so we'll probably test her tomorrow.

Retreat planning is also taking mental cycles.

I'd hoped that work would settle with Friday's deadline, but the  new director is now all about taking the plan and pulling it apart and reassembling a couple different ways. Fiddlesticks.

Friday: https://17sounds.substack.com/p/readiness-is-all Christine has a video here of the first tree coming down, a crepe myrtle that we asked to have removed while the tree guys were here to get the other trees that were blocking the solar panels to some extent. We took out around twenty sweet gums, plus two maples, two oaks, and the black gum (tupelo). One oak and large sweetgum were growing tightly around a persimmon, and were also not really in the solar panels' way. We left the black cherries (Prunus serotina) that are at fairly mature heights. One resource says they get to 80 ft: i estimate the pines must be 90 ft, so these could be 80, but probably 70 ft. The crowns aren't very wide (because of competition with the sweet gums) and they always seem like wispy trees. They loose their leaves quickly in September and don't seem to shade much in the spring. And they are such good wildlife trees. Anyhow, they stay. I weeded in the garden plot and was disappointed by all the stilt grass -- so many seeds falling. Then i did a good bit of raking in the back yard. I was definitely exerting myself, my face red, the tree guys all said i was working as hard as they. (No.)

After that wrapped up, I had a call with B--, we always let it go too long before getting togehter again, and she's now worried about me because i was coughing from the asthma again and was flushed.

Saturday: i was so tired, and i spent so much time looking at the stock at Mellow Marsh Farms. I've placed an order for three sourwoods in 1 gal pots (slow growing to 20-30 ft with vibrant fall color), a serviceberry in a 5 gal pot (A canadensis, grown height 15-25 ft, flowers! fruit!), two ninebarks (fast growing to 5-8 ft, with showy white flowers, berries, and hopefully bright autumn color), and coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus, 2-4' tall with showy berries and hopefully showy autumn color). They didn't have fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus, also slow growing to 30' apparently) but i will get that else where. After the showy white flowers, it has has olive like fruit that can be cured like olives. Anyhow, lots of bird food to replace the horrible Elaeagnus umbellata (Autumn olive) that grows thickly and shades everything out. Everything was "deer resistant -- i'll still need to fence because the deer have eaten so many "deer resistant" things. Like the cactus, for crying out loud.

Later, i went into town to a "pop-up park" where there was some little festival, to see my sister, her daughter, and meet the director of the theater she's starting as a nonprofit for her daughter after the very dramatic meltdown of the community theater this year .. in January? Home via the co-op then to my sister's with Christine for an awesome game of scrabble. For years we've been talking about getting together with my sister and her husband more frequently; his job has changed dramatically recently and now we have a chance.

Sunday i was going through email and stuff, including getting the next meeting of the Quaker planning committee organized. I was also pouting: beautiful day, AGAIN, and i was sitting inside all day, AGAIN. Christine got us organized to walk Carrie and then return downtown to listen to my niece sing at the tree lighting. I am so appreciative of that: it's not like i was not doing anything, but i wasn't doing what i had in mind. There was enough time when Christine changed between dog walk and downtown that i got some leaf raking done.

It's now past 11 and i feel like i've done nothing yet. But i have journaled! And we have reservations to take Dad to a Thanksgiving lunch. He called proposing we get together, which was another of these thoughtful things, but it was sort of inviting himself over and the house is not really clean or orderly. I don't think we want the pressure quite yet. Christine's been thinking about it -- a lovely gift from her to me, to propose something she's comfortable with -- so we now have settled plans! Miracle! Outstanding is when my sister wants us to come over for deserts, but that's probably flexible.

And i have done other things, but i haven't looked at my todo list since Thursday morning, so that's next.

I am wondering if i have a cold again on top of the cough. Curses.



From Sunday Night at the town tree lighting

Yesterday i mowed almost everything. Well. There were some spots in the usually mowed area i missed in order to make sure the highest grass was cut before the rain that did not come. There are some paths in the meadow, and under the black walnut, around the west side of the fence (all stilt grass), and some mole mountainous terrain in the mossy glade that i did not get to. Oh and a patch by the garage. Nor did i mow the best grass ever which has gone to seed (but is only about a foot tall and only looks messy because of all the persimmon trees sprouting in amongst the grass). But that still left enough to do. It all looks great: it's rare to mow everything all at once -- partly because the different mown areas have different growth patterns -- and i prioritized visual impact and health of the ground cover.

Please come rain, thanks! Unfortunately, i think everything is localized thunderstorms and it looks like we are in a dry gap between cells. Fie. I will need to water the okra, squash, and sweetpotato.

Blackberries continue to produce, but with some worrisome disease wilting primocanes. A quick poke at the internet doesn't point to immediately obvious issues, with one confusing reference to Pseudomonas and Arapaho which, when searched with "blackberry," brings up scientific reports regarding "Application of a plant growth promoting rhizobacterium (PGPR), Pseudomonas fluorescens N21.4, to roots of blackberries (Rubus sp.)."

I have mixed feelings about removing wild berries to protect my garden selections, which was one bit of advice about reducing disease vectors.

Work in California went better than expected, in fact, utterly sane result. Still needs care and feeding.

Red eye home was OK. Dad shared how he took a red eye once a month for some years. I know Dad lived on stress and adrenaline to be a good provider, and that's how he coped with sleep deprivation. The world is such a different place when you are rested and centered.

Christine got a massive carrot cake and we had my dad (who shares the same birthday), my sister, and her kids over for a little birthday observation.

In plant changes:

Elsewhere redbuds are blooming, but ours aren't yet.

Two trout lilies (Erythronium) have sprouted in the ferns in the glade, but the one in the bed beside the house continues to sleep. Fingers crossed it's still viable. No more plants! As i have plenty still to tend to before surgery. But the two Etsy vendors in Tennessee who sell pla nts at such a bargain have Erythronium americanum bulbs.

I would love to set out yellow Erythronium americanum (trout lily) and blue Mertensia virginica (Virginia bluebell) en mass under some of the older hardwoods at the back of the property and be able to walk a path to find a blooming carpet in the spring.

But also, stilt grass has sprouted where the soil is bare and it warmed up during this past warm spell. We're to have cooler nights. Not sure cool enough to kill it though.