Hot and Dry Gripes

I am tired of endless hot and sunny days, we haven’t had more than a trace of rain in 6 weeks. There is only about a 30% chance at the most that we will get any rain this week too. Storms pass overhead, thunder and lightning crashing, but the rain never comes. It’s almost like our little corner of the world has been given a death sentence. The lawn crunches when you walk on it, the trees and shrubs are wilting, every night I spend a good chunk of time watering things so they don’t die. I try not to think of the plants I can’t get water too. The weeds are going crazy, [some weeds like dry weather], because after I water I don’t have time or energy left to pull them. The pasture is drying up, we let the sheep roam the back north area where the fence isn’t very good, but even that will soon be gone. First cutting of hay is getting very expensive because there hasn’t been a second cutting. I shudder to think what hay will cost this winter. There may be lots of lambburger in the freezer this winter. I don’t even want to look at our pond. Many ponds around here have dried right up. I am getting paranoid about fire, I haven’t let Steve burn our trash. There is a big stand of white pine across the road to the north and it is tinder dry in there. We have a huge dry brush pile just across the road. If a fire got started it would burn right across the road through the dry pasture to the house and barns with ease. A cigarette thrown from a car could set it all off.
The flies and yellow jackets are getting very horrendous. Stable and face flies make working outside miserable, forget sitting anywhere. Where are they breeding? Manure dries as soon as it hits the ground. At least the mosquitoes are scarce.
We have had less problems with fungal disease on things this year, my tomatoes are doing pretty good except for Bonnie Best, an old variety. But the potatoes dried off early and the onions made little bulbs even though I watered them.
Our county fair is next week. I didn’t personally enter any exhibits this year, although I am in charge of coordinating a large Master Gardener Exhibit. It’s the first time in about ten years I didn’t enter anything and I’m glad, all my garden is less than winning and it‘s too hot to bake or make fudge. That’s when it will probably rain since I have to be there everyday and it can get pretty miserable trudging around in mud. But I don’t care, I hope it pours all week.

Move to the Country- just not too close to me

It’s such a beautiful day here in the country that the only advice I could give today is to move to the country! Get away from people looking at you all the time. Houses and yards so close together you can see in each others windows and hear every conversation. Working in the yard under the scrutiny of neighbors eyes. Different radios blaring at you from all directions day and night, traffic noise, sirens, kids crying. Ugh! Been there, don’t ever want to do it again. I sat outside this morning listening to the birds singing, an occasional sheep baaing, a horse nickering and wind rustling the leaves of the aspens.

Every once in a while a car would go by, we are fairly close to the road here, but its a dirt road and not real busy. But the neighbors can’t see me, no one was casually watching me and it was quiet. I can see out across the horse pastures across the road, or the alfalfa field to the east, or the sheep pasture to the west or the woods on the north- long views where the eyes can stretch out as far as a mile away. No buildings blocking the view, no concrete or asphalt.

I sat for a while watching the kittens play in my flowers and the birds visiting the feeders. My dogs were quiet in the backyard, they knew where I was and were snoozing in the sun. If anything was making noise it was those darn red squirrels, fighting over territory I guess, back and forth across the tree in the front yard. A hummingbird was visiting every red Bee Balm flower in my flower bed and she came and hovered in front of my bright pink t shirt to check it out. Doves were landing under the bird feeder to pick up spilled seeds and a kitten started creeping up on them. Birds kept landing at the feeder, they seemed to dismiss the tiny predators presence and the doves let it get almost to them before they whistled off.

The horse farm has a beautiful roan and white quarter horse mare in the pasture right across from our house. I get to watch her graze without having to buy her food and shoes.
There’s something soothing about watching animals graze on a beautiful day. It’s kind of dry here, the fields are turning yellow faster than normal, but it’s still pretty. We have turned the sheep out into the back pasture along the woods to eat weeds out there and what little grass is left. The back fence isn’t in good shape, but so far they have stayed up close to old pastures, I don’t think they like walking through tall stuff, they have to eat it down as they go.

My Oriental lilies are starting to bloom and the scent is heavy on the summer air. They are about two weeks ahead of normal bloom time I think. Casa Blanca, Tom Pouce, La Reve, Silk Road, and a few others are blooming. They seem to survive drought fairly well, I am watering them a little though. What’s sad is out toward the pond, where my lilacs, mock orange, forsythia and other plants are beginning to wilt. The hose won’t reach and carrying water from the pond would be extremely difficult as it would mean going up and down a hill and wading in mud to get to where the water has receded. So they suffer. There is no rain in sight for at least 5 days, and that doesn’t even look too good. This weather has sure been strange, people 20 miles away got 5 inches of rain last week, we got a sparse 1/2 inch. No matter how much you water, plants always seem to do better with a good rainfall. I will have more watering to do tonight. I try to water a different bed each night. Farmers around here had such high hopes this spring for a record corn crop as prices are high, now the corn is rolling up in the field. Most haven’t been able to get a second cutting of hay off this year so hay will be expensive this year. We may have to sell the sheep, it might mean choosing between hay and propane on our budget this year, or we could turn them into lambburger I guess. But we’ll get by and I thank God we are still living in the country.

Conserving water

We finally got a little rain yesterday and today, not a lot but enough that I didn’t have to water all the plants for two days. That was a nice break. I was getting a little crabby having to haul the hose around every night. I have all these plants in pots that I am growing for a display at our county fair. Pots have to be watered every day and it was so dry that I had to mercy water my flower beds too. We had to buy hay because the pasture is drying up. Yard hasn’t had to be mowed in three weeks. So the rain is very welcome. All those perky little weather girls on T.V. who assure us that the rain won’t spoil our weekend sure don’t live in farm country. Severe weather is a possibility tomorrow. Now I don’t want that. But I will take the rain.
All this talk about conservation and global warming and this drought have got me to thinking. Last fall we ran the drain from the kitchen sink out through the wall and down a pipe to my front flower bed. It didn’t freeze up all winter because water doesn’t stand in the pipe. The original drain had ran into a dry well somewhere under the house I guess, because it wasn’t hooked up to the septic. One of those old house mysteries. But it clogged up or was full and to hook it to the septic meant knocking a hole in a foundation wall in a crawl space, a job that neither my husband or I thought we could handle, so we improvised, redneck style and its worked pretty good. Keeps the front flower bed watered. In fact I would like to run the laundry water out to the vegetable garden or another flower bed. It’s a shame to waste all that water. Grey water, which laundry water and sink water are, is legal to reuse on plants and lawns. And the water won’t hurt them either, unless they get too much and the ground doesn’t drain well. My husband isn’t quite convinced yet on this one. But it would save on electricity too, pump wouldn’t have to run to water the plants. So maybe we will do it. Just think if all the gray water, shower and bath, laundry, sinks etc were reused to water lawns and flower beds what a massive savings across the globe that would be. It would be nice if some of it could be stored to flush toilets too, so clean water wouldn’t have to be used. That’s Granny’s advice for this week, let’s all try to re-cycle some water.

Cats aren't that smart

I don’t think cats are as smart as some people believe or as smart as they seem to think they are. I have this fluffy white cat named appropriately enough, Fluffy, who has been stepped on or rolled over by my husbands wheel chair any number of times, to the point of breaking her leg one time.. Yet she stills sits right on the door step and doesn’t move as you step out. If you manage to miss her there she will soon be underfoot somewhere else and must get stepped on at least once a day. She has successfully raised some kittens this year thanks to the help of a little black cat who either lost hers or combined them with Fluffys. They are about 3 months old now and running all over. They get under the car and I spend 5 minutes everyday checking and re-checking to make sure I don’t mash them. The kittens aren’t real tame, they will tolerate handling but they love making me part of their games if I sit out in the yard. I was on the ground trying to take pictures of them and they kept leaping up into the camera. Henny Penny was with them, she follows the cat family around now that her rooster is gone-victim of a loose Jack Russell. She also was very interested in the camera and kept poking her beak into the lens.
We have a number of barn cats- the number changes constantly as they come and go. A couple months ago a small black and white cat showed up, pregnant but very friendly. I figured some one had dropped her off here as they are prone to do, when they noticed she was PG. She usually ate with the back of the barn group, we have two cat feeding places, although she would be rubbing around my legs the minute I walked in the barn. I knew she had her kittens about the same time Fluffy did, but I never saw or heard them. As Fluffy’s kittens started running around I kept watching and finally I noticed the little cat dragging a rabbit almost as big as she was back toward the barn. When I was done with what I was doing I snuck over to the pasture where I could see the back of the barn and there they were, 5 of them. I didn’t see her or the rabbit, but the kittens were in the sheep feeding pans, eating a little of the stock feed that was left behind. They vanished like shadows when they noticed me. I figured out that she had kept them under the ramp to the inside entrance of an old dog run on that side of the barn. No dog in it of course. I felt sorry for them, so I started dropping a little cat food in the old pen where the sheep couldn’t get to it. A week or so later I noticed they were creeping into the back of the barn when I fed the back of the barn cats and eating with them. This week however they have totally disappeared and Mom too. It’s really strange. Maybe she came from one of the farms around here and finally felt it was safe to lead them home. Don’t know and I guess I shouldn’t worry about it. I can’t afford to fed the ones we have.