It poured buckets yesterday! PTI (the airport that serves Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem) recorded over 3.2" of rain in the 24 hour period. We didn't get that much here at Casa 3917, but we got more than enough at nearly 2" in our rain gauge. Plus, there were thunderstorms from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m.; lots of wind, possibly some hail in the area...although, thankfully we didn't have much, if any, of that stuff.
I spent the afternoon, working in the garage...ha, fooled you! You thought I was going to say garden, didn't you? Nah. It was so muggy out there that you could have cut the air with a knife. The garage was not-as-warm and definitely a lot less humid than outside, so I decided to try to find the freezer underneath all those picture boxes that haven't been opened since our move here...still stacked up around, in front of, and on top of the chest freezer that some friends in MO gave us. It's been plugged in, cooling away, for the past year...but we've yet to load 'er up. That will soon change, as we need that freezer to put up the bounty that's coming in from the garden.
Found it! And, it's still working fine; doesn't even need defrosting...hurrah! Plus, I was happy to finally see some of our pictures and wall decorations again. I have far less wall space in this house, so I'm not sure where they will go, but it'll be fun trying to make it work. And, if nothing else, we'll follow Mr. T's suggestion: we'll line the walls of the garage with whatever we can't find a spot for inside the house!
Well, actually they weren't all of the bees. Some were of the butterflies that were visiting the zinnias and marigolds (right).
I never get tired of taking these pictures. I am trying to get better at it...and maybe I can find just the right one to enter into the photo contest that Our State magazine runs. It's a goal!
Since I couldn't really work in the garden this morning (still too wet), I decided to flatten out all those moving boxes that I removed from the pictures and lay them out in the next area to be tilled (when we get the tiller fixed, that is...:). It's supposed to rain again this evening, so they'll start decomposing in short order.
It's a neat trick we learned a few years ago. Want a new flower bed or garden row where there is now grass (or, in our case, weeds)? Just lay out your bed or row with cardboard, top it with leaves and clippings for a few seasons, and the following year, the weeds...er, grass...will be gone, and the cardboard will be well along in the decomposition process and can be tilled under fairly easily. We didn't get our cardboard process started until last Fall, so we still had some chunky bits after two passes with the tiller...and we learned that sticky-tape used to seal the moving boxes does NOT decompose, ever. Still, it worked just fine for what we wanted: to enlarge the garden space in the Way Back. And, that's what we doing again.
I want to add a large bed for my strawberries, outside/alongside the current garden boundary. Since strawberries are perennials and stay put for several years, I need to move my current crop to more permanent digs. I was reading in my Guide to North Carolina Vegetable Gardening by Walter Reeves and Felder Rushing, that a bed 8 x 30 feet will accommodate 30 "starter" plants and will produce enough berries to feed a family of 4. I currently have 11 plants that are sending out runners, left and right, so I think I should have my 30 starter plants by Fall, when I'll be creating my new bed. Of course, that means that I'll have to wait 2 years for a "real" crop of berries (since I'll want my starter or Mother plants to use their energy to send out even more runner or Daughter plants next year, instead of pouring that energy into making yummy, delicious berries...drool, drool...:). But, remember...gardening is all about patience...and delayed satisfaction from your labors...and, and...well, all that noble stuff that gardeners say when they can't have what they've worked so hard for RIGHT AWAY!!!!!
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