Hi all, I cAn't type much due to a carpal tunnel type issue with my left hand but wanted u all to know I'm here watching. that crinum lily and the hollyhock are beautiful.
Hugs all around,
Sheri
Practical Matters for Physically Challenged Gardeers #16
Me and you both, Sheri, and doesn't it HURT! i heard of someone down here with figs, and she is netting them too. Yay for daylilies and boo for deer eating plants and tomato worms. My husband has sweet potatoes on the list of stuff he won't eat, so I buy them to nuke for lunch.
Photos #1 and #2: The lack of Sun for the last month Has not Stunted OUR Sun Flowers.
Photo #3 Butterfly Checking out Jim's Bouquet of todays flowers. ("Hey Those are my flowers Give `em back!")
Hi, Vickie! Welcome back. Sorry container veggies did not work for you. Don't bears eat dear. If not Elmer Fudd (Speaking through Jim) Says "SH-h-h-h-h I am hunting Cewvidae http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer
It will be great when they have REALLY GOOD Speech to text software.
Carrie. Try sprinkling pecans on your sweet potato a match made in Heaven.
Brown sugar &/or cinnamon is wonderful too, on a wonderfully soft steamed or baked sweet potato
To me, almost anything with brown sugar is great, and pecans makes it even better.
I got weighed the other day. I gained about 15 lbs since we moved to Texas. Ugh. Now the long road to take it off.
SOMEONE ,or several SOMEONES, here hijacked Amargia@DG while I was busy. Gee, I wonder who. ;-) I guess they wanted to make sure you all knew they were still around.
The nice thing about bad pennies, Vickie, is they have an uncanny knack for landing heads up. That makes them lucky, good pennies. If you can still find your way to town without a hitch, you are doing better than Jim and I. We were headed up to a store only two miles away, but we got distracted by our conversation and were about five miles away before we realized we had missed our turn-off. Multi-tasking isn't as easy as it once was. I can still walk and chew gum at the same time so I have hope for myself. Jim can't chew gum so we don't have a prognosis for him.
Family stuff has me running around like the proverbial headless chicken. DD#1 is stabilized and ready to go back to CA. We plan to send her back by train instead of plane. It will be a long trip, but there is a straight shot. That will mean no having to keep up with luggage and making transfers. Despite the extra time spent on route, I think she will find that easier to manage. This is my brilliant, space cadet DD. lol. One of my sisters in TX just got a new hybrid car and is planning to visit. She is celebrating getting cancer under control. She's completely bald, but cancer free. Not a bad trade off in my opinion. My food loving brother has just discovered he is diabetic. Nadine is busy in the kitchen convincing him There is still good eats to be had. (Jim made the zinnia bouquet above for him. The butterflies are very possessive of their zinnias. lol.)
We made the jalapeno soup from Toni Leland's summer soup article a few days ago. Great stuff! I had a crowd to feed the day after making the soup and poured the leftover soup over egg noodles. That went over very well. Well, roasting peppers and putting them in the freezer today and making some pico de milo Better get to work. Hugs all around. K*
What's "pico de mila" Kay? I like to hear about your busy family but sad about your bald sister and diabetic brother.
And the sunflowers up there--do you think the lack of sunlight is making them "stretch?" Does that happen with the actual sun, or just with window sunlight?
We just had lunch, so I can hear about food without starving to death. Same response.....pecans, YUM!
Kay, Tell your DD to find a good window seat and injoy the scenery. I've done it several times.The landscape is constantly changing and I've met some intresting people.Lil ole ladies are the most intresting.
I have a confession to make. I have trouble chewing gum and walking.One reason I never went out for sports. I did march in the band.Never did figure out how I managed that.I was also told I was 16 months old before I started walking.
Oh Kay, I feel for your brother.When he gets the hang of eating right. He wont feel underprivilaged. There are great sugar free candy and sugarfree icecream and such.
The hardest for me is the carbs.I do love potatoes and gravy and I find a way to eat some too. Best wishes to your bro.
I love to hear about your family too.
I love to hear about families. We're in Boston for a visit and got to meet DGD#2 for only the 2nd or 3rd time. She's about 7 months old and was very smiley.
Wow, that flower head band is too cute on her!!
And she looks like Grandma too....!!
I think children are such fun at that age because that is when you first start catching glimpses of the adult they will become....and they are just so-o-o adorable Carrie, your theory about plants growing taller than normal outside when it is overcast for long periods appears valid to me. Most plants in our garden are taller and more upright this year than I've ever seen before. A few days ago I harvested catnip leaves for tea from vertical stalks 4' tall. The growth habit was so out of character I didn't trust my nose alone for ID. I had to taste a leaf before I was confident it was catnip. I have canna 15' tall and still growing. (sigh . It is raining again! )
I like brown sugar and cinnamon on sweet potatoes, but I never liked the marshmallows that are common around the holidays. That is too sweet for my taste.
I am gradually sliding more responsibility for Amargia Farm onto Nadine's shoulders. That, of course, means changes. When you want people to take on more responsibility they need more of a personal, emotional investment in the project. She is in charge of design now. (That is an area I am weak in anyway.) She is "feng shui-ing" all our gardens and living space. I learned a little about feng shui back in the 70's as it applied to land forms, building and construction, but I'm having to educate myself about the more intuitive black hat school. It uses the same underlying principles as Chinese herbal medicine which I'm completely familiar with. Since I already understand the basic idea, it has been easy to learn so far. Jim spent time in Japan and Singapore, he is comfortable with the changes and the flowing uncluttered style is great for w/c accessibility. Letting go of Amargia's reins is a little hard. (Nadine tells me that is because I was born in the Year of the Rat and rats like being first and in control. lol.) I'm liking the changes because feng shui doesn't focus only on the visual. It works with all the senses. Also, it is a way of organizing space that Nadi can get into. I thought she was totally lacking in organizational skills, but the creative approach of feng shui appeals to her. Nadine?! Cleaning and organizing! Who says there are no such things as miracles!
Nadine tells me it is time to go "slay the clutter dragon" in Jim's work shop. ROFL. I never knew it was possible to slay dragons with a broom. k*
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-the-principles-of-feng-shui.html
I like being first and in control too! But I don't think I was born in Rat Year.
Thanks for links.
LOnejack, she is my STEP-granddaughter, so we share no genes. But she IS adorable with that thing on her head.
Whew, slaying clutter dragons is hard work. Jim can navigate his w/c around the work shop again and that makes him happy. Although, he is still constantly asking where we put some tool or piece of hardware.
Carrie, Jim said your little princess looked like she was about to give the paparazzi what for. lol. Oh, I forgot. Pico de Milo is a version of pico de gallo, fresh tomato salsa. You probably wouldn't like the classic version. It contains cilantro. But, a tasty version can be made with parsley instead.
I'm grateful this year for all the small fruited tomatoes and an heirloom variety that grows in segments sort of like oranges. The large fruited types have a tendency to split their skins because of all the rain, but the grape and cherry types are keeping us well supplied with tomatoes.
Vickie, your bears are black bears, aren't they? Nadi just told me about a disturbing new development. Grolar bears. A fertile cross between grizzly and polar bears. Evidently, because of the melting ice. polar bears are showing up more and more in grizzly territory. That's a scary development. Polar bears are the most vicious of bears and grizzlies aren't exactly pushovers. I wonder if psychologist have a name for an unreasonable fear of bears. If they have a name for fear of chickens (alektorphobia), surely they have one for bear phobia. I might have that one. Bears scare me.
Nadi has me reading a book on environmental psychology. ("Environmental psychology" is an entirely new phrase in my vocabulary.) She says since people see Amargia primarily as a place of refuge and healing, we should build more on that. Help! I've created a monster! lol. Seriously, I'm finding all of this interesting, but she just hauled off my cushy, comfortable old couch. Yes, it was too big for the space, but I loved that old couch.
Are you getting all this rain up your way, Sheri? Overcast today, but no rain so far. Yaaay! k*
Hi My Friends,
Here is a link to a deliightful place where they have created a little bit of heaven, "Down Under." When I saw this video I thought of all of us who have difficulty working below our knees.
Paul.
http://youtu.be/1XCh5uaAHn0
Good grief! Those are some big veggies! I would like to grow celery in a system like that. Celery is near the top of every list I've ever seen for fruits and vegetables highest in toxins. It would be worth the effort to have organic celery.
It has been more about fauna than flora lately. Nadine wants to take some dragonfly nymph to the park. A dragonfly laid her eggs in a plastic bin full of rain water. I didn't realize until doing some reading how long dragonflies stay in their larval state. I don't think they can live that long in a plastic bin.
Jim found two more snakes in the garden. (Thankfully, he found them before Fenny dog did.) I guess the rain is running them out of the low lying areas where they normally live. Jim did not realize they were copperheads. They were so placid and went easily in to the new place of the swamp and creek.where we don't go.
Photo 1: Baby dragonfly nymph.
Photo #2: Two Copper head snakes.
Yup, I used to buy hydroponic lettuce so I wouldn't have to wash it but also so it wouldn't be full of junk. I guess if you buy it, it sort of negates the good stuff because who knows what it was grown with?
Jim went to photograph and drool over his dream pond. It was pleasantly cool pond side, but he didn't last long in the tropical house. One of Amargia's heart and hearth children called me from Texas and mentioned they were experiencing triple digit temps so I'm not going to complain about 90 something.
We're going upstate Monday to visit my GSs. The plan is to spend the day in the park, Hopefully, it will be cooler there. They live near Birmingham.
Crepe myrtle and lantana rule among the flowers until it starts cooling down
Photo #1: Jim's dream pond
Photo #2: Alligator plant
Photo #3: Banana
Photo #4: Pretty mystery.
Lettuce is my favorite veggie for container growing. It comes in so many different shapes and colors, it can be as beautiful as any flower display. I just wish I had a good place for growing it inside during the summer.
Nadi's dragonfly nymphs were given an excellent new home. They are now part of an educational display at Landmark Park. Hope everybody is doing well. The rains are still coming. Not so fiercely though. We have started clean-up. It is never quite dry enough to mow, but we are picking up debris and started hand weeding.
Canna, zinnias, coreopsis and two of the amaranths (Golden Giant and Hopi Red Dye) have weathered the daily storms amazingly well. Marigolds, always a big part of the August garden, don't appear to care for all the extra moisture. My elderberry produced fruit for the first time, but I'm not sure the humidity will allow the fruit to mature properly. Muscadine grapes seem unaffected. Small fruited tomatoes and peppers are still producing well. We still haven't mastered growing corn organically, but will try again next year. The birds and squirrels appreciate our attempts. Wooly bears (the caterpillars of the Virginia tiger moth have decimated the Love Lies Bleeding amaranth. Nadii finds the cats and adult moths to be so cute, I don't think she tries very hard to get rid of them. I will have to give the wooly bears some amaranth and peppers of their own on the border of the property so Nadi can move the little monsters there.
Yuk, it feels like Tater-dog took another swim in the sunken garden. lol. Well, the frogs and dogs, at least, are enjoying this weather. Better dry her off and catch you all later. k*
It's REALLY had to grow corn organically. I know this because in summers we would spend a lot of time at my uncle's farm near Washington DC.
They grew zillions of tomatoes and melons and squash and what-not, but their big cash crop was sweet corn. They grew nearly everything organically, not because there was certification, because there wasn't, but it just seemed like the best way to go. They could never control the corn borers (which I believe are an introduced pest anyway). My uncle used to personally be the one who handled all the toxic pesticides for the corn. He used to say it burned his feet when he walked barefoot across a field after the stuff had been applied. (Duh.) Then he mysteriously got cancer and died in his forties. (In 1983 or so.)
They stopped growing corn and stopped using pesticides! Now they are an "eco-ganic" farm.
I think corn pest and diseases that have been introduced to this country is something I haven't considered enough in my organically grown corn experiment. I kept thinking it had to be do-able because the Creek grew corn without chemicals. Pre-Columbian corn growers probably didn't have to contend with as many pest and diseases. I will try a few more varieties and techniques, but amaranth may replace corn as our primary grain.
BTW, Carrie, that was an excellent article on Monday. You made a complex subject comprehensible to just about anyone. I'm reading a book on the so-called super-organisms (a.k.a.: ants, social bees and termites.) I read and re-read the paragraphs where the authors are trying to make the point that the unusual genetics of ants explains how creatures without reason developed a complex social structure. I understood from my reading ants don't have an xx-xy genetic pattern and the authors believe the selfish gene theory explains ants seemingly altruistic and cooperative behavior, but that is all I've come away with after several reads. I still couldn't tell anyone how ants in a hill are related. Maybe, you can explain ant genetics and reproduction to me when I'm old enough to understand. lol. Learning about ants is a "Know Thy Enemy" sort of thing for us. The ground is so saturated the ants are homeless and looking to re-build on higher ground meaning Amargia's ground. It is said the bio-mass of ants is equal to the bio-mass of humans worldwide. I believe it! When so many are up out of the ground and visible, it isn't hard to believe at all. Jim is my weeding partner until it dries out. I can't see the little beasties. Taterdog, my usual weeding buddy, is good about giving me snake alerts, but she doesn't do ant alerts.
Jim has gotten very serious lately about losing weight and getting back as much mobility as possible. He walked an amazing 1/2 miles across country today and he is the one who asked me if I wanted to take a walk. It was not so long ago that I was cajoling and ever so slightly bullying him to get him to walk around the property. We made it to the first of the north side ponds and he says his long term goal is to be able to walk all the way to the river. I would estimate that is another 1/2 mile. We found some very productive wild grapes, collected seeds from hairy yucca, the native yucca, and found a variety of moss we weren't familiar with. Mosses and ferns are unsurprisingly thriving. We glimpsed a crane and hope to get a photo on a future walk.
That's lovely that you can walk that far without leaving your own property! All we have to do is walk out the front door and on to the sidewalk before we meet the neighbors.
And thanks for the compliment about the article! It was literally a question someone had posted on the Ask A Gardener Forum, and I was trying to explain why you can't expect coleus SEEDS to look like the parent plant, and I had been meaning to do an article sabot Mendel anyway. You notice Mendel didn't even survive one of the edits! But I'm very glad you thought it was easy to understand, because that was my goal. As usual, I learned a lot while writing it, too.
And if you ever have an idea for an article you would like to see, just let me know. Maybe I can figure out your ants! That's gardening-related, or at least nature-related, The mass of existing ants is equal to the mass of existing humans? wow.
I think it must be wonderful to find new mosses or plants on your own property. Sometimes we go to Home Depot and find plants we weren't otherwise familiar with.....
Are imported fire ants and other biting ants in the Dallas area? E. O. Wilson is the best source of information on ants if you decide you want to take on the subject in an article and I'm not just saying that because he is a homeboy and a V.I.P. (visually impaired person). Lol. His book The Ants is where most of my funny ant factoids came from.
I think it was Wilson who first referred to controlling ants as pest control's Vietnam War. It is humbling to think we can't out maneuver creatures that have brains the size of a grain of sand. lol.
Jim and I were off our property within the first 10 minutes of our walk, but we have permission to take walks on the neighbor’s property. That particular stretch of land is reserved for wildlife and deer hunting. My family built a house on stilts near the river years ago when we owned the land, but despite being raised up, the house didn't survive the first flood. There are several ponds and the land is crisscrossed with creeks. It is a nice place to visit, but only wildlife lives there. Jim won't let me say how long it took us to walk the distance we did, but I will say if one of the turtles had decided to race us, it would have had a chance of winning. Our walk caused no problems with his back, but he says his legs are still sore. A treadmill would probably be safer PT, but having a destination and interesting things to observe keeps his mind off the pain.
It has been dry and unusually cool the last few days. It is finally dry enough to mow and the summer plants have all perked up. We are ready to start the fall planting season.
k*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson
This message was edited Aug 28, 2013 12:37 PM
Yes, fire ants are definitely out here, but I hardly ever leave the house! :( My articles are totally from memory and online research. Don't spread it around.
I like the image of you and Jim racing a turtle. DH always sets off as if we're in a race but eventually he rests his hand on my back (like a moving cane, not out of affection).
Some of the writers know a lot more about insects than I. T.H. White's The Once and Future King has a great boy-as-ant part, not the movie but the book.
I love that book. Lance and Jenny break Arthur's heart every time, though.
Would those of you that pray please lift me up in prayer. Lots of pain, misplaced pain meds (probably a good thing anyway).really down...nothing specific. Mean spirited people getting t o me, plus medical stuff.
I know this will pass...so thanks and have a good day.
Sheri
Big hugs, Sheri, I am low on pain meds and know how hard it can be not to have them.
My retirement association has been misinforming/lying to me for 27 years (yes, you did not misread that number). I will be making my third trip to talk to the board it means about 1600 miles each way to the Bay Area. Mean-spirited people there, too. They think they are too important to pay attention to me. I need to remind them that they are there because of me, not vice versa. I'm hoping to finally shut up a worker who failed to send me notifications and then cancelled my medical insurance, then said casually "she fell through the cracks." I was willing to let it go and can you believe the dumbie then told me it had been my fault. Four times and counting.
I've been seriously depressed and tired and weepy. Now I'm getting mad (I recommend this; it's much less painful). I'm also working my way through to being able to present it to the Board as the farce that it is. They can dismiss you if you cry but not if you show them up as fools.
hugs, katie
Yay Katie, you get em lady. I hate govt. Between VA disability and SSDI I may just lose it all along with a whole lot of others.
"Farce" is what it is...a farce of fools.
Is that anything like a gaggle of geese?
hugs, Sheri
Sheri, hugs your way. How can you lose SSDI? That's a scary thought. It's not a lot but I earned it!
And Katie, I hear you on the sad vs. angry. Angry is more powerful than sad. Maybe because it's scary.
Our Govt is going to be broke in only a few years....no $'s= no SSDI, Veteran pension or disability,etc
You really think so? I read that SSA is good for many years to come; it's not "going under" as some people say. On the other hand, if the gov't truly goes broke, I bet we will see a revolution. A genuine revolution like the French or American Revolutions. When the few have all the money and the many are hungry, somebody will revolt. Not trying to start one myself; I fear disabled and sick people would die if there really were a new revolution. But clearly the current state is untenable.
I put my trust in SSA because otherwise I would have to start saving money in gold coins instead of banks and stock-piling ammo and guns. Wow, I have been reading too many dystopian fantasy books this year!
My book club is run by a Libertarian guy, and the books that get chosen end up being "if the world ended, what supplies would you want to have on hand" or "in 2050, which three world powers will dominate" or "if Germany had won WWII....." not my kind of thinking or even the books I enjoy. Sorry.
Prayers for both of you from all of us here. I know where you are coming from. Jim contacted the VA about problems with his w/c, as instructed, But it would have taken so long and was such a convoluted process to get them to do the repairs, Jim purchased the parts online and did the repair himself. You would think the overloaded VA staff would be grateful Jim took on the responsibility and expense of repairs himself, right? The official line is his w/c is government property and Jim isn’t certified to do repairs. Ooookay. The government trusts Jim to repair jet aircraft worth mega-bucks with the lives of pilots and flight crews in the balance, but they don't trust him to replace the little wheels on a manual w/c??? ROFL. Anger boiled down and cooled to icy, implacable logic spiced with gallows humor, is the best way to handle situations like that in my experience.
The pink spiderlilies (Lycoris radiata) are blooming. (I'm still looking for the white variety.) The Rose of Sharon blooms are hand-sized this season.
Pineapple' tomatoes are still producing as well as ever. 'Brandywine' is starting to ripen. The 'October Fest' daylilies have decided not to wait until October to party. I was late getting my asters planted so no sign of bloom on them yet.
Nadine is in her role as Frog Queen. There are over 30 kinds of frogs and toads around here and I think each kind must have a representative in a large, rain [formed pool near her door. Even with her amphibian re-location efforts, it is still swarming. She has finally accepted she can't save them all, but she is raising the more rare types in containers on the deck and feeding those in the puddle. She's been feeding them my color enhancing, tropical fish food. I hope none of the toads end up sunshine yellow with tangerine spots. ;-)
I have a shameful confession to make, Carrie. I haven't read “The Once and Future King." Next time I download books I'll see if it is available. Better late than never.
Mk*
Oops! I was supposed to post these pictures on another thread. (Jim)
Wild Muscadine Grapes growing nicely at the end of our road.
This message was edited Sep 2, 2013 10:24 AM
This message was edited Sep 2, 2013 10:44 AM
" Be careful not to damage your crepe's shallow roots when mowing the lawn or digging near it."
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/4377/
I think that also means "be careful with your 8,000 pound electric wheelchair." :( Remind me not to plant anything with shallow roots. Well, remind me to own property before I start planning gardens.
I think that world events will make the US economy irrelevant
Hmmm maybe so. I think we are dangerously close to discussing politics.
Do you have any crepe myrtles?
August would be a dismal time in the garden without crepe myrtles to brighten things up. They are one of the few flowering shrubs that can take our high summer heat. The large, old pink variety has even escaped cultivation and can be found growing in the woods. I will have to remember about the dangers of wheelchairs to crepe myrtles. What kind do (did? sigh) you have?
Sheri, I found "II Corinthians 4 7-9" written in crayon on the inside cover of my first Bible. That one still gets me through difficult and scary times. Uh oh, now we are dangerously close to discussing religion. But, I do find that passage provides me peace of mind in troubled times.
Paul, are you with us on this thread? I know how concerned you are about improving the living situation in Haiti and I came across a clever program that will help some people. Jim is shopping for an all-terrain W/c and came across a deal where you buy two chairs at rock bottom price and one of these is sent to Haiti or other third world places where an all terrain w/c is a necessity to get around. Now that is socially responsible consumerism! The cost isn't much more than buying a single w/c through the normal channels. Still doing some research,but I think we will go with that option.
Kay, I've had lots of wheelchairs....in fact I have 2 in the garage that just need a new battery! My newest one (thank you, Medicare) is a Permobil. It's the fanciest I've ever had. It can fully recline and also go up and down, like a horse on a merry-go-round. I've always resisted tilt-in-space, but I finally gave in, and I love it.
The ones in the garage are a Jazzy we bought used a long time ago and I never used it--it needed a battery when we bought it, and we never got around to it--and a Quantum that was NEVER comfortable, not for one minute.. The Quantum had one nice feature that I'm missing now: an attendant control, so you can drive it without being the one sitting in it. I'm thinking right now that would have been really nice on this one, because DH gets really mad and frustrated when he's waiting for me to remember where I need to back up and where go forward, or when the joystick is tilted sideways and I don't notice. He also tends to get anxious when we're in crowds because he thinks I'm going to hit someone. So I would be happy to turn over the controls on those occasions.
Jim, do you like the scooters you can borrow at the grocery store? You'll get much better garden-ability if you stay closer to a scooter than a wheelchair. In a scooter you can back up to something and then spin the seat around and be right up close to it. In a WC you have to run something over to be able to pick it up. OTOH a scooter is much worse for your back and all that spinning takes a certain amount of agility which I no longer possess.
The Quantum was the first 6 wheeled WC I ever had and I thought it was newer and all wonderful but it dug holes in the New England mud. We don't have clay in Boston, we have stones. I think if you had clay, like they have in Virginia, you wouldn't get two feet on plain dirt. And another thing: a WC can't travel on gravel, bark or mulch.
Wow, Kay, what a fantastic program!
I have a really heavy duty scooter that I love because it doesn't rattle apart on the sidewalks. I was going through one a year just because the sidewalks are worse than the streets. (I don't drive.) This Afikim I've now been using for three years and it's still just fine. Also, it, like some of the others with a tiller and floorboard, can roll over almost everything, which is a blessing. I haul soil and pots into the backyard on it - the other advantage of a floorboard. The downside of this particular scooter is that it's too long to get on a bus. For which reason I miss the Boston "T." But then again, I couldn't have even a window box there!
Good point, Turtle, the floorboard of the scooter is terribly handy. Also the (optional) basket in front. Unfortunately, the "patient" ones I've seen don't have those massive baskets like the grocery store ones; still, with the WC I carry one of those little baskets.
Jim, I find comfort in those verses also. I am not troubled, though....and who mentioned politics....Oh my Lord!!!! I can still say that can't I?? or has big brother taken over this thread. dang...who's "we" anyway? not me....that's my story & i'm sticken to it.