What is this water falling from the skies?

 RAIN!!!  Glorious, wonderful, beautiful rain!

After a quick round of thunderstorms last night, the clouds decided to have mercy upon us and have been releasing a steady, slow rain since the wee hours of the morning. I took advantage and planted the asters that were dug up to make room for the arbor earlier this summer.  Despite the already half inch or more of rain, only the very crust of the ground is damp; an inch below it is still dry as a bone.  Still, this will help some.  I split the Alma Potschke (vivid pink) and soft purple asters and dotted them throughout the wildflower meadow.  The shorter lilac colored asters have taken seat in the cottage gardens.  I was able to dig up some self seeded rose campions from the hillside beds and move them into the cottage gardens, as well. Before the day is over, I'll hopefully sow a few rows of carrots where the onions were, too.  Hope springs eternal and all that.

Speaking of hope...I was hoping I'd hauled the last of the mulch this weekend, but it looks like I'll need another truck load before I call it good.   I've got 98% of the bank covered at this point; all that's left is one little spot around the backside.

 The bulk of this load went toward a path I decided to make at the top of the bank, leaving space between what's left of the miscanthus grasses and the edge of the wildflower meadow.

 Not only does it give me enough room to access the meadow from the back, but it's wide enough for the wheelbarrow.  I honestly never intended to mulch quite this much, but I'm happy that I did.  I like the look of it, and it's a little bit of order among my ever growing chaos.  

 At the bottom of the slope I've decided to continue with my cinder blocks and caps to define the edges of the bank.  I should have enough block left to do that, but the block pile is most likely harboring - you guessed it! - more hornets.  I'll have to carefully pick away at that.  

In the meantime I can continue adjusting and fussing with the rope fence.  I've decided I really like it, and by next year the stakes will have begun to turn grey, matching the big fence and the arbor.  I'm also going to do the same type of rope fence along the raspberry patch, which has not been supported and is going in all different directions.  I did get some fruit this year, but the birds and wasps have eaten most of the berries before I could harvest.  I'll know better for next year!

In hydroponic news, my mesclun is growing like crazy.

 There's almost enough for one salad.  Next time I sow seeds, I should sow some in dirt and do a comparison of which grows faster.  Or maybe just eat what I have and move on.

hoses, hornets, and hillsides

 And you thought triple H was hazy, hot, and humid.  

It actually is those things right now; I'm cloistered in the house to avoid yet another heatwave.  What a shame, it's been glorious sleeping weather the last five or six nights!

The watering is still precarious.  I can't remember the last good rain we had.  At this point, we need three or four days of gentle, all day soakers to replenish the groundwater...maybe even more than that.  After that insanely wet spring, you'd think we would have water to spare, but not so.  I used the water in the 75 gallon stock tank that I collected from roof runoff earlier this year in one watering of the hillside and cottage gardens.  The soaking tub in the back yard was emptied into watering cans to water the tomatoes.  My onions are dying off quicker than I would expect, and some never even got past gumball size.  I dumped a bag of spuds to see how they were doing, and they were still like baby potatoes.  I had 6 baby Japanese maple trees that were coming along well this spring, but one has shriveled and died, and two don't look very happy.  Despite being a variety able to tolerate sun, they can't handle the baking conditions of my holding beds without consistent watering, so I'll need to pot them up and move them into a shadier area for the time being.  I have assorted perennials and shrubs that are in pots right now that need to be planted, but without a way to water them daily as they adjust, they'll stay where they are.   The beds that I had weeded last week are full of self seeded perennials that should be dug up and transplanted, but they're in the same boat.  As if that wasn't bad enough, most of the hoses and sprayer heads I have on hand have given up the ghost.  I went from heavy, awkward rubber hoses to the lightweight expandable cloth ones years ago, and they just don't last.  I can usually get two or three years out of them before they spring a leak.  The sprayer heads are just cheap plastic junk; I need to invest in some good ones that will last more than a season.  I gritted my teeth and laid out the money for a new lightweight, kink-free rubber hose for the back yard.  Hopefully that one will last a few years.  This morning I was watering the veg in the hillside garden and yet another cloth hose split, so I'll need to order yet another.  With all these water woes, I'm hoping we'll get cooler, wetter weather soon enough and I can be done with it.  

The squash plants are growing by leaps and bounds, though.  They love this hot weather and beating sun, and I think the fresh manure I covered the bank in retained a lot of moisture.  I had planned to spend the last two cool days before the heatwave either moving fence to give the mules new grazing ground, or continuing the mulching project on the squash bank.  After the mules had grazed for their allotted hour and a half, they went back to the barn to stand in front of their fans and piles of hay for the day and I reviewed the fence situation.  My plan is to create another dry lot where the downed pine sat for the last year; I've been keeping it mowed but haven't done the fencing yet, and I will need to get material in to smother the grass.  I thought, why don't I just make a short run from the current alley across to that area, and the boys can eat that down for now.  Maybe I can get enough money together to finish fencing the dry lot area and by the time they've eaten the short run, I can let them into the dry lot area and they can eat that down next.  My plan was to do one side of the short run with T-posts and no climb fence, and move the pipe panels to create the other side.  I started to take the pipe panels apart and immediately had a swarm of hornets buzzing around my head.  The little buggers found a hole where the panel weld had rotted out and built a nest inside the fence - and this isn't the first time that's happened!  You can see these photos, under the top bar is a hornet on the fence, and he goes up into the pipe through the hole.

UGH.  I didn't want to spray up into the fence because I don't want to use poison in my grazing area, so I walked away to stew on the issue.  The next day as Fargo was coming through the gate, he hit the bottom pipe with his hoof.  I heard it but didn't think much of it, but as I was swinging the gate closed I caught movement and looked up, and in the corner of the frame where it had been bent and was a little rusted and starting to separate, there were about five angry hornets looking down on me.  Are you serious?!?!?!  I can't even deal with this.  Again, poison isn't an option around the boys, so around twenty minutes to five this morning I was out there on a ladder trying to save my mules and myself from getting swarmed and stung.  I very quickly wrapped the area in aluminum foil twice around, crimped it, then quickly taped it up with all weather Gorilla Tape.  

I went around the area about five times with the tape, but for all I know those hornets are in there chewing their way through it.  I hate having to do thing like that, but it's the only gate and I can't risk the boys getting stung, especially if they can't really get away - the barn has no way to close them in thanks to Fargo's claustrophobia, so they'd be trapped with a swarm of angry hornets inside and out.  

I decided fencing will wait until after a few good, hard, killing frosts, which should end the hornet siege naturally.  I may try to fence the front pasture and create a chute from the dry lot to it.  I need to think on this, because part of the fence would need to be moveable during hay season, so trucks and trailers can jockey into place.  Electric fence would be the sensible solution, but I don't trust the mules not to bust right through it.  That's all I'd need...those two goons running amok up and down the neighborhood.

So with the fencing situation stalled, I turned back to the bank project.  Another two yards of bark mulch, as many cardboard boxes as could be collected, and I was off.

 

 

It's getting there!  I swear, every time I add more mulch, the squash plants double in size.  I would say I'm about 70% there, just a little more to do. 

 That plant in the foreground is a bull thistle, and the bane of my existence.  I spend a day every spring carefully picking through the pasture and surrounding edges looking for them as they just begin growing, and painstakingly pulling them up by the roots.  I put them in my big garden bags and take them to the local dump, where they end up on the mulch pile.  With their razor sharp thorns, they are incredibly painful if you get tangled in them or brush up against them.  As much as I love the beautiful flowers and I know the goldfinch love the seeds, I cant afford to have them near the mules (or me!).  Obviously, I miss a few here and there. The things you do to keep your babies safe...

 

hackin' back

 I'm fairly certain there is nothing quite as satisfying as clearing overgrowth. Another rainy start to our weekend, with clearing and cool, breezy weather on Sunday, which afforded me time to get back to the business of reclaiming pasture and track space. I finally managed to free the fence sections that were caught under the tangle of the fallen tree top, bittersweet, and brambles. 

 Three sections of fence are salvageable, one section is definitely headed to the scrap heap, and one I haven't quite decided if I can use it or not.

 The next steps are to measure the area to calculate how much stone dust and geotextile fabric I'll need, secure the loose fence posts, and fix the crushed fence.  If all goes well enough, I may just have a secondary dry lot in place before the end of June.  Dare I dream?

It's not the heat...

 We're in day 3 of a heat wave, which shouldn't be news...except that it is.  We're experiencing hot, humid weather with heat indexes over 100*F, which is not normal for June.  As my brother noted, weren't we just buried in snow two months ago?  How things change.

The garden is, of course, loving this.  It's gone from this on May 5th

to this on June 20th

Once again the jungle-like conditions on the other side of the fence are becoming more difficult to keep at bay.  I had so many projects I was hoping to get done before anything began to leaf out, but I just can't muster the energy to accomplish anything.  Everyone talks about the hot flashes menopause brings, but nobody warns you about the overwhelming ennui that envelops you.  Le sigh.

I did manage to get my corn planted, and this heat has really helped get it going.  I planted Silver Queen and Sugar Buns.  Sugar buns should yield mature ears about 20 days earlier than Silver Queen.

In the garlic beds the Music and Red Chesnok have beautifully curly (and delicious) scapes, but interestingly, the Thai Fire is only beginning to form them despite being out of the ground a good 3 weeks before the other two varieties.

The snap peas are kinda sorta using the hay ring as a perch...I do have to tie them in every once in a while to encourage them to latch onto it.  I may have to start pinching them back, because I won't be able to harvest them if they get much taller.

The leeks I left to winter over were doing great, then I completely forgot about them.  Now they're forming seed heads, and are most likely too woody textured to bother eating.  I'm going to let them seed out and see if they replace themselves with fresh leeks for next year.

I did manage to get a small section of pasture fenced for the mules, and now I don't dare let them out on it.  Flea has been doing really well and they both spend a large amount of time sneaking grass from around the perimeter of the dry lot, but with this weather the grass is most likely stressed.  Any type of stress - lack of or too much water, rapid or extreme temperature fluctuations, frost, etc. - can affect the way grass produces and stores sugars, which can mean a ticking time bomb for IR equines.  We're supposed to have some good rain over the next few days and the temperatures should return to fairly average range, so I may let them out this weekend.  If I do, Flea will have a muzzle to reduce how much he can eat, and they'll go out as early in the morning as possible when sugars are at the lowest.  Of course, they haven't been on pasture for years, so it's going to mean very, very limited time out there, probably 15-20 minutes.  

Once we're back into less extreme weather, I hope to work on the grassy bank in the back yard.  My goal is to cut the grass short, pile last year's manure on it, cover it with weed block of some sort, then top it with a thick mulch.  Once that's done, that will be where I plant my squashes.  I have butternut, jack-o-lantern, summer squash, and white pumpkins started in the house and they need to be transplanted.  I've cut the grass once already, but it's already grown back.  If it weren't for the rocks on the surface, I might just keep it mowed like a lawn...but who wants more lawn to mow?  Not me!

In the polytunnel the tomatoes are just beginning to flower.  The NuMex Lemon Spice jalapeno peppers are doing fantastic, while the habanero peppers are struggling.  The pepper plants overwintered in the house promptly died when I put them out.

And in the wildflower meadow, things are beginning to bloom.  The penstemons that I planted a few years ago have finally come into their own, and are just gorgeous.

And the gaillardia are finally mature enough to bloom.

A few of the wildflowers are starting to bloom, like the pink silene that self seeded from last year, and the fleabane and field daisies that just smother the property, but it will be a few more weeks before I get to see what my autumn sown seeds produce.

In the meantime, the soaking tub is ready, and I can keep watch from there.

Oh, those tulips!

 I'm obsessed. The tulip I couldn't remember is Mango Charm, purchased from Johnny's Selected Seeds.  It should be called Chameleon, because it is constantly changing.  

It starts out with a yellow-green bud.

As it opens, the petals become a soft yellow tinged with apricot, perfectly complimenting the Apricot Whirl and Pink Charm narcissus (also purchased from Johnny's).

 

It slowly becomes more pink, almost mimicking a soft sunset.

And finally, it ends its reign by turning a beautiful blush pink tinged with white.

 

Most tulips don't reliably rebloom season after season, so I'll be sure to purchase more of these to plant this autumn.  They're just breathtaking.

Also breathtaking is a clematis that I purchased, in of all places, Ocean State Job Lots.  I purchased three clematis a few years ago, and the packaging gave no indication as to the actual variety or type of clematis it was.  I just assumed it was from the summer blooming group, or Group 3.  This group produces flowers on new wood, or new growth, so every spring I would cut them to the ground and allow them to regrow, but never saw much for flowers.  In fact, the only flowers I would get were the Nelly Moser-type pink with white edges.  Disappointing, as I already had one of those.  This spring I didn't get around to cutting them down quick enough, and suddenly there were blossoms swelling all over the plants.  I decided to let them be and see what happened.  I'm so glad I did!

It seems this particular clematis is from Group 1, or the spring blooming group, which flowers on old wood.  If I'm lucky, it may end up being a group 2, which is a reblooming variety.  These will bloom on old and new wood, so I'm doubtful that's the case, otherwise I would have seen these gorgeous creamy blooms over the last two years.

I did finally get the cover on the polytunnel, and my seedling plants have been moved out of the house and into that for hardening off.  I ended up using some bark chippings my mother had to create a grass-free base.  I love that the wood chips retain moisture so that when I close the polytunnel up, it creates a lovely humid environment for the plants. 

They're all responding well except for the baptisia seedlings, which have begun a mass die-off.  This coming week is supposed to shoot up to summer like temperatures, so I'll plant them out and see how they do.

I've got a decent start on the new section of mule track, too.  I am waiting for some gate hardware to arrive before I put up the welded wire fence, but I think this is going to work out well.  

 I've been using Reputa to haul manure out to the back of the pasture, and she's been working great.  It's so good to have her back to work!  Li'l Red has been down and out since autumn with rust chips clogging the gas line and a massive mouse nest in the motor.  Luckily my ex's cousin is a mobile tractor repair person, and he was able to flush the gas tank so it looks brand new, repair the gas cap to prevent water from getting in, and peel out the mouse nest.  I fired it up and one more mouse ran out of the motor and hit the ground running, and a minute later another one was belly up inside the cover but fell back into the motor when I shut it off.  I think there might be an endless supply of mice living in my tractor motor, and it freaks me out.  My plan is to start it up and walk away, allowing it to run and hopefully drive out the furry invaders.  

I've finished another section of the dead hedge, and I'm learning as I go.  This section was made up of mostly forsythia trimmings, and I'm not sure how the mixed material is sitting with me.

I don't mind if there's mixed material in each panel, but having one panel mostly brush with not many thicker branches looks a little funky.  Again, the advantage of this hedge is that it will always be changing depending upon the materials available.  I'm ok with that, because it's FREE.  The corner was a little tricky, and I have to angle the next section to run parallel with the barn.  Once I start running a fairly straight line, I think it's going to go up fast.  At least I hope so; I'm still running behind!