A Welcome to an Unxepcted Vistor

A great sabbath day.   Our dinner was almost ready when we got.  We cleaned up.

We went for a short walk around the front yard and part of the garden.  The Blue Lake pole bean started climbing several weeks ago.  Today the are forming beans.  They are a little hard to see.  I drew a black circle around some of them.

The potato plants are being eaten alive by earwigs.

Breana knocked on our door this afternoon.  What a pleasant surprise.  We haven't seen her since we attended her wedding several ears ago.  She was on her way home from St George and stopped in for a short visit.

 She is a beauty.  We love her so much.

I Pulled two large red beets a little larger than a baseball. I cut on into four pieces and wrapped them in foil. Baked them at 350 degrees for about 75 minutes. I had part of it for dinner. I gave the other one to our six hens. They have been eating on it all afternoon.


Comments and questions are welcome.

Another Trip to Manti

The first thing this morning was to pick the peas.

There were a lot of peas this morning.  Carol and I started on the west end of the while it was a little cooler and as we picked we worked our way to the shade.  We picked the two buckets which were over half full.

I prepared a CSA bucket for the Masner's.   In the bucked were beets. tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, parsley, leeks, salad onions, and peas.

We then drove to Manti for our temple assignment.


Comments and questions are welcome

Viewing in the Manti Tabernacle

I started before it gets hot pretty early in house six.  I started to hang the cucumber plants.  I had done a few a few days ago.

When I started it was quite cool.  I started on the east end and thought that I would do a all of those between the first two posts.  I did them and thought again that I would do a few more.  Then I decided that I would do them all.  By the time I got to the west end it was really hot.  It was about 12:30 and time for lunch.  I finished an went back to the house.

The above pictures shows how I did most of them.   I took a Toma Hook and tied one end of the twine to a large nail (spike).  I unwound the Toma Hook and hung it on the overhead wire.  I had to unwind or wind it up until the head of the spike was a couple of inches above the ground.  Then I hooked the twine to the cucumber plant with a tomato clip.  Most had two plants and with two twine trellis.

I cover the fans during the winter.  In the summer I hang the bottom on a hook.  Earlier I hung it to a corner post.  I bumped into it with my head every time I walked by which was quite a few times a day.

Sampson, one of our cats, climbed up the screen after a year so he made a large hole in the bottom left corner.  I was going put a patch on it a glue it to the screen.  I looked at several videos and diciced that I would replace the screen.

I went to Fillmore and bought a screen, made a payment, and made a deposit.  When I got home I walked out to house two and found some of the plants suffering for the lack of water.  I watered them and then went back to the house and began to put the new screen in the frame.  I got it in and cut away the excess from all four side.  I put the glass back in and could not get the screen and frame back into the door.  But I couldn't get the screen back in.  I tried several times.  Carol came to help and pushed a corner of the screen away from the frame.

The Masner's picked us up and we went to Manti for the viewing of Fred F.  There were a lot of people there.  We then drove home.

I worked some more trying to put the screen in the door.  I finally got one corner and with a little force pushed into the other corner.   Above from outside looking in.

The above picture is in house two.  I moved all of the tomato plants and most of the weeds.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Visit From Battys

I was on my way to house two.  Carol had done some watering and wanted me to help find the snails that come out from hiding in the wet leaves.  We found some and kept looking through we plants and leaves and we ended up with a quart bottle nearly half full.  Most were large and a few others were the size of the finger nail on my pinky.

Later this morning I checked house two to determine the watering needs.  Basically, it was okay.  There is a tomato plant that is doing really well, but it had a lot of branching that needed to be removed.

The photo above shows about six branches plus the main branch.  I cut off more than a dozen branches.  Some small and some over two feet long.

It was getting pretty warm in house two.  There were six or seven tomato plants that I started last fall to maintain a couple of unusual varieties.  I cut off all the branches with the intent to pick the ripe tomatoes.  There were two different cherry tomatoes and an orange Gladiator plant.  I was almost finished when the Batty's came.  We were expecting but we thought that they would be here earlier in the day.

I quit and walked back to the house.  He gave me a hair cut.  I asked him to cut away the hair to the skin around my ears.  He did a good job.  We visited awhile and then drove to Fillmore where we had lunch at Cluff's.   I had a mushroom and Swish cheese hamburger.  It was good right to the end.

I started weeding the strawberry plants, but the ground was so dry and hard that was really difficult to dig out the weeds.  I turned water and gave them a good drink.

This is a one leg for the stool that I made a couple of days ago.  This afternoon, I made three more legs.

I was so hot outside that I decided to build another stool.  I used a different technique using short boards from a pallet.  I made four stiles and cut a 45 degree miter and glued the legs to the stiles.  I pined with my nail gun.  I then clamped them to pull the joints tight together.

The pole beans have a pale color.  I applied some nitrogen fertilizer and then watered them.

Comments and questions  are welcome.

Payson Utah Temple

Pruning and Hanging Cucumbers

Our regular Tuesday morning.  Up early and got home around two.  I changed clothes and watered house two.  I worked in house six the rest of the afternoon.  I did the tomato pruning in house six.  I walked up and down the rows pruning with hand clippers.  There were some tomato plants that needed more hanging.  I also did that on some of the plants.

I pulled up all of the pea plants and picked of all the pea pods.  Some were new and tender and many that were tough and old.   I will make another batch of split pea soup with those.

It was hard to hang these young cucumber plants.  The is not stiff leaf to hook the Tomato clip too.  I hook to the base of  the plant and then put a large spike through the tomato clip.  Then I wound the plant around the twine several times.  There two plants together. I hooked the twine to both. with two separate Toma Hooks.

One of these is done  little differently.  I put the spike between the twine and the cucumber plant.  That seemed to work and was a little faster.  The tendrils beginning to grow on some plants.

Several weeks ago Carol asked me to clean the fridge that is in the garage.   I cleaned the fridge in the garage.  We have had that fridge a dozen years and to my knowledge it has never been cleaned.  The above photo is the dirty fridge.  The state health department would close me down for storing CSA box in the fridge.

The above photo is after I cleaned the fridge.


Comments and questions are welcome.

 

Irrigation

I turned down the water this morning at 6:50 this morning.  I blocked it at Raymond's corner.

Here is where my first screen is located.  I stops most of the junk that comes down the ditch.

I started on the back lawn first and got a good watering.  The water was running to the raspberry bushes.  I then put in a 90 degree elbow and turned the water toward our patio.

The pipes don't fit together so I just put them together.

I caught a lot of snails and put them in the pan and smashed them.  The chickens have been eating them.

The screen has stopped a lot of junk.  I can then throw it out.  

A large electric conduit directs the water around the corner for part of the lawn which is a little higher.

Carol picked up about thirty snails and stuck them in a quart bottle.  She then stuck them in the garbage, bottle and all.

We had a social and dinners at the home of Clair Harmon.  There were a bunch of other people there.

I put together my first CSA bucket this afternoon.  I got a picture but it was pretty bad.  I didn't use it.

Comments and questions are welcome.

An Unplanned Event Again

Today is Saturday and I have three TV show that I watch every Saturday.  The last several times have been reruns.  Today, they were all new.  I did the watering before breakfast and took the garbage out to the dumpster before the show was to start.  Carol was picking peas so I went out to help.  We picked a nice batch from the vines in our garden.  I missed the first ten minutes of the first show.

Carol was cleaning the patio.  I got the blower and she blew off all the leaves and stuff.   She said that she would then clean off the steps that went down to the crawl space under our house.  I got a large flat edge shovel and began to remove the leaves and dirt that has accumulated of the last two years.  There were a lot of worms in the rotting leaves and dirt.  I scooped up a bunch in the shovel and took it out to the chickens.  I thought the chickens would grab those large night crawlers and run, but they were pretty cautious.  The above photo shows mostly cleaned steps.

I put them in a blue tub and put is on the flat wheelbarrow and took them out to the compost pile.  I thought that the worms would help in the decomposition of the compost.

I took a shovelful to the compost pile in the north end of house two.

Carol did a good job at cleaning the patio.

Before lunch I transplanted about fifty eggplants on the north side of house six.  There are two rows of plants north of the post on the right.  The first row are pepper plants that are doing well.  The second row are the egg plants.

I mowed the lawn and walked past the Perityle stansburyi plant.  It will soon be blooming.

After lunch I mowed the lawn.  I am getting pretty good mowing the lawn with the new mower.  I like to make my lines straight.  It took me a little over two hours to mow and trim.

When that was over I cut the weeds next to the road north of the greenhouses one, two, and three.  I gassed up twice and replaced the cutting string twice.

I found these orange foxtail lilies north of house one against the fence.  I haven't been back there for nearly two monthsl

The last thing in the garden is the planting of some watermelon.  I ran the tiller up and down an old row and made a new row and put in the watermelon plants.

It has been unusually cold for this time of the year.  We haven't turned on the AC this year.


Comments and questions are welcome.

Quick Trip to Linden

Carol needed some money for birthday presents.  We drove to Fillmore as soon as the bank was open.  Carol had the birthday cards ready.  She put the money in the envelope  and dropped it off at the post office.

We have been having a little trouble with our car.  It seems to be using more oil than is normal.  Also, There is a stream of smoke coming from the muffler during a quick acceleration.   We were at Murdock Motors for over two hours.  They couldn't find an apparent reason.  There were several procedures that they needed to do which would take several hours.  It was getting late and we needed to hurry home.  We stopped at Carol's brother's home.  He has been ill with pneumonia and is begging to fill better.

Next we went Carol's sister's home.  We had a box of vegetables for them.  The vegetables were not in a box, but in a large frosting bucket.  I will call them Vegie Buckets.  They can easily be carried with one hand.  We visited awhile and then went to Sam's Club where we bought a watermelon, some honey, and I got two small frosting buckets.

We stopped in Payson at Wendy's where we got a sandwich and then drove the rest of the way home.  As soon as I got home I put on my work shoes and watered the plants in house six.  The plants were in better shape than I thought.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Hung More Tomatoes

Alliums and Foxtail lilies in various places in our yard.

The dry garden next to the road on the north side of our house.  Foxtail lilies and alliums.

This one is in the south west corner of our yard.  These are foxtail lilies.

This is another one in the south west corner of our yard next to the grape vines and asparagus plants.  All are alliums.

There is a lot of parsley growing in front of the lemon trees west of the driveway.  Carol started to cut them out and gave her some help.  They were going to seed and by cutting the down there will be new growth.

 Sprayed some weeds where we planted the latest corn.  The corn hasn't germinated. and the weeds were pretty tiny.  I also sprayed weeds in house six.  In this particular spot there was a lot of morning glory.  I put the red beets so I could spray the morning glory.

I moved them out of the way so I wouldn't spray them.  I hung the rest of the tomato plants in house six except for a couple.

I put together two buckets of vegetables together.  The first of the CSA boxes together.  I used the frosting buckets that we got from Sam's Club last week.

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 Carol wanted me to trim the ground cover that started to cover the walk way.

Yesterday I pulled all of the old black tubing on the lawn under the cherry tree.  I put it in the back of our pick up.  There were a few drops of rain, but I took it to the dump.

Comments and questions are welcome.