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Adaptation in Action!
Jun. 7th, 2011 05:30 pmNot surprisingly, we went from very cold and rainy weather to really damn hot. I am the world's slowest gardener this week - so far only the tomatoes are in and the potatoes are planted. The tomatoes involve digging holes, putting down fabric weed barrier, actually putting the tomatoes in, and setting stakes. There's 6 of them I'd still like to put some square cages on, but said cages are not yet constructed so that remains theoretical, and they all still need actually tied to the stakes. The potatoes... I ended up using twice as much space as I planned on and that was with only a few inches of spacing between them. Whoops. I'm trying not to think too much about having to hill up that large a section over the next month to month and a half.
I've been setting the alarm for 7:00 AM in order to get up and get some work in before it's too hot, then taking a long siesta until evening when I can venture outside again. The heat index for today is 100+°F (37.78°C) and, at 4:30 PM, it's still pretty brutal out there with only the lightest sniff of a breeze from time to time. I'm going to have to move the alarm back to 6:00, or even 5:30, AM as 7 just isn't early enough once you figure in actual waking up, eating food, and becoming coherent! D's suggested setting up an outside light for working later into the evening and I might give that a go here soon just so I can make some progress.
The mosquito population apparently spent the entire month of May breeding as there are now 30 million of them for every squaremile foot.
On a completely different note, we have hot water! Granted, at this point, we could probably just sit the kettles outside and they'd boil faster than on the stove (yes, I know I'm exaggerating *g*), but having it come out of the tap is a lot more convenient. For a while yesterday we had hot water but no water pressure, which was not an improvement, particularly since I needed to water the very thirsty tomato and greenhouse plants. That didn't happen until this morning, but last night I was able to take a bath! Without having to heat kettles and pots of water first - an awesome and sorely missed luxury.
The next thing to hopefully be up and running is the tractor, otherwise known as the oversized lawn mower. It's been one of those series of events where one thing is fixed and then they find something else broken, so it's been on the verge of being fixed for a week now. Meanwhile, parts of the 'yard' are up to my waist. On the one hand, I really don't care because grass does little for me and I'm perfectly happy with wildlife habitat. On the other hand, we keep losing the pups; being scent hounds, they think nothing of the fact that they can't see more than a few inches in front of their noses and chipperly plunge right on in. The heat being the way it is, they're only outside for 10 minutes at a time anyway, but the temperature is supposed to drop later this week and it's going to make keeping an eye on them considerably more complicated.
Speaking of wildlife habitat, ( look what mama robin had hatch this morning: )
I've been setting the alarm for 7:00 AM in order to get up and get some work in before it's too hot, then taking a long siesta until evening when I can venture outside again. The heat index for today is 100+°F (37.78°C) and, at 4:30 PM, it's still pretty brutal out there with only the lightest sniff of a breeze from time to time. I'm going to have to move the alarm back to 6:00, or even 5:30, AM as 7 just isn't early enough once you figure in actual waking up, eating food, and becoming coherent! D's suggested setting up an outside light for working later into the evening and I might give that a go here soon just so I can make some progress.
The mosquito population apparently spent the entire month of May breeding as there are now 30 million of them for every square
On a completely different note, we have hot water! Granted, at this point, we could probably just sit the kettles outside and they'd boil faster than on the stove (yes, I know I'm exaggerating *g*), but having it come out of the tap is a lot more convenient. For a while yesterday we had hot water but no water pressure, which was not an improvement, particularly since I needed to water the very thirsty tomato and greenhouse plants. That didn't happen until this morning, but last night I was able to take a bath! Without having to heat kettles and pots of water first - an awesome and sorely missed luxury.
The next thing to hopefully be up and running is the tractor, otherwise known as the oversized lawn mower. It's been one of those series of events where one thing is fixed and then they find something else broken, so it's been on the verge of being fixed for a week now. Meanwhile, parts of the 'yard' are up to my waist. On the one hand, I really don't care because grass does little for me and I'm perfectly happy with wildlife habitat. On the other hand, we keep losing the pups; being scent hounds, they think nothing of the fact that they can't see more than a few inches in front of their noses and chipperly plunge right on in. The heat being the way it is, they're only outside for 10 minutes at a time anyway, but the temperature is supposed to drop later this week and it's going to make keeping an eye on them considerably more complicated.
Speaking of wildlife habitat, ( look what mama robin had hatch this morning: )
