Friday, August 01, 2008, 06:23
Wilted
I never thought I would see it. The weather has been so hot and dry this week that my turnips tops are wilted. They were looking so green and healthy and lush, but the hot weather has got them looking downright green around the gills.
Of course, nothing in the garden looks particularly healthy. It's just too dry.
Well, I guess I can't say "nothing" in the garden. The purple pole beans look pretty good. And so do the muskmelon and the watermelon. That's thanks to both Isabelle and Kajun. Every morning when I dump their buckets to clean them out and give the horses fresh water, I dump the water that's left in the buckets from overnight on the purple pole beans and the muskmelon and watermelon.
The beans are really coming along now and I need to pick them and start freezing beans. I don't' know if the muskmelon and watermelon are going to get enough water from the horse buckets to set and ripen fruit.
If the muskmelon do eventually get ripe, I'm hoping by then that the ragweed pollen will have calmed down a bit. I get a cross-reactivity reaction between the muskmelon and the ragweed. Muskmelon is one of those things in which the protein is something like one molecule different from the ragweed, and right now when the ragweed is bad, my body thinks the muskmelon is ragweed. When I eat it, my mouth, lips, and tongue burn like I have been eating something hot and spicy.
I bought a bag of oranges earlier this week. I'm hoping to get time to make some rhubarb marmalade. The rhubarb is not recovering the way it would if we were getting rain, but there's still enough there to make some marmalade, I think.
I called an ag supply place Thursday morning, and yes, they are buying oats. And they are paying $3 a bushel for top-quality oats. Our oats field has a couple of days to go yet before it's ready to harvest. But it won't be long. My brother says he wants some of it for seed oats for himself next year. Now all I've got to do is find some hay for the winter. I'd rather not think about winter just yet, but cooler weather would be nice. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, 06:05
Toad
Randy had no more than walked out the door Tuesday morning when he turned around and came back inside.
"What's wrong? What did you forget?" I asked.
"There's a toad in the air conditioner bucket," he said.
"What?"
"There's a toad in the air conditioner bucket."
"A toad?"
"Yes, a toad," my husband said. "And now I've got to find something to fish him out with."
He rummaged around in the kitchen until he found the pancake turner. The nonstick pancake turner, to be exact.
Randy headed out the door, with me right on his heels.
There was, indeed, a toad in the air conditioner bucket. He was about as big as the palm of my hand.
"How did you see that from the porch?" I said. "I would have to be right over there to see it."
The bucket that collects water from the window air conditioner in the kitchen is about 15 feet from the porch. We put a bucket under the air conditioner to catch the water dripping from it because I would rather not have the ground by the foundation soaked all the time. Plus, I use the water to water flowers and trees.
"I don't know how I saw it. I just did," Randy said. "I glanced over there and saw him."
"Well, he's lucky you did because I wouldn't have found him until I got water for the horses," I said. The faucet is right by the air conditioner bucket.
Randy fished around with the pancake turner and then flipped the toad out of the bucket. The toad seemed very happy to be out of the bucket, which was about three-quarters full. I suppose there wasn't quite enough water for the toad to be able to get up to the edge to get out.
Of course that begs the question of how he got *into* the bucket. And *why* would he want to be in the bucket.
Randy headed back in the house to put the pancake turner back into the kitchen.
I followed him outside again.
"Jeepers, if I'd been thinking, I would have just dumped the bucket," Randy said.
"And waste perfectly good water?" I said.
"No, no. I would have dumped it on a tree," he said.
"But I still don't know how you saw that," I said.
"I don't know. I just did," he said. And with that, my husband headed for his truck.
I went back on the porch and looked toward the air conditioner bucket. From there, I certainly could not see inside the bucket. I would have to be right by it to see inside it.
Then it dawned on me. Randy is 7 inches taller than I am. If I stood on something, I would be able to see down into the bucket from there, too.
Lucky for the toad that Randy did see him, though, otherwise he might have been in there for a long time until I found him.
That is, of course, one of things that I love about my husband -- that he will stop on his way to work to help a toad who can't get out of a bucket by himself.
Sweltering
It has been sweltering hot here at Rural Route 2 for the past couple of days. Tuesday the high was 96 with a dewpoint in the upper 70s. Miserable weather. I had to attend a zoning board of adjustment meeting late Tuesday afternoon, and by the time I drove 15 miles to get there, I was dripping with sweat. My little GMC does not have air conditioning, but even if it did, I wouldn't use it. Air conditioning makes a vehicle use more fuel.
Kittens
My barn kittens are doing better now that they've been on amoxicillan for a week. The momma cats are doing better, too, although the old mother cat's eye still looks funny. The pupil in her "bad" eye doesn't react to light the way the other pupil does. I have had to put the medicine in canned kitty food for her, but so far, she has eaten it and has gotten the medicine. I have to be careful about putting the plate of kitty food in front of her, though. I don't want her to strike with her claws and shred my hand. She's a nasty old cat. She's been around here for 8 years and has never calmed down.
I don't know why I care about that old mother cat, except that she is Snowflake, Henry, Katerina and Dora's grandma. By the time I'm finished, I will have gone through about $120 worth of amoxicillan for all of them. And here I thought I had it knocked out of them the first time around. The vet tech tells me that respiratory ailments, including pneumonia, are very common in cats this time of year because of all the dust and pollen. I want to get the kittens healthy so I can find homes for them.
LeAnn R. Ralph