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?

a welcomed break from the rain

 That's right.  A few months ago I was worried that we were headed into the 2025 growing season with a drought looming over us, but thanks to weeks and weeks of rain, the entire state of New Hampshire is now out of the danger zone.  It rained to the point that everything grew exponentially well.  Lawns, perennials, and most annoyingly, weeds.  I was losing any faith that I might get started on some projects, when a ray of hope finally lifted me - the young men I'd talked to about clearing the trees that had fallen on my fence last April finally showed up.  I wept, joyfully.  

I had hoped they would get here earlier in the year, before the tangle of bittersweet leafed out and made things more complicated.  On April 6th, I had sent them these photos:

 

 

 

But then it snowed, and then it rained, and it rained some more, and some more, and then it rained again, but eventually we had a dry day and they appeared like images of saints on burnt toast.  They took care of the bigger chunks of the downed pine and left me the top part to deal with, which was the most entangled in bittersweet, and they cleared all of the three smaller trees at the bottom of the pasture that had fallen.

So I was faced with this mess to clean up on my own.

 

This weekend, I hauled out my trusty wheeled trimmer and the riding mower, and started hacking back the bittersweet and overgrown mess. 

I was able to get enough cleared to open up the area I plan to develop as a second dry lot, and start on the tree top mess on the outside of the fence.

I still have a lot to go, but I'm feeling really good about what I accomplished so far.  Plus...18,000+ steps.  😉

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.