We stayed up watching the election returns, finally giving up and going to bed around midnight. I’m happy about the results in Arkansas, but frustrated that we won’t know the national results for awhile yet, and what they will mean for the country. Another character-building exercise.
We’re experiencing low 80s for a high today and tomorrow followed by low 50s and below, plus FREEZES, starting Friday morning. I’m trying to make sure we’ve disconnected the hoses, put the freeze protection on the faucets, closed house vents, gotten the water to the irrigation system turned off, etc. before the freezes come. Today’s yard work is weed whacking at least in the front yard to neaten up for the winter. When the weed whacking is done around the house, I’ll see if I can plant more iris.
We turned off our irrigation system to the yard, and the one to the garden a few weeks ago because of threatened freezes. It always makes me a bit sad because things start to wilt almost immediately when we do.
Our elephant ear plants did really well this year, giving us many hours of pleasure. They are looking quite sad right now. As soon as they are completely down, leaves brown and hanging down, I’ll cut them off as close to the soil surface as possible and lay thick layers of mulch as tightly as I can to see if they’ll over winter in place this time, as digging them up and storing them in the garage in peat moss last year was unsuccessful.
We had kind of a weird growing season this time. Our lettuce did well, giving us lots of nice salads. Our spinach was nice, too. Then things warmed up really quickly, causing all my spring garden to bolt at once. We had nice tomatoes, but due to the weather changes, they weren’t ‘pretty’ this year. Thankfully, our stomachs don’t care about that a bit! :0) This is the way we winter over our raised bed, square foot garden. I carefully weeded, then topped off the 4’x4′ wooden boxes with fresh Mel’s Mix (peat moss, vermiculite, and 3 kinds of compost (I used mushroom, barnyard, and cotton). Hopefully, I won’t have a whole lot to do to prepare the boxes for planting in the spring. I’m already itching to get the plants in as soon as they are available.
I’m going to start getting serious about pruning flower planters and readying things for winter very soon.
We had rain and a cool front come through overnight. It’s 44 degrees F. outside right now with a bit of a wind, so it feels pretty chilly.
The wonderful fiber optic people came through recently hanging wire for the future. They had to cut branches out of a couple of trees in our side yard that were encroaching on the lines. When they finished, it looked like the trees had exploded or had been hit by lightning, with broken branches hanging down. They said they would neaten things up. I don’t think they decide where they go or what they do each day, so they haven’t been back.
My husband disappeared, and I went to find him. He was coming back from the shop with the chain saw – just the thing I had been trying to avoid. We are a bit long-in-the-tooth now for activities such as chain sawing and hauling big branches around. Since he was determined to handle it, I dropped what I was doing and helped him.
We worked about an hour, but made some headway. At least it looks now as if someone might have had a plan. I’m still hoping that the guys will come back and cut both of the trees down, but I won’t hold my breath.
This is part of what we cut down. This is part of what’s left.This is the rest of what remains
The other thing we did recently was to prepare our raised bed, square foot planters for the winter.
Audrey Hepburn – keepinspiring.me
(We built six 4’x4’x8″ wooden planters and put them on metal supports, kind of like tables, at about my chest level.)
I harvested the remaining onions very carefully, since the fire ants had taken up residence in the planters. It amazes me that they wanted a home so high up off the ground. Unfortunately, they were aggressive about defending what they considered their home. I had to keep hosing the planters down with bug killer, then harvesting as much as I could or weeding until they started to swarm again, over and over until the job was done.
We then re-filled the planters with Mel’s Mix – a combination of peat moss, vermiculite, and as many different kinds of compost as you can find or make. The level of this had really gone down, so it was quite a job to mix up the mix needed to top them off.
We have made this alternative soil process as seamless as possible, with big trash cans holding the ingredients of the mix, and then a used cement mixer to combine things.
We strung some wires across the remaining two planters not used this year to create the ‘squares’ we use for spacing the plants. We decided to wait until spring to replace the wooden strips that we put along the middle of each trio of planters that hold the sprinkler for the middle of each box and connect the irrigation hoses.
We put a pail in the middle of each of the boxes and then covered each box with a tarp. We are hoping this will cut way down on the weeds in the planters for when we uncover things and get ready for spring planting.
We used the comparably good weather today – plus a required trip to Fedex in Fort Smith – as a great opportunity to get some winter boots for each of us. We both have real “combat boot” type boots that are good for really cold weather, but are uncomfortable. We decided to look for some more flexible boots with reasonable insulation that we could wear in the in-between cold-but-not-blizzard weather.
We went to our favorite Shoe Depot/Encore store in Central Mall. We each found some pretty good boots! I also got some gel insoles to put in mine. I also found two other pairs of winter shoes on sale :0) – ankle high pull-on reddish-tan leather boots and some more regular flats for fall and winter.
When we got home, my husband looked online for the high top, moccasin-type shoes we both like. We were in luck, and he ordered a pair for each of us.
We are more than shoed-up, or shoed-in, now, fully ready – laced and tripping – for whatever weather comes our way.
This was the way I felt when I finished the afternoon of leaf mulching. When I took my watch off, it looked like I had quite a tan. It was all dirt! I had a thin layer of fine dust all over me and my clothes.
I made three large leaf bags of leaf mulch and stored them in the garage until I’m ready to distribute it. Depending on the weather tomorrow, I’ll try to do some more before it’s due to rain.
Our new system is about as good as it can get. It’s still a lot of work for an old broad. I was really exhausted – even after taking breaks and drinking lots of water – when I finally got everything put away for the day. I got a lot of leaves from the front lawn and the area between the triple flower bed and the driveway. I’ll do another area tomorrow if I get the chance.
I caught my breath and drank more water when I came in, then went up to throw my clothes into the hamper and take a nice, hot shower. I came down feeling alive again and ready to finish up dinner.
We had a really productive day today. We may get rained out tomorrow, but we have plenty of projects to tackle inside, as well.
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