Summertime Blues

Well the last I looked at the garden ... Last weekend really ... we had STANDING WATER in amongst the peas & beans, the grass nests surrounding the cabbages were washed away, and the pumpkins were loving it all.

We had 3 inches of rain from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon ... And major ruts in our driveway because of it ... 

Hubby said that on Thursday that he noticed the corn, beans and peas were up about 2-3 inches because of the rain!  I thought for sure they had drowned from all that rain!  

Now if only the deer and geese will leave them alone, I'll be happy :-)

Here's hoping for lots of canning opportunities this summer/fall

Greenhouse update

'Here is a photo of the green house plants Monday 10 June ... 

Top is cabbage, green

Then cabbage, red

 Then pumpkin, sweet pie

Bottom, tomato, cherry red

We got the green cabbage in the ground today ... Boy were they root bound and tangled but we got four good crooked rows out of them.

I put DS#2 in charge of digging the holes with a porthole digger and he got a bit windy ... He says it comes from only having one eye (which he does) we decided to stop after the greens were in because it was getting too hot in the sun fir old-lady me and the kids needed to get going on raking the grass clippings to put around the Greens to keep the weeds From growing.

Of course my daughters favorite part was walking barefoot in the mud that still sits along the south edge of the field.

Oh the photo:

Welcome To MN

Hope you didn't think it was actually summer yet ... Official or non-officially .... 

There are FROST WARNINGS in our state for TONIGHT!

Yeah I know -- "but its end of May!!"

But wait - its getting back into the 80s next week again ...

 See its going to be another on of <i>those</i> summers ...

Holy crap

UPDATE:

The body of the second child was recovered today.

2 boys, ages 9 & 10 died

This is soooooooooooooo sad

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There's nothing else to say ...

Two sets of parents are pleased .... Two sets are broken ....

Today tragedy struck our area ....

The big city (st Paul) school district had a field trip to a park at an adjoining city ... We've been there but only on the trails ... The point of the trip was to look for fossils ... The place has quite a bit so it's a prime location ...

A group of 4th graders ... Aged about 10 years old ... Maybe 9 years old ... We're having fun looking on this semi-rainy day - just light sprinkles, nothing huge like we've had over the weekend ...

They say the earth just gave way .... They say there was a gravel slide ... They say there was no way to know it was going to happen ....

4 kids were caught in it ...

Two were rescued ... One has already gone home from a hospital ...

One was "recovered" ... That is, they were too late or the child was killed on impact ....

One is still missing ... They were going to stop looking around 11pm tonight because the area was getting dangerous for rescuers - they had been digging all afternoon and even had fire hoses down there to try to wash away the sand/gravel to find the children ...

Facebook posts from the local news say they were going to keep looking ... I'm betting they've closed down for the night now ...

They've dubbed it a "recovery" now ... So they think this child is gone as well ...

This is every parents nightmare!

Hug your kids tonight ... And every time you are near them ... Every time you get in a bickering with them end it with "I really do love you" ... Because you never know ...

So sad ...

I will follow up as news comes in

Green House Update

Well a few things got planted about a week ago ... The day before Mothers Day, while hubby was working on the chicken coop ... My daughter and I decided to get going on the seedlings for the long field - or at least part of it.

We only planted three types of plants -

Pumpkin - Sugar Pie
Tomato - Red Cherry
Cabbage- 2 varieties
________Red Acre
________Green Acre

I still have carrots to do too ... As well as turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, beets but those would do best going straight into the fields ... Then there is the strawberry-spinach and onions ... There is so much more to get going on.

Here's how they have grown so far ... Wait ... It's been 10 days since planting ... They've grown pretty fast

Mother Nature's Cramping Up

It has to be PMS on a massive scale - tornadoes down south ... Flooding out west ... Wild fires even farther west & south ... Ice on the lake at the cabin just went out about a week ago and we got over 100F!

Mother Nature is being crabby ... I'm telling you ...

Last week we were 2 inches or so below our water level ... We had some pretty big storms go through this weekend, and it's been pretty wet today (on & off) so now we are ...

2 - 2 1/2 inches ABOVE where we should be

The high today was 71F (low 63F) which is pretty close to average (71/50)
But the records are 94F (2009) and 31F (1935)

Wow - what a spread in temp and time! Of course the place where the temp was taken in 1935 is different than now, and the equipment these days are a bit more actuate ... And there has been some questions raised about where it's located on site ... But that's neither here nor there for this post ...

The fields are so wet right now that I'm not sure we will be able to get into them before June! We only have until mid-June if we get three more days of rain as they say we should ... The corn we use need 80+ days to ripen/harvest which would still put the grow time in the warmth of the summer (and hopefully rainfall) and still be ready for selling just before the schools open up ... We usually try for the week before the state fair opens, but during is good to.

This year any "left over" corn can be dried, husked, and ground into chicken feed ... And corn meal I suppose ... We will see.

I'm hoping to can quite a bit this year too

A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far Far Away ....

Some sick God decided that chicks need to grow really fast ...

We got these "ladies" one week ago .... On Good Friday

8 Red Sex-Links
4 White Leghorns

The Leghorns were bigger, they looked older - that's why we only got 4, we didn't want the sex-links to get "beaten up" on

Well, that Godly sense of humor has hit ...

The Sex-links are pretty big now ... definitely bigger than those Leghorns!

I will try to get a photo of my daughter holding one of the birds tonight to compare with the ones I have of her holding them the day we got them and on Easter Sunday (3 days later) ... They barely fit in the palm of her hand now!

Here's a comparative photo for the post before this one ...