LysmachiaMoon's blog: Rain!

Some much needed rain over the past 3 days...nothing too heavy, mostly drizzle and heavy mist, but every so often a few hours of real rain. I hope this breaks our 4 month dry spell. Of course, this may mean another very snowy winter...

I'm going to have to put on the thinking cap and decide how I want to put up some winter protection for certain plants. Normally, I have never bothered, but the past 2 winters have been brutal and I've lost a lot of lavender, santolina, etc. The hydrangeas took a beating too. I think I'll wait until well into December, then maybe just use leaves and chicken wire to construct some covers.

My wisteria vine that I've been trying to train into a tree form (it's about 10 years old) fell over and broke off at the base.... I am of two minds. I don't really think that was a good spot for a wisteria in the first place...a bit too shady. I think I may dig up the root with it's emerging shoots and move it elsewhere. That would probably be more sensible than trying to start fresh in the same place. I'll need to think of something else to go in the center of that bed; I've got my heart set on a small tree or topiary, but I'm flexible. The bed is special....it's got an enormous rock in the middle that looks like a big shallow nearly circular bowl....completely naturally occurring. At one time eons ago, this stretch of hillside was the bed of a raging stream (which is now Marsh Run, far down the hillside) and water and pebbles carved that bowl out.

Raining heavily right now, so I think I'm stuck indoors for the duration. Seed catalogs are already arriving and I should get out my seed box and see what I need to order. I'm trying very hard to stick to my resolution of last year to only grow veg that I know will do well with little fuss and that R will eat. No point in struggling to grow cauliflower (a very hit-or-miss proposition here in Southcentral PA) and then have him refuse to eat it anyways.

Going to concentrate on beans, peas, cabbage, potatoes, onions, beets, sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, winter and summer squash, cukes, sweet potatoes, maybe broccoli and brussel sprouts. The tomatoes and brussel sprouts will definitely be up in the auxiliary garden in 2016. I can grow nice sprouts, but for some reason, just as they get to the stage of setting little "heads" I get a voracious infestation of calico bugs that go right for them. So I'm moving them far away from the main veg to see what happens.

I've given up trying to grow carrots and lettuces. Too much effort for too little reward...especially when I get them both so cheaply.

I stumbled across a really good idea for growing onions, entirely by accident. Last spring, I ran out of room for onions and put in about 100 bulbs in a single line right along the very edge of my raised beds. They were so much easier to weed! (One of the worst jobs for me is weeding an onion patch...such finicky work). I got the best, biggest onions I've ever grown. Definitely going to do that again in 2016.

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I see the fools in Congress have decided to teach the pres. a lesson by refusing to pass any Carbon Emissions reduction legislation. That's the way to go! You show him. It's called cutting off your nose to spite your face. Classic.

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