Total Dehydration Averted
Phew, it rained. Torrential for a good half hour, and then a light, steady rain for another hour. When I got home, I pulled back some of the mulch in the garden and felt the soil, plenty wet around the roots, but farther out from the plants, still dry. I should pick up a rain gauge. The one I had at the other house filled up, froze and cracked into a dozen pieces, and I never replaced it, even though I thoroughly enjoyed keeping track of the rainfall in my garden journal, and spouting off to anyone who would listen, just how much rain each storm delivered to my garden.
I’ll also pick up some copper to hopefully deal with the slug problem. Holy crap, those slimy little bastids were making quite a meal out of my pepper plants, the salad beds, the two watermelon plants, the Kuri squash and the newly sprouted (again!) Haricot Verts. Jeebus on a stick, did the chickens just about break one another’s necks when I dumped the collected 72 slugs into the pen. Too bad I poured pickling salt on so many of them before Chris reminded me that the girls would get a thrill out of such a disgusting snack. I should run out there to check one more time before the light completely fades from the sky, but I’m just too pooped.
Here’s something completely different…the other night Chris moved a log away from one of the piles, intending to bury it around the edge of the chicken tractor to deter the baby raccoons. I was in the garden and heard him scream like a little girl. I guess I would have too, if I’d put my hand on this:
Then the next night, Tyler saw this gorgeous, bedazzled chrysalis hanging from Lila’s basketball net.
And you thought city living was so tame.
"Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon?"
~Hal Borland
June 19th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Oh, god, a bat. We were just talking about them tonight. Jim found one in the backyard that had hit an electrical wire and was stunned into, well, death by the blow.
I think the IDEA of bats is great, and what they DO is great, but they freak me the frack outat night when they whiz past my head.
June 20th, 2007 at 5:59 am
Do you remember being told they’d get tangled in your hair if you stayed out at night when you were a kid? My sister and I woke up to one in our bedroom one night very late. We were terrified to go back to sleep after my parents got it out.
June 20th, 2007 at 8:37 am
Great bat picture! Very cool! Have you ever raised butterflies? I did years ago, and am planning on doing it again this year. I love to watch those butterflies emerge from chrysalis.
June 20th, 2007 at 8:55 am
My office is in a beautiful old house that besides being a law office is also a breeding colony for bats. And yes, I remember swimming outside at night as a kid and worrying about a bat getting caught in my hair.
June 20th, 2007 at 9:28 am
My evening watering rounds coincide with the bat’s flight around my yard, Ilove watching them flit about after insects.
June 20th, 2007 at 11:47 am
I am always torn between thinking bats are kind of gross and thinking they are really cute. this picture is cute. But I would have screamed if I’d laid my hand on it too!
All the water my garden is getting is now from me. Hand watering season has begun. I really wish I had set up a drip system, but who had time? The good thing about it is that it makes me go out there and hang with my plants.
June 21st, 2007 at 1:43 pm
so copper kills the slugs/snails? I’ve not heard of that but will try anything non toxic at this point, they’re everywhere! Do I buy copper wire and lay it in the gardens?
July 4th, 2007 at 2:19 am
you can try eggshells for the slugs - you dry them out after washing them, I put them in a jar with an old pool ball (que ball) and then shake them up. then you pour them around the edges of the garden and they slugs don’t like to climb over them because the are sharp. Here in Washington state, we have tons, from all the rain, so it works pretty good, I start saving egg shells in large jars all year and use them when my garden is starting to get invaded, and if I have any left over, I just throw them in the dirt before I turn it.