Rain, Very Little

I picked tomatoes for the Richardson's.  I didn't get and pictures.  They got two buckets of tomato plants.  One was full of Gladiator tomatoes, which are a large past tomato.  The other tub had a variety of red tomatoes with Lemon Boy on top.  We had cucumbers for the post office, but we game them to them.  We took them to their home.  They gave us a nice melon a couple of days ago and we also gave them some cucumbers.

We drove to Fillmore for groceries, a deposit at Zions bank and the credit union.  A week ago today I had cancer on my right temple removed.  I went to the clinic and had the stiches removed.  The nurse wasn't able to remove, so Dr. Basset removed them.  He said that he hadn't seen sutures like those.

There were a few drops of rain in Holden and Fillmore

 I took another picture of large wasp.  It way larger than the yellow jackets.

I found the small cooler in the ditch last year.  I cleaned it out this afternoon.  It will hold two gallon milk containers.

Shadow our cat was napping in this nursery can.  I couldn't resist taking a picture.  The cats are in them almost every day.

 I made another push stick.  It holds the piece of wood firmly against the table saw and the fence.  Hands and fingers are a safe distance from the spinning saw blade.  To the left of the photo is the first one I made.

I put out the yellow jacket traps yesterday afternoon.  I caught several dozen in each bottle.  The bottle to the left with the red lid is a nut bottle.  They are in the freezer.  It doesn't take very long to have freeze.

I began to cut down the weeds with the weed whip, where I found a lot of puncture weeds.  I got the shovel and dug them up.  There was a bucket full.  We took them to the dumpster.  I took a couple of pictures, but for some reason the didn't take.

The is always a wet spot in the isle in house six.  I get my shoes muddy.  I turned off the water this morning and turned it back on tonight to see if there was a leak.  There wasn't.  There is a low spot here.  I made a dike to keep the water from running into the isle.

The are a lot of spoiled tomatoes.  The crack and the sap beetle gets in and they are ruined.   I started cutting them off and putting them in the compost pile.

The above photo shows some that are spoiled.  A rotten tomato.


Comments and questions are welcome.

Tomatoes, Potatos, & bees

Saturday morning, Sunday, and Monday.    Only thing on Sunday was picking a few cucumbers.  In a sense it like milking cows.  It has to be done every day of the week.
Saturday Morning:  Carol wanted baked potatoes for Sunday dinner.  There are some vines at the end of the row that is being eaten by grasshoppers.  The leaves are gone.  I dug then up.

During the night the deer came in and ate most of our watermelons.

I put tomato cages on most of the melons to keep the deer from eating them.

I put a smaller cage on a uneaten watermelon.

Here is were the deer have eaten the sweet potato vines.

 I made this trap for yellow jackets.  There is a large wasp in there that I haven't ever seen before.

 The yellow jackets eating the plums on our plum tree.

The humming bird feed was empty.  Carol filled it and I hung it with a long wire.  The yellow jackets have been eating the sugar water.  I put it down low so I could vacuum the yellow jackets.  Our cats might be able to grab a humming being so low.  This afternoon I shortened the wire so that it is way out of  the cat's reach but in easy reach of the vacumn.

Picked our first zucchini today.

Another photo of more deer lunch.

I picked to buckets of tomatoes for one of our neighbors.  They are not all yellow.  The Lemon Boy tomatoes are thin skinned and are on top.

I put some spoiled plums in this large quart bottle.  It attacked a lot of yellow jackets.  I put a lid on the bottle and put it in the freezer.  It killed the yellow jackets.  I put it back under the plum tree.  Hope to get some more jackets.

I watched several videos yesterday on how some made a push stick.  The push stick keeps my hand away from the saw blade.    Here it is laying on the driveway.

Here it is standing on the driveway.

Here it is standing on the table saw.  There is a heel on the back end that hooks the piece of wood being cut.

I was going to spray weeds this afternoon, but there was so much puncher vine with seeds that I decided to dig it out.  It was so rocky that I couldn't dig the up.  I got a small tool and got on my hands and knees dug up a bucket full.  

I got most of them and I will get the rest a little later.  The were many ripe seeds and spraying them would kill them but the seeds would still be there.


Comments and questions are welcome.

More Puncture Vines

After breakfast we planted more wave petunias.  These are what I planted in germination trays several months ago.  Most were big enough to plant out.  A couple we still planted were very small.  They were planted in the flower bed north of Carol's bedroom window.   Some of the plants there look like the have been eaten by slugs or snails.

The picture above is of the nursery can full of puncture weeds.  I dug those up yesterday.

I went out again this morning and dug puncture weeds in north of the Miller's yard.  Another nursery can full of them.  I put both of them in the garbage.

We have a climbing vine growing in front of the door to the patio.  It has gotten so long that it started growing down.  I tied it to the top of the single trellis.

We drove to Fillmore buy some groceries.  I also got a window fan for the little bedroom window.  We will blow cooler outside air into the house.

In Fillmore I was going to buy a 3/4 inch ball valve.  I didn't buy it because I wasn't sure of the size.  When we got home I could tell that 3/4 inch was the right size.  I found one in house four that froze and broke.  It doesn't leak when it is all the way on or all the way off.  I shut off the water and installed it.  It is the orange handle on the left.  I need to hook it to the PVC pipe on the right side.  That is how I get water to the backyard sprinklers.

For lunch I made a salad.  Most of it comes from the garden.  The picture is a little blurry.

The are three native seedless cottonwood trees that I put in pots a couple of days ago.  I moved up to pad one which gets watered every three days.

There are a lot of dead plants full of weeds on pad one.  I moved to the east a bunch of them.  I hope to clean pad one a little bit every day.

This is the yuca that is ready to bloom, but is lousy with aphids.  I made a soap solution and sprayed them.  A lady bug dropped to the ground when I sprayed it.

These are tubes of Fremont Barberry plants.  There are thirty-five of them.  They were full of single leaf spurge.

The next project was to take the weeds out of the Utah Agave plants.  Most of the plants were dead.  I ended up with eight plants.

 I split the tube with a pair of scissors to remove the plant from the tube.  It is illustrated in the middle of the above picture.  The eight plants are shown on the left side. On the top left hand corner is an example of the dead agave.

Here are the eight quart pots with the final results.

 Comments and questions are welcome. 

Dreaded Puncture Vine

I went to the post office to pick up the mail and on the way home I noticed this tall yuca plant that is budded

I got my camera, smart phone, and took the above picture of the yuca.  The top buds were thickly covered with brownish aphids. The yuca stem is about five feet tall.

While walking over to the yuca, the Puncture vine, Tribulus terrestris, was everywhere.  Some where small seedlings and others had long vines with ripe seeds, called goat heads, with sharp points ready to cling a shoe or to the foot of some animal.

Using my heavy shovel I dug up all of them except for a few that were in part of the driveway that contained a lot of rocks.  l filled a large nursey can with the puncture vine.   

I walked to the row of green arrow peas to see how close they were to harvest.  There may be some ready for Sunday Dinner.

 I dug a lot of wild lettuce in and around the strawberries.  I threw a bunch of them into the chicken run.  The scared the chickens.  One hen flew up and got caught in the twine that I use to hang the lettuce.  I quickly took the above picture and removed the twine.

I worked for over an hour pruning the trees and vines just west of the hen house and the chicken run.

Comments and questions are welcome.